Training in Compassion 7: Send and Receive Compassion

Compassion literally means "to feel passion with." Passion means pain. Compassion is the willingness to feel pain with another, to feel another's pain as one's own.

It's impossible to take in the pain of another unless we are able to take in our own pain. Most of us are not so good at accepting our own pain. We prefer to deny it or distract ourselves from it. We are so intent on making our own pain go away that we don't allow ourselves to feel it. We can't take it in. Consequently we are incapable of feeling another's pain, so we are incapable of actual compassion, although we may think we are quite compassionate.

Real, full compassion requires training your heart to do what it usually does not want to do: to go toward, rather than away from, what's painful and difficult in your own life.

Second, it requires realizing that your own suffering and the suffering of others are not different. When you discover that this is so, you see that when you are willing to really take in your own suffering, you find, within that very suffering, the suffering of others. Also: when you are able to truly take in the suffering of another, you find within it your own human pain. Being willing to receive pain, we come to understand, is the only way to open our hearts to love.

To send and receive compassion, start by breathing in the openness of mind that you can feel in the clarity and strength of the inhale. And then exhale, letting go completely and merging with openness of mind, so that there is nothing else present but that. When you’re ready, breathe in your own suffering. Let compassion ride on your breath.

As you inhale, take in your own pain and the suffering. With practice, you can do it. Visualize the pain and suffering as a dark, sticky substance or smoke or some kind of goo that you are breathing in, taking into your body. This is receiving.

Then, breathe out. In exhaling we transform the goo, the suffering, the pain, into lightness, ease, peacefulness that comes out of our nostrils and all the pores of our body as a light sweet mist. This is sending.

You are sending healing light to yourself and to many others.

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More detail about this practice is in the longer version here.

UU Uses of the Bible

Many of us, I know, have a conflicted relationship with The Bible – the anthology of 66 books in Protestant Bible or 73 in the Catholic Bible, or 76 in the Eastern Orthodox Bible. Yet this particular anthology of old writings (in any of its variants) is powerful, and hugely popular.

Bibles have always sold well in this country. You might think everyone in the US has long since had one by now. Yet sales have not only continued at a brisk clip with 9.7 million Bibles sold in the US in 2019, but sales climbed to 14.2 million in 2023. Then in the first 10 months of 2024, sales were up another 22% over the first 10 months of the year before. But buying Bibles doesn’t mean people know their Bible very well. Time magazine observed in a 2007 cover story that only half of U.S. adults could name one of the four Gospels. Fewer than half could identify Genesis as the Bible's first book. I like to think Unitarian Universalists could do better than that – but I don’t have data on that.

A Gallup and Castelli survey concluded: “Americans revere the Bible but by and large they don’t read it.” Christianity Today wagged: “Americans love their Bibles. So much so that they keep them in pristine, unopened condition."

For many, apparently, the Bible is a sort of talisman: an object to possess as a symbol of tribal loyalty, not a text to study, know, and wrestle with.

Or: and this may be part of what’s going on with the recent boom in sales, as more and more people are growing up unchurched, what they’ve heard of the Bible makes it seems like this mysterious source of truth, and in these deeply uncertain times, they get curious to take a look.

But without a community and tradition to provide a context of meaning, without background on how the texts came to be written, and how those particular texts and not others came to be canonized, they aren’t likely to get much from their attempts to read it.

But if we do engage the text, and also the context – engaging the various interpretive possibilities in open discussion, the stories and the poetry offer us touchstones and wisdom as we seek to make sense of our lives and our world. Two weeks ago, I talked about the Book of Ruth as offering us a helpful inspiration to cross borders and make connections. I’ve spoken of the Loaves and Fishes story from the Christian Testament. At Christmas, we look at the two different Christmas stories, and last Easter we looked at the four different Easter stories.

There’s a lot more to glean from this rich and influential anthology. In fact, I’ll be offering a class, starting next Saturday March 1 at 2:00. We’ll have four Saturday sessions: Mar 1st and 8th, and then April 5th and 12th. We’ll be reading and discussing the book “Understanding the Bible: An Introduction for Skeptics, Seekers, and Religious Liberals,” by John Buehrens. Buehrens is a Unitarian Universalist minister, and was president of the UUA from 1993 to 2001. Let’s plunge in and expand our appreciation and understanding of how to use these resource for understanding our world. Get the book and join me for the class. First, though, where does the notion of God come from? There are lots of theories. Here’s mine.

