Birth and Reincarnation While looking through my books for a story about birth and rebirth, I came across one from Laos that I’ve used before to talk about love and justice. [1] This time, as I read the tale’s sequence of birth, death, and reincarnation, I was reminded of what it’s like to struggle with addictions, illness, and bad habits. Two spirits, Orphan Boy and Yer, are deeply in love. Before they are incarnated, they agree to spend their lives together. However, as they wait to jump into the pool that will take them from the spirit world to Earth, Orphan Boy becomes so eager and excited, he runs ahead and…
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Choose Life – Deuteronomy, Greed, and Recovery
Moses and Choosing Life In the book of Deuteronomy, God says, “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants might live.” (Deut 30:19 NRSV) I relish life. I want to be fully alive even when it hurts, which sometimes it definitely does, so that Bible passage appeals to me. But what does it really mean to choose blessings over curses and life over death? A rabbinical midrash on Moses’ death suggests an answer. The story goes that when it’s time for Moses to die, he refuses. God argues with him, the angels implore him, yet Moses insists he’s not…
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Letting Go and Freedom
Facing the Specter of Death I rested in the hospital recliner chair. Beside me, my fourteen-year-old son lay still, unresponsive, tubes attached, his head bandaged to cover up the incision the surgeon had made to protect his life. He wasn’t saved yet. The doctor had said his body could still give up. Had the shimmering and fragile thread that tethered him to this earth stretched to its limit? Would it snap? I didn’t try to figure it out. I didn’t even pray. I simply stayed near my child, touching his arm, surrounding him in light, and waiting. Waiting. Unable to sit every moment, I took breaks to wander through the…
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Tu B’Shvat and Our Connection with Trees
Tu B’Shvat and the New Year for the Trees As a child, I spent a lot of time in trees. I especially liked the pine tree where two branches formed a sitting nook and the crab apple with its wide limbs and puckery fruit, but I wasn’t particular. If I could climb it, I was content. Recently, I learned that the Jewish people honor trees during Tu B’Shvat, the New Year of the Trees. A legal rather than religious holiday, its original purpose was to provide guidelines to farmers for their tithing. Now, it’s a day to get together with friends, eat fruit, plant trees, and promote responsible stewardship of the…
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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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Recovery and Restorative Justice
Recovery and Justice In this column, I had planned to unpack what justice means in a life of recovery. In his blog, “Selected Papers of William L. White,” White writes: “Recovery is many things, but it is at its best a platform for justice. Recovery without justice is a strained and haunted recovery.”1 White is referring to our need to make amends for the harm we have done to others and ourselves during our addiction. When we pile harm upon harm in our quest for oblivion or our craving for comfort, we accumulate what White calls “debt” that we must face in our recovery. The process of facing our debts,…
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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…
