oh, how the world still dearly loves a cage...

Maude (Ruth Gordon) in the amazing movie Harold and Maude says a few things worth quoting and one of them is to say something like the "zoos are crowded, prisons are overflowing, oh how the world still dearly loves a cage." And she says it in such a way that you can feel her frustration, her realization that people cannot let it go. They cannot embrace true freedom. they still need to keep themselves and each other captive. Let us all, this day decide that Yes, it is time to embrace our freedom and by doing so, allow others to be free. Because in essence...to quote Marge Piercy:
"We seek not rest but transformation. We are dancing through each other as doorways."

blessings, Telos

a new era...

What an inspiring week it has been! As I watched and listened to President Obama, the words of so many people echoed in my mind..."I never thought it would happen in my lifetime. I never thought we would have a black president while I was alive." And we do. It is a new era where we can have renewed faith in our leaders, in our government and trust that they will lead. The time has come. In the words of poet Derek Walcott: "The day will come when with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome saying sit here, eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself." Let us love and embrace the strangers we have been to each other and to ourselves and usher in a new era together.

the time for Hope is now...

It's true. The forces of hope and goodness in the world are stronger than fear. Our Tuesday election of our first African-American president, a person of integrity proves it. I feel blessed to be living at this moment in history.

Returning Home Again...

The leaves are changing here on these hills and the geese are flying above and calling out their dramatic songs. We remember our roots in the Jewish tradition in the celebration of the Holy Day, Yom Kippur this past Friday. We also honor our source of earth-centered wisdom in celebrating the Fall Equinox – a balancing of light and dark on that same day. It is time to return home again, to our congregations and to ourselves. It is a time of remembering and a balancing of our actions. Have we said or done things that we regret? Are there areas of our lives that need to be examined? This is a turning of the year and a time for reflection.

balancing change and constancy...

There is something infinitely healing
in the repeated refrains of nature –
the assurance that dawn comes after night,
and spring after the winter.

~ Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder ~

Spring did come. Actually summer has arrived in Vermont...and it is hot! And it is beautiful. We are involved in a continual changing process within ourselves and all around us. In just a matter of days or sometimes what feels like hours, plants have grown and flowers have bloomed. I was reminded recently that Rachel Carson, the scientist and writer who invigorated the environmental movement with her book Silent Spring, was a Unitarian Universalist. Yet another leader and activist in our midst! The UU Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee is on the path to becoming a Green Sanctuary and has been holding an annual Rachel Carson Memorial Dinner and interfaith gathering each year as part of this effort. Rev. Patricia Cahill, the local Episcopal priest who will be speaking at the event this year says that ‘As we cope with the environmental effects of dramatic climate change, people of faith need to become beacons of hope in the world. We can respond to the call of God’s spirit in actions that help to mend Creation; a good place to light that spark is through Rachel Carson’s writings especially Sense of Wonder.’

Every piece that we work on, no matter how small it seems, does matter. We are involved in an interconnected and intricate web of creation that needs our care and attention. Rachel Carson wrote that “it is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.” As our physical senses are heightened on these beautiful spring days, let us also allow our sense of both wonder and humility to emerge as we walk through the daily ritual of our days.

Everyone Needs Beauty...

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread,
places to play in and pray in,
where nature may heal and give strength
to body and soul alike.”
~ John Muir ~

Yes to John Muir’s words. Yes, we need beauty as well as bread. We need beauty in our daily lives, whether it is a painting or image we can rest our eyes on and gather nourishment we can take with us out into the world, or a book of new poems we have just discovered that will sustain us as we do our work. It might be an unexpected conversation or connection we have with someone. We must be nourished and bread is not enough. Our souls must be nourished; our hearts must be fed. In one of David Whyte’s poems he says: “people are starving and one good word will feed a thousand.” I believe he is speaking about the nourishment of our souls. There is a way that we are starving in this society. We are bombarded by images and words every day, yet we are hungry. We need places to play and be creative in. We need spaces and times when we can pray. When I enter our sanctuary for worship or when I sink to the floor for our meditation circle in the ballroom, I do feel nourished. The beauty of our spaces is nourishing and it can sustain us. But John Muir sends us outdoors “where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” His temple, his church was the forest. He stood among the ancient redwoods and spoke of it as a cathedral of tall and majestic beings emanating peace and wisdom. If you have stood in a grove of redwood trees, you know what he is speaking about. Or if you have stood at the edge of the sea and looked out into that great rolling expanse of waves that never ceases to move and change, a never ending cycle of change and power. As a congregation, we are involved in a never ending cycle of change and power together. It is true. Together we create communities and sustain them with our gifts. And these gifts are many and unexpected. Each one of us is needed. Each one of us has something to give and receive. We might not know what that will be on a given day but there are reasons we are together; there are gifts to be heard in the stories of all of us. There are gifts to be found in everyone we meet. We need our congregations, our churches to be sacred places where we can be ourselves and perhaps places where we can become someone new. We can be reborn here in these communities of love and longing. There is a place inside us all that longs to create and give to the world. Let us offer ourselves, and our gifts. There is no doubt that we can make the world better and we need to begin today.
blessings, Rev. Telos

Local and Global Justice...

