War, Peace, and Remembrance

I come before you today to talk about Memorial Day – about War, and Peace and Remembrance. Unitarians tend to be on the side of peace, though we haven’t always been, and even today we have diverse opinions about when, if ever, war is justified. I’ll mention the death tolls from the last 6 wars in which the US has been involved, and mention that the two main answers to the question of what they died for are: to protect freedom, and to protect commercial interests of the wealthy. Then I’d like to share with you about the Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes. His is a name we should all know, as we should know about the Community Church movement he started. Unitarians were a pro-war denomination about World War I, but fifty years later we were a largely anti-war denomination about VietNam – and I was a teen-aged anti-war demonstrator. But I do believe there is something called “warrior spirit” which is an important part of courage, which is something that does us good, and that our literal warriors exemplify. I’ll talk about how, even for me, fighting can sometimes feel right. You may disagree – and that’s OK.

I begin with a poem from Archibald MacLeish: "We Were Young. We Have Died. Remember Us." (It’s in our hymnal, number 583.)

“The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts.
They say: We were young. We have died. Remember us.
They say: We have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done.
They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.
They say: Our deaths are not ours: they are yours, they will mean what you make them.
They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say, it is you who must say this.
We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
We were young, they say. We have died; remember us.”

Here are some "bullet" points, in more than one sense of the word:

• 116,516 US servicemen died in World War I. The total death toll from that war was about 17 million.
• 405,399 US military personnel died in World War II. That war’s death toll reached 60 to 85 million.
• 33,686 US military died in the Korean Conflict, which claimed in all about 1.2 million lives.
• 58,209 US servicemen and women died in Vietnam, during the American portion of what is also known as the Second Indochina War. Estimates of the total death toll in that conflict range from 800,000 to 3.8 million.
• 4,404 US military died in the Iraq war from 2003 to 2011. Estimates of the total dead in that war range from 177,000 to 1.1 million.
• In Afghanistan, there were 2,459 US military deaths between 2001 and 2021. The Afghanistan conflict during those 20 years, on all sides, claimed , between 176,000 and 212,000 lives.

Our nation, this nation, lost over 600,000 fighting men and women in the six wars mentioned. They were young. They have died. We remember. They were apples of their parents’ eyes. Someone's brother, someone's cousin, someone's nephew, and maybe someone's uncle. Someone's boyfriend. Later, some of them were someone's daughter, sister, niece, aunt, girlfriend. Increasingly, as the wars get more recent, they were someone’s spouse. They were nexus points in communities and families left torn and bereft by their loss.

And for every one of them killed, those wars also killed 100 others – allies, enemy combatants, civilians killed by war-induced epidemics, famines, atrocities, genocides. Et cetera. Let us remember them, too.

I know that our backgrounds in connection to the US military are highly varied, and our attitudes about Memorial Day are diverse. Why did these wars happen? Why did our country enter them?

For some of you, perhaps, it’s very clear why. We fought and killed and died to protect our freedom, to defend our way of life. For others of us, perhaps, it is equally clear that there was a very different reason. They died for corporate profits, or because a political party was looking to get into a war to solidify popular support. Both stories are told about all six of our wars in the last century. The "defending freedom" story is always more popular. The "commercial interests" story, though, is never hard to find for those willing to look.

Let's go back to the first of the six US wars in the last century and a quarter and consider World War I, for example. "The Great War" began in 1914 July when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Germany -- and later Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire -- joined on Austria-Hungary's side. Fighting against them were England, France, and Russia. The US entered the war in 1917 April, and was thus at war for only the last year and a half of World War I. In the years preceding US entry into the war, American banks extended to France and Britain a series of loans totaling $3 billion. Had Germany won, those bonds held by American bankers would have been worthless. J. P. Morgan, England's financial agent in the US, John D. Rockefeller (who made more than $200 million on the war), and other bankers were instrumental in pushing America into the war, so they could protect their loans to Europe.

This was captured in a scene from the 1981 movie, Reds, in which John Reed, played by Warren Beatty, is talking to Louise Bryant, played by Diane Keaton:

“All right, Miss Bryant, do you want an interview? Write this down. Are you naïve enough to think containing German militarism has anything to do with this war? Don't you understand that England and France own the world economy and Germany just wants a piece of it? Keep writing, Miss Bryant. Miss Bryant, can't you grasp that J. P. Morgan has lent England and France a billion dollars? And if Germany wins, he won't get it back! More coffee? America'd be entering the war to protect J. P. Morgan's money. If he loses, we'll have a depression. So the real question is, why do we have an economy where the poor have to pay so the rich won't lose money?”

Why do we have an economy where the poor have to pay – have to die -- so the rich won't lose money? It was a good question then. It's a good question now.

The Unitarian minister, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, opposed World War I and urged his congregation in Manhattan to

“strike . . . at the things which make war— first, militarism; second, political autocracy; and third, commercialism."

In his 1917 sermon, “A Statement to My People on the Eve of War,” Rev. Holmes declared that the armed men fighting,

“are grown from the dragon's teeth of secret diplomacy, imperialistic ambition, dynastic pride, greedy commercialism, economic exploitation at home and abroad....This war is the direct result of unwarrantable, cruel, but nonetheless inevitable interferences with our commercial relations with one group of the belligerents. Our participation in the war, therefore, like the war itself, is political and economic, not ethical, in its character.”

Holmes’ opposition to World War I make him a pariah to Unitarian denominational leadership, which was seeking to have him expelled from Unitarian ministry in 1918 when he saved them the trouble by resigning his denominational credentials. Holmes then urged his church to follow him in parting ways with the Unitarians, which it did in 1919, changing its name to the name it has today: Community Church of New York. For Holmes, denominationalism was divisive, while a community, based on common life, united.

Holmes described the community church as based on these principles:

It substitutes for loyalty to the single denomination, loyalty to the social group.
It substitutes for a private group of persons held together by common theological beliefs or viewpoints, the public group of citizens held together by common social interests.
It substitutes for restrictions of creed, ritual, or ecclesiastical organization, the free spirit.
It substitutes for the individual the social group, as an object of salvation.
It substitutes for Christianity...the idea of universal religion.
It substitutes for the theistic, the humanistic point of view,...the idea of present society as fulfilling the "Kingdom of God" -- the commonwealth of man.
The core of its [the Community Church's] faith, as the purpose of its life, is "the Beloved Community."

Rev. John Haynes Holmes' community church concept was an inspiration to other congregations who adopted the name – including the congregation in White Plains, New York, which I served for 10 years. Rev. Holmes many years later rejoined the Unitarian ministry. Community Church of New York returned to being Unitarian, and White Plains Community Church became Unitarian. But they carry the legacy: the word “Community” in their name, which signified an effort to transcend denomination – an effort spurred on by an anti-war minister’s finding no home in what was then a pro-war denomination.

