PeaceBang

Whatever Gets You Through The [Dark]Night

[I submitted this to Rev. Sean, who is hosting this month’s carnival. I think it’s okay to post it here, too. But what I really want to say is that although my religious faith and practices are very important for getting through the hardest times, my sister and my mom and my friends and family are more important than any prayers. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Heaven winds up being a long phone conversation with my sister where, even though I start out the conversation a total mess, I wind up even being able to laugh a little bit and I know that I’m going to be okay forever and ever.- P.B.]

The UU Blog Carnival topic for this month asks us to reflect on what, religiously-speaking, gets us through the hard nights.

As a light sleeper with high anxiety, I tend to have my “hard nights” literally at night.
More than once I have referred to the lines of the old psalm and reassured myself that “weeping may endureth for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

When I was in divinity school, a friend told me that 3 AM is the mystic’s hour. I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but I had been waking up at just that time on a regular basis and feeling a creepy, haunted kind of pulse in the air. Maybe it wasn’t creepy after all. Maybe I don’t have quite the words to describe what it was. Thick. Charged. Slightly dangerous, as though the veil between the worlds might lift any moment and I might see things that my heart couldn’t endure and my mind couldn’t handle.

I don’t wake up at 3 AM very often any more, but I certainly do have my dark nights of the soul, both on my own behalf and as a result of having soaked up too much suffering and fear from life in ministry. Sometimes I’ve just been dancing too frequently with Lady Death in my work lately and we need to have a few quiet nights awake together while I sit up against the pillows struggling to breathe deeply and she knits in the rocking chair next to me. I look over at her and think of those wonderful lyrics, “ole rocking chair’s gonna get me.” But not tonight, I tell myself. Tonight is not my night.

I have a very small bag of tricks from my religious life that work the miracle of getting me through the dark nights of the soul. The first is an ancient prayer that contains the line, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” This is my regular incantation and has been a mantra for several years now. It has taken me probably fifteen years of serious work with this prayer to own it and to allow it to own me. I know that whenever I recite the words of this prayer, and in whatever condition, someone else on this planet is reciting it along with me. Maybe they need my prayer for them even more than I need it. I pray it for us both.

I have prayed the Lord’s Prayer in dreams when I was being pursued by demons who had my immortal soul in their teeth. This prayer is fierce! It works in dreams and it works in waking life.
For me, it works best slow, with especially long pauses where you might need them most that day or that hour.

I have a second prayer, even more ancient and more favorite than the first, that starts, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” This is the psalm I speak to myself as I walk down the corridor of the hospital, or as I ready myself for a funeral, or as I steady my nerves during take-off from the airport, or when I decide at 11:30 on a Saturday night that I HATE my sermon and I hate myself, etc., insecurity spin-out, so on. Not only is it one of the most beautiful literary pieces ever written in English (what does it sound like in the original? I have to believe I would love it just as much), it is, to me, the best spiritual trip you can take in about 24 lines.
“S/he makes me lie down in green pastures.” Oh man, I can see that. It reminds me of a spring day when my mom and I were lying in the grass with sprigs of lilac over our faces at Bon Secours Spiritual Center in Maryland. My God MAKES me lie down in green pastures. For someone with anxiety issues, this is such a deal, let me tell you.

How dark can a dark night of the soul get?
As most of us know, very dark. No amount of faith can spare us some of those.
For those times, and God grant that they may be few or none at all, there is that commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” It occurred to me quite suddenly and recently that when we pray, “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil,” it is not only our outward-directed hatred and rage that can harm us. Here endeth the lesson.

What else? Love of the community. Understanding my place in the interdependent web of who we are, and trying to be accountable to it even in diminished condition. Accepting strength from those who freely offer it, acknowledging that living in covenant has a serious existential consequence in this lifetime, and even, if one of my dearest Universalist friends is correct, in the next. Rational thought and “heeding the guidance of reason,” (in this context, making an appointment with a doctor if necessary, considering all avenues of help and aid, ruling nothing out).

