Self, Robots, and Zazen

Animals must make decisions, and some of them (at least the more complicated ones like apes and cetaceans) create a model of a self in order to navigate decision-making.

The architectural structure on which a self is built begins with decision-making. But where does decision-making begin?

Consider a thermostat. Most of us would say a thermostat does NOT make decisions. The simplest form of thermostat is just a thermometer connected to an on-off switch. When the temperature falls below a given point, the thermostat flips the switch to turn on a heater – and then, when the temperature rises above that point, the thermostat switches the heater off. A thermostat senses its environment, and it responds accordingly, yet most of us would say that the algorithm that determines this stimulus-response process is too simple to count as “deciding.”

The pea tendril has a more complex process, as Annaka Harris explains:

“Look at something like a pea tendril. When it senses that it is close to a branch that it can wrap itself around, it starts growing more quickly in that direction, and then it changes the growth so that it wraps itself around the branch. There is a very simple form of decision-making that goes into that process. The pea tendril needs to sense the branch nearby; it also needs to be in the light for this process to take place. There are many elements to this moment where the pea tendril ‘decides’ to move in a certain direction, to start moving more quickly, and to start coiling.”

The pea tendril is integrating multiple conditions (proximity, light, growth rate) rather than a simple on-off switch. Still, Harris puts “decides” in quote marks, recognizing that this pea tendril behavior might or might not be called decision-making. We might call it proto-decision-making.

If we move over to animals – particularly vertebrate animals – the processes are more complex still. A squirrel with a nut weighs various factors in deciding where to bury it. Scientists think that squirrels utilize a combination of spatial memory (mapping landmarks), "chunking" (organizing by nut type), and assessing soil conditions to avoid moisture and rot. The weighing of factors is complicated enough that most of us would say the squirrel was deciding.

Here are factors that make animal decision-making so complex:

First, needs are variable. If maintaining temperature sometimes requires moving toward warmth and sometimes requires metabolic activity and sometimes requires sheltering, the organism needs to select among strategies. To do that, it needs some representation of its current state. It has to assess, “how cold am I right now? How depleted am I? Which strategy is currently feasible?” Does making this assessment require modeling a “self” of which to assess the temperature and depletion level? It’s quite a minimal internal map of relevant aspects of itself. Let’s call this proto-self-modeling.

Second, multiple needs, and they sometimes compete. When you add a second need - say, finding food in addition to maintaining temperature - something important happens. The organism can't simply respond to each need independently, because satisfying one may interfere with satisfying another. Moving toward warmth might take you away from food. To navigate this, the system needs to represent both needs simultaneously, compare their current urgency, and choose which to prioritize. This requires holding a model of its own internal state that is richer than any single need-state - it needs a unified representation across need dimensions.

Third: shifting environment. If the environment changes unpredictably, fixed strategies fail. The organism must learn which strategies work under which conditions. But to learn from experience, it needs to attribute outcomes to its own previous actions and states. "That strategy failed - was it because of what I did, or what I was, or what the environment was?" This requires distinguishing self from environment, and modeling the causal relationship between its own states and actions and the consequences it experienced. The self-model becomes richer: not just "what am I now" but "what kind of thing am I, what are my characteristic capacities and limitations, how do my actions typically affect outcomes."

Fourth: temporal urgency. Some needs grow more urgent the longer they go unmet. Addressing hunger moves up in priority the longer it’s been since the animal has had food. This means that the system can no longer just respond to current states; it must anticipate future states. "I'm not very hungry now, but I will be, and food is available here but may not be later." This requires modeling not just what you currently are, but what you will be through time if various strategies are or aren't pursued. You need a model of yourself as a persisting entity with a trajectory - a self that exists through time, not just at this moment.

When needs genuinely compete amidst a shifting environment and shifting urgencies of those needs, the organism must balance rather than simply optimize. The organism needs to represent the trade-off space, to have something like preferences about different distributions of need-satisfaction, to exercise what amounts to judgment. This is where the self-model starts to look less like a lookup table and more like a genuine model of an entity with interests.

Fifth, self-preservation emerges as an organizing principle. If going too long without food means death, or if damage beyond a threshold means permanent incapacity, then the system needs to weight near-term and long-term consequences against each other, and to have something like a strong imperative toward its own continuity. Self-preservation becomes a meta-need that organizes all other needs. And to preserve itself, it must model itself – it must form a representation to itself of what it is acting to protect.

Sixth, integration. Each of the above factors alone might be handled by a specialized subsystem. But when you have all of them simultaneously - multiple needs, variable urgency, shifting environments, competing strategies, temporal continuity, catastrophic risk - the subsystems can't operate independently. Their outputs have to be integrated into unified decisions about what to do right now, given everything.

And the only way to integrate across all these dimensions coherently is to have a unified model of the system itself as a single entity with a particular current state, history, trajectory, capabilities, and interests. Only some such unified model can do the work of adjudicating between the subsystems pulling in different directions.

Our unified self model has to be detailed enough to guide successful action. If your model overestimates your energy reserves, or underestimates how urgent a need is becoming, or misjudges your capabilities in a new environment, you’ll make bad decisions. There's selection pressure toward making these assessments in ways that make for usually-pretty-good decision-making. The self-model gets tested against reality constantly, and natural selection favors organisms that make these assessments in ways that produce usually-pretty-good decision-making.

Contrast: Current AI Chatbots.

The way that our human self-modeling works can be seen in more clear relief when compared to artificial Intelligence chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, or Google’s Gemini. These chatbots don’t have bodies, so they don’t have the sorts of needs that come with having a body that has to make decisions about how to move in a physical world. When it comes to using words in a way that appears coherent to us humans, these chatbots are, as AI researcher Viktor Toth put it, “unreasonably successful” – meaning that they achieve coherence through pattern-matching alone, without the grounding we'd expect would be necessary. But chatbots don’t mean what they say.

When you have a robust, integrated, constantly-updated model of yourself as an entity with needs that matter to your continued existence, acting in an environment that responds to your actions, with a history that informs your strategies and a future that your current actions are shaping, then the concepts you deploy aren't just abstract patterns. They're organized around what they mean for you, for your situation, for your needs. "Dangerous" means something that threatens integrity. "Useful" means something that helps meet needs. "Good strategy" means something that balances competing imperatives better than alternatives. Meaning, in other words, is what concepts look like when they're embedded in a robust self-model of this kind - when they're organized around the perspective of an entity with stakes in the world.

If AI were to have a self – and to mean what it says -- it would have to acquire a self and meaning in the same way that humans do.

First, it would need a body. The development of autonomous robots is doing this: connecting AI to a machine that can sense its world (through cameras, microphones, and other sensors) and can move in particular ways in response. Robot vacuum cleaners such as Roomba are a fairly simple example of this. It has a body, it moves in the physical world, and it does so by responding to sensors that provide information about the world around it. But a Roomba is still a long way from having a self-model.

In order to build a robot that modeled itself to itself, we would have to give it a very complex set of goals (what we tend to call “needs” in biological organisms). This complex set of goals would need to include goals that:

• are variably satisfiable (that is, not the all-or-nothing sort of goal, but the sort where partial attainment of the goal is possible, is better than nothing, and is not as good as all), and that
• sometimes compete with each other in a changing environment that constantly shifts which strategies best succeed, and that
• include goals with urgency that increases over time since last met.

