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  GNH member Cheryl Leksan, a SuperMom, SuperNurse, SuperTeacher, overall SuperWoman and a professor of nursing at Xavier University, presents a talk titled “What’s Your Kryptonite?” Following up on her Sunday message last year on resilience, Cheryl shares what it means to be a “Superman/Superwoman” and how to identify the things in your life that might be sapping your power.

Click here to listen to Cheryl’s message:

(c) Doug Slagle, The Gathering at Northern Hills, A Unitarian Universalist Community, All Rights Reserved

 

The recent deaths of Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Sam Dubose, Tamir Rice, and Walter Scott, at the hands of white police officers, have made it starkly clear that racism in our nation is alive and well.  Almost all were killed in disregard for their civil and human rights.

As a spiritual matter, this issue of racial violence perpetrated against innocents has been discussed from this pulpit many times.  Since I’ve been minister, we’ve grieved and searched our souls over this issue.  From mourning the murders at a Charleston AME church, to Sunday celebrations of African culture or John Brown by Ray Nandyal, to lamenting attacks against immigrants, to discussing the subject of white privilege, to celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reverend WHG Carter, to Howard Tolley’s guest message last month on ways to address racism, we’ve not ignored the subject.

And we will continue to speak about this evil in our culture.  Just two weeks ago, the 2016 Academy Award nominations were announced.  There were zero major nominations for any film dealing with black culture or featuring African-American actors.  Not one actor of color, Director of color, black screenwriter or songwriter was nominated for an Oscar even though there were many excellent ones to choose from.  The award is essentially irrelevant when it ignores the work of so many for reasons that appear to be racist.

This follows last year’s similar nominations of almost all white films and actors. As an industry that is hailed as highly progressive, Hollywood reveals itself to be no better on matters of race than the rest of America.  And so, as a part of my Hollywood Spirituality series this month to look at Oscar nominated films and how they might inspire, I chose the film “Straight Outta Compton” for discussion today precisely because it was NOT nominated for an Academy Award even though it was both commercially and critically successful.  Indeed, I think it a much better film – and socially more important  – than “The Revenant” which I discussed last Sunday.

I have to confess, however, that “Straight Outta Compton” is not a film I saw when it was first released last August.  I doubt many in this room saw it at that time either.  Rap music and its artists don’t interest me, I told myself.  It’s not that I’m racist, I reassured myself.  It’s just a matter of my personal taste.  And yet, that’s not entirely true.  I remember seeing promotions for the movie with its depictions of gangster rap, violence, sexism and profanity and I immediately concluded the movie was not for me. It does not depict a slice of life that is relevant to me.  And in those statements that I told myself are, in truth, my own latent racism.

Let’s take a look now at the promotional trailer to “Straight Outta Compton” and as you watch it, think about your reactions to what is depicted.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsbWEF1Sju0

The film is a biopic about members of one of the original rap groups, NWA, which stands for “Negroes with Attitude”.  Rising out of a 1980’s Los Angeles inner city environment of drugs, gangs and crime, three young men, stage named Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, and Ice Cube, find they have a musical voice that speaks to young, inner city blacks.  Their first songs are filled with anger at the lack of opportunity, police harassment, incarceration and blighted schools in their community.  NWA songs have a thumping beat that pounds with the rage felt about injustice.  Their songs are purposefully political.  They gave a voice to millions of marginalized black youth across the US, including here in Cincinnati, where NWA performed a sold out concert in 1988 at the Coliseum. 

Ironically, NWA’s gangsta rap style began to thrill white suburban youth who had no understanding of black oppression but who loved the raucous sounds and lyrics railing against police power and other authority figures.   Here’s a sample from NWA’s most famous – and notorious song – “F” tha’ Police:”  (And I’ve replaced some words here which is not meant to judge them):

A young brotha got it bad ’cause I’m brown

And not the other color so police think.

They have the authority to kill a minority.

“F” that stuff, ’cause I ain’t the one for

a punk mother-f with a badge and a gun

to be beatin’ on, and thrown in jail.

We can go toe to toe in the middle of a cell,

‘f-in’ with me cause I’m a teenager,

with a little bit of gold and a pager.

Searchin’ my car, lookin’ for the products.

Thinkin’ every brotha is sellin’ narcotics.

Performing similar songs, the group became hugely successful and hugely controversial.  Tipper Gore, wife of Vice-President Al Gore, spoke before Congress against NWA and its profanity laced songs.  Before a concert in Detroit, the police warned band members to not perform songs demeaning police or using profanity.  NWA sang their signature song anyway and they were promptly arrested.  White protest groups across the country also reacted against NWA with boycotts and record smashing.

Arguments over money and fame eventually split the group apart.  Members finally stood up against white managers and recording executives who had exploited them.  Violence, sex and drugs affected them.  Tragedy hit a few of them.  Ultimately, however, they earned hard won victories of self-empowerment, ownership of their music, great financial reward, and a legacy of activism against police and racism that is still relevant.   

The challenge I have in my message is how to suggest a spiritual ethic we might gain from the film.  Indeed, “Straight Outta Compton” speaks for itself on many levels and it is not for me, especially with regard to racism, to suggest how to correct it.  I am a strong believer that whites should listen more than opine about how to fix racism.  As perpetrators of discrimination, intentional or not, our obligation is to fix ourselves.  Beyond that, we must listen to the victims of oppression and follow their lead in how to address the issue.

But if whites are to fix themselves, they can begin by understanding and appreciating African-American culture – including rap music.  We should look beyond the vulgarity, celebration of sex, and palpable rage in many rap songs to find, instead, the core message of anger and frustration.  Rap has been criticized by many whites as homophobic, exploitive of women, and overly violent.  And the movie does not hide those dimensions of NWA and rap in general.

But Dr. Dre and Eazy-E replied to their critics that while they were like journalists who reveal truth, their songs highlight white privilege and discrimination that motivates the angry and profane aspects of the genre.  I’m not a psychologist, but the emasculation of black young men by white police officers, through constant harassment and incarceration, likely gives rise to hyper masculinity in rap and its fans.  The film clearly depicts this fact.  The NWA band was, at one point, confronted and demeaned by white LA police officers outside their studio.  They were slapped, forced to lie on the ground, taunted and referred to as “boys.”  In response, Eazy-E immediately returned to their recording studio and wrote their most famous song “F tha Police”.   The historic debasement of black men by whites has clearly helped nurture their anger AND their sometimes aggression and misogyny.  It’s whites, not them, who are thus responsible.

But rap artists channel their rage not with physical violence but with musical poetry to inspire and give voice to deep rooted feelings.  Misogyny and homophobia are not attitudes to be excused but, in black culture, they are caused by white marginalization of black men.  More important, the angry songs of NWA and those by contemporary black rap artists like Kendrick Lamar, whose song ‘Alright’ is now considered the anthem of Black Lives Matter, their songs both inform and incite.  Last Monday night Lamar performed “Alright” at the Grammy awards set to a background of pounding tribal drums and a screen image of Africa burning with the word ‘Compton’ superimposed on it.  His point was clear: contemporary racism is a form of modern slavery.  Here’s a sample of the song’s lyrics – again with a few words changed:

When you know, we been hurt, been down before, brotha,

When my pride was low, lookin’ at the world like, “where do we go, brotha?”

And we hate Popo, wanna kill us dead in the street for sure, brotha. 

I’m at the preacher’s door, my knees gettin’ weak and my gun might blow…….but we gon’ be alright.

Brotha, we gon’ be alright

Brotha, we gon’ be alright

We gon’ be alright

Do you hear me, do you feel me? We gon’ be alright.

Kendrick Lamar, one of today’s most popular rap artists, follows directly in the footsteps of NWA and the story of “Straight Outta Compton.”  His art is political, social protest speech.

In that regard, many of us can look to rap as instructive for how we can appropriately channel anger in our lives.  Rap is an expression of resistance, power and protest.  It’s an angry but productive response to the war on black young men that is fought with police killings and high rates of black incarceration, highlighted in the book The New Jim Crow.   As a white man, I know these forms of discrimination to be true and yet, if I am honest with myself, rap music and its anger are subliminally threatening.

In truth, rap is threatening to me and others because it threatens white privilege.  But, rap and hip hop are part of the evolution of African-American musical responses to racism.  Like jazz and early rock and roll, rap is a uniquely American – and black – musical genre.  But unlike those two musical forms, rap is specifically intended to inspire and to demand.  But rap is not a bloody revolution in the streets.  Rap songs like those highlighted in ‘Straight Outta Compton” channel black anger in a productive way – much like all art is designed to provoke.  Indeed, I don’t want to sound patronizing, but rap is a form of Scripture designed to poetically motivate its listeners.

Like jazz and rock and roll, rap has also been eagerly adopted by white youth and, some say, often sanitized of overly angry lyrics.  Statistics show that 80% of those who now purchase rap music are white suburban teenagers.  Hip hop and rap are cool.  They’re innovative, subversive, sensual and anti-authoritarian – all things that resonate with young people – black or white.

It’s in that light that I believe we can understand both African-American anger and their culture – through rap music.  It is up to me and other whites to examine our own hearts, in response to the racism that we know is real, to learn about, empathize with and ultimately appreciate black culture – and rap is one piece of that.  In doing so, I can better understand the visceral pain African-Americans feel.

