What Is Our Security?

A resident theologian forwarded an e-mail rendering to me this week entitled, "Would that get me in?": "If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into Heaven?" I asked the children in my Sunday School class. "NO!" the children all answered. "If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard, and kept everything neat and tidy, would that get me into Heaven?" Again, the answer was,"NO!" "Well, then, if I was kind to animals and gave candy to all the children, and loved my wife, would that get me into Heaven?" I asked them again. Again, they all answered, "NO!" "Well," I continued, "then how can I get into Heaven?" A five-year-old boy shouted out, "YOU GOTTA BE DEAD!"

Although many here may not envision heaven in this way, the boy has a point. In order to feel well being, to flow with loving kindness, to be centered and at peace in our sacred knowing, we have to let go of control. No matter what we do to secure our lives, we are not ultimately in charge. Until we allow for uncertainty and mystery and let it have place in our daily walking, we will not get to that peace beyond understanding.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote: "Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die." We can see this truth metaphorically as well. Courage is the claiming of our strength of being with a readiness to change or meet uncertainty.

For most of us, that logic seems counter intuitive, because our egos say we must be in charge. So we create systems of guilt and blame, reward and punishment, winners and losers, good guys and bad guys. We build walls and claim territories. We cast out nets. We confine our wildness. All in the effort and industry of survival. But well being and full living, what some may deem heaven, is not about survival, its about thriving. And thriving, full and free and joyous living, is an idea that is losing ground as we dedicate more and more of our life energy and our purpose to staving off fear. Love of life will never be known if we give ourselves over to fear. And we cannot loosen the shackles of fear through the counter measures of control. It will not work.

Pema Chodrin wrote in her book, The Places That Scare You, "a friend was telling me about her elderly parents in Florida. They live in an area where there is poverty and hardship. The threat of violence seems very real. Their way of relating to this is to live in a walled community protected by guard dogs and electric gates. It is their hope, of course, that nothing scarey will enter. Unfortunately, (they) are becoming more and more afraid to go outside of those walls. They want to go to the beach or the golf course but they are too scared to budge. Even though now they pay someone to do their shopping the feeling of insecurity is getting stronger. Lately they've become paranoid even about those who are allowed through the gates: the people who fix broken appliances, the gardeners...Through their isolation, they are becoming unable to cope with an unpredictable world. This is an accurate analogy for the workings of ego. The tragedy of experiencing ourselves as apart from anyone else is that our delusion becomes a prison. Sadder yet, we become increasingly unnerved at the possibility of freedom...."

Pema Chodrin reminds us that although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly we mysteriously choose, more often than not, the small and fearful cocoon of the ego. Unravelling that cocoon takes a leap of faith. There are many ways we create barriers and set ourselves apart from one another. Fixed ideas harden hearts, sometimes for life. We see what we want to see through the lens of that idea which rules our perspectives and masters our choices. It takes courage to have an open mind and a willingness to be humbled. That is why open mindedness is a faith discipline of Unitarian Universalism.

Another barrier is an identity claim, a fixed idea about ourselves. Sometimes we create that safe and familiar way of being by labeling ourselves and wrapping ourselves in the ego cocoon full of self pity or righteousness, self blame or praise. We make our worlds small enough to handle, predictable enough to control when we insist on our labels and limit our expectations of growth. I am the one who came from a dysfunctional family, I am the one whose ancestry were slaves, I am the one who didn't get picked, I am the one who earned that award. And we place others like game pieces on our life board and allow them in as long as the identity stays in tact. It takes a leap of faith to shed our self assumptions. That is why a free and responsible search for truth and meaning is a faith discipline of Unitarian Universalism.

We do this to others as well. He is the one who was in that horrible accident. She is the one who had a nervous breakdown. He is the one who fired my friend. She is the one we've seen on the big screen. And we relate to them within that safe designation to control the outcome of our interaction. It's unnerving to be in the presence of another whom we've made decisions about and open our hearts and minds to new information. That's why acceptance of one another is a faith discipline of Unitarian Universalism.