Two generations later, I was a teenager in a different Unitarian congregation, and a different war was going on. Both my grandfathers had been too young to fight in WWI; my father was too young to fight in WWII, and I was too young to fight in Viet Nam. By 1968, when my family moved to the Altanta area and began attending the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, being anti-war did not put one at odds with most other Unitarians. Indeed, most UUs opposed the Viet Nam war, and many of our congregations were hotbeds of anti-war activism. Many of my earliest memories as a Unitarian had to do with learning in church about why we should get out that war -- and going from church with other Unitarians to demonstrate against the war.

If Memorial Day is for expressing gratitude to the soldiers who fought and died in wars because they gave their all for our freedom, some of us are really on board with that. Others of us have a hard time seeing US war-fighting as having any connection with any freedom other than the freedom of US companies to make exorbitant profits.

In the midst of whatever cynical exploitations may be at work, however, I do believe there is such a thing as a warrior spirit courageously defending of his or her people from the oppression of conquest.

If ever American soldiers were truly fighting for freedom, it was the regiments of African American soldiers in the Civil War. So-called “Colored regiments” began forming after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. One of them, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, featured in the 1989 film, Glory, was led by a Unitarian, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (played by Matthew Broderick in the film), whose Unitarian faith in human equality accounted for his willingness to take the assignment. Another was the 1st Michigan Colored Regiment. Sojourner Truth provided the Michigan regiment with new words to the popular tune to sing as they marched toward battle. (Though Truth claimed authorship, some historians think she may have taken almost all the words from the "Marching Song of the First Arkansas Colored Regiment," written by that regiment's white officer, Captain Lindley Miller.) Sweet Honey in the Rock has recorded that song.

“We are the valiant colored Yankee soldiers enlisted for the war.
We are fighting for the union. We are fighting for the law.
We can shoot a rebel further than a white man ever saw
As we go marching on.

Look there above the center where the flag is waving bright.
We are going out of slavery. We are bound for freedom’s light.
We mean to show Jeff Davis how the Africans can fight
As we go marching on.

We are done with hoeing cotton, we are done with hoeing corn.
We are colored Yankee soldiers just as sure as you are born.
When the Rebels hear us shouting, they will think it’s Gabriel’s horn
As we go marching on.

They will have to pay us wages, the wages of their sin.
They will have to bow their foreheads to their colored kith and kin.
They will have to give us house-room or the roof will tumble in.
As we go marching on.”

Now THAT is fighting for freedom.

Peace and justice must go together, and where there is no justice, the only peace there can be is the temporary peace of suppression and enslavement. When it comes to oppressed peoples fighting against an unjust system, my heart is stirred with support for them.

Are there nonviolent ways to resist oppression? Yes. But a campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience was not an option -- it wasn't something that US blacks in 1863 would have had any way of conceiving or organizing. Could victims of more modern genocide have responded with Ghandi-like civil disobedience? Maybe, sometimes. Always? I only know I don't have the heart to blame an oppressed person for fighting back with the only means they can think of: violent force.

So thank you. Thank you, fighters, warriors. Thank you for being unwilling to accept domination passing for peace. You died or risked death because you feared death less than you loved hope. Your example shows the rest of us that we, too, can commit our lives to a greater purpose, a purpose for which we may be willing to die.

Abstractions like “country” and “freedom” are the terms we hear from people far from the battlefields when they talk about what the fighting was for. Those in the midst of such battle have little thought of such abstractions. They are motivated in the moment by concrete and immediate loyalty to the mates fighting beside them, not to the large ideals they will later invoke, if they survive. Thank you, fighters, for embodying the value of concrete connection to the people around us right here and now.

We today are what we are because of fighters. There’s that joke that goes: "I'm in favor of sex. I come from a long line of people who had sex.” So, too, we must also acknowledge that we come from a long line of victors in battle. The victors generate more descendants than the vanquished – and even the vanquished are around to be vanquished because they succeeded as a people in previous fighting. Thus each of us has an ancestry made up of those able to fight and win. We all come from a long line of warriors – and we wouldn’t be here without their ability to fight, to kill, their willingness to die. For most of human history, if there were any communities or tribes of pacificists, they were either under the protection of people who were willing to fight, or they were soon subsumed and conscripted or exterminated.

Thank you, fighters. You entered situations more fearful than anything permanent civilians like me can imagine, yet you did not let your fear control you. Because you showed us what courage is, we are better able to bring courage to our peaceful pursuits.

The phrase “warrior mind” refers to a state of being concentrated yet relaxed, smoothly sizing up a situation and deploying strategies to overcome obstacles and challenges. Every time we confront difficulties rather than fleeing from them, we are drawing on the skills of our warrior ancestors – skills which today’s warriors continue to embody. Thank you, warriors.

It falls now to us to build a way to transcend our heritage of violence, to utilize warrior mind for the creation and defense of institutions of peace. Let us be fierce for justice.

Essential for success in battle – and thus essential for the tribe's survival for millennia of human history – was the capacity for discipline and organization and courage. That capacity was also essential at Selma in 1965, and before that in Gandhi’s nonviolent campaigns in India. Grateful for the warrior virtues, let us continue to seek ever more effective ways to bring those virtues to the nonviolent resistance to oppression.

Let us also remember this on Memorial Day. If Memorial Day can be described in two words, "thank you," it can also be described in another two words: "I’m sorry." Some of the deaths in war were not much about nobility and courage, let alone freedom. Sometimes politicians and generals made unfortunate choices when better alternatives were available. Some of that killing and dying served no purpose at all. Good people died, families were bereft, and I’m sorry.

Beyond the gratitude, beyond the regret, Memorial Day is simply remembering. Ultimately, the meaning of Memorial Day is described not in two words, but in one: Remember.

The dead say: “We were young. We have died. Remember us.” For all who died in warfare or as a consequence of the war, tears.

Amen.

Training in Compassion 16: Five Virtues: Repetition

To train ourselves in compassion calls for growing the five virtues:

• Determination,
• Repetition,
• Owning Your Nobility,
• Reproaching Your Demons, and
• Aspiring to the Impossible.

Today we focus on repetition.

Familiarization is the key. To get out of an old way of being, get deeply familiar with a new way. We take our own point of view so much for granted. The world may not be as we think it is. In fact, it is virtually certain that it is not.