Our brains do their best to cope with this world in which we find ourselves. They rely heavily on predicting what’s going to happen. Psychology researchers have been learning more and more clearly that the brain is not best understood as a stimulus-response mechanism – waiting for some stimulus, then responding. That would be way too inefficient – and often there wouldn’t be time to figure out much of a response. Rather, our brains anticipate events, and plan in advance. They are prediction machines. And as the infant grows into the toddler, it begins to form concepts of belief and desire. People believe things and people want things. This turns out to be tremendously useful in predicting how people – the most important features of our world -- will behave – which allows us to coordinate our behavior with theirs.

Apparently, conceiving of other people’s beliefs and desires comes first, and only later do we apply the process to ourselves and form a conception that we ourselves believe certain things, and desire certain things.

Beliefs and desires are a fiction. We might someday be able to make a complete map of someone’s brain – its 100 billion neurons firing across 100 trillion synapses, and know just what neurotransmitters are passing across which of those synapses, and at what rate. But nowhere in all of that will we find such a thing as a belief or a desire. Yet these are indispensable fictions for giving us a rough and ready way to predict and get along with other people and ourselves. There is no other practical way to understand each other.

We are made to relate to others as believing and wanting. We can’t avoid it. We can, with training, avoid relating to the universe as a whole as having beliefs and desires. Though we can’t get along without imagining that people have beliefs and desires, we can get along passably without imagining that the universe has beliefs and desires. We can do it, but I don’t recommend it.

If you’re a physicist at work, or if you’re reading an explanation of what physicists have concluded, you need to set aside any conception of the universe believing or desiring, but even the physicist gets off work at some point, and the exercise of imagining that the universe itself knows things and wants things is a helpful exercise for feeling at home in this universe.

We feel at home with people by relating to them as believing and desiring. Likewise, it helps us feel at home in this universe by relating to it as if it believed and desired. We explore our place in the order of things by asking ourselves what the universe seems to believe about us, what it seems to want from us. Imagining the universe as a person – an entity that knows things and wants things, that has feelings, like love and anger – is a construct that can be helpful for pulling in our whole humanity, not just the logical left-brain. By engaging with that construct, playing with it, wrestling with it, it can put us into a relationship with our world, with nature – or at least can help us cope with it.

And so we come to the God of the Hebrew Bible, the God of the Hebrew people. As probably every people have done, the Hebrews imagined the universe as having beliefs and desires – and the agents of these beliefs and desires are the gods, or, as Hebrews came to conceive, the one God. The Hebrew God has some powerful positives. In the Exodus story – a.k.a. “Yahweh and Moses’ Excellent Adventure” – Yahweh is liberation. He is sustenance; strength to rebel against oppression. Yahweh is covenant, the power of people to come together to be in community, to walk in a shared way of life aimed at transformation and healing and the realization of human potential to have and live in beloved community.

But the Hebrew God is rather bipolar. Life itself is rather bipolar. The God of the Hebrew Bible swings between dishing out unearned grace and unearned wrath – and life does include a lot of pleasantness and unpleasantness that we didn’t earn or deserve. The Bible is A LOT – and there are so many fascinating stories in it and about how it came to be, and what it might mean. I’m not going to try today to articulate overall the message of Buehrens’ Understanding the Bible – we’ll do that in the class starting Saturday. Nor will I make a general point about UU uses of the Bible. Instead I’m going to take just one example of the way God is characterized – God at God’s very worst – the abusive God who appears most harshly in some of the books of the prophets. We’ll see if even the parts of the Bible that are most likely to turn you off of the Bible entirely – if even those parts might have some use for us today. It will be difficult. And if, in the end, you decide that’s a bridge too far for you to find any use for, I won’t blame you. But let’s give it a try and see. The God of the Hebrew Bible is sometimes angry and punitive toward his people. Sometimes in life it does feel like the world is punishing you. The God of the Hebrew Bible is sometimes abusive. It’s the prophets that express this abuse – Hosea, Ezekiel, Jeremiah. These imaginative street preachers described for their listeners a universe that fits the profile of what we know about how abusers behave, casting Yahweh as the abusive boyfriend or husband, with Israel as the girlfriend or wife. This description so resonated with the people of Israel that they made these descriptions scripture.

My first semester of divinity school, every week, on Thursday, I was in Old Testament class for three hours in the morning, then had Pastoral Care class for three hours in the afternoon. In the pastoral care class we got to a unit on battering and abuse: how to recognize the signs of an abuse relationship, how that abusive dynamic works. In the Old Testament class we kept talking about this Yahweh character who fit the profile of an abuser that I was learning about in Pastoral Care.