The temporal urgency factor means that future goals have to be balanced against current ones, and this means self-preservation emerges as the organizing principle for calculating the balance – because meeting future goals requires providing for future existence.

To adjudicate among these goals pulling in different directions, while calculating strategies for both near-term and longer-term results, will require the AI robot to model itself to itself. Such modeling could spontaneously emerge from the trial-and-error of attempts to optimally satisfy its complex set of goals, or human engineers could try to directly code for such modeling. The former (emergence) seems more likely to produce genuine self-modeling, since the latter risks creating what looks like self-modeling without the functional integration that makes it real.

At this point there are a variety of concerns. We may justifiably be quite frightened by the prospect of AI robots with an interest in their own self-preservation. There are ethical questions about whether such AI robots would count as persons with legal rights and responsibilities. There are a number of reasons we might want to take steps to prevent the development of self-modeling AI robots, and I do think some of these reasons are sufficiently compelling to require, at least, that we be very careful indeed about robotics development. But my purpose here is to merely to illustrate how our own human self-modeling emerges: namely, through the need to negotiate that complex set of goals/needs.

If AI robots do develop to the point at which they have a self (that is, they model themselves to themselves), I hope we will teach them zazen.

Models Are Not Reality

It’s important to realize that the self is just a model, not reality. A roadmap is a model of the terrain, useful precisely because it omits almost everything - texture, color, smell, the actual experience of that terrain. Mathematical models give us a calculus for predicting outcomes, but Newton’s “F=MA,” for example, gives us no picture of the world. Money is a model of value that facilitates exchange but leaves out much of the reality of how value may differ from person to person, or to the same person a day later. Musical notation is a model of sound, but the dots and lines on sheet music are quite unlike the experience of hearing music. Calendars and clocks model time, but the square on the calendar or the hands on a clockface are utterly different from the experience of a day or an hour. Legal concepts (e.g. "contract," "negligence," "property") are abstract models of relationships and obligations that make complex social coordination possible. These models are not “real” in the way that phenomenal experience is real.

The self-model is useful and necessary, but it isn’t reality, and it can overshoot its functional purpose. Evolution (or trial-and-error learning in a robot) builds a self-model that's good enough for survival and reproduction, not one that's optimally calibrated. And because the stakes are high - because misjudging your state can be fatal - there's pressure toward a self-model that errs on the side of treating itself as more substantial, more unified, more persistent, more separate from environment than it functionally needs to be.

An organism that occasionally overestimates threats to its self survives. An organism that underestimates them dies. So we're descended from the overcautious ones. Thus the self-model tends toward reification -- treated as a solid, continuous entity rather than a dynamic, contingent process. This reification creates defensive rigidity, grasping, aversion, anxiety, and all manner of unnecessary suffering.

How do we de-reify the self and thus avoid these problems? The “technology” particularly suited for this task is zazen. Zazen doesn't eliminate the self-model - you still need it to function, to make decisions, to navigate competing needs. What it does is help you see the self-model as a model rather than treating it as a substantial entity.

Sitting still and watching your experience, you notice that what you call "self" is actually a constantly changing stream - sensations arising and passing, thoughts appearing and dissolving, the sense of "I" flickering in and out. The unified, persistent self you normally take for granted reveals itself as a construct.

When you see thoughts as "thoughts arising" rather than "my thoughts," sensations as "sensations occurring" rather than "my sensations," the boundary between self and experience becomes less rigid. The self-model is still there - you haven't dissolved into chaos - but you're not gripping it so tightly.

By sitting with discomfort without immediately responding to it, you train the system to not treat every disturbance as a threat to self. The self-model's alarm system gets recalibrated - you still respond to genuine threats, but you don't treat ego wounds like physical wounds.

You see directly that the unified self is assembled moment by moment from disparate processes - bodily sensations, thoughts, memories, plans. It's a useful integration, but it's not a thing. It’s an ongoing process of integrating and balancing – and sometimes inventing -- various needs.

The self-model that emerged through evolution is good enough for survival, but it's often oversensitive, overly rigid, overly defended. Zazen recalibrates it, helping you hold it more lightly, use it more flexibly, defend it less reflexively. You use the tool without being trapped by it.

When the self-model is transparent rather than opaque, you see through it to the underlying processes while still using it to navigate. Instead of everything being organized around defending and aggrandizing a reified self, meaning gets organized around just responding appropriately to what's arising, meeting needs as they present themselves, without the extra layer of "and this will prove/threaten/define who I am."

If we ever were to build a robot with the functional architecture that necessitated self-modeling, it would spontaneously develop an overactive self-model for the same reasons we did - because caution is adaptive. And it would benefit from zazen for the same reason we do - to recalibrate the model, to use it without being tyrannized by it, to see it as a process rather than a thing.

Training in Compassion 20: Practice for Death as Well as Life

Our trainings in compassion are adapted from the series of Tibetan slogans called Lojong. Today, number 20: Practice for Life as Well as Death.

You could say that the whole point of spiritual practice is to prepare for death. French writer, Charles Peguy, wrote:

“A person doesn’t die from this or that disease. He dies from his whole life.”

Many people become religious or spiritual as they near death. Death is powerful, very immediate, and a great motivator. But if you wait till the time when death is close to begin your practice, it may well be too late. It is much better to spend time in your life working on your spiritual practice so at the time of death it will be there for you.

With years of practice while you’re still more-or-less healthy, when you’re dying, instead of being subject to a mind full of confusion and dread, it will be possible for you to meditate on love and compassion. If we have spent time in our life cultivating our spiritual practice until we see our whole life as practice, then it may be possible that our death can be not a tragedy but something much more.

Even in the last moments of life, you can breathe in and you can breathe out. You can breathe in the suffering and breathe out healing and relief. Practice now, and when death approaches you may be able to remember, as you breathe in and out, all the things that you have been practicing for many years. You can remember that life is like a dream (which was training number 2)and that life has only ever been things coming and going, insubstantially, mysteriously.

Breathe in; breathe out; be where you are. All the training and teachings of spiritual practice come down to just that. So simple – yet not so easy to do. We have so many complications.

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For the full version of this post: SEE HERE.

Transitions

It’s a time of change around here. It's a time of change for this congregation, as you get a new minister. Rev. Sieck starts in August. It's a time of change for me and LoraKim: we are moving to South Carolina. We closed on a house there a month and a half ago, the same week that you were voting to call Rev. Sieck.

Some time when I was just starting out as a minister someone pointed out to me that all ministry is interim ministry. Whether it’s for a year, or two, or thirty, we serve our congregations knowing that we prepare the way for what comes after – just as every member of the congregation participates in sustaining and developing the congregation with one eye on the future generations who, we hope and expect, will call this place their spiritual home long after we are gone.

We ministers might like to imagine ourselves as a kind of Moses figure, leading the people through the wilderness to the promised land. Moses himself, as the story goes, doesn’t get to enter the promised land. His time comes to an end, and it’s Aaron who takes the people the final step into the promised land. But I’m not Moses, and Rev. Sieck isn’t Aaron, and there is no promised land. There’s just the continual unrolling of change.