In the end, it is salvific for me that Unitarian Universalism does not require or expect of its members a pious demeanor or humble mien. It requires honesty, intellectual rigor, compassion and acts of service. In my darkest hours when I rail against life and cynically declare that there is no meaning in any of this bleak exercise, I have the comfort of knowing, courtesy of my tradition, that my rage and my cynicism do not offend a judging God but are the legitimate rantings of a suffering human being who is, in some mysterious way beyond my comprehension, still held in the essence of love.

"But" And "And"ers

I have shared church leadership with a remarkably talented and wise lady for the past two years who always says that she is working on being an “and” person instead of a “but” person. Very, very wise. We would talk about issues and where we were tempted to say, “but,” we would replace it with “and” and enjoy watching opportunities pop up where obstacles had been.

(Sorry if I sound like a motivational speaker!)

I know we have a reputation for theological wishy-washiness, but I prefer to think that Unitarian Universalists are “and” people in a religiously “but” world.
If we aren’t, we should try to be. Even though it’s exhausting and we’ll probably always be in the minority, I hope we will try to be.

When someone says, “I go to church, but I’m not sure what I believe about God,” Unitarian Universalists can say, “I go to church, and I’m not sure what I believe about God.”
Note the transition from insecurity (”but”) to comfortable acknowledgement of ambiguity (”and”). Neat trick, huh?

When someone says, “I consider myself a Christian, but I don’t really think Jesus was the same as God,” a UU might say, “I consider myself a Christian, and I don’t think Jesus is God.” Where there was a sense of defensiveness in “but,” there’s a chance for theological refelection with “and.”

I met two gals today at my hair salon. One was Catholic, and asked me to explain my faith tradition. I did so, challenging myself to avoid the word “but.”
Suddenly, with the avoidance of that one little preposition, I was able to describe Unitarian Universalism not as an un-Catholic religious tradition (e.g., “The Catholics believe this but the UUs don’t”) but as it’s own, legitimate thing. (”… and in my tradition, we affirm the priesthood of all believers.”) It was a really nice experience, and it may have been because I was avoiding “but” that my usual verbal stumbling rolled out much more smoothly. (Okay, true confessions: I started out with a whopper of a negation, but it’s the end of the summer and I’m out of practice. ::::beating self on head:::::)

I dare you preachers to schedule a sermon called “Let’s Get Rid of Our ‘Buts’.”
No!
No, I don’t!
I was just kidding! I kid you! I’m a kidder!

P.S. I’d just like to thank everyone who wrote in about what happens for you during worship. I have been planning the worship year for my congregation and have found that your “witness” (sharing, riffing, etc.) has been an important inspiration for my process and a factor in getting really extra excited about this church year. Groove on, PeaceBangers. Thank you.

P.P.S. ********Project Runway Spoiler alert — Spoiler alert*********

I am so ticked off by the results of tonight’s challenge. Of course, like the rest of the nation, I hope Jeffrey gets cornered in a dark alley by a gang of chubby middle aged moms wielding lead pipes, but that’s just my little fantasy that you don’t need to know about. Because I’m a Christian woman and I don’t believe in violence. In Jeffrey’s case, I have to remind myself of this in firm tones every time I behold his smirking little pin head, but again, I digress.
No, it’s the obvious gender bias on this show that really has me frothing this evening. EXCUSE ME, but Angela has had several very strong designs and while tonight’s wasn’t great, and really rather missed the mark, Kayne was a JOKE. A YOKE, do you hear me? And while I love Kayne, he has had a solid string of serious bloopers and should have been auf’d tonight. But have you noticed that when it comes down to one really lousy guy design and one really lousy gal design, the woman inevitably gets flushed? Like when Vincent made that heinous toilet paper dress and Alison’s merely resembled a brioche, and all the judges flang heaps of ire on Alison’s head because she should have known better than to design something unflattering for a woman’s figure? I know flang isn’t a word, but the point is, Vincent’s model could barely walk the runway, and Alison got auf’d that night. And please tell me that Robert was more talented than some of those gals who were auf’d so early on in the season? I. don’t. think. so.
So anyway, I love Tim Gunn forever and ever but I’m very angry at the producers. And when I think of Angela flying home alone (probably not first class return trip — am I right?) having simply been driven through Paris just to get driven back to the airport, I just think this is too cruel. Even if the pants she made were so embarrassing I actually put my hand over my mouth when I saw them.