Last Sunday was Justice Sunday for UU congregations around the country. I collaborated with the chair of our Social Action Committee (in Chester, VT) to offer a service that focused on Local and Global actions we can take. The Local action came in the form of offering people the opportunity to purchase Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs to reduce their energy bill and to "green" their homes. A member of the congregation agreed to purchase light bulbs for the 14 lights that illuminate our sanctuary. We can be more environmentally conscious, more green on a local level; right here in our sanctuaries, in our houses. We can buy bulbs that will allow us to decrease our energy use now. Education, worship, community connections and physical changes, all important steps we can take together. Every step we take matters.

Our Global Action was to unite with congregations around the country to highlight and take action toward reducing the violence and devastation in Darfur. As Unitarian Universalists today, ministry has become interwoven with social action and truly living into our principles. I was with a local minister last week and he shared that three years ago, ending the violence in Darfur was the one issue that the fifteen clergy there could agree on. It went beyond differences in theology and belief. They sent a letter to their local newspaper signed by clergy from all denominations and traditions. This was three years ago. We need those letters now. The killing hasn’t stopped in Darfur; it has increased in the past year.

This is a report from the organization, Human Rights Watch. (http://www.hrw.org/) “Since early 2003, Sudanese government forces and ethnic militia called “Janjaweed” have engaged in an armed conflict with rebel groups called the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). As part of its operations against the rebels, government forces have waged a systematic campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against the civilian population who are members of the same ethnic groups as the rebels. Sudanese government forces and the Janjaweed militias burned and destroyed hundreds of villages, killed and caused the deaths of at least 200,000 people, and raped and assaulted thousands of women and girls. As of January 2007, approximately two million displaced people live in camps in Darfur and at least 232,000 people have fled to neighboring Chad, where they live in refugee camps."

I realize that this information is sobering and terrible to hear but we are being asked as people of faith, people who are committed to social justice, to equality, to furthering peace in areas of violence, to do something. We are being asked to write letters to our legislators, to the current administration so that the situation in Darfur is not forgotten. We need to educate ourselves and others about the situation that has meant 200,000 deaths and millions of displaced people so that the violence can end. We need to ask ourselves why we aren’t reading about Darfur in our newspapers, why aren’t we hearing more about this situation, this place in the world?

But there is hope in this story. The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (http://www.uusc.org/) is part of the Save Darfur Coalition, an alliance of 167 faith-based, advocacy, and humanitarian organizations pressing for a stronger, international peacekeeping force to stop the genocide that already has claimed more than 200,000 lives and displaced 2.5 million people. The Million Voices for Darfur campaign delivered 1 million postcards to President Bush last May as a common voice in saying, the violence in Darfur must end. Together we are making a difference. President of the UUSC, Charlie Clements: “When a million people from across the country can speak with one voice on this issue, it sends a powerful message. But we must acknowledge that much more work needs to be done to reach our ultimate goal of ending the genocide in Darfur and bringing peace to the region.”

Justice means that we need to keep the chalice of hope lit, even if it is a small chalice and we are but a few voices. We are not alone. There are thousands of Unitarian Universalists learning about the devastation and violence in Darfur and taking action. We are holding this pain together. And we are going to take action together. We are individuals committed to having less violence and more justice in the world, as people who know that a letter to the editor, to our representatives does matter. It is difficult to be working on all fronts at the same time and keeping the global world and our local one in our minds and hearts but there isn’t a choice. We have to live into our commitment to being religious liberals. It is the realization that we have no choice but to promote justice.
Action Steps We can take:
Go to the UU Service Committee web site link
http://www.uusc.org/news/alert020607.html
there are ways to call your representatives and encourage divestment, push for a UN peacekeeping force and increase awareness.

When I was in college, some of us knew that we needed to work to push the university to divest from South Africa because we knew that the system of apartheid had to end. We new that even though we were a group of white college students in New Hampshire, far from the towns and roads and struggles of African peoples, and people of color across the planet, we had to at least make the effort. Just our university divesting wasn’t going to stop the system of apartheid. But if enough universities and corporations divested, then it would make a difference. The government would have to respond. And they did. There is a call for companies to divest from Sudan in order to pressure the government, in order to shine a global light on the situation. Millions of people died in the concentration camps during World War II. 800,000 people died during the crisis in Rwanda. 200,000 people have died in Darfur. We know the words that need to be said and the actions that need to be taken. Justice Sunday is a way for UU congregations to come together and be united around a common issue of concern. It is a reminder that we are not alone in this step by step process of changing the world. It is hard to do these actions ourselves and feel like they will really make a difference, really save any lives. They are bound to. One more step, we will take one more step. One more prayer, we will say one more prayer, one more song, we will sing one more song until every song is heard by everyone we will sing one more song. The light is shining in the darkness and will not be overcome. May it be ever so.