We make hard hearted definitions in groups as well...we are the ones with the answers, they are the ones that need help. We are the ones who have suffered, they are the ones who need to change. And the walls thicken and the barriers strengthen and the distance increases. It is downright scarey to place ourselves with the hope for peace and understanding near a group that has made a decision about who we are and where we fit in. It is even more horrifying when we see how we do that to others. That is why world community is a faith discipline of Unitarian Universalism.

As you may have gathered, I offer that the security we are looking for rests in faith practice, honoring the sacred knowing within that can abide and thrive in a life full of change and chance and loss and surprise and wonder and doubt. Even in the tumult of these times, farther reaching than the message of terror, ever deeper than the shouts of righteousness, there is a calm and strength of life that dwells within each soul and provides the wisdom we need to change our world.

And yes I join the sighs of despair...the feelings of overwhelm...because we have created such a massive cocoon of fear and ego. And these cocoons are all over the world generating more barriers and less desire to risk a different way of being.

This last week we've witnessed the opening of hearts and tender holding of sorrow around the loss of lives and innocence on September 11, 2001. We have also seen and heard rational for the hardening of hearts, justification for fixed ideas and the claiming of an identity of victim. We are doing this because we are afraid and we are being constantly told in speeches and images to remain afraid.

"Never forget": the slogan to memorialize September 11th gains ground two years later. Never forget that we are victims of terror. Never forget that evil is prevalent and can come with such surprise. How about "how will we remember?" How about "how will we move on?" How about "What can we learn?" How about "how can we honor the sacrifice of lives and lifestyles and foster healing and strengthening of those of us who have survived?"

Pathological grief symptoms include excessive anger, developed phobia about death related to the incident and compulsive grief response. We, as a nation, are coaxing pathological grief.....we are fueling anger with our evil speak, we are breeding phobias about the next terrorist attack, we are admonishing people to stay with their grief... "never forget"....of course we won't forget...we don't need to be told that that is our duty. What we need is to take it in, work it through and lead wiser lives. But righteous victim is the order of the day. Victimology will not get us there. Victimology will help no one in any country or for any cause, and yet we humans fuel this pathology world wide. No culture is immuned to this dangerous fear response.

If we stay with our grief and our anger and our fear and make it what we are about, we will feel helpless and overwhelmed. We will let others take charge. We will then want something to be done to change the feeling, something to assure our security, something to push away uncertainty. So we accept less liberties, if we believe that will make us safe, and we block out difference of opinion so that we have no doubt and we give over spending billions to change things over there if that will keep what we fear at a distance and we let others sacrifice themselves to assuage our fears and convince ourselves that we are supporting them and we allow ourselves to be lulled by false connections and pretty phrases that give us something to hold onto when we wonder what its all about.

A comment the other day really struck home for me: "Blaming Iraq for Sept. 11th" this man said, "is like blaming China for Pearl Harbor...they have similar ethnicity (quote: they are the same color)....." We are barely questioning the link that has no basis in fact, testimony or history that Osama Ben Laden is a cohort of Saddam Hussein's. Millions of us want that absurd link so that something can be done out there about what we are feeling in here. It's too hard to stay with what we are feeling -- we've got to DO something. We have to keep them at bay. And until "they" become "we" in our understanding and "we" is connected to "me", things will get worse...not better.

It is not nearly as important for us to rehash how we got here as it is to ask ourselves what to do now. We are where we are, regardless of what we want or whether we agreed to get here. What, then, is our next choice. We are not victims of present circumstances either. The world is ever ready to be reborn. It is possible to break out of our cocoons.

The question is: "What ripple effects am I creating in my being and with my circles of family and friends and for my county and country and in the world. What choices am I making for the world?" It starts with our brave and gentle hearts. It starts with our own healthy choices. We have such power of being within us to incrementally influence the world. The change we are looking for won't happen overnight, probably not in our lifetime...but we may see a glimmer of it in our children's eyes.

We are never stuck. We can always flow into the next moment. The joy of being is ever within our reach, even in the struggles and the mistakes and confusions. Another comment this week on September 11th was from an artist who wrote a play entitled "Blind Date". "Every morning when we wake up," I heard him say, "is a blind date with life."