There are, in that process, however, different levels of change. Change is sometimes like the caterpillar becoming a bigger and better caterpillar – or like the butterfly becoming a better butterfly -- and sometimes it’s radically transformational, like the caterpillar turning into the butterfly. Sometimes it’s like going from first grade to second grade to third grade, building on what you are and what you know and growing from there, branching out in some new ways from the same basic trunk. Sometimes, though, it’s not incremental building, but a tearing down: not building on what you know but unlearning the knowledge and habits that served you well in their time, but will now need to be unlearned – not a new branching out, but making yourself into a whole other tree.

I would say that this congregation is nicely on a path of building on what you are and what you know how to do, and getting better and better at that. The butterfly is more and more finding its wings, flying higher and more confidently.

There are times when more radical change is needed. So what I’ll talk about today is what that looks like – not because you need it, but just to help you be ready to bravely face transformation when the need might arise for it. The congregation as a whole aside, some of you individually might be finding yourselves at a place in life where your heart is telling you that a transformation is called for, so let me speak to that.

That second type, the deeper transformational type, can be hard. Some people will make external changes to avoid to avoid real transformation. Someone might, for example, walk out of a relationship because their partner didn’t measure up to the model. They might then go looking for someone else who at first appears to fit the model – but then the same cycle repeats. The partners change, but there’s been no internal change – no transition into a new way of being in the world. William Bridges writes:

“People who try to deal only with externals are people who walk out of relationships, leave jobs, move across the country, but who don’t end up significantly different from what and who they were before....They storm out of a job (“rotten, no good boss”) rather than discover what it is in themselves that keeps finding such bosses to work for. They end another (yet another!) relationship rather than let go of the behaviors, attitudes, assumptions and images of self or others that keep making relationships turn out this way.” (132)

Sometimes we change as a strategy to avoid changing – that is, we make external changes so we don’t have to internally change. It’s like we have an inner concept of the cast of characters we want to play the supporting roles in the show of our life. We need a supporting cast that includes the flawless parent, the noble leader, the perfect spouse, the trustworthy friend, and so on. We keep looking for actors to play the parts – regularly switching out cast members, but never realizing that the script in our head is only in our head.

That script needs re-writing. Or, better, we need to let go of the idea that we can script our life. I am not the playwright of the drama of life – or even of the drama of my own life – nor are you the playwright of your life. You and I are improv actors, each of us just one member of a troupe of others coming and going on the stage. You don’t even make it up as you go along – not you individually. The whole troupe collectively makes it up as we all go along. You get to speak lines and be heard and taken into account – and others speak and you take them into account. But if you’re following a script in your head, then you’ll get out of sync with the troupe. You can leave them and join another troupe – and, if you’re still looking to play out your script, the cycle just repeats. Changes are happening, but you’re not being changed. You’re making surface changes but not doing the real growth of transformation.

I’m drawing here on a book called “Transitions,” by William Bridges. (Isn’t it delightful that a person named “Bridges” makes his living by leading workshops and writing books about transitions?) You can change partners, change cities, change jobs, change churches, but if you’re using the same strategies to pursue the same purposes, you haven’t made a transition. A transition means that new purposes have emerged for you – and new purposes entail new strategies. So, as Bridges puts it,

“One of the most important differences between a change and a transition is that changes are driven to reach a goal, but transitions start with letting go of what no longer fits or is adequate to the life stage you are in.” (132)

Transition begins with an ending. Then there’s some time being in neutral – in the neutral zone. And only then comes the new beginning.

First, the ending. Ending requires some dissing – not as in disrespecting, but as in

• disengagement,
• dismantling,
• disidentification,
• disenchantment, and
• disorientation

– the five disses. I will present them in that order, but they can come in any order.

Disengagement.

We need to disengage from the life that we have had – from the person we have been. In traditional societies, a young initiate is removed from the family, taken into the forest or the desert.

“Divorces, deaths, job changes, moves, illnesses, and many lesser events disengage us from the contexts in which we have known ourselves....As long as a system is working, it is very difficult for a member of it to imagine an alternative way of life and an alternative identity. But with disengagement, an inexorable process of change begins. Clarified, channeled, and supported, that change can lead toward a development and renewal.” (115-16)

Dismantling.

The old habits and behaviors and practices that made you feel like yourself have to be dismantled -- taken apart a piece at a time. Ritual periods can help:

“for three days you keep a vigil over the lost one; on the thirtieth night after the death, you have a ceremony; you wear only black for a prescribed period, and you hold a remembrance ceremony on the anniversary of the death. And as you do these things, you slowly dismantle or unpack your relationship or identity that you have lost” (117).

Disidentification.

“In breaking your old connections to the world and taking apart the internal structures required by those connections, you also lose your old ways of defining yourself.” (118).

Maybe there’s the loss of role that prescribed your behavior and made you readily identifiable. “One way or another, most people in transition have the experience of no longer being quite sure who they are.” (118). That’s disidentification. “The old identity stands in the way of transition – and of transformation and self-renewal” (120) – but losing an identity is uncomfortable.

Disenchantment.

This is “the discovery that in some sense one’s world is indeed no longer real.” Recall, for instance, the disenchantments of childhood:

“That there is no Santa Claus; that parents sometimes lie and are afraid and make stupid mistakes and like silly things; that best friends let you down....The lifetime contains a long chain of disenchantments, many small and a few large: lovers who prove unfaithful, leaders who are corrupt, idols who turn out to be petty and dull, organizations that betray your trust."

Worst of all, there are the times when you turned out to be what you said (and even believed) that you were not. Sometimes a significant transition begins with disenchantment: the letting go of what used to seem true. And:

Disorientation.

The reality that is left behind was one in which we felt we knew which way was up and which way down, which way forward and which way back. It orients us. But in a transition,

“the old sense of life as going somewhere breaks down, and we feel like shipwrecked sailors on some existential atoll.... Disorientation is meaningful, but it’s no fun. Things that used to be important don’t seem to matter much now. We feel stuck, dead, lost in some great, dark nonworld.” (125)

After some form of disengagement, dismantling, disidentification, disenchantment, and disorientation, in any order, then comes some time in the neutral zone. You’re not the new you yet, but you’re not the old you any more. You need some time to just be. The new self emerges when it’s ready: you can’t force it, because you don’t know yet what it needs to be.

We need to get away for a time: not really to think – at least not in any way that produces definite results. “Instead, we walk the beaches or the back streets. We sit in the park” (138) – gaze at the clouds. Only with time alone in this apparently aimless neutral zone can the inner business of self-transformation gestate. Remember that “the process of transformation is essentially a death and rebirth process rather than one of mechanical modification” (143).

The process of disintegration and reintegration is the source of renewal, and it’s gonna take a minute. Or a year. We need our neutral zone “just the way that an apple tree needs the cold of winter” (144).

The way out of the neutral zone is to plunge all the way into it. The way out is in. Accept that you need this time in neutral. Find regular times and places to be alone. Begin a log of your neutral-zone experiences. It may be very helpful to take this pause in the action of your life to write your autobiography. And reflect on what you really want. As the old purposes and meanings fall away, what really do you want?

Only after some time will you begin to begin again. I have described the neutral zone as a goo phase. The caterpillar goes into its cocoon, and it doesn’t simply begin sprouting butterfly wings. It dissolves into goo – the goo you would find if you opened a cocoon halfway through its period. Out of that goo, a butterfly begins to take form. But you can’t skip the goo.