There's nothing wrong with habits as such. Habits can be very helpful in carrying us through without having to invest the energy for figuring out from scratch what to do in every situation. Habits help us conserve energy for times when we will need it. But our habitual way of seeing things, in many instances, large and small, is often distorted, too narrow – limiting our possibilities and our love.

This is why spiritual practice takes time, effort, support, and lots of repetition, repetition, repetition. Little by little our way of seeing the world and ourselves can shift. With effort, the mind can be trained. So choose your spiritual practice, and stick with it. Support your path with daily journaling, study, and meditation. Add further supporting practices such as mealtime grace, keeping sabbath, and getting enough sleep. Stick with these practices -- familiarize yourself with them so thoroughly that they become second nature.

New pathways in the brain are built through familiarization with a new approach. Repetition gradually establishes a new habit that is not, like the old ones, unconscious -- but instead is a habit you have thought about and chosen to cultivate for reasons that come out of your best motivations. It's a matter of brain-washing yourself, but in a good way: washing out an otherwise musty brain, freshening it up.

Left alone with its unconscious habits, the mind goes down predictably dull and often disadvantageous pathways. Just as physical exercise, over and over, changes the body, spiritual exercise, over and over, changes the brain and keeps it toned. Repetition is the true soul of spirituality.

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For the full version of this post: SEE HERE

Teisho: On Not Slurping Dregs

I take refuge in Buddha -- the awakened nature of every being. I take refuge in dharma -- the path of understanding and love. I take refuge in sangha – the community that leaves in harmony and awareness.

In celebration of the Buddhist holiday Vesak I am today offering a Teisho – the Japanese word for a Zen talk. It’s traditional for a Teisho to begin by reciting the three refuges, and then to read a case – a koan from the tradition – to serve as the springboard for the talk.

The American Zen master Reb Anderson wrote an essay, “Guidance in Shikantaza.” Shikantaza translates as “just sitting” – no object, no goal, no particular focus. It’s a main approach to meditation in Zen. Shikantaza practice, Anderson writes,

“is not merely stillness; it is complete presence in stillness. There is not the slightest meddling. It is physical and mental non-interfering. It is thorough intimacy with whatever is happening.... [In this way, zazen] opens the door to a full understanding of how self and other dependently co-produce one another.”

Anderson concludes this essay, “We can’t do it by ourselves, and nobody else can do it for us.” Nobody else can do it for us: we must, each of us, take up the task. AND we can’t do it by ourselves: We have to do it together. It takes a village to awaken a being.

So, with that prelude: Here’s the case – the koan. It appears as case number 11 in the Blue Cliff Record, which is 100 cases compiled by Xuedou in the 11th century.

Huangbo addressed the assembly and said, "You are all slurpers of dregs. If you go on studying Zen like that, where will you have Today? Do you know that in all the land of China there is no Zen teacher?"
Then a monk came forward and said, "But surely there are those who teach disciples and preside over the assemblies. What about that?"
Huangbo said, "I do not say that there is no Zen, but that there is no Zen teacher."

That’s the case – the koan – for us to look at.

Huangbo was a 9th-century Chinese Zen teacher and abbot of a monastery. Huangbo says there’s no Zen teacher, but there is Zen. No Zen teacher means nobody to do it for us, nobody whose words we just have to learn, whose posture and movements we just have to imitate. If you’re looking to your teacher for the truth, you’re just gobbling up dregs. But there is Zen: there is this thing that we do together. Whether it’s traditional Zen with rakusus, bows, chants, bells, clappers, incense, altars, mats, cushions, and sitting cross-legged in silence for 25 to 45 minutes at a time -- or whether it’s the Zen of Unitarian Universalism with stolls, chalice lightings, hymns, choirs, candles, folding seats, responsive readings, listening to a sermon for 20 minutes at a time, and also bells – there is this thing that we do together.

Practice – whatever form spiritual practice takes -- is a joint venture. The great 13th-century Japanese Zen teacher Dogen insisted: the practice is the enlightenment. We do it together – we practice together and in that practice manifest our inherent enlightenment together. We do it together, or we aren’t really doing it at all. A private, solo retreat can be wonderful as long as, at the end of it, you come in and see how you stand up in the context of your spiritual leader and guide and your fellow practitioners on the path with you.

It’s ultimately a joint venture, even when you’re by yourself. The Buddha, according to legend, reached a great realization while practicing on his own – but he wasn’t far from five friends. The story goes that Siddhartha Gotama left home at age 29 to pursue spiritual liberation. He left behind a wife and small child to, in other words, go find himself – yeah, that’s the story. He found a teacher and advanced quickly, but wasn’t satisfied. He left that teacher, found another teacher and advanced further, but hadn’t found liberation. He left that second teacher and was soon followed by five friends who joined him in practicing extreme asceticism. Finally, he abandoned extreme self-denial for the middle way: neither indulging in sensual delight nor denying himself basic sustenance.

He split off from the five friends for, essentially, a private solo retreat. Six years had gone by since he left home. He sat, by himself, beside the Neranjara River, under a pipala tree, also called bodhi tree, for a week. And as dawn was breaking on the seventh day, he looked up and a little to his right, and saw Venus, the morning star. That pinpoint of light triggered a cascading psychic reaction that felt like a complete opening, an awareness of the one-ness of all things, a falling away of all the usual ego protections and defenses.

What he said at that moment was: “Behold, all beings are enlightened exactly as they are.” That was his moment of awakening, the moment when Siddhartha Gotama became the Buddha, the awakened one. Soon after he’d had his morning star experience, he met back up with his five friends to whom he gave an accounting of himself. He came back to a community of accountability. We have to have Sangha – community.

Huangbo urges us not to be gobblers of dregs. The term is literally, “eaters of wine-dregs” or of “brewer’s grain” – it’s the dregs left over after the wine or brew has been made and siphoned off. Huangbo is saying, “You think you’re getting the real thing, but you’re just taking in the dregs of it.”

“If you go on studying Zen like that,” he says, “where will you have Today?” He’s talking about students who travel around from one teacher to another – doing a retreat here or a few visits with a group there. As soon as they’ve heard a few talks from, and had some interviews with, one teacher they’re ready to move on to check out the next one. They are dilletantes -- spiritual tourists.

Not that there isn’t a time for exploring the field and getting a broad exposure. Huangbo himself studied with a number of masters before coming to Baizhang, from whom he received dharma transmission. So, no, I don’t think Huangbo is implying you should commit your life to the first meditation center you happen to walk into or to this church after just one visit. Give yourself some time and experience a number of different practice and teaching styles. The purpose, though, is not to keep on accumulating different experiences – as if faith communities were toys and you believed that whoever dies with the most toys wins. The purpose is to get a rough sense of what’s out there, so you can find one to settle down with.

