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Love's
Transforming Power
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, February
13,, 2010
The great Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, wrote, "If it is true that there
are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of
love as there are hearts." All our lives we are learning about love;
learning from our mistakes, our failures, as well as from incredible
reaches of happiness. Somewhere along the way we may learn that
sustaining love takes attention, nurturing and is, in fact, a daily
choice.
The poet Kahlil Gibran spoke of love in this way: "Like
sheaves of corn Love gathers you unto itself. Love threshes you to make
you naked, sifts you to free you from your husks, kneads you until you
are pliant; and then assigns you to the sacred fire, that you may become
sacred bread for God's feast. All these things shall love do unto you
that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge
become a fragment of Life's heart."
One thing is certain. Love
changes us. It is often hard to say exactly when love begins. But I
recall one such day! It was the first day I met our new baby, adopted at
4 months of age. We'd received the call, the day had come, and we would
not only meet, but take home, this baby that was to be ours. With
adoption, you don't have a 9- to 10-month gestation period to prepare
for the new being that will arrive. With adoption, we hadn't known if
there would be months or years of waiting. Suddenly, sooner than
expected, the day was here.
We drove to the red brick municipal
building. We walked in and up a staircase to the room where we would
meet "our" baby. We waited there, bursting with anticipation. A door
opened and the social worker entered, carrying the baby that was to be
our daughter. Indescribable moments of joy and curiosity about getting
to know her followed; and an immense love was born. That day in October,
a couple arrived as a family of two. We walked out as a family of
three, carrying a little bundle that would change our lives and our
capacities to love forever. We would never be the same again.
In
retrospect, I replay the image of those two young people eagerly
arriving at that brick building with its stairway. They couldn't
possibly have any idea what lay ahead, could never imagine the joy,
anxiety, pleasure, challenge, anger, happiness - everything that is a
part of love. They could never imagine how that love would be a
transforming fire, changing them for life, enlarging their capacity to
love.
A colleague of mine and her partner made a much longer journey - to
China - to adopt their daughter. They were so stressed, prior to
departure, that they consulted a meditation teacher about how they might
handle the upcoming stress and excitement. She suggested: "The trip
will be a series of transitions, hurdles to jump, right? Practice
envisioning each of those steps as a doorway to more love. Each time you
change planes, or visit another bureaucrat, or wait in a line, envision
another door opening and more love coming in."
Life offers us
over and over again doorways to more love; opportunities to love beyond
our mistakes and failures, as we learn love's ways of forgiveness,
patience, putting another's well- being first. Doors opening and more
love coming in.
The poet Rilke reminded us that, "For one human
being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our
tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all
other work is but preparation."
No overnight transformations.
Rather, we learn as we go; learn how to love - our children, parents,
mates, partners, friends. Gay, straight, trans or bi - all of us longing
to find, to give and to receive love. It is a deep spiritual hunger.
"The deepest need of human beings, is the need to overcome separateness,
to leave the prison of aloneness." (Erich Fromm)
At the heart of
most world religions is the call to Love - to love neighbor as self, to
love God. Though we learn love in the particular - in relationships, in
communities - that experience often expands into a broader concern for
the well-being of all life; for those who suffer deprivation or
injustice.
Love is this sacred fire through which we are
connected, through which we "become a fragment of Life's heart," acting
on behalf of, standing on the side of Love.
A Hindu teacher
described how, as he grew older, he came to trust not in knowledge but
in love. "I have let go the need to know so much. What we can know is so
small, the holiness around is so large. Now I trust in simplicity,
simplicity, and love."
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Live by King's
Words
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, January
16, 2010
Last Thursday,
I attended the Area Interfaith Gathering
- a clergy and lay group that has been meeting
for three years or so and who meet to explore
a suggested theme. Members take turns hosting
the monthly gathering at their church, temple,
synagogue, or meditation center. This meeting
was held at the Al-Noor Academy in Mansfield,
a private middle and high school, which serves
the Muslim community. The space was arranged
for by a Muslim member of the Interfaith group,
and we were graciously welcomed by the principal.
It was an unusual
setting for the group. Here we could occasionally
hear, and sometimes see, the students: the young
women in long dresses, headscarves; the young
men in their dark trousers and white shirts.
At the end of our meeting, we were invited,
if we wished, to attend their early afternoon
prayer time; and to either participate or simply
be present.