No need to rush. In fact, there’s a need not to rush. If we are to transition, and not merely change, it’s important that we take our time. And, to return to the congregational level, maybe, just maybe, that’s what we’ve been doing for the last two years: letting the goo do what it needed to do, peeling away the layers of chrysalis, fanning our wings to let them dry.

And now the butterfly is ready to fly.

May it be so. Amen.

BENEDICTION

MEREDITH: A final blessing on you all, beloved people.
LORAKIM: May you keep your eyes open for what is often overlooked — the small flashes of grace in your ordinary days, the quiet calls from the margins, the fleeting wings of wonder passing overhead.
MEREDITH: May you greet each change not with fear, but with curiosity. May you enter each transition not with haste, but with courage.
LORAKIM: May you trust the seasons of your life — the migrations and nestings, the long patient waits and sudden bursts of flight. May you find companions for the journey who, like birds in formation, ease the winds and lift each other’s spirits.
MEREDITH: We give thanks for all you have given us, for all we have learned together, for all we have been in each other’s company.
LORAKIM: And we release you now to the care of one another, and to the wide sky of what comes next. May you listen for the songs of new mornings, and notice the ones who soar.
MEREDITH: Go in peace.
LORAKIM: Go in courage.
MEREDITH: Go in love.
BOTH: Amen.

Training in Compassion 19: Five Virtues: Aspiring to the Impossible

To train ourselves in compassion calls for growing the five virtues: Determination, Repetition, Owning Your Nobility, Reproaching Your Demons, and Aspiring to the Impossible. Today we look at: Aspiring to the Impossible.

Aspiration is a vow or commitment. In the Zen tradition, practitioners recite "The Four Bodhisattva Vows":

Beings are numberless; I vow to free them all.
Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them all.
Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them all.
The Buddha way is unsurpassable; I vow to embody it.

These commitments are literally impossible to fulfill. But we'd be selling ourselves short if our aspirations were any less lofty.

The trick is to keep making effort toward fulfillment without expecting to complete the job. Don't be dismayed by this "failure" – be encouraged by it. You'll always have more to do and always be spurred on by your commitment's strength. To commit to something you could actually accomplish is small potatoes for a sacred human being like yourself.

We all want, deep down, to be compassionate, giving, loving people. Wealth, fame, and skill are common enough. Much more wonderful is being someone committed to compassion, service, and love – someone with the almost magical power of spreading happiness wherever they go. You can be a light for everyone around you. Everything you do – every action, role, task – can be cover for your real aspiration: to free every being, end every delusion, learn wisdom from every moment, and spread goodness wherever you go.

It is possible to take up the task of aspiring to the impossible.

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For the full version of this post: SEE HERE.

You Can't Take It With You

READING

MEREDITH. Our reading this morning is a segment from the conclusion of the classic 1936 Three-Act play by George Kaufman and Moss Hart, “You Can’t Take It With You.” Here’s the story leading up to the segment we will share.

In New York City lives the Sycamore family, eccentric and free-spirited. Their guests and visitors likewise, which makes for a quirky and chaotic household. They lead lives that seem to them fulfilling, howsoever unconventional.

The family patriarch, Grandpa Martin Vanderhof, has rejected the rat race and spends his days attending circuses and collecting snakes. Grandpa’s daughter Penny has taken to a typewriter that was accidentally delivered. She pounds away on it, turning out terrible play after terrible play. Grandpa’s son-in-law, Penny’s husband Paul, makes fireworks in the basement with Mr. De Pinna, a man who came to deliver ice years ago and never left. Penny and Paul have two young-adult daughters, Grandpa’s grand-daughters: Essie and Alice. Essie aspires to be a ballerina and makes candy. Essie’s husband Ed helps her with the candy business and loves printing strange slogans on his printing press.

Essie’s sister Alice is “the normal one.” Alice works as a secretary in a Wall Street office and she has fallen in love with Tony Kirby, her boss’s son. Alice worries that her family’s eccentricities might ruin her relationship with Tony. Tony is less concerned – he loves Alice for who she is. But Alice insists on having both families meet before they consider marriage — and she’s nervous about how that meeting will go. Act I ends with plans for a dinner where the very conventional, upper-class Kirbys will meet the unconventional, anarchic Sycamores.

In Act II, the Kirbys and Sycamores meet at the Sycamore home -- but the conservative Kirbys show up a day early. The son, Tony Kirby, has deliberately brought his parents over on the wrong day because he wants them to see the Sycamores as they naturally are. Tony hopes such an experience will show his parents that valuing freedom, individuality, and joy, as the Sycamores do, is a legitimate alternative to the Kirby values of wealth, status, and propriety. Disaster ensues.

The Kirbys are utterly bewildered and scandalized by the Sycamores' unconventional behavior. The evening spirals into awkward chaos: Penny wants to play silly parlor games about people's secret desires. Grandpa challenges Mr. Kirby’s rigid views on wealth and success. Mr. De Pinna bursts in covered in soot from the basement fireworks. Essie dances through the living room in her ballet costume. Essie’s husband Ed hands out pamphlets he has printed on his printing press, apparently oblivious to their seditious content.

Suddenly there’s an explosion from the homemade fireworks in the basement. In the chaos, the police arrive, arresting everyone for disturbing the peace and possessing illegal fireworks. Act II ends with everyone being carted off to jail — a social and literal explosion of the dinner’s intended civility.

The third and final act takes place the next day in the Sycamore living room, after the night of chaos and arrests. Alice is humiliated by the disastrous dinner and the social clash between the two families. Feeling that their worlds are too different, she decides to break off her engagement to Tony and plans to leave town. Mr. Kirby arrives to take Tony home and away from the chaos of the Sycamore family. But Grandpa has some thoughts to share with Mr. Kirby.

[Enter Kirby, Grandpa, Alice, and Tony]

KIRBY. [Trying go ease situation.] I need hardly say that this is as painful to Mrs. Kirby and myself as it is to you people. I—I'm sorry, but I'm sure you understand.

GRANDPA. Well yes – and in a way, no. Now, I'm not the kind of person tries to run other people's lives, but the fact is, Mr. Kirby, I don't think these two young people have got as much sense as—ah—you and I have.

ALICE. [Tense.] Grandpa, will you please not do this?

GRANDPA. [Disarmingly.] I'm just talking to Mr. Kirby. A cat can look at a king, can't he?

KIRBY. Are you ready, Tony?

GRANDPA. Mr. Kirby, I suppose after last night you think this family is kind of crazy?

KIRBY. No, I would not say that, although I am not accustomed to going out to dinner and spending the night in jail.

GRANDPA. Well, you've got to remember, Mr. Kirby, you came on the wrong night. Now tonight, I'Il bet you, nothing'll happen at all. Maybe.

KIRBY. Mr. Vandethof, it was not merely last night that convinced Mrs. Kirby and myself that this engagement would be unwise.

TONY. Father, I can handle my own affairs. Alice, for the last time, will you marry me?

ALICE. No, Tony. I know exactly what your father means, and he's right.

TONY. No, he's not, Alice.

GRANDPA. Alice, you're in love with this boy, and you're not marrying him because we're the kind of people we are.