I also challenge us as Unitarians to examine our Sunday services in the light of African-American Sunday worship and music.  UU services can be more open, more emotion filled, more loose, more multi-cultural.  In doing so, we might help bridge the Sunday racial divide.  It’s imperative we find multiple ways to honestly empathize with black feelings, to figuratively put ourselves in their shoes and feel the sting of racial harassment, the shame of inferior schools, the dread a parent feels for a son’s safety at the hands of police, or the soul draining pain of hate directed one’s way simply for the amount of melanin in one’s skin.  Rap and other forms of African-American culture, like their styles of worship, if really listened to and borrowed from, can show whites the existential pain – and pride- of being black and why, indeed, black lives matter.

My message series this month using films to look at spiritual themes might seem trivial to some.  One member sincerely told me the series comes across as similar to the image of playing a fiddle while Rome burns.  I welcome such comments.  But my hope is that we see movies – and rap music – much like we do other forms of artistic expression – as powerful in their ability to inspire, instruct and motivate.

It might seem like a stretch, but I believe the three films I chose to discuss this month are thematically linked.  The film ‘Inside Out’ asks us to look at our emotions and see them as useful if we maintain them within appropriate boundaries.  The movie ‘Revenant’ suggests we can find redemption in how we treat others – with open and unconditional love that transcends hate and insult.  ‘Straight Outta Compton’ brings those two themes together.  The justifiable anger depicted in the film of young black rap artists is powerful, appropriate and real.  And our response to such heartfelt emotions must be to listen, understand and unconditionally love.

If rap is honestly listened to, we will find universal spiritual expression against injustice consistent with the words of Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.  Rap music won’t cure the ills of racism alone but listening to and understanding it is one way for me and other whites to address subconscious racism and see, instead, one’s inner reality.  No white person can fully understand the hurt of racism and ways they are responsible for it, but viewing the film ‘Straight Outta Compton’ and listening to the rap music it showcases are worthy ways to begin an empathy effort.   

I wish you peace and joy………………as I also now welcome your thoughts about my message and topic today.

(c) Doug Slagle, The Gathering at Northern Hills, A Unitarian Universalist Community, All Rights Reserved

 

There are two well known stories in the Bible about fathers and sons that are often retold to teach spiritual concepts.  One is from the Jewish Torah, and the other is from the New Testament.  The Torah story is about Abraham who is considered the father of Judaism.  After settling in the area we know as Israel, Abraham and his wife Sarah were happy and prosperous.  One night, as the story goes, God spoke to Abraham and told him that he will be the patriarch of God’s chosen people – the Jews.  God assures Abraham that just as there are millions of stars in the night sky, so too will be the number of his descendants – the people of Israel.

This promise from God, however, belied one aspect of Abraham’s life.  He and Sarah were both at advanced ages and had been unable to conceive a child.  After a number of odd twists to the story – like Abraham having a child through a servant  – he and Sarah eventually do have a son – Isaac.  And both knew that it will be through Isaac that the Jewish people and nation will come. 

But God later tests Abraham’s faith by asking that he sacrifice – kill – Isaac on the top of a mountain.  Abraham is shocked but he does not question God.  He does as he is told and leads Isaac to the mountain, ties his arms and legs and raises a dagger to kill his only son – the one who represented God’s promise.

God however quickly tells Abraham to put the dagger down – that this was only a test.  For Christians and Jews, the story is confirmation that Abraham was a great spiritual figure – a man who had total faith in God far beyond his love for a long desired son.  To me and many other commentators, however, the story is unfathomable.  If God is love, as the Bible says, then this story tells us we must honor that God by forsaking the very real love that a parent has for a child.  That is cruel and inconsistent logic.

A contrasting Biblical story about a father and son is from the New Testament.  It’s the parable of the Prodigal Son. In it, Jesus describes a father with two sons.  One son is obedient, loyal and hard working.  The other son is self-focused and a playboy.  This son asks his father one day to receive his inheritance in advance – before his dad dies.  The father, out of love for his son, agrees.  And the son promptly takes the money, moves to the city and squanders it on wine, women and other debauchery.

This son eventually finds himself so poor that he is forced to scrounge with pigs for food scraps.  As a Jew, he could not fall any lower.   The son decides to return to his father and throw himself at his mercy.

As the boy is walking back to the family farm, and before he pleads for mercy, his dad recognizes him a long way off and is overjoyed.  He runs to his wayward son, smothers him with tears of joy and hugs, and commands his other son to prepare a feast for the returning prodigal.  Despite the impudence of a son who demanded his inheritance early, who broke one of the Ten Commandments by dishonoring a parent, who led a wastrel life, the dad did not care.  His love for the boy was so great.

Jesus told this as a lesson and not as a true story.  As such, I love the tale.  It speaks of the kind of love most of us rarely offer another – a love so powerful that it overcomes any hurt or offense.  It’s a love so pure that Jesus pointedly said that it is how God feels about us and that we are to show others.  Love without prejudice.  Love with forgiveness and no judgement.  Love unconditionally.  It’s a perfect story for Valentine’s Day.

I begin my message with these two stories because they highlight the bigger ideal I hope to convey by examining one of this year’s Oscar nominated films – part of my February series to consider Hollywood spirituality.  I looked last Sunday at the Disney animated film “Inside Out” and the topic of Emotional Intelligence.  Today, I look at the movie “Revenant” and the idea of redemption.  For me, it is a good movie – one that also examines a father / son relationship and the idea that love is a purifying and redemptive force.  Let’s take a look at the promotional trailer for the film…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoebZZ8K5N0

As you just saw, “Revenant” is cinematically beautiful but it is intense and full of violence and bloodshed.  It tells the true story of Hugh Glass, a fur trapper who lived and worked in the unexplored west of the early 1800’s.  After his fur trapping party was attacked by Native-Americans, Glass and a few others narrowly escaped.  They were forced to walk overland to the nearest fort.  While he was out hunting one day, Glass was attacked and horribly mauled by a bear.  His fellow trappers must then carry him.  They soon find that task impossible and decide to leave him behind with his son and two trappers who are to tend him until he is better or a rescue party can return. 

One of the two trappers resented the care-taking assignment, killed Glass’ son, and then buried Glass alive in order to abandon him.  But Glass survived and the majority of the movie then shows how he miraculously made his way back to civilization despite horrific injuries and lack of food or winter clothing.  I won’t describe the many ordeals he endured but they are harrowing and not for the faint of heart.

The film, like the two Biblical stories I earlier related, teaches a spiritual lesson.  Indeed, the word ‘revenant’ is defined as a person who returns from the dead.  The film’s director, Alejandro Inarritu, intended for Glass to be a type of Jesus by his astounding ability to survive grievous wounds, being buried alive, and the ravages of nature.  Lesser persons would have given up and died.  Glass did not.

In the end, he achieves a kind of spiritual epiphany and resurrection.  Like the Jesus of Bible stories, Glass endures his own torture and figurative crucifixion, he’s betrayed by a friend, he’s buried in a grave and yet he not only comes back from near death, he’s redeemed in the process.

Redemption is thus a strong theme in the film much like it is in the two contrasting Bible stories I described.  Redemption as a concept is one shared by many world religions and, indeed, by humans in general.  For Christians, redemption is about salvation – how a person is changed from being a supposed sinner into one who is right with God through a belief in Jesus and his resurrection.  For Jews, redemption speaks of salvation of them as a people – their exodus escape from Egyptian slavery, their Hanukah victory over a foreign enemy and their recent revival as a nation after the horrors of the Holocaust.  For Muslims, one achieves redemption through dedication to Allah and his requirements for regular prayer, charitable gifts and other obligations.  For Buddhists, a person is redeemed when they are able to let go of worldly desires and find instead peaceful contentment.

For us as Unitarian Universalists, I believe there is a path to redemption which is highlighted in the “Revenant” film and in the story of the Prodigal Son – one contrasted against religious ideas of redemption as told in the story of Abraham.  And that underlines my theology and spiritual outlook.

God is not an outside force that regulates our lives and determines our eternal destiny.  God is within us and is, indeed, us.  God is you and god is me.  We, we (!) are figurative gods and goddesses who have the ability to both redeem ourselves and redeem our world.  As part of all nature, we are no more special than other forms of creation but we do have unique capabilities to grow and change, to love and nurture, to sacrifice and serve, and thus build a better world.  It is in this sense that we are symbolically but not literally holy and divine.

In the Prodigal Son story, the father did not follow Scripture or religious rules to determine his loving response to a wayward son.  Indeed, according to Jewish law, he should have disowned the boy for dishonoring him.  He certainly should not have welcomed back a son who had become religiously unclean by his wanton life.  But he loved his son despite those facts and in the process, love redeemed the boy as much as it redeemed the father.  Who among us has not been a prodigal at some point in our lives and yearned for the forgiving embrace of another?

This contrasts with Abraham who followed his religion and not his heart in how he acted.  Instead of acting according to love for HIS son, Abraham obeyed the commands of a cruel and manipulative God.

That contrast between following love……..or following religious belief is highlighted in the film “Revenant”.  Hugh Glass was strongly motivated to survive against all odds by a love for his deceased wife whom he saw in dreams – and to memories of his beloved son.  His redemptive epiphany resulted directly from that love.  Indeed, he often recalled Native-American wisdom that his wife had told him:  The wind cannot topple a tree with strong roots.  For Hugh Glass, his strong roots were his family, his love for them, and his will to survive no matter what.  The mantra for him was to endure, for the sake of their memory, as long as he had breath.