If there is never anything about the faith community that makes you go, “Wait. That makes no sense” – then that’s a sign that place might be, for you, a place of more complacency than growth. The perplexing and exasperating can be a nudge toward liberation, toward spiritual growth.

“If you go on studying Zen like that,” says Huangbo – or, as it reads in another translation, “if you keep visiting temples and masters here and there in a lukewarm manner,” (Sato) – “where will you have Today?” Even if you are settled down with one teacher and sangha and they are solid, and you’ve been there for years, you might still be kinda slurping on some dregs. If you’re living on second-hand concepts, where will you have Today? Another translation gives, “when will there ever be a day for you?” Or: when will you come into your own.

The spiritual path aims to bring you to yourself, to your own, to the day, every day, that is for you. That’s having your Today: experiencing for yourself and in your own way the eternal quality of this day, of this hour, of this moment – seeing for yourself that, Chinese Zen figure, Yunmen, would say a century later: every day is a good day.

And some of Huangbo’s students did have their Today. One of Huangbo’s students – perhaps in the hall on the day he called them all slurpers of dregs -- was Linji – Rinzai, in Japanese – the founder of one of the two main lineages of Zen today.

Then a monk came forward and said, "But surely there are those who teach disciples and preside over the assemblies. What about that?" Huangbo said, "I do not say that there is no Zen, but that there is no Zen teacher." There’s no teacher – no one who can do it for you. There is no one outside you, so no one to fix you from outside. There’s no Zen teacher -- but there is Zen – all of us together co-creating practice, co-creating enlightenment.

If there is to be Zen, as Huangbo says there is, what is our task? If there is to be Unitarian Universalism, how shall we live it? What is the work that all the bells, clappers, mats, cushions, altars, incense, bowing, chanting, and getting together in a room with our friends to be very still and quiet together is supposed to facilitate? What is the work that hymns and sermons, forums, connection circles and religious education classes, operating budgets and capital campaigns, hospitality volunteers, and grounds clean-up days, is supposed to facilitate?

This congregation has a mission. We say the work is: love radically, grow ethically and spiritually, serve justly. And doesn’t love radically really include the other two? From the drive to love as radically as we can, as whole-heartedly and as whole-beingly as we can, comes the impetus to serve justice, and the path of our own growth ethically and spiritually.

The new graphic of Unitarian Universalist values places justice, equity, pluralism, interdependence, transformation, and generosity as petals of a flower centered on love. So the essence of the work is love – radically love.

And love goes with understanding. In Thich Nhat Hanh’s Old Path White Clouds, he has the Buddha explain,

“love cannot exist without understanding. Love is Understanding. If you cannot understand, you cannot love. [Spouses, siblings, parents and children] who do not understand each other cannot love each other. If you want your loved ones to be happy, you must learn to understand their sufferings and their aspirations. When you understand, you will know how to relieve their sufferings and how to help them fulfill their aspirations. That is true love.”

So if our task is to love radically, then it must be to understand – specifically, to understand suffering: our own and others. If our task is to love radically it must be to comprehend suffering. We have “been thrown into this world at birth” and are “constantly subject to illness and breakdown" (Batchelor) Each breath could be your last. Rather than pushing that thought out of mind, carry it in or near the front of your mind all the time. “We keep meeting what we do not like, losing what we cherish, and failing to get what we desire.”

Pay attention to features of life we easily fall into overlooking or ignoring – the tragic dimension of life. Otherwise, writes Stephen Batchelor, we

“become enamored, seduced, and captivated by what is merely agreeable, which leads to cycles of reactive and addictive behavior.” (Batchelor 71)

Comprehend suffering. Wrap your mind around it – wrap your heart around it. Take it in. Comprehend in the sense of encompass: encompass the totality of what life includes.

This is our task: keeping our eyes open to the totality: all the beauty and all the tragedy -- keeping our hearts open to all the ambiguity, strangeness, and ineffability of life.

“To comprehend dukkha is to comprehend life intimately and ironically with all its paradoxes and quirks, its horrors and jokes, its sublimity and banality” (Batchelor 73).

To comprehend suffering is to meet the reality of life with “an understanding that is openhearted, clearheaded, compassionate, and equanimous.” This is the task we take up on the cushion, and it is the task we take up in our lives.

The possibility of comprehending suffering is the possibility of loving radically. That’s the Zen path, the Unitarian Universalist path, the path of any spiritual tradition worthy of the name. Anything else is just slurping at the dregs.

We can’t do it by ourselves, and nobody else can do it for us. We must, each of us, take up the task – for ourselves and for all beings. We have to do it, and we have to do it together. Friends, we have to.

Training in Compassion 15: Five Virtues: Determination

To train ourselves in compassion calls for growing the five virtues:

• Determination,
• Repetition,
• Owning Your Nobility,
• Reproaching Your Demons, and
• Aspiring to the Impossible.

Today we focus on determination.

When we are exhibit determination to live compassionately we learn to take ourselves seriously as dignified spiritual practitioners. Your strong determination will teach you that, whatever your shortcomings, you also have within you a powerful energy to accomplish the spiritual path and the way of compassion.

What is it that you most would like to accomplish or manifest with this one short, precious life you have been given? We want to be good people, and we want to fulfill our highest human destiny.

At our best we all have high purposes, noble goals, even if we are modest about them. But we forget them. We get lost in the details, absorbed in the problems.

To practice strong determination is to intentionally stay connected to our higher goals and to remind us that we truly are spiritual practitioners; we are heroes; we can make effort; we can do what needs to be done to live a noble life.

The concrete practice is to concretely remind yourself. Compose your words of reminder, forthright, resolute, and bold.

"I am a spiritual warrior, and though this may not be apparent to others, inside it is clear to me. I refuse to be stuck for good with my ordinary limited point of view; I'm leaving that behind. I'm going forward!"

That's the spirit of strong determination.

So compose your words of determination and repeat them to yourself from time to time.

Such affirmations don’t do much by themselves, but in combination with attention to all the other trainings in compassion, these words will facilitate your growth.

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For the full version of this post: SEE HERE.

Commensality: The Open Table

SERMON, part 1

Some Unitarian Universalist ministers mention Jesus exactly twice a year: Christmas and Easter. I have typically mentioned either Jesus or something from the Christian ("New") Testament a little more often than that, but not a lot more. In any case, it is Easter, so let's talk about Jesus. He had some worthwhile things to teach us.

“Jesus talks a great deal about the kingdom of God, and what he means by that,” says theologian Walter Brueggemann, “is a public life reorganized toward neighborliness.” Neighborliness. Not exactly the first word that pops to mind when considering the current state of public life in this country.