I couldn't
help reflecting that this invitation allowed
us, literally and figuratively, to step inside
the practice of a faith that is less familiar
to many of us, and to experience it firsthand.
It was a wonderful experience, on many levels.
In a brief visit one doesn't learn in depth.
But there is an experiential dimension that
remains - the faces of the students, the obvious
dedication of the teachers, all of the students
meeting for prayer each day.
At a time when
almost every newspaper details reasons to be
suspicious and distrustful of those who are
different from us - who believe differently,
behave differently - this was an opportunity
to step inside a place of difference and simply
"be" in it. Invaluable.
It seems a
metaphor for one of the most valuable dimensions
of these Interfaith gatherings. Through our
meetings, we are gradually coming to understand
what living another faith means, from the inside
out. No one is trying to convert or persuade
anyone else. It is rather a time in which to
deeply listen, and to be deeply heard. It is
also an opportunity to observe in oneself, how
very difficult it is, sometimes, to hear passionate
beliefs that seem beyond belief to you. You
realize, of course, that your beliefs may sound
equally untenable to others! This is a chance
to stand in our difference, together; to understand
more deeply. It is a blessing. With this trustful
practice of attentive listening, it is possible
to move beyond stereotypes and misconceptions;
to appreciate that religious difference need
not mean divisiveness.
There is a
folk tale which tells about God taking a walk
across the earth, disguised as an old man. He
makes his way through fields where a group of
friends are working, and decides to have a little
joke with them. He puts on a hat that is red
on one side, white on the other, green at the
front and black at the back.
As the friends
walked home that night, they talk about the
old man. "Did you see that old man in the
white hat walking through the fields?"
asked the first.
"No,"
the second replied, "It was a red hat."
"Don't
tell me that," retorted the first. "It
was definitely white."
"No, I
saw it with my own two eyes, and it was red."
"You're
both blind, that fellow's hat was green,"
chimed in the third.
"What's
the matter with you all?" rejoined a fourth.
"It was a black hat. Anyone could
see that! What
fools you all are!"
And so the
argument continued, and before they knew what
was happening to them, the group of friends
had become a band of enemies. And the strife
continues. To this day, the descendants of those
former friends still go on arguing the "White
Hatters" vs. the "Red Hatters, the
"Green Hatters" vs. the "Black
Hatters" - each party believing that it
knows, beyond any doubt, the color of God's
Hat.
This simple
story is a helpful reminder that no one person
or religion has a corner on the truth. We perceive
from many angles, our hearts understand in different
ways. Listening and learning from diverse voices
is foundational to my Unitarian Universalist
faith. It calls me to a wide and inclusive love,
an understanding that difference can be enriching,
not threatening. Again and again I discover
that through understanding others' beliefs,
one comes to understand one's own faith more
deeply.
The Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we celebrate
this Monday, wrote these words more than 40
years ago: "This is the great new
problem of (hu) mankind. We have inherited large
house, a great 'world house' in which we have
to live together - black and white, Easterner
and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and
Protestant, Muslim and Hindu - a family unduly
separated in ideas, culture and interest who,
because we can never again live apart, must
learn somehow to live with each other in peace."
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There's No Better
Time to Give Thanks
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, November
21, 2009
It's been a difficult year for many. We all know folks who are out of
work and have been looking, unsuccessfully, for a long time. Now, as
the holiday season draws closer, we may be more aware than ever that
for many, putting plenty on the table is a problem. In this time of 10
percent unemployment, food pantries everywhere are experiencing huge
increases in the numbers of folks in need. Many are inquiring about
food baskets for Thanksgiving. In times like these, it may feel
difficult to find one's sense of thanksgiving.
It occurs to me
that possibly these times may open us to a deeper understanding of that
original Thanksgiving. Though we have been taught incomplete history
and questionable myths, at least one clear truth stands out: That first
Thanksgiving was held at the end of a year that had been unutterably
difficult.
In the first year of their life in this new land the
Pilgrims dug seven times as many graves as they built huts. With not
enough food or medicine and bitter-cold weather, one half of the
Pilgrims died that first winter. What I find remarkable is that, even
in the midst of great hardship, they made the decision to celebrate.
Somehow those settlers were able to choose gratitude over bitterness,
generosity over greed; thanksgiving over self-pity.
Somehow they
were able to remain, despite their difficulties, aware and thankful for
the gift of life. In good times or in bad times, in joy or in
suffering, in peace or in turmoil, they gave thanks for the gift of
life.