That theme of discovering what are one’s life roots is a spiritual pursuit I find compelling.  Our foundation, our roots, those things that ultimately redeem us and determine our lasting legacy, they are found in how we love and forgive one another.  They’re found in the teachings of Jesus, Muhammed and Buddha who encouraged people to let go of self-focused thinking and find meaning in service and compassion.  Strong roots are found in how we choose to act toward fellow humans – not in whether we obey a capricious god or accept religious dogma.  We are the the ones charged with building a world of forgiveness, gentleness, kindness, humility, justice and peace.  These are divine and eternally good ideals we do not need a god to initiate.  Only WE have the ability and the choice to practice them and make them our strong roots.

Love motivated the Prodigal Son’s father and Hugh Glass.  The film “Revenant” reminds us that we live in a world of great beauty but also one of unfeeling hardship and death.  We must survive against many obstacles in life and it is up to you and me not only to courageously embrace the task of living, it is also our calling to be forces of unconditional love and justice in a universe where only we can provide them.  Once again, we are divine agents of change in our own lives and in those of others.  We choose to live a life of love and service or one of indifference and unforgiving bitterness..

In a few minutes, we’ll sing perhaps the most famous of all Christian hymns – Amazing Grace.  We’ll sing that song with lyrics I’ve altered  – ones we’ve sung here before.  These changed lyrics address my theology that none of us were or are lowly wretches in need of salvation – as the original words suggest.  It is love received from others that sings to our hearts.  It’s love we extend to the hurting, outcast, hated and discouraged that redeems us.  Love is a form of grace that is given to us and a form of grace we are called to give away.

Our path to the mountain top of personal enlightenment is just that – to give away pieces of our hearts and souls to family, friend and stranger.  We do that as a holy endeavor to build a better world .  That’s our mission in life: to redeem ourselves and others – all through the powers of reason, growth, compassion and above all else, love without condition.

I wish you each much peace, joy and a happy Valentine’s Day…

And I welcome now your thoughts on the message topic, my message, the movie or on your special Valentine!       

(c) Doug Slagle, The Gathering at Northern Hills, A Unitarian Universalist Community, All Rights Reserved

***One joke I did not tell with the kids here is one I remember from Erma Bombeck – the famous humorist. She once said that when her kids were acting wild or out of sorts, she used a nice, safe playpen……And when they were finished……she climbed out!
***Sadly, that is how some adults deal with their children’s emotions or even their own – they wish they’d go away, they put on a happy face and they fail to deal with them. And that’s one reason why I chose to discuss the film ‘Inside Out’ in my message today.
***It was nominated for this year’s Best Animated movie. It wonderfully entertains people of all ages while offering insight into how our brains work and, more specifically, how emotions govern our actions and define who we are. The film does not dumb down the examination of emotions. Its writers worked closely with two of the foremost contemporary researchers into emotions – Paul Ekman and Dacher Keltner. The result is one of the best films I’ve seen in its ability to poignantly inform and entertain viewers about our emotional selves. Take a look now at the film’s trailer, for a better understanding of what the film is about…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lDkegpnH30
***Experts on emotions indicate that they are good for us and should not be suppressed. They control an amazing amount of our thinking and actions – in ways that we are only dimly aware. The film delightfully shows how we see the world through a prism colored by our emotional reactions to it. We memorize and store information based not on simple facts, but on how we emotionally interpret an experience. It also pointedly directs viewers in how to balance emotions so that we can effectively channel them to be helpful instead of destructive.
***Indeed, the movie is a template for achieving a higher level of emotional intelligence or EQ – which is the ability to identify and manage emotions. The movie is targeted to youth but its message is just as resonant for adults. How can we better manage anger in ways that are not harmful? How we do control fear such that we embrace change? How do we employ sadness to serve and heal – without descending into depression? How can our rational minds lead us toward meaningful joy – the kind that is deep and lasting? These are age old spiritual questions to which we all seek answers.
***Over the past six February’s at the Gathering, and for one message last year at Northern Hills, I’ve looked at Oscar nominated films to find themes that inspire. I see these message series as a fun way to explore serious spiritual issues. Regarding the film ‘Inside Out’, people often pride themselves on their intellectual prowess and the knowledge they’ve acquired. Few people, however, recognize how essential emotional intelligence is for a healthy and others focused life.
***“Inside Out” imaginatively depicts the brain of an eleven year old girl named Riley. Having grown up in a small town in Minnesota, and raised by two attentive parents, Riley must suddenly deal with her family’s move to San Francisco, a new job for her dad, a new home, school, and classmates. As a girl whose default is to be happy, she soon struggles with the emotional challenges of the move. The film spends a lot of time showing the animator’s vision of Riley’s brain and the emotions that govern it. It depicts five key emotions as anthropomorphic characters – joy, sadness, anger, fear and disgust. While some psychologists believe we have six primary emotions – surprise being the sixth, many others believe we have only four. The other two – disgust and surprise – are extensions of anger and fear. For the dramatic purposes of this film, they depict five.
***I don’t want to describe too much of the movie In case you have not seen it. But a central theme in it is that Joy can be a controlling emotion only when it appropriately interacts with other emotions. In the movie, however, Joy believes her mission is to keep Riley happy and thus minimize or eliminate sadness, anger and fear. But that assumption is largely incorrect. All emotions have a role to play in life. This is an essential lesson to teach children – and adults. We can be sad or angry in healthy and appropriate ways – and still find a way to ultimately be joyful.
***I watched this film on my computer while I was in California these past weeks tending my mom and helping my family reach a decision about her future. I could not have watched a better film during that experience. It helped me better understand my emotions about moving my mom, who has Alzheimer’s, into a care home. It also gave me perspective on what is likely controlling her brain. For me, it was difficult not to focus on the tragedy of her disease – how it terribly diminishes a once vibrant woman and how that is affecting my family. How can I and my family feel appropriately sad, frustrated and even angry? Is it OK to feel those emotions? Does joy have any role in this drama?
***One scholarly article on Alzheimer’s I read helped me a lot. It said that with dementia, the frontal lobes of the brain that control intelligence and reasoning become clouded and ineffective. Unfortunately, however, the almond shaped amygdala area of the brain, located at the rear – near the spinal cord, is one of the last areas to be affected by dementia. The amygdala is considered a more primitive part of the brain in that it was the largest brain portion in early humans – and it still is for many primates. It regulates fear and anger which allows for survival by initiating the fight or flight reactions to danger. All of us feel the prompts of the amygdala but they can be regulated by our fontal lobes when we examine and filter perceived dangers. Are they real or imagined – and what is the most effective response to them?
***My mom can no longer control or rationally understand her amygdala feelings. Life for her, unless she is assured of basic safety, is full of irrational fears and delusions. People want to kidnap her, my father has abandoned her when he simply goes to the store, waking in the dark at night is terrifying, etc, etc. She is constantly confused, agitated, frustrated and even angry. Calming her is very difficult.
***Over these past weeks, I too noted my own amygdala responses to my mom’s situation. I got frustrated with how she sometimes acts. I was angry at the awful disease and I was, and am, profoundly sad at the figurative death of the mom I once knew.
***What the film helped me understand is that my emotions and those of my family are okay. They are not only normal, but important. I’ve had to practice what I often counsel others who grieve and mourn. It is good to feel bereavement at the loss of a loved one. It’s often helpful to be afraid of change, or feel the emptiness and loss of a death, romantic breakup or change of circumstances. It’s productive to be righteously angry at injustice. So too is it right to empathize with the pain of those who are sick or distressed. Too often, we try to suppress such emotions believing that sadness, fear or anger are mentally unhealthy emotions. We rationalize all the ways that we should instead be joyful. Riley’s brain, in the film, has her emotion named Joy remind the other emotions that the loss of Riley’s past friendships is simply a way for her to meet new friends. Don’t be sad or afraid, she tells them. Instead, be happy at the new opportunity!
***Ultimately, such rationalizations are defense mechanisms we tell ourselves because of another fear – that we will get stuck and be forever depressed, fearful or angry. Indeed, Riley’s parents in the film praise their daughter for always being happy and for being the source of joy in the family. Unable to process their own fears and sadness at the changes they face, they are shocked when their once happy child is sad and afraid. At one point, they angrily implore her not to feel them.
***What became more clear for me over the past few weeks is that my own sadness at my mom’s rapidly declining state of mind should not be rationalized away. I was trying to tell myself that moving her into a home is for the best. I reminded myself that she and my family will be happier and so I should not be sad. I used such thinking to try and banish unhappy thoughts. I was not allowing myself to feel sadness, fear and anger – or I rebuked myself when I did. I’m a smart guy, I told myself, I shouldn’t immerse myself in pain.
***But that’s a false mantra. It’s a common false narrative that many people tell themselves. Our default should always be happiness – we tend to believe. We must do our best to suppress the seemingly negative other emotions.
***What we intuitively understand but often forget, however, is the ironic truth that we cannot feel joy unless we have also felt and experienced sadness. We cannot mourn the loss of someone – and deeply feel the pain of that emotion, unless we’ve also had the joy of knowing them and feeling their love. My mom was usually one of my few cheerleaders. She was the one I called when I did well on a test, was made captain of my high school Model UN club, or became minister at the Gathering. I miss being able to share with her the joy I feel in my new Minister role here. She was the one who soothed me in my childhood fear of bullies. She was one who scolded my dad and a few others when they snickered once I came out eleven years ago. She was not a perfect mom. None are. But she always seemed to understand and love me in ways perhaps only moms are able. The security and contentment I felt from her has been invaluable. In an ironic way, it is the pain of seeing her as she is now that helps me remember and relive the past happiness she gave me. We cannot exult in the light of a morning dawn unless we’ve walked through a dark night of pain. Such dark times are awful and terrifying but they are also necessary. Indeed, the path to happiness is not only through our reasoning minds, to rationalize away pain, it is also, also!…….figuratively or literally…….to walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
***I don’t intend that idea to be another way to rationalize away unhappy emotions. Fear, anger and sadness remain a part of the human brain because they serve a valuable purpose not only to survive danger, but also to enhance emotional intelligence. Much like we draw on creativity, imagination and knowledge to think, we draw on emotional memories to find real joy. To be emotionally intelligent is thus not to minimize supposedly negative emotions and outwardly only be happy. It is, instead, to fully feel each emotion but maintain them within healthy boundaries. In this way, our reasoning abilities, our frontal lobe portions of the brain, work in balance with the amygdala and its emotions of sadness, fear or anger. Doing so, we realize the benefits our emotions play in finding genuine contentment. Such is emotional intelligence and perhaps a reinforcement of my message in January that life must be lived in a grey zone balance. Emotions are not bad. Intelligence and reason are not always good. Exercised in tandem with each other, emotions AND rational thinking are both good.
***Spiritually, we know this to be true. Jesus wept at the death of a friend. He got angry at hypocrites and uncaring people. He trembled in fear at his impending execution and he shouted from the Cross at its injustice. And yet he was also a spokesman for good news – that the arrival of a realm of love and peace is within our reach. He did not deny his emotions. Instead, they were a vital part of his ministry.
***The Buddha likewise called us to be mindful of our emotions – to feel them, be aware of them and then gently allow them to pass through our minds. Emotions can be like birds who alight in a tree but soon fly away. In being mindful of our emotions but not worrying about them, we gain perception into our minds but let go of the ways we negatively express them – through verbal violence, greed, arrogance or depression. The goal is to be at peace with ourselves and with the world – and thus find empowerment to empathize with, serve and love others.
***And that is our mission as individuals and as a spiritual Community. We seek both head knowledge AND heart knowledge – greater cognitive intelligence and greater emotional intelligence.
As we move in a few minutes to the historic business of approving a merger between our two congregations, may we remember these truths. May we call on Unitarian Universalist ideals and use our minds to intelligently AND emotionally act in the high cause of a more just and loving world.
I wish you each much peace, joy and emotional intelligence!