Here are some of the aspects of the profile we learned:
Smashing things. (like maybe Sodom and Gomorrah).
Destroying her property.
Harming pets (like demanding animal sacrifices, or perhaps the Flood).
Acting invincible (Yeah).
Putting her down.
Calling her names.
Humiliating her.
Making her feel guilty. (Yahweh does all those things to Israel.)
Unreasonable demands or expectations. (Hmm. “Thou shalt not covet” seems a rather unreasonable demand.)
Limiting her outside involvement (like when Yahweh commands “have no relations with the other people in the land”).
Embarrassing her in front of others.
Using the children to relay messages.
Threatening to take the children away (as in Ezekiel, “Your survivors shall fall by the sword”).
Here’s one: Using religion to control her.
Degrading her about her relationships.
Abusing the children.
Treating her like a servant (that fits, doesn’t it?)
Making all of the rules. (like pretty much the entire book of Leviticus)

This Yahweh has serious power and control issues. Our pastoral care text said, "extreme jealously and accusations of infidelity characterize most men who batter." Yahweh is famously jealous, proclaiming in Exodus, "I the Lord your God am a jealous God.”

And in such books as Hosea, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah, Yahweh repeatedly levels accusations of infidelity at Israel. Israel’s unfaithfulness is described as sexual unfaithfulness and promiscuity. The accusations, the threats of public shaming in Hosea, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah are in the Bible, and those parts of the Bible are more graphic than I feel comfortable sharing with you out loud in a worship service.

The abuse cycle, as counselors now recognize, includes episodes of tender seduction – “honeymooning her” -- periodically recurring between episodes of violence. Both phases – manipulating tenderness and dominating humiliation – are designed to assert and reinforce the abuser's power and control. Here, too, Yahweh fits the profile. Hosea describes how Yahweh will humiliate Israel, and then Hosea continues, in passage I will share:

"Therefore, I will now allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. From there I will give her her vineyards, and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she shall respond as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt." (Hosea 2:14-15, NRSV)

“Honeymooning,” it’s called, and it’s a tactic of abusers. For a long time the official Christian line on all of this was that God’s acts were fair punishment for Israel’s sins. As our understanding of the nature of abusive relationships grows, and we use that understanding to help us interpret the Bible, more and more people – including more and more Christians – are now saying: there’s not enough sin in the world to justify that much punishment.

Jewish scholar David Blumenthal, in a book titled, Facing the Abusing God, writes:

Abusive behavior is abusive; it is inexcusable, in all circumstances. What is true of abusive behavior by humans is true of abusive behavior by God. When God acts abusively, we are the victims, we are innocent. When God acts abusively, we are the hurt party and we are not responsible for God’s abuse. Our sins – and we are always sinful – are in no proportion whatsoever to the punishment meted out to us. Furthermore, the reasons for God’s actions are irrelevant. God’s motives are not the issue. Abuse is unjustified, in God as well as human beings."

So what is the point of these awful stories? Yeah, this world, which we viscerally respond to as person-like, it does abuse us sometimes. And it abuses some of us more than others. How do we, today, make use of those stories? The answer, I suggest, is that we are called to Social justice.

Last week, we talked about the work for social justice that we do. We do direct service. We attend and sometimes may lead classes to educate ourselves and others about the issues. We organize, we advocate, we witness. Last week those in attendance were asked to write on sticky notes what they have been doing, or want to do in the coming year, in any of these five areas of justice work: service, education, organizing, advocacy, and witness. We put those sticky notes on the map that’s at the back there. If you weren’t here last week, I want to invite you to peruse that display and add your own sticky note – or two or three. And if you were here, but you’ve thought of an additional area you have or would like to contribute in, then please add another sticky note to our map.

One way that we can relate to those old stories of an abusive God is to move ourselves out of the role of the abused partner, and into a role of ministering to the abuser. The call to social justice is the call to minister to God. In that Pastoral Care class I mentioned, we talked about some ways to minister to victims of abuse. And we also talked about appropriate responses for a minister when the abuser himself comes to see you, or you see him.

How do you minister to an abuser? Our Pastoral Care textbook stressed accountability: holding the abuser accountable. In our social justice work, we seek to hold accountable the sources or injustice.

“The appropriate frame," our textbook said, "is that the abuser has committed a criminal act, and he should not be allowed to evade the consequences of his behavior."

He may be asking for forgiveness, but forgiveness is not appropriate if it allows him to elude accountability for his violence and his mania for power and control. Abusive men can be truly anguished – but the reality of the anguish is not always accompanied by readiness to engage with counselors or clergy to change their behavior and assumptions. "The minister's task," said our text, “is 'to become an ally of that part of the man that gravitates toward change.'"