Big Papi, Be Well!!

Oh, what’s happening to my boys!!?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14576115/

To Joe Paczek, Thanks For Everything, PeaceBang

We are not a domestically gifted family.

My mother once hemmed my brother’s pants measuring one side in inches and the other in centimeters. We had to run out to Bob’s Sports on Elm Street for another pair of chinos so that he could graduate from the 8th grade without looking like an extra from “Big River.”
I myself was photographed for my sixth grade class photo wearing a blue cotton jumper that had been mended with staples up the rear end seam.
Mom is a great cook, a talented writer, artist and singer. She makes the best birthday parties ever and she taught me everything I know (a lot) about cosmetics application and she is magical. But not so much the domestic goddess.

My dear departed father, worse. Useless. A trip up the ladder to change a lightbulb meant a fall off the ladder. Trying to lay sod one afternoon, he threw out his back so badly he was discovered crawling toward the house hollering for my mother. That he managed to grow Beefsteak tomatoes most summers filled him with excessive pride and joy. He once took three hours to install simple bookshelves. I know because I held the brackets in place while he attempted to use the cordless drill. After an hour of holding my arms up, I started breathing hard, prompting snappish and guilty remarks from Carl.
A Christmas Eve assembly of a Planet of the Apes treehouse for my brother almost brought my parents to the brink of divorce, and just about killed Dad. I understand. My brother and I recently assembled a large plastic toy item for my nephews, and we weren’t a whole lot better.

SisterBang and I definitely suffer from a condition we delicately refer to as “spatial retardation.” If you don’t believe me, ask L’il Flava, who in five seconds installed two shoe racks from IKEA that lay in useless piles of sticks after my fruitless hours trying to put them into coherent shape. She was too kind to even laugh at me.

So listen, you will forgive me when I tell you that it is with an inordinate sense of self-satisfaction and personal accomplishment that I SET UP MY NEW PRINTER TONIGHT. True, I bought it last June but it intimidated me so much I never unpacked it until this evening. It took me all of 25 minutes to get it going! I am an assembly genius! Even more impressive, I figured out how to make snazzy CD labels using a new program that I bought at Office Max yesterday. I wanted to make some music CDs for a beloved parishioner who spends three days a week at long dialysis appointments and who definitely needs some Jimmy Durante, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Judy Garland, Linda Eder, and Eva Cassidy at the hospital with her. Her CD is BEAUTIFUL! I MADE it!

My father may have been a domestic disaster (Mom used to call him “Inspector Klutzo”), but he wasn’t any dummy. He used to hire a Polish man named Joe Paczek to do all our handyman and “honey-do” jobs around the house. We loved Joe. When Joe showed up, it meant that Dad had thrown in the towel and could go back to doing the things he did well, like growing tomatoes and playing paddle tennis.

Now you know why when people from church make things and fix things for me, I’m not just admiring, I’m downright worshipful. I missed a huge money-making opportunity a few summers ago when I painted my bedroom and my study: I could have video-taped myself and created epic works of comic genius! Like Buster Keaton, only not on purpose!

(I don’t believe in petitionary prayer per se, but I will certainly be praying against that tropical storm tonight. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since Katrina hit. Jesus Lord. Helluva job, Brownie.)

Manatees

MotherBang used to have a condo in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where there wasn’t a whole lot to do but walk along the beach and eat early bird specials at local joints. Of course we went to Disneyworld all the time (”Honey, don’t you want to go to Epcot this time? Or Universal Studios?” “Um, okay! Let’s go to Epcot this time.” Then, after we got there, “Mom, let’s go to the MAGIC KINGDOM!” Mom would snort and happily tromp around with me).