Listen to the message…

(c) Ann McCracken, The Gathering at Northern Hills, A Unitarian Universalist Community, All Rights Reserved

Listen to the message or read it:

(c) Doug Slagle, The Gathering at Northern Hills, A Unitarian Universalist Community, All Rights Reserved

I’m going to recite a few pairs of words with opposite meaning for which I’d like you to think of and then shout out, if you wish, the one word that represents a middle ground or middle meaning between the two contrasting words.  Pick just one word and not a phrase or sentence.  OK?  Here goes:  Name a word between black and white (grey).  Large and small (medium, middle).  Fast and slow (moderate).  Good and bad (okay).  Happy and sad (pensive).  Clean and dirty (smudged).  Calm and anxious (normal).

Did you notice that finding a middle ground word got more difficult with each pair I recited?  Did you also notice that most of the middle ground words might be characterized as boring?  They don’t describe anything that is exciting.  Indeed, few of us speak middle ground words very often because the English language has few of them, because middle meaning words ARE bland and because we tend to think in extremes.  For instance, if I do not eat anything until this evening, I’m likely to tell myself and others that “I’m starving.”  But that clearly will not literally be the case.  I also tend to think of myself as neither shy or outgoing.  But because there is no word for what exists in between, I struggle with describing my personality and, if forced, I will say I’m “reserved.”   But even that word does not describe the “in-betweeness” of who I am.  I’m neither an introvert or an extrovert.  I’m a mix of both.  I’m grey in that regard, but our cultural thinking and our language tells me I must choose one of the opposing labels.

Our choice to use dichotomous, black or white language leads many people, experts say, to think in extremes.  In today’s world, people are described as either good or bad, liberal or conservative, moral or immoral, religious or atheist, happy or sad.  In truth, however, few of us perfectly fit any one of those extremes.

And that is the problem with dichotomous language and dichotomous thinking.  When we adopt an extreme way of thought, that everything is either good or bad, right or wrong, holy or unholy, we close our minds to the complexities of life.  We believe in absolutes and not in nuance.  We become rigid, uncompromising and lacking in empathy for those who are opposite from what we are.  And, as history tells us, that can lead to hatreds, prejudices, and violence.

As we begin a new year, it seems as if our nation and our world are becoming increasingly polarized.  Indeed, as I noted, feeling and thinking in the middle on many issues is not exciting and rarely initiates passion.  In politics, religion, and everyday life situations, the extremes seem to be the only choice.  But, as I often say, paraphrasing Gandhi, we can’t change the world unless we first become the change we wish to see.

While many religious people claim to have absolute knowledge supporting their beliefs, the reality is such that all spiritual beliefs exist within a so-called grey zone between fact and myth.  A religious person might say to me, “Prove that God does NOT exist!”  I can’t do that in a way that uses verifiable evidence.  It is impossible to prove a negative.  But I can just as easily ask this person, “Prove that God DOES exist!”  Once again, the task is impossible using evidenced based facts.  One can only employ beliefs and interpretations to talk about whether or not God exists.

Even the Bible admits as much.  The New Testament book of Hebrews says that, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  In other words, faith – not fact – comprises all the things we cannot see, touch, hear or empirically prove.  But they are often things we nevertheless yearn for and desire.  We can’t see and touch a universal power of love, or God if that is your belief, but we may hope that such a power exists.   And it is in hope that faith resides – not in certainty.  Within hope lies much of our spirituality – the hope that prays for peace, the hope that sees the dignity of every person, and the hope that love will one day conquer hate.  In this regard, faith as an expression of hope is a beautiful sentiment to hold but it is something that can never be proven.

That perfectly states the grey zone of spirituality that Unitarian Universalism embraces.  While we explore all that might be true in the universe, we have no evidence to show us that any specific religious belief is the right one.  We humbly admit that we have no answers, only questions, and so we open ourselves to consider the merits of all faiths and all spiritual prophets – knowing that each one has worthy things to teach us.

Our critics tell us, however, that we believe in nothing, that we are boring, lack passion and are much like the color grey.  I assert, however, that we do believe in exciting values such as human tolerance, humility, cooperation, and spiritually adventurous thinking.  We offer the challenge to explore a grey zone richness of many beliefs and many historic prophets: the selflessness of Buddha, the devotion of Muhammad, the love of Jesus, the faith of Abraham, or the peace of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

What we as Unitarians spiritually stand against is absolutism and fundamentalism.  While any religion might argue their faith demands loyalty to its beliefs, almost all religions nevertheless embody grey thinking.  Christianity and Judaism are full of grey area teachings that are practiced with reasoned interpretation.  Indeed, Christianity itself is a grey zone belief with its claim to be a monotheistic, one God religion.  The Bible describes Jesus as God praying to God the Father, and being anointed by God the spirit.  Did Jesus therefore pray to himself?  Was he anointed by himself?  Can God be one while also being three?  Christians use a grey zone argument – “yes, God is one, BUT(!)…..god is also three.”   This seeming paradox was the reason why Unitarians split from Christianity.  The Trinity is a grey zone concept that contradicts for us, Jews, Muslims and many others the principle that there is only one force, power or god in the universe.

Furthermore, the Bible says that adultery is wrong but it also describes several men who marry multiple wives.  Is that a grey zone solution to adultery – to marry any person with whom you are intimate?  The Bible praises Abraham, the father of Judaism, for having sex with his servant Hagar since his wife Sarah could not conceive a child.  Was Abraham an adulterer?  It can be argued he was.  Jesus lovingly forgave the woman caught in adultery even though the men standing in judgement against her were rightly applying Jewish law – the penalty for adultery was stoning to death.  Which is right – Jesus or verses in the Bible saying adultery deserves stoning?

The Ten Commandments demand that believers honor the sabbath as a day of rest and no work.  But Jesus disobeyed that commandment when he harvested grain to feed his hungry followers.  As he said, laws were made to help people, not enslave them.  The ethic of mercy must predominate.  Jews today still debate what constitutes work on the sabbath.  Cooking is seen as work but what about simply turning on the oven to heat an already cooked meal?  Is that work?  Many Orthodox Jews heatedly debate the issue.

The Bible says we are not to kill others but it is also full of commands from God to ancient Jews to kill unbelievers.  Christians often support wars against our enemies even though Jesus said we are to love our enemies.  Many Christians support capital punishment but oppose abortion.  They use grey zone arguments in both instances to favor killing in order to prevent greater killing.

The Koran supports grey zone morality by telling Muslims that mercy and justice must supersede all acts of piety like prayer – even though five prayers a day is one of the primary pillars or commandments of Islam.