An ally of the part that gravitates toward change. They won't change overnight – though they might swear they have. But they can gravitate toward change if enough sources are making clear that they cannot get away with their old ways. That’s the take-home phrase I offer to you today: be ye “allies of the part that gravitates toward change.”

There is a place for us in the framework of the picture that Hosea, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah put before us. We can take on the role of ministering to the victims, yes, and of ministering to the abuser, too. What would it be like to imagine ourselves as God’s pastor – to imagine ministering to the world that batters its poor with starvation, disease, violence, denial of education, economic hopelessness? How do we carry out such a ministry?

We minister to an abusive God as we would minister to an abusive human. We hold accountable. We avoid easy forgiveness that allows the abuse to continue. We are allies of the part that gravitates toward change. We find the thread of value there and work to weave with it a new cloth. We befriend the aspect that can transform.

Ministry for justice and security means alliance with that part of reality-as-a-whole that gravitates toward change, toward justice, toward a true and healthy love, toward freedom and the relinquishing of dominating power and control. This means standing up to Yahweh, staring him in the eye and naming his abuse – naming and confronting the hurt – facing directly the sources of power, whether they be governments or corporations or natural disasters. It won’t get better if we don’t hold it accountable.

As a minister would say to an abusive husband – “I am judging your behavior, not your humanity” – so we, as befrienders of a world our souls want to treat as a person, can say, in effect, “I am judging your behavior, not your divinity. I am not going to desert you, but I am not going to excuse you either. This is not betrayal. Speaking the truth is the best way I can help you.”

Here, then, is a new psalm – a poem, prayer, and promise.

You are my shepherd.
You provide for me in so many ways.
In you, I have the still waters of peace.
From you, security and love, beauty and abundance.
My cup truly overfloweth.
You also hurt so many humans and other animals and ecosystems.
There is such cruelty in you.
As you are my shepherd, so I will be yours.
I will stand with you, and I will not enable your harming.
I will hold you accountable.
I will stand with you as an ally of that in you which gravitates toward change.
This change will not be easy.
The change is too fundamental to be possible without anguish.
Universal peace and justice will take a long time.
They will not be attained in my lifetime -- they will in yours.
I will be with you, as you have been with me; I commit my life to that.
Together, we will take the next step.
I insist.
Amen.

Training in Compassion 6: Be a Child of Illusion

Spiritual practice requires a certain degree of childlike innocence -- of accepting what seem to be "illusions." Here are some attitudes, hopes, and beliefs that many people regard as illusions:

• Radical transformation is possible.
• The world can be suffused with love.
• One can enjoy a measure of happiness and peace in the crazy world we live in.

Be a child of such "illusion"!

Being a child of illusion doesn't mean that you ignore the more difficult side of life and of humanity. It just means that you don't have to let that side completely colonize your mind and heart.

Why not have, along with our appropriate adult perspective, a child's-eye view of the world? After all, we have been practicing seeing everything as a dream, examining unborn awareness, and resting in the openness of mind.

To be a child of illusion is to take those practices into everyday life and introduce an element of childlike delight. You can stop every now and then and look out the window. Whatever you see, take it in for a moment with wonder. That person in your life who has been giving you a hard time: as you are talking to her and looking at her, notice her eyes and ears and nose and marvel at them.

Conventional reality is not the only reality. It is an important reality, and we have to deal with it. But it is not the only reality, and thinking it is only hems us in, imprisons and confines us. Being a child of illusion -- together with "see everything as a dream," "examine the nature of awareness," "don't get stuck on peace," and "rest in the openness of mind" -- expands and smooths the space we are living in, breaking down the walls we've been putting up for so long.

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For more detail on this spiritual practice, see this longer version here.

You, UU, and Social Justice

Doing justice as you is great. Doing justice as UU is even better.

Take heart, friends. The opposition is forming. In an article two days ago, Quinta Jurecic noted that the administration “is encountering persistent and growing opposition, both from courts and from other pockets of civic life.” There may be an attempt to defy court orders, but Jurecic notes,

“there is significance to the fact that the administration already has a hefty stack of court orders it might want to defy. Litigants have sued the administration over the seemingly unlawful freezing of federal funds, the deferred-resignation program for civil servants, the destruction of USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the handling of sensitive government data by Musk’s aides, the removal of scientific data from government websites, the attempt to write birthright citizenship out of the Constitution, the barring of transgender people from military service, the transfer of undocumented immigrants to Guantánamo Bay, and more.”