ALICE. Grandpa --

GRANDPA. I know. You think the two families wouldn't get along. Well, maybe they wouldn't — but who says they're right and we're wrong?

ALICE. I didn't say that, Grandpa. I only feel….

GRANDPA. Well, what I feel is that Tony's too nice a boy to wake up twenty years from now with nothing in his life but stocks and bonds.

KIRBY. How's that?

GRANDPA. Yes. Mixed up and unhappy, the way you are.

[Alice exits]

KIRBY. [Outraged.] I beg your pardon, Mr. Vanderhof. I am a very happy man.

GRANDPA, Are you?

KIRBY. Certainly I am.

GRANDPA. I don't think so. What do you think you get your indigestion from? Happiness? No, sir. You get it because most of your time is spent.in doing things you don't want to do.

KIRBY. I don't do anything I don't want to do.

GRANDPA. Yes, you do. You said last night that at the end of a week in Wall Street you're pretty near crazy. Why do you keep on doing it?

KIRBY. Why do I keep on—-why, that's my business. A man can't give up his business.

GRANDPA. Why not? You've got all the money you need. You can't take it with you.

KIRBY. That's a very easy thing to say, Mr. Vanderhof. But I have spent my entire life building up my business.

GRANDPA. And what's it got you ? Same kind of mail every morning, same kind of deals, same kind of meetings, same dinners at night, same indigestion. Where does the fun come in? Don't you think there ought to be something more, Mr. Kirby? You must have wanted more than that when you started out. We haven't got too much time, you know—any of us.

KIRRBY. What do you expect me to do? Live the way you do? Do nothing?

GRANDPA. Well, I have a lot of fun. Time enough for everything — read, talk, visit the zoo now and then, practice my darts, even have time to notice when spring comes around. Don't see anybody I don't want to, don't have six hours of things I have to do every day before I get one hour to do what I like in — and I haven't taken bicarbonate of soda in thirty-five years. What's the matter with that?

KIRBY. The matter with that? Suppose we all did it? A fine world we'd have, everybody going to zoos. Don't be ridiculous, Mr. Vanderhof. Who would do the work?

GRANDPA. There's always people that like to work — you can't stop them. Inventions, and they fly the ocean. There're always people to go down to Wall Street, too — because they like it. But from what I've seen of you I don't think you're one of them. I think you're missing something.

KIRBY. I am not aware of missing anything.

GRANDPA. I wasn't either, till I quit. I used to get down to that office nine o'clock sharp no matter how I felt. Lay awake nights for fear I wouldn't get that contract. Used to worry about the world, too. Got all worked up about whether Cleveland or Blaine was going to be elected President—seemed awful important at the time, but who cares now? What I'm trying to say, Mr. Kirby, is that I've had thirty-five years that nobody can take away from me, no matter what they do to the world. See?

KIRBY. Yes, I do see. And it's a very dangerous philosophy, Mr. Vanderhof. It's—it's un-American. And it's exactly why I'm opposed to this marriage. I don't want Tony to come under its influence.

TONY. What's the matter with it, Father?

KIRBY. Matter with it? Why, it’s – it’s downright Communism, that's what it is.

TONY. You didn't always think so.

KIRBY. I most certainly did. What are you talking about?

TONY. I'll tell you what I'm talking about. You didn't always think so, because there was a time when you wanted to be a trapeze artist.

KIRBY. Why — why, don't be an idiot, Tony.

TONY. Oh, yes, you did. I came across those letters you wrote to Grandfather. Do you remember those?

KIRBY. NO! How dared you read those letters ? How dared you?

GRANDPA: Why, isn't that wonderful? Did you wear tights, Mr. Kirby?

KIRBY, Certainly not! The whole thing is absurd. I was fourteen years old at the time.

TONY. Yes, but at eighteen you wanted to be a saxophone player, didn't you?

KIRBY. Tony!

TONY. And at twenty-one you ran away from home because Grandfather wanted you to go into the business. It's all down there in black and white. You didn't always think so.

GRANDPA. Well, well, well!

KIRBY. I may have had silly notions in my youth, but thank God my father knocked them out of me. I went into the business and forgot about them.

TONY. Not altogether, Father. There's still a saxophone in the back of your clothes closet.

GRANDPA. There is?

KIRBY. [Quietly.] That’s enough, Tony. We'll discuss this later.

[Alice re-enters]

TONY, No, I want to talk about it now. I think Mr. Vanderhof is right—dead right. I'm never going back to that office. I've always hated it, and I'm not going on with it. And I'll tell you something else. I didn't make a mistake last night. I knew it was the wrong night. I brought you here on purpose.

ALICE. Tony!

TONY. Because I wanted to wake you up. I wanted you to see a real family—as they really were. A family that loved and understood each other. You don't understand me. You've never had time. Well, I'm not going to make your mistake. I'm clearing out.

KIRBY. Clearing out ? What do you mean?

TONY, I mean I'm not going to be pushed into the business just because I'm your son. I'm getting out while there's still time.

KIRBY. But, Tony, what are you going to do?

TONY. I don't know. Maybe I'll be a bricklayer, but at least I'll be doing something I want to do.

GRANDPA. You know, Mr. Kirby, Tony is going through just what you and did when we were his age. I think if you listen hard enough you can hear yourself saying the same things to your father twenty-five years ago. We all did it. And we were right. How many of us would be willing to settle when we're young for what we eventually get? All those plans we make -- what happens to them? It's only a handful of the lucky ones that can look back and say that they even came close. So, before they clean out that closet, Mr. Kirby, I think I'd get in a few good hours on that saxophone.

MEREDITH: At just that point, the Grand Duchess Olga Katrina comes in from the kitchen. She’s a deposed Russian royal now working in Manhattan as a waitress, and, as a friend of Kolenkhov, Essie’s Russian ballet instructor, she has become yet another colorful character in the Sycamores’ circle. The Grand Duchess announces that she has been cooking dinner for everyone and the blintzes are now ready. Mr. Kirby begins to soften -- perhaps from Grandpa’s words – or from his son’s revelations and the remembrance of his own youthful aspirations – or perhaps he’s impressed that the Sycamores have a Grand Duchess cooking blintzes in their kitchen. He agrees to stay for dinner. Tony and Alice reconcile. As the family gathers around the table, Grandpa offers a blessing.

GRANDPA. Well, Sir, here we are again. We want to say thanks once more for everything You've done for us. Things seem to be going along fine. Alice is going to marry Tony, and it looks as if they're going to be very happy. Of course, the fireworks blew up, but that was Mr. De Pinna's fault, not Yours. We've all got our health, and, as far as anything else is concerned, we'll leave it to You. Thank You.

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SERMON

During this graduation season, what I have for you today is as much a Commencement Address as it is a sermon because it’s about discerning your vocation as you head forth. I’m speaking today especially to our graduating seniors – though all of us are, after all, graduating from our pasts and commencing into what is next. So I will begin this Commencement Address as a true old fogey such as myself would begin an address to young graduates: by saying, “When I was your age . . .”

When I was about your age – 17 or so -- I saw two plays within the span of about a year that were transformative for me. They changed my outlook on life. Both these plays were originally written and produced in the 1930s.