And what does this neighborliness entail? We are told "The last will be first, and the first last." Children and the poor are highlighted as exemplars. Power and wealth make such neighborliness difficult or impossible.

In Luke, Jesus says the Kingdom of God is within or among you. The preposition in the original Greek is “entos” – which can mean both within and among. “Within you” suggests an internal, spiritual reality. “Among you” suggests the kingdom is present in the community. I like to see Jesus as meaning both: being among you helps it be within you, and being within you helps it be among you.

Jesus described the kingdom of God as a feast where everyone has a seat at the table. In the 1990s, Latina feminist theologian Ada María Isasi-Díaz suggested calling it the “kin-dom of God,” which better expresses the emphasis on relationships over hierarchy, community and mutual care over patriarchal rule. The kin-dom of God is a radically inclusive community of equals. The kin-dom of God is what Martin Luther King called “beloved community” based on reconciliation and integration, nonviolence, economic justice, and radical love.

Today, I’ll draw on the work of John Dominic Crosson to describe the kin-dom of God as commensality – from “mensa,” Latin for table. Jesus’ vision for society is of an open table, where everyone has a seat at that table. Then, today being Easter, I’ll talk about how the Easter story, in particular, re-presents this basic social vision.

To understand what Jesus was really all about, argues scholar John Dominic Crossan, look at the way he took meals – the theology of food that he exemplified – the meaning of eating together. Anthropologists Peter Farb and George Armelagos write:

“In all societies, both simple and complex, eating is the primary way of initiating and maintaining human relationships.... Once the anthropologist finds out where, when, and with whom the food is eaten, just about everything else can be inferred about the relations among the society’s members.... To know what, where, how, when, and with whom the people eat is to know the character of their society.”

To bring home to our own experience the way that eating reflects social position, Crossan suggests:

“Think, for a moment, if beggars came to your door, of the difference between giving them some food to go, of inviting them into your kitchen for a meal, of bringing them into the dining room to eat in the evening with your family, or of having them back on Saturday night for supper with a group of your friends. Think, again, if you were a large company’s CEO, of the difference between a cocktail party in the office for all the employees, a restaurant lunch for all the middle managers, or a private dinner party for your vice presidents in your own home.”

The structure of our meals recapitulates the structure of power. And when Crossan examines the gospels, he finds Jesus teaching and exemplifying open commensality.

“The rules of tabling and eating [are] miniature models for the rules of association and socialization. Table fellowship [is] a map of economic discrimination, social hierarchy, and political differentiation.” (Crossan)

And for Jesus, the table was open.

While John the Baptist had fasted, feasting is more Jesus’ style – and the table was open. While John the Baptist had emphasized a coming future kingdom, for Jesus, “It is not enough to await a future kingdom; one must enter a present one here and now.” And that kingdom – that kin-dom – is one of abundance and equal sharing.

The gospels so closely associate Jesus with meal time that the Eucharist became Christianity’s sacrament. And the most famous painting of Jesus is DaVinci's "Last Supper." In the miracle story of the loaves and fishes, there are hundreds gathered – and all end up eating. Jesus takes the bread, blesses, breaks and gives. Those are the four basic moves of the life he represents: take, bless, break, and give: Take – receive. Open to take what experience and the world bring.
Bless – or, that is, be grateful. Pause for a moment of gratitude.
And then break into parts for giving back.

And consider this parable, from Luke 14:

“He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’
One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, ‘Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!’
Then Jesus said to him, ‘Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, “Come, for everything is ready now.”
But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, “I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.”
Another said, “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.”
Another said, “I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.”
So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.”
And the slave said, “Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.”
Then the master said to the slave, “Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.”’”

Now that’s an open table.

And consider what a horrific mess that would be to the standard hierarchical values of the time.

“If one actually brought in anyone off the street, one could, in such a situation, have classes, sexes, and ranks all mixed up together. Anyone could be reclining next to anyone else, female next to male, free next to slave, socially high next to socially low, and ritually pure next to ritually impure." (Crossan)

What a social nightmare that would be! Crossan comments that:

“The social challenge of such equal or egalitarian commensality is the parable’s most fundamental danger and most radical threat. It is only a story, of course, but it is one that focuses its egalitarian challenge on society’s miniature mirror, the table, as the place where bodies meet to eat.”

And Jesus lived out his own parable. Open commensality is the model of the Kin-dom of God. The nondiscriminating table represents the nondiscriminating society.This was a great annoyance to those who regarded open and free association as a thing to be avoided. First century Mediterranean culture emphasized honor and shame – and Jesus’ open table was profoundly subversive.

Two messages are clear. One is the radical egalitarianism of the open table. The other is that it happens right here and now – among the people around us today. When the table is open, that is the kingdom, the kin-dom, of God -- and the kin-dom of God is, as Jesus says, within you and among you.

“It is not enough to await a future kingdom; one must enter a present one here and now.”

But that was all just too radical for Paul – the erstwhile Pharisee and persecutor of Christians who had a conversion experience. But Paul never broke bread with Jesus – didn’t really grasp the open commensality.

And here we come to the Easter story, for the emphasis on Jesus’ bodily resurrection is an invention of Paul. For Paul, the end of the world was not merely imminent, but had already begun – and Jesus’ resurrection was but prelude to a general resurrection. Thus, for Paul, the Sunday of which we are today celebrating the anniversary was the beginning of a religion of the end-times. But Paul’s form of Christianity was not, for some time, the only form of Christianity being practiced. As Crossan explains:

"What happened historically is that those who believed in Jesus before his execution continued to do so afterward. Easter is not about the start of a new faith, but about the continuation of an old one. That is the only miracle and the only mystery, and it is more than enough of both.... It is a terrible trivialization to imagine that all Jesus’ followers lost their faith on Good Friday and had it restored by apparitions on Easter Sunday. It is another trivialization to presume that even those who lost their nerve, fled, and hid also lost their faith, hope, and love.”

So let’s look now at the Easter story – or, rather, the four quite different Easter stories. Did Mary Magdalene visit the tomb by herself? Was it Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary”? Was it Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome? Was Joanna with them? And also other women? Did they arrive before dawn, at dawn, or when the sun had already risen? Did they arrive to see an angel rolling back the stone, or was it already rolled back? Did they see guards? Angels? Both? Neither? Let us revisit the four variations in John, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

READING (adapted from Mark 16, Matthew 28, Luke 24, and John 20)

JOHN: On Sunday morning Mary Magdalene went by herself.

MATTHEW: No. Two women, Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary,” went to the tomb.