Court orders already in have prevented the administration

“from dismissing a government watchdog without explanation, and granted restraining orders barring the administration from slashing funds for crucial scientific research. They have prevented [DOGE] from meddling with Treasury Department systems and insisted that the government halt its transfer of an incarcerated transgender woman to a men’s prison. Four separate judges have issued orders requiring the government to stand down on its effort to dismantle birthright citizenship. The deferred resignation program for federal employees was closed on Wednesday as a number of government employees had expressed defiance. Posted one: 'Before the "buyout" memo, I was ready to go job hunting, but then a revelation hit. I took an oath under this position to the American people.'”

As the Office of Personnel Management

“had called the program a ‘fork in the road,’ some federal employees adopted the spoon as a symbol of their opposition. Earlier this week, federal workers rallied at a protest outside the Capitol holding signs that read Public Service is a Badge of Honor!”

During a visit by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to a U.S. military installation in Germany, an eighth grader organized a walkout at her middle school to protest Hegseth’s attacks on diversity efforts within the military.

And Unitarian Universalists are in on the resistance. We are numerically small, but we are mighty. A number of folks have observed that we UUs punch above our weight when it comes to making a difference for social justice. This week my inbox has brought me notice that our national Unitarian Universalist Association

“has joined with a multifaith coalition and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection to bring a lawsuit challenging Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s “sensitive locations policy. Churches, as well as schools and hospitals, had previously been protected from ICE enforcement actions, but a Department of Homeland Security memo rescinded that protection on January 20.”

Our UUA is standing strong for the principle

“that subjecting places of worship to ICE enforcement actions without a judicial warrant substantially burdens our religious exercise in violation of the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”

Our UUA President, Sofia Betancourt, said,

“We know that many of our congregations include members who are immigrants, both documented and undocumented, and many of you carry out important ministries that serve immigrant communities in church spaces. The UUA is committed to supporting and protecting your ability to continue this vital and life-saving work.”

Our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee has been working for human rights around the globe, with projects, for instance, in Haiti, supporting civil groups on the forefront of resistance and rebuilding. UUSC has been working with partners and allies around the world to end Israel’s human rights violations in the Occupied Territories. UUSC is part of coalition calling for the temporary ceasefire to be permanent, and for a ban on arms transfers to Israel.

If you go to the UUA.org website, the first thing you’ll see at the top of the page is a tool to find a congregation near you. Then there are three prominent links: “Meet your region” which will show you a map of the US divided into the 5 UU regions. (Iowa is in the Mid-America region.) And the second link is “Act for Justice.” That’s such a prominent part of who we are. If you click on that, you’ll read:

“Justice is at the core of our faith. Our congregations are called to make a positive difference in our wider communities. We work to serve, to raise awareness, and to support and partner with people who face injustice. We advocate, organize, and act for justice to live out the values of our faith.”

Unitarians and Universalists haven’t always been so big on social justice. Yes, our denomination was the faith home of a number of prominent abolitionists before the Civil War – but, sad to say, we also had a number of members whose wealth came from enslavement and who quietly (usually), or vociferously (if necessary), snuffed out any fledgling congregational effort to take a stand for abolition.

The Unitarian minister Rev. John Haynes Holmes prominently opposed World War I, but he was roundly denounced by pretty much all the rest of the Unitarian establishment.

In those days, Unitarianism was basically “Christianity Lite.” The story is told that in those times a woman was asked why she was Unitarian, and she answered, “Everybody’s got to be something and Unitarian is the least you can be.”

In the 1920s and 30s we see the beginnings of the shift that would lead to the way we see ourselves today. This was when the humanist movement got going within Unitarianism and, to a lesser extent, within Universalism. Humanism dropped God out of the picture altogether and emphasized the scientific method. Religious concepts were redefined “into human, non-magical, understandings." We started to sing hymns such as:

"Where is our holy church?
Where people unite in the search for beauty, truth and right.
Where is our holy land?
Within the human soul, wherever free minds truly seek with character the goal.”

By the middle of the 20th century, in most Unitarian and Universalist congregations, the crosses had been taken down and the communion silver stashed in a basement closet. Now we were becoming the resistors. We weren’t just a lower-demand version of the prevailing Christianity.

In the 1950s, business interests were combining with mainstream Protestantism to emphasize pro-business values and fight the Cold War. Prayer breakfasts swept the country, bringing together business leaders and church leaders to praise God and denounce communism. The 1950s so thoroughly conflated patriotism and religion that in 1954 Congress added the words “under God” to the pledge of allegiance. It was no longer enough to be “one nation, indivisible.” We had to be “one nation, under God, indivisible” – because the enemy of both the business establishment and the religious establishment was Godless communism.