There was a river nearby where manatees were often seen, and I tried for a sighting several times with no luck. Mom always saw them, and loved them. During one particularly bad year, she sent me a postcard featuring a photo of a mama and baby manatee swimming underwater together, which I tacked on the wall over my computer and looked at when I needed a dose of mother-comfort. Those big, bumbling things looked so graceful in their element. I tried to remember that ministry was my element, and that my mother was swimming alongside me all the time, sheltering me with her big flipper.

One time we went to try to spot the manatees, and Mom just about rolled the car into the water. She would never admit this, of course, just as she would never admit that she’s the world’s worst, worst, worst ever driver, but when we drove up to the edge of the water and she made a three-point turn, she almost landed us in the drink. I was hysterical.

No manatees that day, and MotherBang and StepdaddyBang sold the condo a few years ago.

But I was cheered to see my big, lumpy friends featured in the NY Times today:

http://tinyurl.com/ectso

They refer to them as SEA COWS.
Of course this makes me exceedingly and irrationally happy.

P.S. MotherBang is safely home from England. She took off from Manchester airport the other day, and one day later, a flight was delayed from the same airport due to a bomb threat. I had an attack of vertigo last night and it may be that I’m just dizzy with relief.

Where Would Jesus Shop?

It just so happens that I got into a conversation about Wal-Mart this very weekend with some of my oldest and best friends, and it just so happens that there’s a raging conversation going on about it at Making Chutney:

http://www.makingchutney.com/2006/08/24/more-wal-mart-crap-youre-paying-for-it#comments

I want to stay away from Wal-Mart, but I find it creeping insidiously into my life. I’ll go in for kitty litter and come out with curtains, toiletries, DVDs, six cute plastic bowls, and a Tinkerbell t-shirt.

Understanding

Flipping through a book of devotionals today I came across a quote that said, “we can only understand what we love.”

Quite a deepie. Been thinking about it all day.

Have a Nice Day

DSCN2641
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

Happy Back To School and Back To Church for those of you in those worlds.

Meditate on this lovely fleur when things get hairy. Remember: Christmas is coming.

Cruise Gets the Heave Ho

I just love that Tom Cruise got his come-uppance. It’s not just that I’m mean, it’s that he has been on an insane rampage for over a year and obviously believed himself to be immune from all consequences. Cruise has been the King of Schmuckland for a long time now, and I join the millions of people rubbing their hands in glee today and saying, “YAY for Paramount for dumping this egotastic freak job!”

We all know that Tom Cruise is always going to have bazillions of dollars to roll around in with his wife and daughter, that poor child. This isn’t about money. It’s about reputation and about someone in Hollywood saying, “Your crazy costs us money, time and prestige. You’re fired.” Note to star actors, athletes and other money-generating “personalities:” you’re not an individual, you’re an industry. People rely on you for their living. You need to show up, do what you do well, collect buckets of dough for it, go home and behave yourself. Lindsay Lohan, I’m talking to you. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/15365677.htm
(You know you’re getting a bad rep when the lovely William H. Macy says you deserve an ass-kicking. That’s real bad).

I still remember the bile that rose in the back of my throat when Cruise was being interviewed by Matt Lauer and in the most gently psychotic of tones, referred to psychiatry as a junk science. “It’s a junk science, Matt,” he crooned, and when Matt interrupted to ask a very simple question (which I believe was “But hasn’t it legitimately helped people”), Cruise broke in with his eyeball-spinning messianic routine and said, “Matt. You’re being glib. You’re being glib, Matt.” It was like, “Look into my spinning eyes and read the truth here, Matt.” I was ne’er so creeped out in my young life.

Apparently “Mission Impossible III” only make sixty sixteen squillions of dollars instead of a hundred sixty sixteen squillion, so someone’s head had to roll. I’m glad it was Tom Cruise’s. Now can they do something about that totally insane glint in his eye. ‘Cause it scares me.

It’s God’s World, I Just Work Here

I just spent a week in Provincetown, reading, resting, and catching food poisoning. The weather was absolutely perfect. I prayed the Anglican rosary every night and read the Morning and Evening Prayers from the 1895 Universalist Prayer Book every day. I bored my condo companion silly (especially in the final days when I was unable to leave the house due to sickness). I ate a huge lobster that Paul murdered on my behalf. We saw an absolutely terrible Kander & Ebb review at the Provincetown Playhouse. I took photos of flowers. I was/am utterly content.