Peter Fleck, a Unitarian Universalist minister, observed
that: "The traditional interpretation of our Thanksgiving Day
Celebration holds that the Pilgrims were thankful for having survived.
It has occurred to me that they may have been able to survive because
they were thankful."
Imagine, the practice of thanksgiving as a path to survival!
I
recently talked to a friend who told me of a time when she was troubled
by downturns in her life. Though she'd moved, she drove an hour and a
half to see her former minister, in hopes of receiving some wise
counsel. He listened to her with compassion, but offered no solution.
She was disappointed.
But as she left his office he said, "I
want to ask you to do something on your drive home - that hour and a
half you'll be traveling. For the entire ride home, I want you to speak
out loud, non-stop, the things in your life that you are thankful for."
She
said she didn't much feel like doing this, but she reluctantly
complied. All the way home, out loud, she named the places, the people,
the memories, and the experiences that she was thankful for. She said
to me, "By the time I reached home, tears were streaming down my face.
I had been unutterably changed through this process. No, it didn't fix
my problems, but speaking my thanks allowed me to hold them in a
larger, balanced context." She opened her arms wide to express her
sense of being mysteriously filled with a new spirit of deep gratitude
during this litany of naming.
A colleague reminds me that: "In
the fall we complain about the cold and all those leaves to rake. In
the winter we complain about all the ice and snow. In the spring we
complain about all the mud and rain. In the summer we complain about
the mosquitoes and heat.
But in what season do we rejoice and
give thanks that this Earth seems to possess just the right climate to
permit the existence of life ... and us? (A. Perry)
So much
comes to us of goodness and grace in this life, which also includes
pain and loss. We are the recipients of sustaining gifts from sources
beyond ourselves; the mystery of the Spirit of Love at work in the
world.
Here we are, kindred creatures sharing life on this tiny,
beautiful planet. We know there are many among us who are hungry - for
food, for hope, for meaning. May we deeply care for one another. In
this time of scarcity may we, like those early settlers, choose
gratitude, generosity and thanksgiving. Return
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Seize
Precious Spiritual Moments
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, September
26, 2009
"The
winds of grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail."
- Ramakrishna
Through the ages, religious institutions have often incorporated the assumption
that there is a quality of spirituality that is accessible only through the
intercession of holy persons or clerics, as if only those with special
knowledge hold the keys to the kingdom, the gates to grace. Sacred and secular
have been characterized as separate spheres.
Over and over again, it is my experience that the sacred dimension of life is
available in our daily life, and that a spiritual epiphany can happen at any
moment. And when it does, when we experience a moment of grace, a holy moment,
we know that secular and sacred are not worlds apart, but are in fact the same
world, seen with different eyes.
"We experience intimations of the divine in a lover's embrace, a rainbow,
a baby's smile, a bird's flight overhead, a friend's forgiveness, a dolphin's
leap, or the selfless service of a volunteer." And when that happens we
may sense that, "Our lives extend beyond our skins, in radical
interdependence with the rest of the world." (Joanna Macy)
Sometimes we experience this sense of deep connectedness and extension in small
ways. The wonderful phone call, note or even an e-mail message, that comes on
the very day when you are wondering what in the world you are doing in your
life, or feeling particularly ineffectual or perplexed about a relationship.
That call, card or e-mail can change your day; alter your thought and the way
you are feeling about life. Each one of us has the capacity to "make
someone's day."
As Daniel Goleman points out in his book, "Social Intelligence,"
"The brain itself is social. One person's inner state affects and drives
the other person. We're forming brain-to-brain bridges - a two-way traffic
system - all the time. We actually catch each other's emotions like a
cold." We are astoundingly interconnected.
We are astoundingly interconnected! But often these moments of grace,
epiphanies, and great insights are lost to us because we are in too much of a
hurry to notice them.
In the scriptures of world religions, these moments, messengers, strangers who
presage a transformation, are usually so extraordinary that they cannot be
overlooked. Jacob wrestles with a divine being and is transformed. Angels
announce to shepherds great tidings that will change the course of history.
In our extraordinary ordinary lives, we are often too busy to notice the moment
that wants our attention. But sometimes during an unlikely occasion, an
unlikely creature can become a "divine messenger," so to speak; and a
reminder of our belonging to a larger community of being. I know, because it
happened to me not long ago.
Strange to say, it was in the midst of a funeral for a young man who had died
tragically. A very young man, a father, had been killed in a terrible accident.