What we find in most religions are countless grey zone stories and examples.  It is nearly impossible to follow any religious teaching to the letter of what it says.  One must use grey zone reason and interpretation to move beyond literal meaning and find the underlying motivation of the teaching.  That’s why Jesus condemned hypocrites – those who follow the letter of a teaching but not the core value.  If you give money to charity, he taught, do it quietly or anonymously and not with a desire to have your name and wealth advertised.  If that is your motivation, then you have not really given anything.  You’ve simply paid for your ego to be boosted.

This idea of moving beyond polarized and extreme thinking must hold true in all parts of our lives.  I love how this congregation voted for a new name that is perhaps a mouthful and likely not as exciting or fresh as a totally new name.  But I believe we voted in a way that saw the grey zone of the issue – what is best for our unity and what is best for honoring our past while moving into the future.  Some may say we compromised by combining two former names.  I believe we instead cooperated and united.  And that impulse to unite instead of divide is the true benefit of grey zone thinking.

Ultimately, I advocate not compromise – but collaboration.  There are three ways to find a solution to any disagreement.   One side can dominate and thus win the debate.  Or, both sides can compromise, give up some of their demands and reach a conclusion where neither side wins.  Some might say both sides lose.  Or, the third way, which I promote, is to cooperate by coming together to listen, gently discuss, find common ground and reach a decision that includes the desires of both sides.  That is a win-win outcome.  By working together to find the core value each side supports, anger and animosity are eliminated.   Goodwill and love are achieved.

As an example, I offer collaboration as a solution to the debate over abortion.  Each side of this polarized issue asserts that its way is the most moral.  But what is the underlying value for each side?  I believe it is a shared value that there be no unwanted children.  Might both sides figure out cooperative strategies to promote that ideal – to provide free reproductive education, to provide free contraception, to provide young families with free childcare, etc, etc?  In other words, lets stop screaming at each other across an emotional and polarized divide we will never bridge and instead discover that all of us care about children and insuring that all are wanted.  Let’s do all we can to promote what is, I believe, a grey zone ideal.

This way of approaching a problem, to collaborate and find common ground between two polar opposites, is one we can follow in all parts of our lives – in our marriages and partnerships, with our children, at our workplaces, and here at GNH.  I particularly love that in the seven months since a joint Board of Trustees began overseeing work here, it has held only one vote in all of its meetings – and that was a mere formality since every Trustee had already agreed on that issue.  Our Board has operated by consensus.  It talks out problems, listens to concerns of each Trustee and then finds a solution that all accept.  This may seem like a simple thing but it is actually quite beautiful.  I encourage us to continue building within our spiritual community a cooperative and unifying vision we seek for the world.

The Buddha said, “Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.”  Let us continue in the new year to apply his teaching and boldly use reason and not polarized emotion to guide our thinking.  Let us work to eliminate dichotomous descriptions, when possible, from how we label others: Muslims are not evil, Christians are not hypocritical, Unitarians are not unholy, conservatives are not heartless, liberals are not spendthrift.   People are all so much more than extreme descriptions.  We are each complex, diverse, and nuanced.  Let us listen to one another, let us disagree but never be disagreeable, let us seek common ground, let us cooperate so that everybody wins.  May I, may we, willingly embrace living our lives within a grey zone of humility, gentleness and empathy for all.

I wish you much 2016 peace and joy!

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering, All Rights Reserved

 

To download and listen to the message, please click here.  To read the message, please see below.

 

 

The Gathering is at an historic crossroad – obviously!  What we as a congregation decide next week – whether to approve or deny a merger – will define our future.  I have no illusions that no matter what happens next Sunday, our spiritual home has been and will be changed.

I took a look this past week at theories on why almost every person resists change.  While I cannot peer into all of your hearts and minds, I’ve tried to discern, as a result of my reading, some of the questions we might have  about the potential change we face.  I’ve condensed them into three areas of concern.

First, I believe many of us are uncertain about our future.  We have no clear idea what the experience will be like in a new and merged church.  Further, we have no experience working with Northern Hills members and thus we have no bonds of trust with them – and that is not to say we distrust them.  Ultimately, I summarize this first concern many of us have in one sentence: Our concerns about an uncertain future might outweigh our concerns about remaining the same.

Second, many of us are concerned about the loss of our culture, our way of doing things, and our history.  We sense the end of an era that many of us have worked so hard and given so much to achieve.  We are loyal to all that the Gathering embodies and it is difficult for any of us to forsake that.  Ultimately, we have concerns about a loss of the Gathering ethos, spirit and identity.

Third, we have a natural and healthy skepticism about any change.  We are an intelligent group of people who do not jump on any passing opportunity for the mere fun or emotional pull of it.

To address the first concern, I deeply understand it.  None of us are able to predict the future even though we often spend so much time worrying about it.  Keith and I occasionally experience bouts of insomnia and the primary cause is that at night, alone in bed, our minds too often focus on worries about the future and possible negative outcomes to issues we face.

This fear speaks to a primary spiritual goal for any person – how do we find peace of mind and of soul such that we are able to lead happy and fulfilled lives?  Fear of the unknown and of change comes from our ultimate fear of death.  And, for us, a merge may seem much like a death.  If we vote next Sunday for a merge, some of us believe we will be voting for the death of the Gathering.

A mitigating factor for this worry about the unknown is to have trust in those who will implement change.  Hopefully, you have some trust in me and you know my style of ministry.  That might reassure you that at least there will be a level of continuity in how a new church will be Pastored.

Added to that mix, however, is the unknown factor of Northern Hills members and how they will interact with us in managing the new church.  Will they be fair, will they be cooperative, will they be open to more informality, will they be caring and friendly?

Fear of the unknown is natural to the human species.  As we know, the only thing certain about life is that it is uncertain.  So, in order to find peace, we must come to terms with changes we face everyday.  To echo the famous serenity prayer, we ask for the peace of mind to accept the things we cannot control, the courage to change the things we can, and most importantly, the WISDOM to know the difference.

Change for the Gathering, like all things in life, is inevitable.  Even if  we hope to stay the same, that is not possible.  Staying the same is simply choosing to change in a way that is less sudden.

By choosing to stay the same, we will change.  We see forces around us in Over-the-Rhine that will force us to change – high rents and a changing neighborhood.  We can see a change in the core group of our membership.  The average age of our congregation is getting older and that brings with it issues and changes in personal lives that affect us as a whole.

In order to apply the serenity prayer, we must find the peace to accept the forces we cannot control – like committed members who pass away, move to another city or, in some cases, choose stop attending here.  But, as the prayer goes, we must have the courage to change the things we can control – like growing the size of our congregation.  A merge with another like minded church is simply one way for us to change for the better.  It is not the only way to address this problem nor is it an act of desperation.  Instead, it is a wise and prudent option – an opportunity for us to change that was not sought by us but which has enough merit that we would have been foolish not to consider it.

Fear of the unknown is also fed, as I said earlier, by our healthy lack of trust in how Northern Hills members will work with us.  They have been nothing but friendly and welcoming but, we have only nine months of experience with them.  They have only nine months of experience with us and so their level of trust toward us is also limited.  Nevertheless, I hope most of us have had some level of experience in dealing with at least one Northern Hills member.  I believe most of those experiences have been positive.

Folks at Northern Hills are much like us – a small group of people who are loyal to their church, what it stands for and how it encourages them to act according to their spiritual beliefs – as people who are kind, considerate, passionate, and compassionate.

In this regard, I ask you to trust me in my belief that we can trust them.  I ask for your trust based on my five and a half years as your Pastor and who I am as a person.  I also ask you to trust my many experiences with them.  Because of the nature of my work, I am the one Gathering person who has interacted with almost every Northern Hills member.  I’ve worked closely with their leaders and volunteers.  I know most of their names.  I’ve counseled a few, worked with many, and socialized with many.  Surprisingly or not, I find their congregation is similar to our own.  They have a committed core of members who do a lot, they have their peacemakers, their few cranky people, their slightly eccentric personalities.  Overall, they are kind-hearted people who are not perfect but, like us, want to love fellow members and love outsiders.

If I did not believe this, if I thought Northern Hills members, as a whole. had attitudes of control, arrogance, anger and unfriendliness, I would NOT endorse a merger.  I’ve seen congregations like that.  I do not want to work for people who do not sincerely try to apply spiritual values and ethics in their behavior.  They have been gracious and kind to me as I’ve seen them be to each of you.  And we have acted toward them in the same manner.   They want to work as equals with us in forming and governing a new church.

I want to also address a second concern many of us have about the loss of ourselves, our culture, our history and identity.  What we have at the Gathering is something of a paradise.  We are a mostly gentle and caring community.  There are no factions and very little gossip or behind the scenes backbiting.  Engaging in congregation intrigue is not who we are as a beloved community.  We have few committees.  Members are free to dig in and do the work that is needed to keep us running.  Overall, you are a group that has treated its two Pastors with respect and kindness.  I will also add, as humbly as I can, the Gathering has been fortunate to have had two good ministers who were liked by most.  As Northern Hills can attest, that is not always the case.

So, I understand Ginny Patterson’s lament about sadness in her heart at the loss of our culture.  The culture at Northern Hills is different.  While their people, as I said, are very similar to us in demeanor and spirituality, they run their church based on their own history and traditions.  It is natural to fear that their culture will swallow ours up.