US church attendance was at its peak in 1959. Just about everybody was in church on Sunday morning, and what was preached there was a theology of God, country, and General Motors -- albeit rather less so in Unitarian and Universalist congregations. We were beginning to find ourselves in a counter-cultural place.

The American Unitarian Association (this was before Unitarians had consolidated with the Universalists) objected to putting “under God” into the pledge of allegiance and argued that the new version violated the separation of church and state. When a plan was advanced to let kids out of public schools on Wednesday afternoon so they could attend religious instruction in their churches, it was a coalition of Unitarians and Jews that resisted.

Through the 19th-century Unitarians had been the epitomize of the well-heeled establishment. Amid the prevailing buttoned-down “God and country” anti-communism of the 1950s, Unitarians shifted to resistance. We weren’t even the slightly more skeptical wing of the respectable elite. We had evolved into centers of resistance to the prevailing conventional opinion.

Yes, the Unitarians and the Universalists go back 200 years in this country – and 400 years in Europe – but we were formed into what we are today during this 1950s phase of massive cultural conformity. The humanism that we moved into in the 30s put us in a position of cultural resistance in the 50s. Our humanism shifted us from insiders to outsiders.

When this congregation’s own Edna Griffin took on Katz drug store in 1948, she did so without overt involvement of her congregation – but also without the kind of objection from her chosen church she would have gotten at many other churches. The way was being paved. The idea that involvement in social and political issues was what it means to live Unitarian faith was catching on. By the mid-1950s we were, tentatively at first, getting involved in Civil Rights issues. In this congregation, we gradually moved from ignoring Edna Griffin’s activism to organizing support of it. By 1965, large numbers of Unitarian Universalists went to Selma to march with Dr. King.

When I was a youth in the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta in the early ‘70s, I saw a lot of anti-Vietnam-war activism going on, and I joined in in what ways I could as a kid. So, yes, Justice is at the core of our faith. It’s what we do. It wasn’t always. It is now, and has been for about 3 generations. On our UUA web page, just below the paragraph I quoted earlier, you’ll read:

“Our intersectional justice priorities are:
Climate Justice (inclusive of Indigenous sovereignty and Climate Resilience)
Decriminalization (inclusive of Racial Justice and Immigration Justice)
Democracy and Electoral Justice (inclusive of Voting Rights and electoral participation)
LGBTQIA+ and Gender Justice (inclusive of reproductive justice and abortion access).”

Our justice work is carried out in five ways:

• Service,
• Education,
• Organizing,
• Advocacy, and
• Witness.

Service means direct helping for people materially suffering: things like soup kitchens and clothing drives.

Education involves organizing classes and forums to learn and teach about justice issues.

Organizing refers to forming partnerships and coalitions to amplify our voice for justice.

Advocacy means speaking and writing publicly in support of justice, including lobbying legislators.

And witness refers to using the media effectively to get our message out – whether through paid advertising or news coverage.

Here at First Unitarian of Des Moines, we have a range of social justice initiatives. Our Faith in Action Coordinating Team selects two nonprofit organizations each year to which to particularly encourage our members to contribute. This year, we’re supporting Al Exito! and the Young Women’s Resource Center.

For Environmental Justice, we have our Green Sanctuary initiative. We have been accredited by the UUA as a Green Sanctuary since 2015. Our ongoing Green Sanctuary team focuses on engaging church members on energy efficiency, recycling, composting for our building and grounds. The team also promotes outside activities that our members can get involved with to improve the greater Des Moines community.

We have a FEDS task force. FEDS stands for Feed Every Deserving Soul – or every deserving stomach – although it seems to me that “deserving” is redundant. There’s no such thing as an undeserving stomach or soul. Our FEDS task force facilitates projects to alleviate hunger in central Iowa. This task force prepares and serves dinner monthly for Des Moines’ unhoused population.

Our Immigration Justice task force heads up our congregation’s is involvement in immigration and sanctuary issues in Central Iowa. We are a part of the Iowa Sanctuary Movement. In 2017, we became a Sanctuary Church for people facing the threat of immediate deportation. Subsequently, our immigration task force has been involved in various efforts, including assisting asylum seekers and other issues as they arise.

QTAG is our Queer and Transgender Action Group. This group increases awareness of queer and transgender lives and issues within the church community, and provides a safe haven and resources for queer and transgender people in need. The group educates the congregation on gender identity is, the difference from sexual orientation, and how to support queer and the transgender folk in our community.