MARK: No. Three women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salomé went.

LUKE: It was at least four women: Mary Magdalene, who we all agree on; Mary the mother of James, as Mark said and maybe who Matthew means as “the other Mary.” There was also Joanna, and other women.

JOHN: She . . .

MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE: They . . .

JOHN: took spices to prepare the body for burial.

MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE: Yes, that’s right.

JOHN: Mary went in the pre-dawn darkness.

MATTHEW: The women went when the day was dawning.

MARK: No. The sun had already risen.

LUKE: I’m with Matthew. They went when the day was dawning.

JOHN: When Mary . . .

MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE: The women . . .

JOHN: Got there, she . . .

MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE: They . . .

MATTHEW: They arrived just in time to see that “an angel of the lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.”

MARK: No, they found the stone already rolled back.

LUKE: I’m with Mark on this one. It was already rolled back.

JOHN: Me, too. It was already rolled back before Mary got there.

MATTHEW: The two women saw one angel, the one who rolled back and sat on the stone, and also some guards.

MARK: The three women entered the tomb and saw “a young man dressed in a white robe.” No mention of any guards.

LUKE: The group of four or more women entered the tomb, and did not find the body. “While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.” No guards.

MATTHEW: “The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised.’”

MARK: It was the young man dressed in a white robe who said essentially those words.

LUKE: I’ve got that the two men in dazzling clothes said it.

MATTHEW: So the two women left the tomb and ran to tell the disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings! Go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

MARK: The three women “fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” Some indeterminate time later, Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene, then to the disciples.

LUKE: The four or more women returned from the tomb and told the eleven disciples “and all the rest” what had happened. Later that day, Jesus appeared to two other women who weren’t in the group that went to the tomb, and these women didn’t recognize who he was at first.

JOHN: No, no. Mary Magdalene, alone, saw no one at all until after she returned from the tomb, and told two of the disciples that the body was missing. Mary and the two disciples returned again to the tomb. They still saw nothing but linen wrappings. The disciples left. Mary stayed, alone and crying. Only then did she look into the tomb and see "two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying." Then she turned around, and there was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him. She supposed him to be the gardener until he called her name.

SERMON, part 2

The compilers of the New Testament surely noticed these discrepancies. The writers of the later gospels would have known they were diverging from the earlier gospels. But for the Early Christian community, the differences and contradictions were a strength, not a weakness. The differences indicated authenticity, indicated that these stories were not coordinated, edited accounts but independent testimonies. If the stories were perfectly aligned, they would have appeared suspiciously manufactured.

The culture of the time did not draw a line between history and fiction – there was no division of their storytellers into historians and novelists. A story was a story, and its value was not in whether it met scholarly standards of historical accuracy that wouldn’t be invented for centuries, or even in whether it would stand up in the law courts of the time, but whether it moved the listeners, filled them with a sense of awe, and lent meaning to their lives. They delighted in the story being told in different ways, just as we today might enjoy a book and also enjoy the movie made from the book, even though the filmmakers changed a number of plot points.

In these very different Easter stories of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, we have a feast of diverse perspectives – not only in the plot details, but the theological dimensions being emphasized. Mark, in its earliest manuscripts, has a very abrupt ending that emphasizes mystery and awe. Matthew’s story emphasizes Jesus's divine authority and commission. Luke highlights the continuity with Hebrew scriptures. The John gospel focuses on personal encounters and recognition. It’s an open table feast of narratives.

The early Christians embraced a theology of abundance and plurality — in food, in gifts of the Spirit, and in story and perspective as well. So inconsistency among the stories is not a bug; it’s a feature. The early Church was modeling a unity that didn’t require uniformity. They demonstrated that we can tell the story differently and still have a shared commitment to the values which the story’s variations highlight in different ways.

In fact, telling different, even contradictory, stories enhances the richness of our community. Recall that Walt Whitman, in his “Song of Myself,” said:

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

Whitman grasped that life has contradictory lessons for us, and that embracing the contradictions enriches life. Yes, sometimes we have to choose which one of competing claims we will believe, which one seems to have the stronger evidence in its favor. Other times, though, we don’t choose one over the other, but live in the tension between them. Doubt, divergence, and creative retelling are not threats but pathways to a more full truth.

Christian dogma would come later. The earliest Christians had a theology of abundance and diversity and openness to difference. They were not interested in propositional belief – which propositions and doctrines to hold true and which ones to brand as heresy. The purpose of Christian community was not to believe propositions, but to tell, in varying and even contradictory ways, stories about their lived experience as followers of Jesus – experience that was itself contradictory or paradoxical: absent presence. Easter is about the absent presence of their beloved teacher and friend: how he was present in their hearts, while also absent.

The diverse and inconsistent stories, then, are an extension of the open table – open to all kinds of people and all their stories without attempt to iron them into consistency. But for all the diversity, there are two points that all four of the gospel Easter stories agree on. The tomb was empty, and women are at the center of the story. Let’s look at that second point.

It’s striking that women would be so central. In Jewish Palestine women’s testimony was widely regarded as unreliable and untrustworthy. Women were not eligible to be witnesses in court. As theologian Richard Bauckham explains,

“in the Greco-Roman world in general women were thought by men to be gullible in religious matters and especially prone to superstitious fantasy and excessive in religious practices.”

Yet it is women who discover the tomb is empty and women who first tell about it.

I see here a deliberate subversion of social and religious expectations. It’s a radical inversion of hierarchy, of the structure of who counts, who’s credible, and who’s worthy. I just don’t think it’s possible that the Gospels were trying to establish the resurrection as factual. If they were, they’d never have told the story with women as the witnesses – yet that is one thing all four gospels agree on. Establishing factual resurrection wasn’t the point – couldn’t have been. The point, instead, is to resurrect, or simply continue, the kin-dom of God – a beloved community based on grace, presence, and radical inclusion. And if that’s the point, then of course it begins with those who are least expected — but most deeply attuned.

The women’s testimony is not speculative theology; it’s relational encounter — “I have seen him,” Mary says. It’s not a doctrine, not a propositional belief, but a presence to be lived into – a resurrection-in-the-heart of hope and community connection, not proven with objectively credible evidence, but witnessed by love.

So the Easter story, in its multiple variations, yet all of them centered on women, on the ones who normally wouldn’t have a place at the table, illustrates the open table and the kin-dom of God.

Here, then, is what, this Easter, I urge us to remember: that the meaning is the stories we share and the bread we break; that the kin-dom is our open tables and our brave and tender love, and the beloved community is where everyone has a place, and every story is part of the feast.

May it be so. Blessed be. AMEN.