The service began and an overwhelming sadness settled over the gathering, this
community of the grief-stricken.
Right in the middle of this terribly sad service, a dog somehow gained entrance
to the funeral parlor and came bounding into the ceremony. He was wagging all
over and ever so friendly, with absolutely no "respect" for the
solemn occasion at hand. He was just being his doggy self, happy to see a nice
seated crowd of people to get all friendly with.
The dog was hotly pursued by the embarrassed funeral director, who bounded around
after him. It was like something out of an old Hollywood
movie! As we watched the director corral the creature and usher him back out
the door, we were all totally transfixed; and transformed. In that moment,
among that "frozen" gathering of mourners, a palpable saving grace
entered. Some smiles lightened faces, and Life took heart again. A life had
ended, but Love would not end. Life would go on.
Thanks to our doggy friend, we knew that the Spirit of Love and the community
of the living, were stronger and more enduring than death. My Unitarian
Universalist faith understands Spirit as immanent in all of life, sometimes
manifesting in unexpected places; that we are all deeply interconnected with
one another; that our destinies are mutually interwoven one with another; and
that ultimately what touches you touches me.
"The new survival unit is no longer the individual nation; it's the entire
human race and its environment. This newfound oneness is only a rediscovery of
an ancient religious truth. Unity is not something we are called to create;
it's something we are called to recognize," writes William Sloane Coffin.
"Grace happens when we act with others on behalf of our world."(J.
Macy) What does this call us to do on behalf of all of us? I ask each day.
The Rev. Sandra D. Fitz-Henry is the minister of Murray Unitarian Universalist
Church in Attleboro.
She is the mother of three grown children, and has one grandchild. She was an
artist, religious educator and hospital chaplain, before entering parish ministry
full time.
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Let
Us be Awakened to Life's Surprises
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, May
9, 2009
“All things must change: the vision pass,
The shadow lengthen on the grass,
The ship go down behind the sun,
The passion of the heart be done.
The flower droops : we cannot stay
The lovely miracle of May.
From “In the Time of Change,” Theodore Roethke
I got up early one
recent morning and headed for my study. It's a tiny study - a room where all walls are bookcases. I arrived at the
study door, and there, blocking the entrance, was a very large chaotic pile of
books. During the night a couple of the shelves in the bookcase to the left of
the doorway had let go, emptying their entire, and considerable, contents onto
the floor.
Surprised, I wondered: Is this a message? Is life trying to
get my attention and tell me something? Am I being blocked for a reason? Is
something deeper trying to get my attention, to shake me awake in some way?
Then I remembered the poem of the 13th Century Persian poet,
Rumi, that begins:
“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
And frightened.
Don't open the door to the study
And begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.”
Was this pile obstructing the doorway gently “suggesting,”
enough with the books? Yes, books are good, wonderful even, but there are other
dimensions of living? Don't get me wrong, I know these are cheap bookcases that
had simply reached their load limit and given way. But why now?
A lot of life lands in our lives blocking the way. We didn't
see it coming. No advance signs and warnings. You get up one morijing, and
there it is. It has arrived in your life. In whatever way, small or large, it “blocks
the doorway” to life-as-usual.
Rumi, and Buddha too, probably, would see these unexpected
events --large or small -- as inconvenient, perhaps difficult nudges to wake up
and get more deeply in touch with ourselves, and with life.
“Enough with the books,” that doorway pile was telling me!
“Here we are, surrounded by the miracle of spring -- this amazing period of
flowering trees and new growth. Catch it if you can! The green plants near the
mailbox grew 6 inches in seven days! Spring doesn't stay still, waiting for you. Notice what is happening
now.” “We cannot stay the lovely miracle of May.”
Sometimes it takes a surprise event to shake us awake to a deeper
meaning calling for our attention. Sometimes it takes the unexpected, to knock
the blindness off our eyes and open our senses and our mind to the world around
us. I wonder if what we call the miraculous is what we would see all around us
every day, if we paused long enough to witness. I've heard it said that the
burning bush is the way all of nature appears when it is seen through unclouded
eyes -- radiant, holy and life-bearing.
I am convinced that when we live with compassion and
non-judgmental openness, we will understand that, as the Dalai Lama said so
simply, last Saturday, “We are same. Emotionally, mentally, physically, we are
same ...” And in his talk he emphasized the importance of valuing all faiths.