We have a relatively new task force called Peace, Justice, and Democracy that has been organized for education and advocacy on this broad range of issues.

You should know the acronym CBCO – it’s Congregation-Based Community Organizing. It’s a thing. Our congregation is a part of a couple CBCO efforts. One of them is AMOS – which evokes the Biblical prophet Amos, who cried out “let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” – and which is also an acronym for A MidIowa Organizing Strategy. AMOS members include about 30 churches and other community organizations that work together to plan and carry out projects to move the needle toward justice in central Iowa.

There’s also a statewide CBCO of just UU congregations called IUUWAN: Iowa UUWitness Advocacy Network. IUUWAN brings UUs together to effect state-level actions for justice.

Justice is at the core of our faith, and the need during these times is great. What can you do? There’s an awful Unitarian Universalists are doing. You can add your efforts to one of our Social Justice initiatives at this congregation, or you can form a new initiative. Our policy declares that if three members of this congregation get together for a social justice initiative, they will be recognized as a social justice group of this congregation – meaning you can get space in our Intercom newsletter, use the building for meetings, and get spotlight segments in the Sunday service.

I know that many of you do social justice outside of the congregation. On your own, you might be a part of Habitat for Humanity, or be in the Sierra club for environmental justice, or be in the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) or Planned Parenthood or write checks contributing to various justice efforts. Thank you for that. That, too, is living your faith, and it’s so important. I will just note that it is helpful to have a religious grounding for your social justice work.

We are here to nurture our spirits and help heal our world – and those are not two separate things. We help heal our world by nurturing our spirits. Yes, the world becomes more whole when any person – including you – nurtures their spirit, becomes more grounded in a spiritual awareness that everything is connected. And we nurture our spirits by helping heal our world. The work of justice expands and deepens our spirits.

You’ve heard the saying: comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. But those, also, are not two separate things. Let yourself be afflicted out of comfortable complacency, and you will discover that the action you are goaded to take ends up for you a comfort against all that afflicts you. Being afflicted in your comfort functions in fact to comfort you in your affliction. So your justice work is not a separate thing from your spiritual path – it’s a crucial part of your spiritual path. And your spiritual path – the meditation, your prayer life, your jounaling, the fostering of friendships with other UUs – strengthens and supports you for justice work. It’s a helpful thing to bring them together – to weave together your religion and your social values rather than practicing them separately.

So if you’re ardent in your support of the ACLU, or Planned Parenthood, or the Sierra Club, maybe get together with some other members of these congregation who share that commitment and form a support task force for the organization you love. Doing justice as you is great. Doing justice as UU is even better. It helps to think together about how the work is a reflection of your theology, your faith.

Clarify and articulate the UU values that impel your justice work. We have to be the change you wish to see. As I mentioned last week, to promote a world that is less cruel, we do need to attend to reducing our own penchants for cruelty, even if unintentional. Model being centered, passionate, open-minded, and welcoming. That’s bringing your spirituality to the justice task.

And when you’re talking to people outside this congregation about the justice issue you are working for, identify yourself as a person of faith – a Unitarian Universalist. Make references to your congregation and couch your advocacy in terms of your UU values. Also: include rituals in your activities: start with a chalice lighting, reading, and/or meditation. End with a closing reading or brief sharing. Always plan time for reflection and discussion following significant activities or events. And ask the others in your social action group about their personal and spiritual motivations.

We Unitarian Universalists are doing and have done a lot. We’d like to make a visual display of that, and that’s where the sticky note comes in. Please write social justice initiative that you have been a part of in the last year – or that you want to be a part of in the next year. Add your sticky to our map in the back – put it in the sea of service, the education estuary, the cove of community organizing, the advocacy alps, or the woods of public witness. We’ll make an inspiring visual representation of all that we are doing, have done, will do.

May it be so. Blessed be. Amen.

Training in Compassion 5: Rest in Openness of Mind

Rest in the openness of mind. There's no need to figure everything out. We can just be alive. We can breathe in and breathe out and let go and just trust our life, trust our body. Our body and our life know what to do. Let them.

Of course, life is complicated and we have many things to work out in our material and psychological lives. But also we can find a place of refuge sometimes. We can just return right now to ourselves -- to our actual concrete presence, in the body, in the breath, in the mind and heart.

If we had the confidence that this were possible at any moment, then we would feel much more at ease with our lives and it would be easier and happier to take care of all our complicated problems. We could do it without anxiety or stress. We would trust our life.

Rest in the openness of mind. Getting used to this phrase and its meaning, it can be an inspiration for you. Ability to bring it up at any time during the day, is a powerful advantage.