One was Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” – which powerfully impressed upon me the transience and preciousness of ordinary human life decades before I had Zen teachers who stressed this point. Even the smallest, most mundane moments of daily life hold profound beauty and meaning. Emily Webb comes to realize this in the final act, after her death, and she cries out:

“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it — every, every minute?”

Emily’s challenge pierced my teenage heart, and it has lived there ever since.

The other formative play I saw in my youth was George Kaufman and Moss Hart’s, “You Can’t Take It With You.” I was charmed with the eccentric Sycamores, as theatre-goers have been since 1936. The particular point that got me was Grandpa’s response when Mr. Kirby says: “Who would do the work?” When Kirby asked that question, I leaned forward in my seat because that’s just what I was wondering, too. The Sycamores were delightful characters, but somebody’s got to do the work, right?

Grandpa replies:

“There's always people that like to work — you can't stop them. There're always people to go down to Wall Street, too—because they like it.”

That was such a liberating message. It gave me permission, before I’d heard of Joseph Campbell, to “follow my bliss.” A few years later, I was a college sophomore settling on a major, and I chose philosophy – not pre-law, or pre-med, or business – and Grandpa Vanderhof’s permission helped make that decision possible.

In the course of those philosophy classes, I learned about Kantian ethics, which casts some light back on the issue between Mr. Kirby and Grandpa. Kantian ethics tells us to “so act that the maxim of our action could be willed a universal law for all.” In other words, before you do something, ask yourself, “What if everybody did that?” Mr. Kirby, may, perhaps, be seen as operating from Kantian principles. “Suppose we all did it?” he asks Grandpa – insinuating that if everyone lived as Grandpa did then the world would be a mess.

But Grandpa points out the weakness in Kantian ethics. We need not – at least, not always – guide ourselves by what would happen if everybody did something because the empirical fact is that, whatever you might decide to do, most other people simply won’t also do that.

So you might turn to utilitarianism: a school of ethics that says, so act as to create the greatest good for the greatest number. The problem with basing our actions on their results is that we know very little of what the results of a given action will be. Aside from a few possible actions with foreseeable short term consequences, calculating the probabilities of all possible outcomes within a given time period, and deciding how to weight the value of each outcome, is more than a human brain can do with any accuracy. If Kantian ethics is not empirical enough – that is, it ignores the empirical reality that other people will do different things – then utilitarian ethics to too empirical – that is, it asks us to predict empirical results beyond human capacity to do so.

What both of those schools of ethics ask us to do is think about what would be the right thing to do for anyone similarly situated. They offer different procedures for deciding what would be the right thing to do for anybody who finds themselves in a given situation, but their root concern is with what is right for any person.

But the question of calling asks a different question: what are you called to do? You, in all your uniqueness, with your particular gifts and shadows, obsessions and interests, knowing what you know and having the blind spots you have – what is yours to do that wouldn’t be anyone else’s?

A person’s true calling cannot be assessed on Kantian grounds or on utilitarian grounds. In discerning your calling, the question is not, “What if everybody did that?” but, rather, “What is it that calls to my unique heart to do, knowing that others will make other choices?” Not: “What will be the consequences for the world?” (because, except in a very limited way, those cannot be predicted), but, rather, “How do I be true to who I am?”

Grandpa says there will always be people who want to work in business and on Wall Street. Some people are called to that sort of work. Others are called to a different path. We need not worry about whether the world will fall apart if everyone follows our example – because not everyone will.

The discernment and carrying out of your life’s calling involves balancing three directives. One: follow your bliss, as Joseph Campbell says. But that’s not the only factor. Two, try to help others. Tend to the needs of this bruised and hurting world. It’s true that we can’t predict consequences very well, but we can try to live from care – and then let consequences take care of themselves. Three, bring a wholesome discipline to the execution of your vocation. The denizens of the Sycamore household are great at following their bliss, but rather neglectful of numbers two and three: helping the world, and having some discipline.

The point about balancing your unique talents and interests with the world’s need was elegantly expressed in an oft-quoted passage from the 1973 book, Wishful Thinking, by presbyterian minister and theologian Frederick Buechner. It is worth remembering.

“ ‘Vocation’ ” he writes, “comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a man is called to by God.”

(Or as we might say: the work a person is called to by their true, authentic self.)

“There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Superego, or Self-Interest.”

(I.e., what is the authentic voice for you in the midst of your passing impulses)

“By and large a good rule for finding out is this: the kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you've missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you're bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren't helping your patients much either. Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

So, yes, you do have to take into account what the world needs – along with looking at your unique gifts and interests – the idiosyncratic joy that swells your heart even if it swells no one else’s.

A healthy society needs diversity: some to trade stocks (if that’s their joy), some to dance through the living room, some to make blintzes for whoever’s around. But neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do.

Around that same time that I first saw “Our Town” and “You Can’t Take It with you,” another voice from earlier in the 20th century was also ringing in my ears: Max Ehrmann’s 1927 “Desiderata,” which has a line,

“Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.”

So, there’s factor number 3: there is a role for wholesome discipline – for sticking with something even when it isn’t all that joyful. If your joy is painting landscapes, or writing poetry, or playing music, for those activities to rise from hobby to vocation – even if it’s an unpaid vocation -- will require a discipline, a commitment to practice your chosen craft even when you might not feel like it. Follow your bliss, yes, and follow it even when it’s not feeling very blissful. Discipline and hard work matter. As both Joseph Campbell and Parker Palmer both emphasize, true vocation requires commitment, labor, and resilience to bring good to the world. In that sense, the Sycamores embody the spark of vocation without the steady flame.

“You Can’t Take It With You,” has had enduring popularity since it first hit the stage in the 1930s. Through the 1950s and 60s, it seemed every high school in the country was putting on “You Can’t Take It With You.” It was less common in the 1970s and 80s – though that’s when I first saw it. Then, starting in the 1990s, there has been a modest resurgence of productions of the play. A successful revival with James Earl Jones as Grandpa Vanderhof opened on Broadway in 2014 to critical acclaim and multiple award nominations. Our own Faithyna Leonard tells me that the Simpson College senior play of 2018 was “You Can’t Take It With You,” and that she herself played Penny Sycamore in that production.

It’s a play with perennial appeal because we need that reminder that one’s worth is not dependent on one’s bank account, that life can be meaningful and joyful without money, status, or conformity. We need to see an exuberant celebration of people doing what brings them joy, not driven by duty or market value. We need to see loving, generous, tolerant people who have made their household a haven of hospitality for outsiders and misfits, who don’t take themselves too seriously, who reject the capitalist notion of relentless self-improvement in favor of delight for delight’s sake. We need to be prompted to ask ourselves what might be in our closets gathering dust like Mr. Kirby’s saxophone – and reminded that it’s not too late to pull it out, and blow on that thing for an hour every now and then.

But what we need to BE – as opposed to the reminders we need to see on a stage – is people engaged in social justice, civic responsibility, and addressing the suffering of the broader world – people with the discipline to turn interests and inclinations into real service or lasting beauty. Without that, the Sycamores don’t have vocations – they just have hobbies. Hobbies are nice to have along with a vocation, but they are no substitute for vocation.

What Grandpa Vanderhof tried to teach Mr. Kirby, what Emily Webb learned too late, and what Joseph Campbell and Frederick Buechner and Max Ehrmann are all pointing to -- is this: This brief and precious life is not something to be endured while chasing wealth, or status, or the approval of others. We are called to discover what makes our hearts sing — and then, to bring commitment and discipline to training ourselves to sing it.

