Spiritual Fortification Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray August 21, 2016

Transcription

1 Spiritual Fortification Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray August 21, 2016 Reading For our reading this morning I offer two perspectives on the meaning and nature of spirituality. One is from the American writer, educator and Quaker, Parker Palmer. The second is from Nichola Torbett, the founding director of Seminary of the Street, a nonprofit institute for the spiritual formation of social change workers in the context of community. From Parker Palmer: By spiritual, I mean the ancient and abiding human quest for connectedness with something larger and much more trust-worthy than our egos with our own, with one another, with the worlds of history and nature, with the invisible winds of the spirit, and with the mystery of being alive. From Nichola Torbett In this country, we treat spirituality as a health additive, like the protein powder you can get sprinkled on your imperial smoothie. For just a small extra charge, a little prayer or meditation can make you run better, smoother, in service to the exploitative systems in which we are immersed. No! Our spiritual practice is meant to make us dangerous, to temper us like steel into cogs that grind the wheels of injustice to a halt. Sermon In the late 1960 s, two researchers carried out a study observing how people respond to potential dangers. 1 In the study, volunteers were asked to wait in a room and fill out a questionnaire. While they filled out the questionnaire, a visible smoke-like vapor started pouring in from a vent in the room. If individuals were alone in the room, they would quickly leave the room and go find help. However, when several people were in the room together, individuals, upon seeing the vapor, would look at others in the room to see how they were responding. If others were remaining calm and continuing to fill out the questionnaire, they were more likely to do so too. Apparently, even after they began to cough or have to rub their eyes, they would remain filling out the questionnaire. Two thirds actually stayed until they ended up having to be rescued by the researchers. This is not one of those tests we human beings aced! When interviewed later maybe people said they just didn t believe the smoke was dangerous. Since others were not reacting with concern, they figured they should not be concerned either. 1 Study by Bibb Lantané and John Darley (1968) cited in Active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, p. 59 (2012). 1

2 This study offers some explanation as to why it has been so difficult to get collective action and response to climate change. We may hear terrifying statistics and there are many but then we see everyone around us going along, business as usual and so we maybe think it is not so bad. Another reason people gave for not reacting to the smoke was that they felt uncomfortable being the only one reacting. For many of us, we don t like to stand apart from the crowd we like to get along and belong. While this is all still true the reality of climate change is breaking through in ways that are not easily denied or ignored. This summer, globally, we saw the hottest June and July ever recorded according to NASA. In fact the average global temperature for the first six months of 2016 was the hottest since records have been kept in the late 1880 s surpassing the previous record set in It is hard to deny, temperatures are rising. And Louisiana, the people of Louisiana, are once again underwater with flooding losing everything, drowning, needing rescue. The images are reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina just a little over ten years ago. The current flooding is being called a thousand year flood but that name is misleading. Earlier this year, Missouri was devastated by the second so called hundred year, or five hundred year, flood in less than 20 years. Most of the state was underwater earlier this year, just like it had been in 1993, although this year the waters were higher. And more island communities including one off the coast of Alaska, are having to figure out how to relocate as oceans rise and their island home is expected to be underwater in just 30 years. Who will make room for these communities? And in California and Arizona, miles of acres of forests continue to be lost to fire. Last summer, when we were hiking in Prescott, a national forest ranger invited my family up to the top of the fire tower where he lived six months out of the year. His job was to watch for fires and call them in at first sight so the crews could respond quickly. There were three active fires we could see from the tower one had just started the day before. Then he showed us the dry bare mountains sides where forests previously lost to fire had once stood. The forests won t come back he said. We don t even plant new trees any more, he explained, because there simply isn t enough water for them to survive and grow. The opportunity in all of this is that it is becoming more difficult to deny global climate change more and more people are naming it it is breaking through our daily news. May it lead us to actively engage these challenges. For the truth is that despite that study showing how the influence of others can block our reactions, in the midst of tragedy and emergency, human beings help each other. The best of us comes forth in moments of challenge and need. Once we are aware, we can adapt, we can respond, we can and do come together. Last week, I referenced Joanna Macy s and Chris Johnstone s book Active Hope to talk about the kinds of spiritual practices and characteristics we need to build as a community in order to be a place of courage, resiliency and engaged hope and action given the urgency and uncertainty of the times we live in

3 All this summer we have been looking at spirituality and what it means to be spiritual people. We looked at it through many different perspectives with individual members reflecting on how spirituality has changed for them, is still growing in them, how it is a source of strength. Today, I want to look at this idea of spiritual fortification. Standing on the Side of Love is our faith tradition s Unitarian Universalism s national campaign for justice and human dignity. And they have been reflecting on the importance of fortification of people and movements in this time. Fortification is an interesting word. It has two primary meanings. The first is a militaristic one, it means to build up a wall around something to increase its protection and guard against attack. In this time of great uncertainty and anxiety this definition of fortification is used a lot build a wall. Build a wall to keep out the uncertainty the threats of the world as if somehow we can separate ourselves from these changes and disruptions as if we don t have a hand ourselves in creating and contributing to these disruptions, as if we can somehow isolate ourselves from the realities of our planet and fellow species. Interestingly, another way I hear this militaristic sense of fortification being used, even if not explicitly, is the idea that in response to uncertainty, the United States ought to double down on its consumption, its materialism, its way of life change is not required of us - keep doing what we ve been doing and if we just do it better all will be okay better than okay it will be tremendous. Here s a good example. There is a new professional field growing in the United States. It is the Wall Street Coach - part performance coach, part psychologist these coaches are hired by Wall Street Traders to improve their game, their edge, their success in making money. Apparently this is a new trendy thing in Wall Street. A reporter was interviewing a trader who has used such a coach to great success. He said he expected the coach to give him trading tips, but instead she wanted to know about his family and how he dealt emotionally with loss. As Nichola Torbett says, In this country, we treat spirituality as a health additive, like the protein powder you can get sprinkled on your imperial smoothie. For just a small extra charge, a little prayer or meditation can make you run better, smoother, in service to the exploitative systems in which we are immersed. Counseling, coaching, spiritual direction, religious community efforts to understand ourselves more fully are beneficial. However, the key question is to what end? As they continued to interview the trader, some things he spoke of touched a bit on the spiritual, but in the end, it sounded like therapy that just nurtured the ego to be stronger than the internal critic that we all experience. Of course the problem with the ego is that while it can make you feel indestructible, and it is helpful in competitive fields, when life intervenes as it does for all of us an illness, the market crash, the family falling apart the ego will not get us through it at least not with health and wholeness. For this, we need something more solid. Parker Palmer defines spiritual as the ancient and abiding human quest for connectedness with something larger and much more trust-worthy than our egos with our own, with one another, with the worlds of history and nature, with the invisible winds of the spirit, and with the mystery of being alive. 3

