A Sunday of Peace According to a Presbyterian colleague of mine, the theme for this second Sunday of Advent is peace. By this, we might mean the absence of war or conflict. But a deeper exploration of peace would include a companionable silence, a comfortable camaraderie, a feeling of safety, a happy stillness in one’s heart. Peace is equanimity, tranquility, a sense of well-being. In Christian terms, peace is that absolute trust and rightness that comes from an abiding relationship with God. According to the Gospel of Luke, Zechariah, eight days after his son John the Baptist was born, prophesied about Jesus. He said, “By the tender mercy of God,…
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Resilience and Spirituality
Resilience in the Face of Hardship and Trauma As a chaplain and spiritual counselor, I work daily with people whose resilience impresses me. Homeless, struggling to let go of one addiction after another, or grieving the loss of loved ones or marriages or jobs, many of them chronically ill or in pain, these people nonetheless find a way to keep on going, to survive another day. They long to feel better; they want to heal. Not that they never experience despair or curse their hunger or the cold. They do. Some days, they want to give up. Some days I want to give up, and my life’s easy compared to…
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Healing from Historical Trauma
The Pain of Racism While working as a chaplain on a residential drug treatment unit, I had the opportunity to sit with a young man with white skin who had been given a roommate whose skin was dark. Having been raised to blame and reject dark-skinned people, he felt uncomfortable being close to this other man and wanted a different roommate. However, he didn’t feel he could just march up to nursing staff and make such a demand. He had at least that much understanding of social propriety. Instead, he came to me to try and process his feelings and behavior. As I invited him to focus on his emotions…
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Reducing Our Bias
Cognitive Bias We humans are stuck with this thing called cognitive bias. Because of the way our brains evolved, no matter how much we want to be rational and reasonable, we tend to jump to conclusions; make assumptions; judge others by the group to which they belong; change our memories; and give more weight to information that confirms, rather than challenges, our worldview. In other words, we’re full of isms and biases that our conscious mind may not even notice. This isn’t all bad, though. Cognitive biases make life easier. They speed up simple decision-making, make routine possible, and allow us respond to danger before we even realize there’s a…
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Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, and God’s Hands
Riding Roller Coasters Years ago, while preparing to preach about Pentecost, a holiday that at the time I knew nothing about, I discovered that one of my Unitarian Universalist colleagues had once been a Pentecostal minister. Pentecost and Pentecostal must be related, I figured, so I asked him to explain what this holiday was. He didn’t answer directly. Instead, he told me about an amusement park in the town where he grew up. The park was famous for its roller coasters. When he’d been a boy, they had this old wooden one. The train would chug along, inching up the slope, painfully cresting the hill, and then dash down the…
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“Only Love Can Do That” – In Honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Praying Without Apology Years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, attended Unitarian churches. King was drawn to liberal religion for “its devotion to the search for truth, its insistence on an open and analytical mind, and its refusal to abandon the best lights of reason.” [1] When they chose a tradition to align themselves with, however, the Kings chose African-American Christianity. In her article, “To Pray without Apology,” Unitarian Universalist minister, Rosemary Bray McNatt describes a meeting she had with Coretta King. At that meeting, McNatt commented that she was a Unitarian Universalist minister. King said that she and Martin had attended Unitarian churches in…
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Rigorous Honesty versus Opinion
Truth and Leaving According to World of Proverbs, the Slovenians have this saying: “Speak the truth, then leave immediately after.” If I had heard that proverb when I was young, perhaps I wouldn’t have lost a loyal and kind friend when I was fifteen. For my birthday that year, she had given me a book by Albert Camus. For those who don’t know Camus, he was a brooding, thoughtful, absurdist author who wrote about meaning, purpose, death, and life. I didn’t read the book. I didn’t want to read it. Not because it was dark or philosophical, but because it was nonfiction. At the time, I only read myths, stories,…
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Honoring the Dream
Facing Our Pain In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday, this month, we will talk on Sunday about King’s dream and about our own dreams for a better world. Although I start out talking about pain in this column, I am also talking about the dream for justice, equality, and fellowship that King called for. Last Sunday, I attended a service at Eastrose Unitarian Universalist Fellowship where the Rev. David Maynard spoke about pain. He was discussing the challenges and hopes for individuals who suffer from chronic pain. He quoted from a pastoral care pamphlet on pain that said, “Pain is a reliable indicator that something is wrong in…