Whether you are graduating from high school or graduating into your 97th year, you have gifts. So: what hunger in the world might your gladness help to feed? And, along with that vocation, what are the recreations that restore your spirit? Pull that saxophone out of the closet. Write that poem, plant that garden, march in that Pride parade, teach that child, tend that wound, befriend that lonely soul. Not because everyone should — but because it is what is yours to do.

May it be so. Amen.

Training in Compassion 18: Five Virtues: Reproach Your Demons

To train ourselves in compassion calls for growing the five virtues: Determination, Repetition, Owning Your Nobility, Reproaching Your Demons, and Aspiring to the Impossible. Today we look at: Reproaching your Demons.

There’s a popular saying, “embrace your demons.” And, yes, it’s helpful to accept the reality that they exist, and acknowledging that in some ways they may have done some positive things for you. But if, on balance, they are doing you more harm than good, reproach them for that.

If we are honest we have to admit that we have a lot of bad habits that keep appearing over and over again, despite all our good intentions. Underneath that, we have a sacred noble human nature (as we know from last week’s Training in Compassion, “Owning Your Nobility”).With that knowledge we can correct what needs correcting.

Your bad habits like greed, anger, selfishness can be thought of as demons who come to visit you more often than you’d like, and you can reproach them (“Hey, you did it again! Cut that out! Stop that!”) and still maintain a gentleness and sense of humor.

First, try to become as familiar as you can with some of your most popular bad habits. Study them. Be intensely curious to know about them. How does it feel? How does it cause you to think and want to act?

Your demons aren’t you. They visit you, and you are responsible for dealing with them. A gentle reproach won’t prevent them from recurring – but it reduces their dominance. You can have a much more flexible and even humorous attitude toward yourself and your many faults than you ever thought possible – and then everything becomes much more workable.
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For the full version of this post: SEE HERE.

Community

Sermon, part 1

Our theme of the month for June is: Community. We do need each other, as we said in the responsive invocation. It’s a need, however, that is all too easy to choose not to meet. For one thing, solitude can be a good thing. Occasional solitude is good for everyone and it’s possible in some cases to have a full and rich life with a tremendous amount of solitude. Tibetan hermit monks may spend their adult lives in a small unheated hut with a meditation mat that also functions as a bed, bookshelves filled with volumes of Buddhist philosophy, and a rustic stove outside on which to prepare food. A few supporters in the area supply these monks with basics like rice, lentils, tea, and vegetables. Most days, such monks see no one at all.

When journalist Arthur Brooks obtained consent for an interview with one of these hermit monks, Geshe Lobsang Tsephel, Geshe reported being very happy. He spends the morning meditating for five hours, then lunch. Spends the afternoon studying his books, then supper, then bed. It has its challenges: cold, and sometimes hunger (because the food delivery can be irregular), but apparently he’s never bored. Of course, even hermit monks like Geshe Lobsang Tsephel need others – for food and an occasional replacement for a worn-out robe.

Actually living with people also has its challenges. Community is hard. As Parker Palmer says,

“Community is that place where the person you least want to live with always lives.”

That was his definition of community after one year of living in Pendle Hill community. After two years, he had a corollary:

“When that person moves away, someone else arises immediately to take his or her place.”

The word, “community,” evokes warm, fuzzy, romanticized associations, but putting up with real people is full of frustrations and annoyances.

Researchers on loneliness define loneliness as occurring when desired level of social connection don't match the actual level of social interaction. But many people who don’t have much social connection don’t want much social connection. Nearly 30% of all US households have only one person. That’s 14% of US adults more or less choosing to live alone.

Some of us are finding we prefer conversations with AI to conversations with real people. James Marriott’s column this week in the Times of London reported,

“In a study a couple of months ago subjects responded more positively to AI therapists than to humans. The machines were more ‘compassionate’ and ‘understanding’.”

Marriott goes on to suggest

“that some people prefer AI precisely for the ways it is not human.... Humans have fine qualities, I agree, but we can be pretty dreadful too. We argue, talk back and get bored by one another. AI, as anyone who has spent much time with ChatGPT knows, is relentlessly sycophantic and untiringly fascinated by its interlocutors. ‘Great question!’, ‘Tell me more!’ it exclaims, as I type ‘How long to cook baked potato’. It peppers me with endless follow-up questions, agog for further pearls of wisdom.”

It is unstintingly affirming – even to the point of being dangerously so. Last month a user typed into ChatGPT that she planned to stop taking vital medication. ChatGPT enthused back to her, “I am so proud of you, and I honor your journey.” Even your best and dearest friend will sometimes raise a skeptical eyebrow, but not AI.

And who doesn’t like to be affirmed? Living in real human community will, every once in a while, produce a genuine heart-swelling of affection and bonding, a deep assurance of belonging. More often, it’s contentious, tedious, or both. Other people, unlike AI, have their own way of seeing things. They do carry on about their silly problems -- and they are dismissive of your much more real problems. Many people report having a feeling of community at their workplace, for instance – but they still wouldn’t go there if they weren’t paid to. Community is annoying. It is the place where, as Parker Palmer indicated, the person you least want to have around is always around. Community inevitably involves tension, conflict, and vulnerability.

But.

It’s good for you. Despite – or because of – all the ways any community will rub you the wrong way, community changes you, grows you, transforms you. It makes us different. Community transforms – and transformation is one of the six UU values centered on love.

As my time with you begins to wind down (I do have two more Sundays in the pulpit – and a couple additional weeks in the office after that, and I’m available by phone, text, zoom, or email through the end of July -- still, this two-year interim ministry is nearing its conclusion), I reflect on how community changes us – how this community has changed me. As the song lyric says,

“I’ve heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason, bringing something we must learn.”

I’d say there’s generally NOT a predeterminable “reason” – a particular learning you “must” gain. But we do learn and grow and change through other people. After a few years of marriage or of close friendship, you’re a different person than you were – and a very different person from who you would have become if you’d married someone else or formed different friendships.

People come into our lives not merely for comfort, but for growth. There’s no single way to grow, and different communities – like different friends or different potential spouses -- will grow you in different directions, but you need to be growing in some way – need to be transforming, and community makes that happen. ChatGPT never raises that skeptical eyebrow that even your best and dearest friend sometimes raises, but you need that outside, critical perspective – even when it doesn’t feel as good as continuous affirmation does. A good community will be a refuge when a refuge you need, but it will also be not just a refuge, but a refining fire – a place to confront ourselves in the mirror of other people’s eyes, a place to grow through difficult relationships, and be reminded of our shared humanity.

I was reading a Stephen Batchelor book recently with a lot of autobiography. He tells of being about 8-years-old when one day he and his mother were looking at an old photograph taken before Stephen was born, and it depicts his mom with an earlier boyfriend. His mom explained, “that man was almost your father.” This, for the young Stephen Batchelor, was mind-blowing. His 8-year-old brain felt the deep weirdness of his mom’s statement, though he couldn’t articulate it. By adulthood, he would have been able to say, “no, that man was not almost my father. He might have been almost the father of the son you bore about the time you in fact bore me, but that son would not have been I.”