Much to my surprise, all my thinking about God this summer, and ruminating on faith, has led me to the conclusion that I do deeply believe in God. I have an old Chinese fortune in my wallet from a cookie I must have eaten years ago. It says, “You will become more passionate about your convictions.”

I have indeed become more passionate about my conviction that this is God’s world, and I just work here.

I no longer believe that God is just part of human nature.
I no longer believe that God is just something in Nature.

I believe in the God beyond understanding. My soul is satisfied with the God of Biblical tradition, as I understand more fully the human limitations in trying to interpret and enter into a mature relationship with this God. I have been studying the Ten Commandments this week. Can you believe I never have before?
Believe me, I know how stupid I sound when I say, “Whoa, man, those Commandments are, like, amazing!”

(I was, however, tremendously disappointed by Christopher Hedges’ book about the Commandments, Losing Moses on The Freeway
http://www.amazon.com/Losing-Moses-on-the/sim/0743255135/1.

I found his treatment of the Decalogue undisciplined and irritating. On one hand, he likes to dramatically critique white liberal privilege and distance himself from the talking heads at Harvard, and from his church-going past.
Yet he uses his Harvard education and his church-going past as the very foundation of his self-righteous moral pontificating.
Beyond that, his essays seem to be cathartic pieces that Hedges only barely bothers to connect to the Ten Commandments.)

I think it most luxurious to have been able to spend hours just sitting and thinking about the Ten Commandments. This is why ministers need vacations. This is not the kind of thing you can do between the other thousands tasks of ministry.

There is only one potentially serious problem arising from all this ruminating:
I still don’t know what Unitarian Universalists are worshiping if they are not worshiping God or, in the words of the hymn, “hallowing the world God hath made.”

If they are gathering to worship in the name of the Holy, in the acknowledgment that this world contains a spark of the sacred, I got no beef with that. If folks don’t want to use the word “God,” well, okay. Considering that “God” is the nickname most people on the planet give to that “that transcending mystery and wonder which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces and create and uphold life,”* it’s kind of eccentric for us to keep avoiding it. But still, okay. Spirit of Life and Love, okay with me.

If, however, UUs are actually worshiping human potentiality, I have to admit that I just don’t get it.
I am not offended by worshiping human potential, I just can’t do it myself.

This summer has clarified the main question for me: are we worshiping human potential, however veiled, or are we worshiping a world that is imbued with the sacred.
If I know my people, their next question will be: “How do you define the sacred?”

You know what? I don’t. I don’t mean to be dismissive, or cycnical, or pious when I say that. I just don’t. I have spent at least some portion of every day for the past nine weeks thinking deeply about God, and I can’t define it. So I won’t try. I am more amazed than ever, in fact, that any of us even try to live religious lives together around this Thing that none of us can define. I have recently discovered that I am almost as much in awe of that fact as I am in awe of God.

I discovered this summer that I am definitely in the right business. There is no righter business for me to be in. In fact, there is no other business at all. My little tiny life, even if it ended today, would be remembered as a religious life. I have recently discovered that I don’t care about any other accomplishment. That’s a big thing to know. That’s a big piece of blessed assurance pie to have at my table. “You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”
You can have your anxiety disorder and bouts of depression. Or rather, you can have mine. That and loneliness and all the rest of the existential struggle. I got me some blessed assurance this summer. I hope it sticks. My God, I hope it sticks.

If this summer has made one thing clear to me, it is that I have something very intimate in common with the militant atheist:
For as perfectly dumb and irrational and nonsensical as it seems to the devoute atheist to worship an invisible, unproveable God — whose very name and potential existence seem only to provoke bloodshed, hatred and enmity, it seems every bit as dumb and irrational and nonsensical to me to worship human potential — a species whose past and present provide me no persuasive evidence whatsoever that I should place my faith in it.

* - from the UU first Source.