4 This is where the second definition of fortification comes in, the one that is the meaning connected to spiritual fortification. The second definition of fortification means to strengthen and invigorate, to make healthy. For example, vitamins fortify our bodies. This is about understanding where we have deficiency, where is our longing, and building strength in those areas. Torbett says we use spirituality as an additive. It s sold everywhere on tv, in crossfit centers, on Wall Street meant to help us survive the daily grind, the demands, pressures and uncertainty of our world that weigh on us. And it is not surprising and it is a better option than some others. After all, depression is reaching epidemic proportions in the Western world, with one in two people likely to experience at least one episode of major depression. 3 But the real religious and spiritual teachings from which the additives are being commoditized turned into something you can buy and sell are actually meant to help us see more deeply, beyond our egos, beyond the constructs in which we live to a more honest and compassionate way of being. These teachings are meant to help us see our connection to each other, our connection to a larger view of time that connects us to nature, to history and to our responsibilities to the future. They are meant to help us live new stories, not just survive the business as usual story. This is why the earliest Christian communities were communities that sought to separate themselves from Rome and were committed to nonviolence and generosity, providing for their collective needs. The key question we must ask in seeking spiritual fortification is what is the end the goal of my practice, of my community, of the teaching or counseling I am following? In the interview with the Wall Street trader, he is asked whether or not he thinks these Wall Street traders are going to catch on. His answer was I hope not. And if it does, I hope it grows slowly, because right now I have the edge and if it catches on I won t have it anymore. Compare this to the story of the Buddha, who upon attaining Nirvana, enlightenment, chooses not to be released from the cycle of life and death and rebirth until all people have attained enlightenment. He is not in it just for himself his enlightenment, his spiritual practice, leads him to want to see this freedom for everyone. The question we must ask of our spiritual practices is whether they are serving to make us stronger in order to survive in a narrative of isolation, competition and disconnection or are they helping us move beyond that narrative to a deeper story of compassion and connection helping us bring about new narratives of how we might live and shape our lives. Spiritual fortification spiritual health and strength is necessary to keep us in the struggle. True spiritual fortification engages us in acting against narratives of domination and working toward narratives of collective power and compassion. It helps us have the courage, awareness and clarity to see the smoke, to step out from the crowd, name it and work to address it. Fortification helps us begin to live new stories. Torbett would have our spirituality make us like steel. I prefer the gentler analogy of Palmer seeing ourselves as part of a greater sense of history, a larger understanding of self that helps us 3 Macy, Johnstone, Active Hope, p

5 collectively nurture stories that can help us make a turn in this changing time toward responding to challenges we face with compassion and courage, love and justice. So how do we build up spiritual fortification, the qualities that help us stand up, act up, find ways of living that nurture ourselves, others and connect to the mystery of life itself? First, we make time to develop spiritual practice in our daily life; a practice like a daily gratitude practice has the effect of reminding us of the ways we are not alone, but of ways we are connected to others. Gratitude reminds of the people and things that hold us and that we can count on. Understanding, experiencing, feeling connected to others and to life itself is fundamental to nurturing our strength and health. Second, nurturing friendships and relationships of care and solidarity. All of us will experience moments of loss and despair; we need companions we can reach out to, who will listen, offer help, a shoulder, or a perspective to help us see our situation, our struggle or our despair from a new perspective. We don t get through this thing of living alone; developing, nurturing and maintaining friendships that feed us and fortify us are essential. Here at UUCP we offer these opportunities to make and nurture connections through, for example, our small group ministries and Community Nights. It can be hard to connect and build relationships in large communities. Our small groups ministries, which will kick off again in October, are chances to meet regularly with a small group to share our stories and build connection and support. Third, we talked about this a little last week, we need to develop a strong capacity to honor and feel our emotions. One of the dangers we face in times of anxiety or uncertainty is shutting down our emotions, deadening our response. In that smoke filled room, people saw the smoke. Their first reaction had to be concern, but not seeing others react, they deadened that response, ignored it. This is dangerous, when we do not listen to ourselves. And finally, we need to understand a larger sense of self and a larger sense of time. In our lives, we will experience moments of success and moments of defeat. Those times of defeat, failure, or loss are so difficult. Friendship, gratitude, honoring how we feel in the process is so important. But so is not forgetting the larger picture, even as we are consumed with the moment. Whatever we are experiencing in this moment, this is not all life has for us. It may feel that way in the moment, but truly it is not all life has for us. Even when we become full of despair for how much needs to be done to move our world forward in the way of respect for life, for dignity, for justice, for peace, with a longer view of history, we remember that change does happen, and that we are not the only ones to struggle, to love, to live and die the work is not all ours we only have a small piece of it the only piece we can do. 5