Training in Compassion 14: Whatever You Meet Is the Path

Whatever happens, good or bad, make it part of your spiritual practice – because everything IS part of the path. Even straying from the path is part of the path – just see it that way.

If you've followed the earlier trainings, or even some of them, then you're beginning to see that whatever you meet is the path. In spiritual practice, which is our life, there are no breaks. We human beings are always doing spiritual practice, whether we know it or not.

Once you begin practice -- or even just begin thinking about your practice -- you always keep going, because everything is practice, even the days or the weeks or the months or decades or entire lifetimes when you forgot to meditate, forgot to pay attention to whatever intentional spiritual practice you have. Even then you're still practicing, because it's impossible to be lost. You are constantly being found whether you know it or not.

To practice the slogan, "Whatever You Meet is the Path," repeat it to yourself again and again. Know that no matter what is going on, no matter how distracted you think you are, no matter how much you feel like a terribly lazy individual who has completely lost track of her good intentions and is now hopelessly astray -- even then you are on the path and you have the responsibility and the ability to take all of that negative chatter and turn it into the path.

Whatever you meet is the path.

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For the full version of this post: SEE HERE.

Conflict Is a Good Thing

I was once at a Zen gathering where the teacher's talk that day spoke to the somewhat unrealistic expectations that people showing up for Zen practice might harbor. Someone who undertakes a Zen practice is apt to imagine that if they are just diligent enough, and if they are focused enough, and if they sit zazen long enough, then something will happen to them called “becoming enlightened” – and after that, life is all rainbows and unicorns.

Zen, of course, does not make life all rainbows and unicorns. No spiritual practice will do that. Over time with a spiritual discipline, our problems bother us less. We get to where we don’t mind problems so much. But the problems themselves aren’t any less. And, really, that’s a good thing. Dealing with problems gives us something to live for – or, it can, if we relish the challenge.

Sometimes people expect congregational life to be all rainbows and unicorns. No one says it out loud, of course. “Hey, I joined this church. Where are my rainbows and unicorns?” No one says that. No one even consciously thinks it. But maybe some of us, unconsciously, were harboring a secret hope that this community was the end of all our problems. There’s something deeply human about that quiet hope. We don’t really expect magic, but there’s a part of us thinking maybe this church – or the right church somewhere – could somehow be the balm for everything — relational tension, grief, burnout, loneliness. When it isn’t, that can be disillusioning.

Faith communities do offer something beautiful: support, purpose, connection. But they’re also made up of people — real, messy, sometimes surprising, sometimes disappointing people. It’s at this point that you might expect me to say that we aren’t perfect, but as some of you have discerned about me, I like to take the opposite angle on that and say actually, we ARE perfect. We are perfect the way that newborn babes are perfect – delightful just the way they are while at the same time having a lot of growing to do.

And what better place to do your growing than surrounded by a hundred, or a few hundred, other people who have a lot of growing to do? Congregational life doesn’t solve all problems, but it’s a place to walk through them together. So, no rainbows and unicorns — unless maybe you’re doing an art project with the kids downstairs. Shared coffee and a cookie – hugs, maybe, if you’re game for that -- honest expressions of our hopes. Maybe some time when life is falling apart, a casserole. And the aforementioned support, purpose, and connection. It’s not rainbows and unicorns, but it’s nice. It can sometimes be more than nice. It can be life-saving – it really can. Plenty of us, I know, have stories of how this place held them together when everything was falling apart. And when things aren’t all falling apart, it’s still nice.

Until.

Until someone says something that rubs us the wrong way. Until a beloved program changes. Until one day we feel unseen. We see conflict. Maybe we’re embroiled in a conflict. We’re surprised. We’re disappointed. Maybe disillusioned. I get it.

It’s hard to see that conflict as a good thing. I know, some people love conflict. But most of the people who come to a church aren’t looking for a fight. People who are looking for a fight typically look somewhere else. Yet fights do happen here: personalities clash, expectations differ, my anxiety about there being too much of something meets your anxiety about there not being enough of that thing.

Conflict can, indeed, be beneficial. Conflict can be a catalyst for growth and change by forcing examination of our assumptions, creating pressure to move beyond comfortable but limiting patterns, and revealing blind spots we might not otherwise notice. Conflict deepens understanding as we gain clarity on what matters to each other, what our underlying needs are. Conflict strengthens relationships, for as we work through that conflict, the experience demonstrates our mutual commitment to an ongoing relationship and to this church, it exposes our vulnerability which makes the connection more intimate, and ends up building trust and resilience in our relationship.

A marriage that has weathered difficult fights is a stronger marriage, and the same goes for the relationship between you and this church. Conflict drives innovation as it challenges our complacencies and nudges us to a creative and novel synthesis of divergent ideas. Conflict helps establishes healthy boundaries as it clarifies our respective expectations, which reduces future misunderstandings. Better to air out and work through small misunderstandings so that that larger ones are avoided. Conflict builds democratic process as we collectively hear our different concerns.

Of course, conflict has to be done well. I remember many years ago, before I was a minister or even seriously considering the possibility of beginning the process toward becoming one, it was about 1990 or 1991, and I was in my early thirties, and a lay member in our congregation in Charlottesville, Virginia. I remember that a measure was up for congregational vote: a by-laws amendment that required a two-thirds majority to pass. I don’t remember what the proposed amendment was, just that I was in favor of it. It was just what our church needed. I spoke up at our congregational meeting, and marshalled my most cogent arguments – and remember, you are looking at the 1976 Georgia High School state debate champion.

Other people spoke against the measure, and several further others spoke also in support of what I supported. And when the 150 or so votes were cast, the tally came in at 57% in favor, 43% opposed. All these years later, I’ve long forgotten what the issue was, but I remember those vote percentages. My side had a clear majority, but not a two-thirds majority. The measure was defeated.

As the meeting adjourned, and the gathering slowly began thinning out, a feeling of remarkable joy came over me. It was the best I have ever felt after a congregational meeting. My side lost, but the process had been beautiful to behold, and inspiring to be part of. I loved how different we were, and how our different perspectives had been heard and weighed.

Did I still think the other side was mistaken? I’m sure I did, but I also recognized that it was possible I was mistaken, and, more important, that making mistakes is part of what makes us perfect: it’s how we grow and learn. My sense of bonding to a congregation has never been stronger.

That sense of joy in congregational life – in the possibility of human beings coming together and being different and disagreeing and building community not DESPITE the differences and disagreements, but community ON THE VERY BASIS OF differences and disagreements – that joy became part of why I so loved congregational life that I wanted to become a minister and help bring people into congregational life.