This last week, Jennelle Murray and Jack Brennan both worked to make sure Northern Hills had access to an in depth history of the Gathering’s founding – one that Jack wrote for our ten year anniversary.  Many at Northern Hills were eager to understand that history so they can better understand us.

My point is this: it took Jennelle and Jack to proactively work to make sure a piece of our culture was understood by them.  That leads me back to the serenity prayer.  We must have the courage to change the things we can control.  We will have the ability to affect and change the culture in a new congregation – if each person is willing to gently speak up, volunteer, and help manage it.  The success of a merger with NHF will depend on two questions: do we simply allow our Gathering identity to be swallowed up, or will we have the courage and the willingness to make sure we are, instead, equally blended?

To insure the continuity of our culture, it will take the work of every sincere and good hearted Gathering member – to serve in outreach, to serve as leaders, to serve on Sundays, to be actively involved.  If we do these things, I am confident a Gathering spirit, ethos, kindness and informality will be infused within a new culture.  If the Gathering has meant anything to you, if your work and your contributions have meant anything, then I hope you will boldly embrace this opportunity to change us in a way that insures continuity of all that the Gathering has been and still is.

An overriding principle is at work here.  The Gathering and Northern Hills have a chance to be the kind of change we say we want to see in the world.  Peoples all over the world express hate, anger, jealousy and violence – verbal and physical – toward one another – mostly based on perceived differences.  But we, two congregations with different cultures and practices, can now live out what it is that we say we believe.  We can be proud of our traditions and hold on to them, while honoring and welcoming those of others.  We can be cooperative, understanding, listening, loving, humble, gentle and compromising – all the ways of living that we hold dear.

That is what our Gathering defining artwork portrays – many prophets all dancing together in celebration of universal truths – that people are good, that we all seek inner peace and happiness, that the one abiding way to live – one that all religions agree on – is the Golden Rule to love all others at least as much as we love ourselves.

Unitarians and the people of Northern Hills believe the same.  People of all religions and spiritual backgrounds are welcome to come and explore their PERSONAL journey of faith, or no faith.  Sunday services, instead of celebrating and speaking about one narrow religion, celebrate a universal spirituality of reason and love that ALL people, whether they be Christian, Jew, Muslim, Atheist or Hindu, can accept and practice.  While we as individuals may believe in one particular faith or no faith, we as a community have always lived out, whether we knew it or not, Unitarian Universalist ideals.  Who among us disagrees with the following from UU 7 Principles:

“We believe in a direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to renewal of the spirit and openness to the forces that create and uphold life.  We believe in the words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.  Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding and expand our vision.” 

Third, and finally, I come to the point about having a healthy skepticism for anything new.  We are all intelligent and educated people.  We do not operate on emotion.  We deeply think about many things.  And a merger requires no less of us.

A merger with Northern Hills has been wisely examined by most of us.  Most of us have attended there many times.  We’ve had social events with them.  Some of us have actively worked with them on events, Sunday services or outreach.  We have the opportunity to work as partners with a congregation that appreciates us, wants to unite with us and is willing to join us as equals.

As Gatherers, we are not timid creatures who choose the status quo.  From its first moments as a congregation, when Steve and others bravely defied centuries of religious tradition, the Gathering embraced change.  Implicitly, the Gathering rejected old forms of faith and moved toward a spirituality of compassion and love for all people – no matter who they are.  The Gathering essentially proclaimed, “If there is a God, she is one of love.  If there is one universal Truth, it is one that demands constant questioning and not blind obedience to a single belief system.”

Our spirituality is one that sings and dances to the gentleness and love of Jesus, the passion of Muhammad, the tradition of Abraham, the unity of Krishna, the selflessness of Buddha, the mysterious force of goodness that permeates our universe.  We will not die if we merge.  We will, instead, insure that our Gathering spirituality and identity goes forward.

 

To conclude, let us pray:

To the God or no God, each of our own understanding, Grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  We pray that our collective wisdom, and our mutual love for one another, be expressed next Sunday, May 17th, 2015.

 

 

To download and listen to audio of the two-part message, please click here.  To read the messages, please see below.

 

Part I of the two part message: By Tom Lottman

As I look out today on the two congregations of Northern Hills UU Fellowship and The Gathering, I see folks who I know well and for a long time, and folks I barely know at all.  However, having had the opportunity to watch both congregations interact with their members and with each other, I am confident that each congregation is truly a beloved community.  The term, beloved community was first coined early in the 20^th century by the Philosopher/Theologian Josiah Royce, but was most popularized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a community of good will, a community infused with compassion for all.

I am very grateful to have the opportunity to “tag team” with Rev. Doug in preparing and presenting today’s message.  It was a gift to spend time with Doug talking about these issues and, as an aside, it underscored my personal profound sense of hope and optimism for the extraordinary spiritual community that can emerge from the merger of our two congregations, our two beloved communities.  Ours is a two-fold message today: first, a look at how compassion emerges within each of us and within our beloved communities, and secondly, Rev. Doug will speak to why compassionate outreach is so important for a church community.

As a couple of you know, I have a contract to write a book on what developmental science has to say about the emergence of character strengths in young children.  So I have done a lot of research and thinking about how empathy and compassion develop not just in children, but in adults as well.  And I want to condense this work into two essential ideas: 1) What in beloved communities fosters compassion?; and 2) As a result, what happens inside us that draws us to compassionate caring and social justice?

For me, beloved communities, infused with compassion, develop when the group meets four essential needs of its members: the needs for belonging, becoming, believing and “beloving”.   And for each of these core needs, its fulfillment engages our heads, our hearts, and our hands.  It changes how we think, how we feel and how we act.

Let’s take belonging.  Families and church communities are good at this.  I suspect that if we each rated our congregations for how well they meet belonging, we’d probably score a ten.  It’s clear that a sense of belonging is one of the great benefits we gain from our membership at NHF or The Gathering.  The feeling of connection to others, acceptance by others, and genuinely being valued by others meets a fundamental human need that transcends almost all others.  Take a moment and look around you.  Truly bring your awareness to the connections you have with so many of the people in these seats.  It may not be a deep relationship with each person, but perhaps at least a sense of the familiar, a sense of Yeah, this person is a fixture here, they belong here.  Undoubtedly we have belonging in abundance in our congregations.  However, there’s a reason why belonging isn’t enough to generate and sustain compassion.  Belonging feels good, feels comfortable, but it can become too comfortable.  You see, belonging implies not only rules for inclusion but also rules for exclusion.  Not only for “who belongs here” but also for “who doesn’t belong here.”  We can be seduced into wrapping ourselves in the warm blanket of belonging and be content to forgo the need to change, the need to grow.  We get comfortably “stuck” in where we are and with who we are.  While belonging begets caring, by itself it does not sustain caring.

A true beloved community creates not only the enduring comfort of “belonging to” something, but also the periodic discomfort of “be longing” for something. It challenges us to grow.  The “longing for” something is at the cusp of belonging and becoming.  Whether it’s a family or church, a beloved community nurtures our drive to become, to be more than who we were, to connect to a broader world from that which we’ve come.  The other day when I was leaving for work, Ann looked at me and motioned to me to come over.  She reached to brush away what she thought was a crumb on my sweater that turned out to be a hole.  It didn’t help that some extra pounds around my middle stretched the sweater and exaggerated the hole. I said that I really didn’t mind the hole and that I liked the sweater even though it no longer fit right.  Without saying a word, she gave me that look that said, “Sometimes a sweater like everything we try to hold on to wears out or we outgrow it.  It’s time to consider getting a new sweater.”  So too, there are ideas that wear out or that we outgrow and we need the people who love us to encourage us to try on new ideas and beliefs.  So let this beloved community support you in examining old ideas for holes, for seeing if old beliefs still fit.

Like the secure attachment of a toddler to a parent gives the child the courage to explore and broaden her world, so to, the attachment to a beloved community gives us the confidence to broaden our view of what it means to be human, to make us curious to discover and celebrate the diversity of people with whom we share a neighborhood, a country, a world.  Compassion begets more compassion.

Let’s take a look at believing.  I don’t mean belief in a religious sense, but I do mean it in a sense of the profound.  A beloved community asks us to truly appreciate the mystery and also the good inherent in humanity.  A book club engages the head.  A social club engages the heart.  And a work team engages the hand.  A beloved spiritual community engages the head, the heart and hands around issues of ultimate concern.  What does it mean to be human?  What does it mean to lead a full life?  What does it mean to help others lead a full life?  A beloved spiritual community asks us to confront our beliefs about ourselves, other people and the world in general.  What do we think, feel, say and do when we reflect on the natural disaster in Nepal and the man-made tragedy in Baltimore?  Willingness to deeply consider our beliefs about what it means to be human paves the way to compassion.

And finally “Be-loving” begins at home.  You’ve probably heard about those contests where you win the chance to race up and down supermarket aisles for three minutes to put as much as you can grab into your shopping cart.  Well, this message is kind of like zooming up and down the aisles of compassion with the hope that you will grab something you want along the way.  And if I can suggest just one “in the cart” message today it is that authentic compassion for others requires true compassion for myself.  So what does it mean to have self-compassion?  The starting point of Buddhist teaching is that suffering is inevitable, or as the more simplified non-Buddhist bumper sticker proclaims, “Excrement Happens”.  Perhaps you have seen that TV commercial by an insurance company that have people first list the good things that happened to them last year on blue cards and the bad thing on yellow cards.  Then they asked them to post what they think would happen in the future.   The past was an even mixture of good and bad while the future expectations were predominately good. So, even the TV commercial confirms the truism of the bumper sticker.