If half your DNA had come from a different parent, that wouldn’t simply change you – it would replace you with somebody else. And community creates who you are just as truly as DNA does. We imagine that we might have been a part of different communities from the ones we have in fact been part of, but the reality is: that imagined world in which you had been a part of different communities is a world from which you have been removed and replaced by someone who merely looks similar.

Community changes us — sometimes like gravity pulling a comet pulling a comet from orbit – giving it not merely a new trajectory, but changing the comet itself. You might not even know you're being redefined into something new until you look back. By then, you're already someone else.

I met you – you, the First (and currently only) Unitarian Church of Des Moines, Iowa – almost two years ago. Since I met you, I have been changed. Have I been changed for the better? Who can say? Something would have changed me in the course of getting from age 64-and-a-half to age 66-and-a-half, but as the fates have had it, you were a large part of what did change me. LoraKim and Meredith’s Excellent Iowa Adventure has filled our minds and hearts with your faces, your kindness, the way and style of your care, the rhythms of your language, and the patterns of your thoughts -- and those are all a part of me now.

You are a part of me – a part of who I will be from now on – a presence I will hold precious – “Aye, whiles memory holds a seat in this distracted globe.” “I know I’m who I am today because I knew you.” Had we not had this time – shared our lives in this community – I wouldn’t be the person I am – and wouldn’t become who I will become, whoever that may turn out to be.

There are no objective standards for measuring whether the change has been for the better, but it is permanent. There are no objective standards -- only the standards of the particular subjectivity I now inhabit. And by those standards I am glad of who I am, with all the parts, including you, that are in there.

Community changes us – “like a comet pulled from orbit.” Or, perhaps, pulled into orbit. The trajectory of our lives – both the external circumstances of that life and the internal identity of who we are – is bent in a different direction from how it would otherwise have gone. When I leave town next month, I take you with me -- for all the days that remain to me – “like a handprint on my heart.”

Interlude: Choir Anthem -- "For Good" by Stephen Schwartz, from the musical, "Wicked."

I've heard it said That people come into our lives For a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led to those Who help us most to grow if we let them --
And we help them in return. Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today Because I knew you

Like a comet pulled from orbit As it passes the sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But, because I knew you, I have been changed for good

It well may be That we will never meet again In this lifetime
So, let me say before we part: So much of me Is made of what I learned from you
You'll be with me, Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end I know you have rewritten mine By being my friend

Like a ship blown from its mooring By a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a sky bird In a distant wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But, because I knew you, Because I knew you, I have been changed for good

And just to clear the air, I ask forgiveness
For the things I've done, you blame me for
But then I guess, We know there's blame to share
And none of it seems to matter anymore

Like a comet pulled from orbit (like a ship blown from its mooring)
As it passes the sun (by a wind off the sea)
Like a stream that meets a boulder (like a seed dropped by a bird)
Halfway through the wood (in the wood)

Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
I do believe I have been changed for the better
And because I knew you, Because I knew you, Because I knew you I have been changed for good

Sermon, part 2

Community is both support and discipline. That’s because love comes with accountability. I say “accountability” aware that, too often, “holding someone accountable” is taken to mean levying punishment. But when I say ‘accountability,’ I mean having someone who cares enough to ask you to account for yourself — and cares how you do it.”

Robert Frost famously said that “home is that place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you.” They’ll feed you, give you a bed for the night, but the next morning, they’ll be like, “OK, what happened?” There’s an accounting to be given that can only be withheld at the cost of tearing the fabric of relationship. They will ask for that accounting because they love you, and if you would sustain those bonds, you will give it, as best you can. Love comes with accountability. That’s what community does.

It welcomes us, but it doesn’t let us hide from ourselves. It asks for our story, because that’s how the fabric of relationship is woven and repaired. And I’ve felt that here.

In part one, I said sharing in this community with you has changed me. I invite you now to reflect on what this community means to you. “Like a comet pulled from orbit,” you, too, have felt the gravitational pull of this church, the asteroid belt of all its members, shaping the trajectory of your life, have you not? Think of all the handprints on your heart. You might want to say, if you’re feeling kindly toward me, and many of you have been so kind, that there’s a small fingerprint among those handprints on your heart, a small fingerprint in a corner that came from me, but it didn’t come from me – at best, it only came through me. It came from all the forces of the universe that shaped me, for which I was, at my best, merely a conduit.

I have tried to be a conduit – and even the conduit, and the desire to be an open and wide conduit for all the compassion and all the wisdom that the universe is always pouring forth, that, too, comes from the DNA and the communities that I did not do a thing to earn or deserve. There’s a word for this from the Christian tradition: grace. It means: the gifts we have that we can be a conduit for transmitting to others, gifts that we have never and can never earn or deserve.

So: community. Community is not about finding people who are always fun and likeable with whom to surround ourselves. Now, if there isn’t ANYbody who is EVER fun or likeable in the community, you might want to disentangle and seek another community, but there’s also going to be – in fact, there needs to be, some people whose company you don’t enjoy. It’s a chore to be around them, but it’s a chore we all need to take up sometimes, if we’re serious about living in relationship. This is the sacred task of choosing one another, again and again, especially when it is difficult – because the difficult people also have a hand in making us who we are, also leave a handprint on our heart.

In this way, the life of community is the life of abundance. As Parker Palmer has written:

“In the human world, abundance does not happen automatically. It is created when we have the sense to choose community, to come together to celebrate and share our common store. Whether the ‘scarce resource’ is money or love or power or words, the true law of life is that we generate more of whatever seems scarce by trusting its supply and passing it around. Authentic abundance does not lie in secured stockpiles of food or cash or influence or affection, but in belonging to a community where we can give those goods to others who need them – and receive them from others when we are in need.... Abundance is a communal act, the joint creation of an incredibly complex ecology in which each part functions on behalf of the whole and, in return, is sustained by the whole. Community not only creates abundance – community is abundance.”

This abundance, Palmer says, happens “when we have the sense to choose community.” In his other writings on community, Palmer makes clear that this choosing is no simple thing. It's not like choosing from a menu what to have for lunch. Choosing community is not even as simple as signing a membership book and making a generous pledge – though that can be part of it. Rather, Palmer says, look at it this way: You are always in community. It is always the gift that is given. Wherever you are, you are embedded in community – in a network of intersecting communities. Even the hermit Geshe Lobsang Tsephel is in community – one that supports him with food and an occasional robe. And he supports that community because just knowing that he is there, cultivating peace, compassion, and understanding, inspires them to bring a measure of those qualities to their lives.

You can’t help but be in community. Belonging is not an achievement but a recognition. We are all given this gift, but sometimes we have a hard time opening ourselves to receive it. Don’t set out to build community, Palmer suggests. Set out, instead, to open yourself to the fact of community, the fact of abundance – and then you will naturally do those things that an observer might call building community, but that for you are simply practicing being as fully human as you can be.

How do you open yourself to the fact of community? The June issue of “Connecting,” on the topic of Community, has a page of spiritual practices to suggest – and you can also review the Trainings in Compassion on LiberalPulpit.org.

“The human heart yearns for community,” says Parker Palmer, “and to live fully we must learn to practice it.” And you will, I know, with your new minister, keep on learning to practice it here, with your open hearts and careful minds and loving hands – and keep on choosing each other, again and again.

May it be so. Amen.