Over and over again, as our life un- folds, we are awakened
and invited into a life more abundant; we are called to a wider compassion;
called to be a participant in life; to be part of justice making in the
world.
Being part of diverse and open religious community nurtures our
embrace, with love, of the messy and mysterious miracle of being alive in this
world. It allows us to share and magnify this gift of life -- this precious
life in which we are privileged to be both witness and participant -- our hands
reaching out, our eyes opening beyond their blinkers, our feet walking our
talk; our spirits growing toward greater wholeness.
Mother's Day reflections
Tomorrow (May 10) is Mother’s Day. “It's a well-known fact
amongst ministers that Mother's Day is a next to impossible thing to preach on.
For every person who brings a sainted mother to church on Mother's Day for a
little well-deserved appreciation, there is someone else gritting their teeth
over the utterly inadequate job that their mother did of raising them,” writes
a colleague.
This day of all days brings up more mixtures of feelings
than almost any other. There is no simple way to talk about motherhood. There
are those who had difficult mothers, those who adore their mothers, those who
lost their mothers early on and have felt that sadness all their lives. There
are people who are mothers, who struggle with the difficult job of being a “good“
mother, with how hard and-challenging it is. There are those who long to be
mothers and find, for whatever reason, that it is not possible. There are
mothers who have lost a child.
I first became a mother through adoption and am aware of the
complex feelings of thoses who have never kown their birth mother, or those who
have chosen not to parent a child to whom they gave birth, or who have chosen
not to give birth to a pregnancy.
Mother’s Day, as I see it, can be a day to honor the people
in your, life who have nurtured you, who loved and cared for you -- who may or may not be
your birth mother; who may be your adoptive mother, or your step-mother, or
foster-mother, or grandparents - or dads who are raising kids in families that
might or might not have moms in them, but who do all the things that you might
think of a mother doing.
Mothers are those who are nurturing. And today is a good day
to honor all of them.
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Time to Spring Forward - And Cleanse the Soul
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, March 7, 2009
"It is of the greatest importance that humanity now and then should take out its beliefs for spring cleaning."
~ Julian Huxley
Spring
is going to come, we know. Despite the foot of newly arrived snow we
can feel it in our hearts, and our spirits. Mark Twain spoke of that
rising sense of longing for - we know not exactly what - that spring
stirs in us. When it really takes hold, we call it spring fever. And
when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you
do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!
Perhaps
it is noticing that the sun is setting later and the arrival of
Daylight Savings Time - tomorrow! - that stirs anticipation of what is
on its way. Perhaps it is the arrival of seed catalogues, and the
promise of seeing new life poking up from the Earth, that causes us to
take heart a bit. And suddenly there is that rising of the spirit in
anticipation.
It's no wonder that as the birds become more vocal
and the light grows longer, folks start to think about clearing out any
clutter that has gathered through the winter, and doing some so-called
"spring cleaning." As if there is a kind of new start that can happen
as we begin to see signs of renewed life returning. Yes, it's a little
early to see very many signs. But it's not too early for the heart to
lean with a lift, in the direction of the coming of these lighter
warmer days.
New beginnings call to us in all seasons, but they do so with special
poignancy as spring approaches. For me this lift and longing are our
spiritual natures, calling us into deeper relationship - with the
Earth, with our lives, with a Larger Spirit, that we call by so many
names. And that rising of the spirit is as miraculous and as real as
the buds that will soon be poking up through the Earth.
In
consonance with nature, new beginnings call us to freshly re-engage
with the meanings of our lives. But what nature does so "naturally,"
(effortlessly, it seems), usually requires of human beings a time of
reflection, and sometimes new and sometimes hard choices and changes.
It involves something more than going with the flow. There is a
favorite meditation that I always revisit at this time of year: "Spring
Housecleaning of the Spirit."
Many religious traditions
incorporate a time in their liturgical calendars in which the faithful
are encouraged to take an extended time of reflection and review of
their life, leading to a renewed re-centering in a deepened faith. It
is a time of inwardness, an active time of self assessment, and
bringing ones life into right relation with oneself, ones neighbor, and
with a larger Spirit. Spiritual re-alignment.
These times of
review and realignment, are also often times when we are reminded of
our own mortality. That, despite rumors to the contrary, we are not
here forever; that none of us gets out of this alive. That our time is
precious and it is limited.
