Starting Where We Are At the Universalist Recovery Church, we’ve been exploring different aspects of listening. For instance, when we listen deeply to one another, we provide each other a gift. We see, and we are seen; hear and are heard. That, by itself, can be healing. Listening to ourselves can be just as healing. But many people find it easier to listen to the stories, fears, and hopes of others than to pay attention to their own. When we hear what’s going on inside us, we can feel embarrassed or afraid. How, then, do we listen to ourselves without flinching? Where do we begin? According to the Buddhist teacher,…
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A Time for Everything
All is Vanity “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (Eccl 3:1 NRSV). [1] These words start the third chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes. They were written by an anonymous Qoheleth. This Hebrew word is not a name, but a title. It means preacher or teacher or someone who speaks to an assembly of people. And the very first thing we hear from him is, “Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (1:2). Qoheleth repeats this phrase throughout the book and expands upon it, giving many examples to show that life is meaningless. The work we do…
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Living with Chronic Pain
Making Pain Worse Her pain was excruciating. She’d had two surgeries in as many days, and the stabbing, stinging ache she felt was worse, she said, than childbirth. She was scared, too. Not only could she barely move her legs, but she had a fever. She worried something terrible was wrong with her, but the staff dismissed her complaints. To make things worse, her doctor was already trying to wean her off the pain medication, as if she were a drug addict. She felt desperate, abandoned, and judged. Old traumas surfaced. Although she would “never” do anything to hurt herself, she prayed for God to take her. She wanted to…
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Isolation and God’s Love
We Need One Another As far as I know, none of my friends or colleagues have contracted the coronavirus, but a number of them are getting sick with other ailments, whether chronic disorders or terminal diseases. I suppose it’s because I’m getting older, so my friends are aging, as well. Our bodies were designed to fall apart, and they do. Decay and death will happen to us all. But our physical vulnerability rarely feels real until we receive a diagnosis that shatters the comfortable control of our world. Then we face a grief and anxiety. Often, we can find peace on the other side, but first we must go through…
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Witnessing as a Sacred Act of Love
The Healing Power of Witnessing The world has always needed healing. Even in idyllic communities, violence can disturb the peace, and it’s possible war dates back to the time when Homo Sapiens lived among the Neanderthals. We aren’t certain what wiped out those neighbors of ours. Today, though, things seem desperate. We continue to pollute the land, burn fossil fuels, and hunt animals to extinction. Hatred and intolerance are rampant. Around the world, totalitarian regimes are gaining traction. Politicians and police are abusing their power. Black and brown people are killed simply because they exist. And we can’t even agree to wear masks to keep our neighbors safe. It’s as…
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Independence Day: A More Perfect Union
The Founding of Our Nation No matter the scripture, we humans argue about its interpretation. Did God give Jews the right to occupy Israel, as Zionists claim? Does the jihad mentioned in the Quran justify holy wars, or does it refer to an inner, spiritual struggle? How should we, today, understand Paul’s letter to the Ephesians that reads “Slaves obey your masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ”? Reading scripture is supposed to inform our spiritual and religious beliefs, but often our beliefs influence our interpretation of scripture. This is also true when we try to make sense of our nation’s founding documents: the…
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Ownership, Complacency, and Giving Up Privilege
Change Is Coming The United States, along with many countries in the world, is in turmoil. Tension has been festering for decades, but because of the pandemic, a widening income gap, black and brown deaths at the hands of police, a broken healthcare system, and inequities caused by global warming, social unrest has erupted. Across the political spectrum, people feel threatened. Rebellion is a time-honored American tradition. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence declares “that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of” the ability of its citizens to enjoy “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the people have the right “to alter or to abolish it.” [1] Is this…
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Fathers, Limits to Love, and Healing
Limited by Trauma She felt guilty. Her father had just died, but instead of feeling sad, she felt happy. Was she a horrible, heartless daughter? Not knowing what to think, she asked to talk to a chaplain. In bits and pieces, her story came out. For the last year and a half, she’d been her father’s caregiver. He’d never been easy to be around. A combat veteran, he had run his home with military discipline. Orderly, rigid, and autocratic, he showed his children a limited kind of love. Mostly he ignored them, but he could be abusive. When drunk, he was cruel to their mother. It was the typical story…
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The Courage to Hope
Accepting Our Lot in Life Between acceptance and hope lies a tension. According to Buddhist theory, the way out of suffering is through acceptance. By letting go of desire and aversion, by embracing the moment as it is, we become free, not of pain, but of the stories that make our pain miserable. Such acceptance, however, can lead to passivity. Years ago, in a source long forgotten, I read about a Buddhist woman who had grown ill, yet refused medication or medical support. It was her karma to become sick, she believed, and if she were to recover, it would be because it was her karma to get well. Medicine…
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Jonah and A Message for Our Time
A Call to Compassion Once upon a time, there lived a prophet named Jonah. He was a real person who lived sometime around 800 BCE, but the story in the Bible that contains his name wasn’t written down until about four centuries later, and it hardly represents his life accurately. Indeed, it is a satirical tale, but it offers us a serious message. Jonah’s name means “dove.” Since the dove symbolizes Israel, we can assume that Jonah symbolizes her, as well. He was also the son of Amittai, whose own name meant “faithfulness,” but Jonah was far from faithful. When God told him to go prophesy to Nineveh, he ran…