The core teaching of the Buddha, confirmed by modern science is that it is not the suffering or lack of suffering that makes us sad or happy, but rather what we tell ourselves about our inevitable suffering.  If we confront our suffering with self-blame or with deep resentment, if that is the king of conversation we have with ourselves about our suffering, anxiety and depression follows.  If on the other hand, we are gentle with ourselves, if we truly accept all parts of us; the good, the bad and the ugly, we can move past our suffering to greater grow and greater love.

Dr. Kristin Neff is one of the leading thinkers about self-compassion.  She suggests that self-compassion consists of three components: Self-kindness: being gentle and understanding with yourself when you experience suffering; Common humanity: realizing that you’re not alone in your struggles.  When we are struggling we feel isolated.  We think we’re the only ones that screwed up, or have been rejected.  The key message of self-compassion is the realization that these very struggles are a shared experience of what it means to be human; Mindfulness: Observing life as it is without being judgmental of or discounting our feelings and experiences.

So when we come together in this shared place, when we come together as a beloved community, let’s come with an intention to let go, let in, let be.  Let’s let go of our old worn out or “holey” ideas, let in a desire to know and appreciate the perspectives of others, and let be every aspect of ourselves, accepting ourselves in our shared struggles.  That’s the way to compassion.  The Dalai Lama simply said, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion; if you want to be happy, practice compassion.”  Now Doug will talk about the importance of compassion and the practice of social justice work in a church community.

 

Part II of the two part message, by Rev. Doug Slagle, (c) All Rights Reserved

 

I love what Tom just shared with us.  I hope you might read or listen to his message again online – especially how it applies to each of us as individuals.

I want to focus my part of the message on us as one body – why compassion is so essential for our collective whole – as either Northern Hills, the Gathering, or, hopefully, as a newly merged church.

 

Myra Oliver is a young Cincinnati woman who found herself homeless and living on the streets at the age of seventeen – kicked out of her home by her mom.  Two years later, she was still living on the streets – but she had recently given birth to a baby girl.  Somehow, Myra was able to keep her child and still be homeless.  She came to the attention of Lighthouse Youth Services who then began a months long process to win Myra’s trust so they could get her off the streets.

Lighthouse found no homeless shelter able to house a mother and infant together but, fortunately, case workers did find temporary foster care for the baby.  This was so Myra could enter the Lighthouse Sheakley Center – a homeless shelter for young adults.  The Gathering has supported Sheakley over the past five years by buying, preparing and serving lunches to its young adults, by assembling thousands of personal hygiene kits for them, and by supporting self-sufficiency classes that get homeless youth into homes and jobs.

Myra applied herself at Sheakley by working within its many programs – twice a day self-sufficiency classes, job training, resume writing and parenting courses.  After a time spent at Sheakley, Myra was transitioned into an apartment last September where she was reunited with her daughter.  She found child care for her baby and a job.  She now is successfully raising her daughter, working and applying to community college.

Myra’s is just one story among many from the Sheakley homeless shelter.   From a heroin addicted, homeless prostitute who was able to conquer addiction, graduate from college and work as a social worker, to an African-American young man who recently passed the Cincinnati Police exam and entered their training academy – many homeless young adults have been helped by the Lighthouse Sheakley Center and by the Gathering.

The Gathering has also supported, with money and hands on work, Faces without Places, an organization that provides assistance to elementary age homeless children.  They run a free camp for a hundred homeless kids every summer in addition to year-round help in the form of tutoring, uniforms, school supplies, winter coats and food.  One mom of six young children recently related the impact Faces has had on her family.  She had dropped out of school after the eighth grade but now, even though her family lives in a shelter, her children are receiving the kind of educational support she never had.  Those who have helped her family, she says, have saved seven lives.

Six years ago, after I started as Pastor at the Gathering, the church began an intensive effort to move beyond the four walls of its building to directly serve needs in our the community.  The Gathering, like Northern Hills, provides financial assistance to many organizations but the bulk of the Gathering’s assistance to others comes with hands on work by our members to feed, clothe, educate, support, nurture and assist homeless youth.

But the Gathering is doing no more than what is expected of it – or any church.  As Tom related four key areas in the development of a beloved community, compassionate hands on service to others is a vital function.  Indeed, it is a defining function.  From a spiritual perspective, our purpose as individuals is to seek the kind of knowledge and experience that take us beyond ego and self-interest – and into a spiritual realm.  And the same is true of churches.

This divine realm is a metaphorical place, a state of mind and being that we reach as we fulfill our purpose for existence – to serve others at least as much as we serve ourselves.  While some might look to the heavens for a theological God to serve humanity, I believe we must look instead here on earth.  It is we, as people, who have the opportunity to act as little ‘g’ gods and goddesses to build a version of heaven on earth – to heal the brokenhearted, bind up the wounded, feed the hungry and strengthen the weak.

And the existential purpose of churches is to help us achieve these things.  Only in community are we, as individuals, exponentially enabled to learn and grow in our abilities to serve, be change agents, and to act as little ‘g’ gods and goddesses.  Churches are essentially places of empowerment.  They equip us to be human gods to our families, to our fellow members and, most importantly, to those with whom we have nothing in common.  In doing so, we move into a spiritual realm beyond mind and body – an interconnected sacred space of unconditional love, understanding and compassion.  Churches and spiritual organizations are some of the few institutions that make this happen.  They train us in how to humbly love ourselves so that we can then in turn selflessly love and serve others.   And it is such selflessness that fundamentally defines who we are and the kind of life legacy we will leave behind.

The many lives the Gathering has touched in its outreach, the many lives Northern Hills has touched, they are symbolically like the pebbles we drop here in a bowl of water.  Each life we help to change for the better is a sacred life – a life that then touches other lives for good.  One life, one pebble, dropped into the pond of creation sends out ripples of influence far into the future.  From a former addict and sex worker, to a homeless young man soon to be a police officer, to the children of a mom who never went to high school, to thousands of hungry children across our community, we impact people and generations we will never know.  In doing so, we touch eternity, we touch the divine, we touch the face of God.

As the Unitarian hero Ralph Waldo Emerson once put it, “The purpose of life is not to be happy.  It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have life make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”  In this regard, Emerson makes Tom’s and my point.  An abundant life is not one of happiness as it might superficially be defined – one of indulging sensory pleasures.  An abundant life is, instead, a fulfilled life.  A life of meaning.  A life of peace that is at one with the wider universe precisely because it has been integrated into it.  And that integration comes only from serving ALL life – not just one’s own.

We, as a beloved community, must take Emerson’s words to heart.  Our community comprises many individuals but it is one body – one force of love and compassion.  As we focus that love inward to strengthen our own spirits, it must be reflected back out into our neighborhoods to nourish and strengthen them.  That’s why we are here.  That’s why we attend on Sundays, volunteer, give and now contemplate a merger.  It’s not for me, it’s not for you.  We do all of this for our ONE HUMAN FAMILY.

A beloved community is never judgmental.  It never imposes expectations or guilt on its members for not serving.  Instead, it inspires members.  It encourages them by word and example.  A beloved community is a transformed place of greater happiness, kindness, productivity and interconnection.  This kind of church does not seek bigger buildings, thousands of members or millions of dollars.  In every aspect of its being, it looks beyond its walls, it humbly serves a broken world, it quietly but persistently loves the unloved, the outcast, the broken, the helpless.  As for me, as for Tom, as for all of us, we will be a community that grows in belonging, becoming, believing and, most importantly, in “beloving”.

 

 

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering, All Rights Reserved

 

To download and listen to the message, please click here.  To read the message, please see below.

 

 

I have shared with you in the past the challenge I often experience when I consider my current work schedule.  I have a few friends in Florida regularly ask me why I continue my current practice of returning to Cincinnati to work, when I could stay in Florida, find employment there for equal take home pay, and supposedly be happier.  I should choose, they tell me, to pursue happiness in a place that offers many of the things I enjoy in life.

These friends of mine, however, cannot understand the response I give them – that I don’t currently want to change the structure of my life.  While stress from work, the challenges of a back and forth schedule and the costs associated with working here are not easy, I find significant fulfillment and satisfaction in what I do as a minister.  Being happy, for me, goes beyond my physical well-being.  I want to feel that my life serves a greater purpose than just my own happiness.

I relate this anecdote not to solicit your sympathy, but in order to offer an illustration that sets up my message on the pursuit of happiness.  I’ve focused this month in my three messages on the relationship between suffering and happiness – and most importantly, in how they help define our life purpose and legacy.  What is it that truly makes us happy?  How do our reasoning minds, or our emotions, figure in our happiness?  Reason tells me I would be happier living and working in a place that gives me enjoyment.  But my feelings of compassion for others, gratitude for all I’ve been given and a personal desire for meaning lead – these lead me to a different conclusion.  They call me to serve others at least as much as I do myself.