I was reminded of the importance of
using our precious and limited time well, as I heard the remarks of a
greatly treasured colleague, the Rev. Forest Church. Having learned
that his cancer has returned and is inoperable, he spoke of the process
of making peace with self, and neighbor, and with God; of having been
able to settle unfinished emotional business.
He offered the
profound observation that, "The two saddest words in the English
language are 'if only,' and they ring with the most poignancy at a time
that a person gets word that he or she has a terminal illness: 'If only
I had stopped drinking; if only I had dared to change careers when I
could; if only I had reconciled with my father when I had a chance.' "
I
have been meditating about his words ever since. There is some "if
only" in almost everyone's life. Part of spring housecleaning may
involve attending to "if onlys" in the making. Now, while there is
still time.
I once told a 3-year-old friend, "Sometime we'll do
that special project together. OK?" She looked at me, and replied, so
very wisely, "Sometime never comes." And she was right. She'd already
learned that, in her world, "sometime" was a promise for a future that
never came. So, right then and there we planned for the particular day
we would do our special project.
I am thinking that, since most
"sometimes never come," now is a very good time to attend to those
dusty corners, those unattended amends to make, those changes that
beckon. This gathering spring reminds us that renewal is truly possible.
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No Doubt about Spiritual Uncertainties
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, February 7, 2009
"Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth."
~
Robert Weston
Some of the most religious people I have known
call themselves atheists or agnostics. That might seem a strange
statement. A person might say to me, "I don't believe in God." And I
might respond, "Well, tell me about the God you don't believe in.
Chances are I don't believe in that God either." The reply I receive is
often filled with a depth of spiritual honesty, and an unwillingness to
assent to what does not ring true to personal experience. It often
expresses a faith that is still "in transit," still growing in
understandings, on a life journey through both darkness and light. The
questioning and doubting do not mean a lack of faith, but rather are
openings into a deeper relationship with that which may be beyond
naming. They are religious questions, religious replies.
A
person may not be conventionally pious, but we all have experiences in
life which lead us into questions, searching for understanding in
response to the mysteries of life and death. "We are not human beings
having a spiritual experience," wrote the French philosopher, priest
and paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin. "We are spiritual beings
having a human experience."
We might discover as we grow that
the beliefs we held as younger people no longer speak to us. For some,
that is the day they discard the whole idea of religion as meaningless.
For others, the day those beliefs cease is the day, as one person
described the experience to me, "that the scales fell from his eyes."
It was a day that he suddenly lost his childhood creedal faith. But he
gained an authentic relationship to his own spiritual life and began to
see life in a new way.
The person I describe as a "religious"
atheist, (and who would probably disagree with this description) is a
wonderful man who has lived a very long time. He is a deeply reflective
person, a compassionate person, and a person who says things like, "The
more I see of life, the more filled with mystery I feel things are." He
is a person who has a sense of awe and a connectedness to all that
lives. He is a person who has questioned and wondered his whole life.
And now he is in his 10th decade; and
unafraid of death. He finds great peace in knowing himself to be part
of this Mystery of Being. Part of what gives him such a steady place to
stand, I think, is that his faith in life has grown through his
questions, doubts and skepticism. He has not been afraid to imagine
that what he thought was true, might not be so, and he has remained
grounded.
Recently
a movie was released that came very briefly to our area. Its title:
"Doubt." It is the film version of the Pulitzer Prize winning play by
John Patrick Shanley. It takes place in a church school in the Bronx in
the '60s. The plot has to do with the principal of the school, who
suspects that the priest has been behaving inappropriately with
students. There is very little evidence upon which to base her
suspicions, but she is certain, and without doubt. She airs her
concerns with others, thus spreading a dark rumor. A younger teacher in
the school is not so sure; she wonders if there aren't other ways to
interpret the information. Yet the principal's conviction is absolute.
Insufficiently substantiated, rumor and innuendo spread in their
insidious ways. And the priest is removed from his position. As viewers
of the film, we are held in uncertainty, never sure what the truth
really is. But the final lines of the play are the principal's: "I have
doubts! I have such doubts!"
The playwright subtitled his play
"a parable," suggesting that the process we witness in the play/movie
is one that we may experience in other walks of life - ones in which we
close our minds to the idea that the truth about a person, a situation,
or a belief might be other than imagined - more nuanced, more complex,
more ambiguous.