Staying steady with uncertainty is how we will find our strength of life and our ability to live freely and fully with one another. It starts with our everyday lives. Not as dramatic as some may want but powerful beyond our knowing.

Pema Chodrin comments: "Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow every day good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world. We can do this even at the most difficult moments. Everything we see, hear, taste and smell has the power to strengthen and uplift us." "The greatest harm," she also points out, "comes from our own aggressive minds."

The warrior she is referring to is the warrior of compassion. Now before some of us go to the "you try hugging a suicide bomber" place, dismissing the power of compassion....stay with me. Compassion is not about hugging the suicide bomber and all will be ok, or forgiving those who destroy without reparation or feeling sorry for the tyrant....Compassion is about opening our hearts and minds to the state of being and bringing our strength of life to it in mutual regard. A way to know peace in the heart.

There are three near enemies of compassion, in Buddhist thought: pity, overwhelm and "idiot compassion". Pity is patronizing warmth; regarding the other as needing help and so creating the relationship of helper and helpless. This sets us apart from the other who stays alone in their pain because the helper has not truly entered in or understood. This state of pity can be generated by the helper or the one asking for help. Both have to mutually welcome the other's presence in order for healing to happen. If the one being helped is addicted to the drama of victim no genuine acceptance of help will occur and true compassion cannot manifest. The helper is then pushed away. Compassion means a mutual opening of heart. A brave endeavor.

Another near enemy of compassion is "overwhelm." This is when a person faces the situation of another and feels helplessness at the magnitude of the challenge or the pain. When we feel "overwhelm", it is good to train ourselves with less challenging situations, to strengthen our sense of self and steady our ground for the work. It is important to remember that any act of true compassion sends healing energy into the world.

"Idiot compassion" is described as the third near enemy of compassion. This is the gesture of compassion that seeks to avoid conflict. It's the inability to say no to destructive behavior. It's the dismissal of tyranny or brokenness to "smooth things over". Your hear this in reasoning like: "he's just like that" or "she doesn't know any better." No true compassion nor healing occurs, because mutual regard of other and self is essential. We cannot be truly compassionate if we throw away our lives.

The far enemy of compassion is cruelty. Cruelty damages systems of relationship that take a great deal of time and exceptional strength to heal. When we damage, we set negativity in motion that hurts us all often for a very long time, if not generations.

But if we are generating true compassion, healing begins, sending ripples of hope into world consciousness. When all things are equal – safety, purpose, respect and intent – the greater good manifests. It is ever ready: the greater good abides in spite of our dramas and protests and doubts and mistakes. That is our security: trust, belief, faith, love of the greater good, defined by more than any one of us.

John O'Donohue Irish poet and Catholic scholar speaks of this way of seeing in his tradition: There is no need for any of us to be afraid of God, because God is no judge and all our images of God as a judge and as being perfect and watching us so negatively are all projections of our own fear, and have nothing at all to do with the incredible generosity and beauty and dignity of the divine presence around us...Iraneas, in the second...century said the glory of God is the human person fully alive. So when you enter in fully and awaken all the dimensions of your heart and live out of the robustness of the divine difference that's in you and dance your life, then you are really on sacred ground."

What's difficult about these times is that there is so much happening in them. The information age has given us access to more opinions and goings on than any one of us can navigate. We see how large the world is and how devastating our choices can be. We can feel our fear and convince ourselves that our job is to placate that fear. We can lose our trust in love.

But we can also choose a different course. We can stop what we are doing and try a different blind date with life tomorrow. As the flutter of a butterflies wings can be the beginning of an eventual monsoon. Every gesture of kindness, every brave and wise opening of heart, every risk of being uncertain can be the beginning of a power of goodness that could astound the most cynical. None of us can do it all, but we are called to do what we can. Have faith that your sacred knowing of the greater good will give you all you need to meet the life you are in. None of us can solve all the problems, but we are able to be present in the mystery. We can choose love and kindness. We can develop compassion, we can create energy of hope. We can leave the cocoon of our ego behind and live freely and fully in the splendor of our beauty. Little by little our perspectives will change and if we as a species so choose, peace, justice and goodness will be made manifest.

So may it be. Amen.