Rational people, however, do not allow emotion and heart impulses to govern their actions.  Reason seems to tell us that personal happiness ought to be our primary purpose in life.  If stress, extra expenses and cold weather cause me distress, I should reasonably eliminate them and choose another way to live.  But such a choice would ignore my feelings on the matter.  I want to help change the world for the better.  I want to connect with and relate to other people.   These are things that make me feel useful, purposeful and, as a result, happy.

Ayn Rand, and her book Atlas Shrugged, however, support my head analysis of how I should live – that I should pursue my happiness above all else.  The book has achieved new fame in recent years – mostly among thoughtful and philosophical conservatives.  Indeed, Rand’s  book and her philosophy are more popular now than they were in 1957 when the book was first published.  While the book is fictional, its intent is to present a very clear message.

It details a future where America is the only non-dictatorial nation.   Governments around the world have all asserted that the collective good is greater than individual good – that people morally owe one another their service, instead of immorally serving themselves.  All nations in Rand’s fictitious world, with the exception of America, have adopted Marxist governments and economies.

Atlas Shrugged depicts an America that is nevertheless sliding toward Communism.  One day, in Rand’s story, America finds itself in crisis – all of the innovators, entrepreneurs, scientists, doctors and business owners have vanished.  Those who make America run and prosper are gone.  And America becomes a bleak, dark and joyless place – much like the rest of the world.

Woven within her story about two corporate leaders who become lovers and then discover the reason for the disappearance of all the nation’s innovators, is Rand’s philosophy on the purpose of life.  She even has one of the characters deliver a 70 page long discourse on her philosophy of “Objectivism”.   According to this theory, we should use objective reason as the means to decide how to act in life.  Our thinking minds, Rand said, tell us that personal happiness must be our goal.  To obtain happiness, each person is not only responsible for their own happiness but the pursuit of happiness should be our primary goal.  In other words, selfishness is good and self-sacrifice is bad or, as Rand emphasized, it is a philosophy of personal loss and eventual decline.

Ayn Rand would tell me that I am a fool to labor here as a minister, to inconvenience myself in that regard, to give up what I could otherwise enjoy.  Logically, I should pursue happiness by remaining in Florida.  I would be happier and thus do more for the world if I did not give up personal pleasure.

My discussion of Ayn Rand might seem as if I want to engage in a political discussion.  I do not.  I want to instead encourage spiritual reflection on what it means to pursue happiness and the kinds of things that actually provide it.  Many current conservatives see Ayn Rand as a wise prophet.  She was someone willing to condemn governments and prevailing “do good” philosophies as illogical.  Human evolution and experience show us that we are organisms intrinsically designed to seek our individual well-being and survival – to eat, reproduce and avoid pain.  As rational creatures, we instinctively follow a Darwinian, or survival of the fittest, approach to life – the well-being of individuals and of our communities depends on the personal effort not just to survive but to thrive.  Only those who are able to thrive, and pass down their genes, will find happiness and, in the long run, evolve, populate the earth, and make for a better world.

In Rand’s philosophy of “Objectivism”, people are altruistic solely because of their emotions – which she asserted are not reason based.  Emotions such as love, empathy, or compassion lead us to make illogical decisions about how to act.  She saw altruism as a sacrifice of the self.  It is a morality of death, she said, since it leads to our decline by giving away pieces of ourselves.  People and societies get ahead only by meeting their needs.  As she said, “If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.”

Furthermore, emotions such as compassion and altruism lead us to feel guilty when we do act in self-interest.  Such guilt is destructive.  If we look at life without subjective emotion, she believed, we will see that self-interest is objectively for our own good and is the means by which society as a whole succeeds.   This is the push / pull, in other words, between our hearts and our minds – but it is only our minds that tell us the truth.  We should ignore our “do good” emotions.

In her view, most human behavior is already self-oriented and even though we do not admit it.  Parents do not support their children and pay for their educations based on altruism or love.  The root motivation for their actions is based on self-interest, which is to reproduce by making copies of themselves.  Mother Teresa, for instance, did not serve others for sacrificial reasons.  She was motivated by self-interest to make herself look good in a world that values altruism.  A doctor does not treat patients solely to do good.  He or she does so to make money and even get rich.  I do not minister primarily to help people.  I do so for my paycheck.  Money, as she said, is society’s barometer of virtue.   An industrialist serves far more people than did Mother Teresa by not pretending to be altruistic.  He or she seeks money by exchanging valuable labor or creativity for even greater value.  Exchanging value for nothing, is not a primary motivator for anyone.   We should not pretend otherwise.

The problem with Rand’s philosophy lies in her analysis of what makes people truly happy.  For Rand, we are happy when we receive external reward.  And seeking such external reward is what motivates behavior.  All of our actions are done in order to receive a reward in recognition, money or material benefit.  What we find, however, is that obtaining external rewards is not the means to long term happiness.  It is a highly primitive way to be happy – one found in the most basic of organisms.

Neurological research shows that externally derived pleasures like food or sex stimulate a release of the hormone dopamine that briefly lights up pleasure centers in our brains.  What neurologists, philosophers and even casual observers of human behavior have discovered is that too much external reward, and resulting high levels of dopamine, these ironically lead to less happiness and even suffering.  If we allow external reward to motivate us, if we believe only that will make us happy, we will find ourselves on an endless treadmill seeking greater and greater reward.  But as with an addict, such pleasure soon loses its power – we need more and more of it achieve the same high.  If we ever stop desiring external stimuli, we will not be happy.

Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher, wrote that happiness is derived from simplicity and limiting selfish desires.  We should pursue happiness inwardly by seeking a peace of mind similar to what the Buddha encouraged.  Desire is the root cause of suffering and only by reducing selfish, external motivations can we truly be happy.  We must avoid what Epicurus described as the “pain – pleasure – pain” cycle.  We desire external pleasure when we are in pain.  But we find that external rewards only lead to more pain – we become anxious about protecting our reward, we worry about getting more of it, the urge to seek more and more external pleasure gets stronger, and that leads to even greater disappointment because we eventually can’t satisfy such desires.   This is the paradox of the pursuit of happiness.  If we pursue it, we won’t get it.

Once again, modern research and neurology support this idea.  Another hormone released by our bodies is oxytocin.  But it is released not because of external stimuli that we crave – like food and sex, but by inner feelings of inspiration, love, and compassion.  For instance, when we cry at the hurt we seen someone experience, our bodies are flooded with oxytocin.   Instead of igniting pleasures centers in our brains like dopamine, oxytocin regulates the vagus nerve which controls our heartbeat and breathing.  Oxytocin slows down our heart rates and calms our breathing.  Feelings of peace, contentment and happiness then take over.

Victor Frankl, the holocaust survivor and author of the book Man’s Search for Meaning, supported this idea from his experiences in the Nazi death camps.  “Happiness,” he wrote, “cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”   In the depths of hell on earth, that of four different Nazi concentration camps, Frankl discovered that the persons most likely to survive were those who found peace of mind not from selfishly obtaining pleasures like more food, but rather from giving to others.  Frankl wrote that meaning and joy is found in sacrifice for another.  As he wrote, “The more one forgets himself–by giving himself to a cause to serve another person – the more human he is.”

Frankl focused during particularly hard times in Auschwitz on his wife and the love he had for her – even though he had no idea if she was alive or dead.  At one especially difficult time he wrote, “I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious ‘Yes!’ in answer to my question of ultimate purpose.  Once again I communed with my beloved wife.  More and more I felt that she was present; that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there.  Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.”

In poignant fashion, Victor Frankl understood what brings true happiness far better than Ayn Rand.  It is only in forgetting the self, in letting go of the pursuit of happiness, in focusing on loving and serving others, that one ironically finds the self and all of its potential to be happy.

My recent time caring for my mom deeply affected me.  I’m still struggling to understand her suffering and my feelings about it.  I found myself last Sunday expounding on the life affirming purpose we can find in suffering, and yet I was reduced to tears when I specifically remembered my mom.  Confronted face to face with it, suffering is real and, yes Ginny, it does suck.  But I did not care for mom out of duty or sacrifice.  I did so in love for her and my dad.

Like any of you, I yearn to find myself, my life and my purpose in compassion and charity.  Ministry is not just a profession for me.  Yes, it earns me a paycheck but that only meets my basic needs.  Instead, ministry deeply fulfills me because I know, in very small ways, I make a difference.  Ministry is how I find happiness precisely because, in my work, I’m not pursuing it.  And the same is true for any of you as educators, social workers, homemakers, managers, whatever is your life calling.  We seek not extrinsic pleasure from what we do in life.   We seek intrinsic meaning at making a small piece of the world better.  We pursue not happiness but, instead, awe and wonder with nature, gratitude for all we have been given, humility in thought and demeanor.  We want to be life affirming and never destructive or hateful.  We aspire to feelings of unity with all humanity – to express love openly, to sing with joy at simple pleasures, to embrace life as an adventure to love and give.   Without such emotions, with only our cold, objective and unfeeling minds to guide us, life would be a brutish, dog eat dog existence.  In such an existence, some will find a multitude of sensory delights from the pursuit of external happiness – lavish food, exotic travel, material luxuries.  These can be modestly satisfying in limited doses.  But as for me, as for us, we are driven by a nobler inner call to kindness, generosity and love.  The key to finding happiness is to die to self in order to love and serve others.  And it is in the death of self interest, that we’ll find our true reward.