So become a minister I did. In that role, I served one congregation for seven years, and then served another congregation for ten years. They were strikingly different in how they processed conflict. The first congregation did not handle conflict well. The second congregation handled it pretty well. In fact, since I had just come to the second congregation from my experience with the first congregation, I found the way that the second congregation handled conflict astonishing. It was astonishingly healthy.

The second congregation had had a big fight just before I got there: voices had been raised, feelings had been hurt. But they kept talking it through, and they healed. They were able to let go of the past, settle into loving each other in the present. Their conflict had brought to them the benefits that conflict can bring: a catalyst for growth and change, re-examination of assumptions, deepened understanding of each other and strengthened relationships, vulnerability leading to greater resilience and greater trust.

The first congregation, on the other hand, did not have healthy conflict. The folks there were still seething from fights and divisions they’d had twenty years before I got there. They held grudges. Even when they tried not to, they were still holding them.

The leadership tried gamely to mitigate the bad feeling, and they promulgated a slogan they often repeated: Assume best possible motive. It’s a good slogan. Assume best possible motive. In a conflict situation, if you think the other side has nefarious motives, is operating from some hidden evil agenda, then the conflict isn’t just a comparison and weighing of diverse perspectives, it’s a battle of good versus evil. And there’s no reconciling with evil. To avoid that downward spiral of acrimony, the first congregation’s members reminded each other: assume best possible motive.

But this slogan didn’t make the grudges go away. The difficulty is, if conflict has gotten to the point where it feels like a battle of good versus evil, your brain at that point has locked in and locked down. You can tell yourself to assume the best possible motive, but the only motives that seem to you at all possible are all nefarious ones. You think you are assuming best possible motive, but even the best motive you can imagine still seems evil – because the conflict has so narrowed your imagination that you’re unable to imagine a truly good motive.

If it feels like a battle of good versus evil, then you don’t have the spaciousness, the imaginative capacity, to imagine motives on the other side that aren’t evil. Our imaginations fail, and against that failure of imagination, the slogan, “assume best possible motive” doesn’t stand a chance. Empathy, curiosity, and openness to complexity shut down. The lens flattens. People become caricatures, and motives become irredeemable. “Assume best possible motive” demands a level of imaginative and emotional flexibility that, in the midst of a good vs. evil conflict, we simply don’t have.

At that point the need is to create conditions for spaciousness to re-emerge. There are some intentional ways to facilitate that. Step back. Breathe. Sit silently and notice how your body feels when you picture the main other person with whom you’re disagreeing. Find someone you trust who is outside the conflict, who isn’t a member of the church, and talk it over with them. And name to yourself where you are – say to yourself, “Right now, I cannot imagine a good motive. That’s a signal to me that I need to pause, and not charge forward.”

This Des Moines congregation has had conflict. I heard a lot about it when I first got here. It undermined your confidence in yourselves as a truly good and wonderful congregation. My approach has been to say, “Eh. Let’s just do church for a while and see what shakes out – what settles down and what doesn’t. Will this turn out to be more like the first of those two congregations I was mentioning or more like the second?”

Turns out you are neither – you are your own thing. Of course. (Duh!) You are perfect, and you are learning. To continue that growth, let’s look at some examples of church conflict -- examples of conflicts we haven’t had here, but like those which some churches have.

Suppose a church finance committee is debating how to allocate a budget surplus. One member proposes investing in community outreach, while another insists on building maintenance. Voices rise. Someone mutters, “Some people just don’t care about the actual mission of the church.” In that moment, the disagreement has become moralized. It’s no longer about budget priorities — it’s a question of whether someone truly cares about the church.

The task is to recover spaciousness, which might happen if there’s someone to step in and say: “Can we each take a minute to name what we most hope for in this decision — not what we’re against, but what we’re trying to protect or nurture?” This reframes the discussion from attack/defend to values/vision, and invites people to see each other’s deeper motives, even if they still disagree.

I can easily imagine that, in this congregation, someone would step in to say something like that. There are a bunch of you, in fact, that I can see saying that.

Take another example. Suppose a church member posts an article on social media that others in the congregation find troubling. A few angry comments appear: “How could you share something so harmful?” The original poster feels attacked and responds defensively. Soon, both sides are questioning each other’s morality.

How might spaciousness be recovered? It might help for a third party, a mutual friend, to reach out to both parties to say: “I can see you both care deeply — would you be open to a conversation in person? I’d be willing to sit with you.” This small, human gesture introduces warmth and presence into a cold digital exchange. It creates space for nuance, tone, and shared humanity to re-enter.

Here’s a third case. During a small group discussion on a justice issue, someone shares a perspective rooted in personal experience. Another person, uncomfortable with what was said, doesn’t respond — but they don’t come back to the group the next week. They begin quietly avoiding the person who spoke up. The story in their head has already been written: “That person is pushing an agenda. I can’t trust them.”

The path toward recovering spaciousness might open if a facilitator notices the change and gently follows up. “I noticed you seemed uncomfortable last week. I care about your experience in the group. Can we talk about what’s coming up for you?” By inviting a conversation before assumptions calcify, the facilitator opens space for the withdrawn person to voice their fears — and maybe hear a fuller story.

One more. Something similar to this one might be on your horizon, because you’ll have a new minister next year, and they might make changes to the worship style that some folks might not like. It’s possible. I don’t know what that change would be, but in some congregations it’s a change in the music that can disorient longtime members. The sudden appearance of drums and electric guitar might make some long-timers think, “This new minister is trying to erase everything we’ve built.” Meanwhile, younger attendees feel energized and think, “Why are the older folks trying to kill the spirit?”

How to recover spaciousness? Rather than framing the situation as “traditionalists vs. progressives,” the celebrants team, with the minister, might host a listening circle where people are asked, “What kind of worship has helped move your spirit most deeply?” and “What do you grieve losing? What do you hope we can create together?” This allows pain and hope to coexist in the room — and helps everyone remember that everyone is seeking connection with the divine, just in different forms.

So I want to tell you today that we now have a new process in place to assist any of us in the recovery of spaciousness. We have a conflict reconciliation team – at today’s forum they and I will be discussing and describing how to make use of them. Let me go ahead and introduce them to you now – and you’ll see more of them in the forum. Sally B, Scott C, Jeremy G, John M, Ellen T. They are our spaciousness recovery team – though the official name is Conflict Reconciliation team.

In all of those examples, when spaciousness is recovered, then the benefits of conflict can emerge: growth and change, learning and new perspectives, deepened understanding of one another and deepened trust.

Sometimes it’s tough. But it’s so worth it. And, honestly, who really wanted rainbows and unicorns anyway?

Amen.