In his preface to the play, Shanley writes: "It
is Doubt that changes things. When a (person) feels unsteady, when he
falters, when hard-won knowledge evaporates before his eyes, he's on
the verge of growth (which) often seems at first like a mistake, like
you've gone the wrong way, and you're lost. But this is just emotion
longing for the familiar. Life happens when the tectonic power of your
speechless soul breaks through the dead habits of the mind. Doubt is
nothing less than an opportunity to re-enter the Present."
Some
of the most profound parts of my journey have begun with doubts, that
led to questions, that led to discoveries, that led to a deeper and
deeper faith. I continue to be enriched and to grow in communities that
share their stories, certainties, doubts and questions. Sharing with
people of many faith traditions - believers and nonbelievers, theists,
humanists and atheists all the diverse ways that the Spirit lives and
seeks and shares its life.
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On Understanding, and Respecting, Our Differences
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, November 15, 2008
On the day after the election, Delores Handy, a commentator on WBUR,
began her reflection, "Never. I never expected this in my lifetime."
She continued with remembrances of growing up in the Jim Crow South, of
white and African American drinking fountains and restrooms, of
separate places to sit in movie theaters.
"Now,"
she said, "for many Americans there is no you, and there is no us. Our
children play together. We work together. It all began when we started
going to school together, getting to know each other, learning to
respect and trust each other. A black man running for president -
that's a direct consequence of us knowing each other."
I, too,
spent part of my childhood in the pre-Civil Rights South, but there was
a big difference. I was white. It was that experience that first opened
my eyes to the injury and injustice of how prejudice (pre-judgment)
limits our capacity to know and understand one another.
When my
one of my daughters was 3 or 4, she surprised me by announcing firmly,
"I hate so and so!" (a new person in her play group.) Taken aback, I
asked, "Do you know her?" "Well, no," she said. Out of nowhere or
somewhere, I responded, "Honey, sometimes we hate what we don't know -
someone new or different. It makes us feel safe, when maybe what we
really feel is a little afraid." Even at her very young age I think she
could begin to understand that her hate/fear was coming from
unfamiliarity with someone who looked or seemed different.
There
are so many differences that potentially can divide us, and keep us
from knowing one another - first among them, our religious beliefs. One
of the wonderful benefits of the Area Interfaith Group is its
commitment to listening deeply to one another, and learning. It is
sometimes hard to do, to listen non-reactively, non-judgmentally to
wide differences of belief. What is wonderful and so hopeful is that
this is so possible.
Listening to and learning from diverse voices is foundational to my
Unitarian Universalist faith, which calls me to a wide and inclusive
love, and an understanding that difference can be enriching, and not
threatening. Again and again, I discover that through understanding
others' beliefs, one comes to understand one's own faith more deeply.
The
Sacred Scriptures of all the major world religions caution about
humankind's almost instinctive suspicion of what is perceived as
"other," caution humanity about being quick to judge.
In
Buddhist scripture we read, "The fault of others is easily perceived,
but that of oneself is difficult to perceive; a man winnows his
neighbor's faults like chaff, but his own fault he hides, as a cheat
hides the bad die from the gambler," (The Dhammapada.) In Christian
scripture we read, "Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye, but
fail to notice the beam in your own eye?" (Matthew 7:3).
One of
the most hopeful qualities of human beings is our capacity to change,
to continue to grow and deepen our understanding of the world,
ourselves and others. On this journey, I have found that one must
always be alert to those times when that almost instinctive impulse to
judge is a first response. When that happens, it is likely that I will
be less open to understanding the truth of another's reality.
There
are tales the world over that remind us of how fears and suspicions
prejudice our perspective: There is the tale about a farmer who lost
his ax and suspected his neighbor's son had stolen it. The farmer
watched the youth closely and his suspicion increased.
"Why," he thought, "He walks like a thief, he talks like a thief and he even looks like a thief."
But
a few days later the farmer discovered his ax in a distant field, just
where he'd left it some days before. When he returned home, he noticed
his neighbor's son at work in the yard. "Amazing," he thought. "The boy
no longer walks like a thief, talks like one, nor looks like a thief."
He looked like any other boy."
At the end of her piece on NPR
Delores Handy said, "Attitudes have and are changing. While it's clear
they have a long way to go we now recognize that acceptance is directly
proportional to how much we've gotten to know each other."
One
of the most important ways of living religiously in the world of
diversity that surrounds us in this 21st century is to live with
respect for the worth and dignity of every person. It is to respect our
diverse paths toward wholeness and holiness; and to understand our
various understandings of God not as a threat, but as a rich and
colorful celebration of spiritual diversity.
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