Maybe the easiest way to rest in the openness of mind is: just stop and take a breath. One breath, maybe two or three. You could do this now. Take a breath and return to the openness of mind. Breathing in, breathing out, and in the feeling of the breath noticing whatever is there and letting go of it, easily, gently.

If you are bored, or disturbing things are going on, it is still possible in this precise moment to notice breathing, notice the body, notice the feeling of being present in this moment. This will relax you. This is what it feels like to rest in the openness of mind.

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For more detail about this spiritual practice, see this longer version here.

Borders and Belonging

Back in 2018, during our first go-round with this president, Adam Serwer wrote an analysis for Atlantic magazine that seemed the only explanation for the inexplicable. The title was: "The Cruelty is the Point." (Serwer later expanded his article into a book of the same title.) I read a lot of articles and forget most of them, but that stuck with me. Serwer said, “The president and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear.”

Oh, gosh.

Now, a liberal, according to Judith Shklar’s famous definition, is a person for whom cruelty is the worst thing they do. This doesn’t mean liberals are always less cruel than others, but it does mean that when we see we have been cruel, we regret it. We recognize that humans are prone to be cruel, and, for liberals, that's the worst in us. Nonliberals have a different idea of what is worst: such as dishonor -- and a particular conception of "weakness" is usually involved in the idea of what is dishonorable. On that view, it's better to be cruel than dishonorable. It's a fundamentally different orientation to life.

Now a new level of harsh and cruel anti-immigrant policies are being implemented – and we face the reality that a lot of our neighbors support those policies – and don’t regard cruel as a criticism. Indications are: they rejoice in it.

Next week’s sermon will be “You, UU, and Social Justice.” I’ll talk about the ways that we do resist and can resist. Today, I want to talk instead about how we open our hearts to make ourselves more compassionate, more ready to reach across borders and walk across borders. Today our question is: What can I do to commit myself to loving-kindness across borders? The first step in standing up against cruelty is making ourselves less cruel.

I’ll look to the Book of Ruth for an instructive parable for us. Before I get to that, let’s take a moment to be clear about what exactly borders are – and what they’re for.

Two things: you need a border, and it needs to be porous. A cell has to have a cell wall to hold it together – but it has to be a porous wall. We have to have skin to hold us together. And the skin needs to be porous. It needs a flow coming in and out. We die if we don’t have skin holding us together, defining us and making us a definite thing. We also die if we are sealed off and nothing goes in or out. We need to let in, and let out, air and nutrients.

The average human adult has 7 million pores on their skin: 5 million hair follicle pores that secrete oils, plus 2 million sweat gland pores. Your pores secrete and also take in – which is how, for example, nicotine patches work. You have to have boundaries – definition. And there has to be a flow through those boundaries – just to be biologically alive.

But we humans are also social animals– in fact, hypersocial animals, as I have often said. We need communication, connection flowing in, out, and through. We need ideas and love to flow in, to flow out, and flow through us – or we perish. Through our connections, we form ourselves into groups, and the group also needs a definition, a boundary – some way to identify itself and be identified as a group. We need to belong, and our belonging requires a sense of US. So borders, boundaries, and belonging are wrapped up in each other. You don’t know who you are if you don’t know whose you are.

But the group’s border also needs to be porous: to take in and to give out. Whether the group is a nation, or a congregation – a trade union, sports team, or a gender or ethnic identity -- its definition of itself cannot be rigid or static, but must be somewhat ambiguous, vague, and evolving -- without being too much so.

For the last three years now, Ukraine has been trying its darndest to defend its borders – to fight off and push out an incursion that threatens its existence. But fending off a very real organized hostile takeover attempt is one thing. Delusions of takeover from imagined dangerous others are quite different.

Fear – for our individual person, or for the group which is our belonging – heightens focus on our border, on protecting ourselves by shoring up that border however we can. Fear morphs from a useful tool, blaring a warning when needed, to a pervasive condition: consuming and debilitating. Here in the U.S., division and polarization tears us apart. There is fear of the other in anti-immigrant attitudes, and in the cruelty of our policies toward people who live in different, poorer neighborhoods. There’s fear of the other driving every form of white supremacy, misogyny, and colonialism.

A few years ago, for the 2021-22 church year, the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Common Read that year was Zach Norris’ Defund Fear – or, as it was originally titled, We Keep Us Safe. Zach Norris points out that what really keeps us safe is – or would be – good schools, good jobs, effective affordable health care, clean and safe drinking water and air, safe roads and bridges. Funding for what really keeps us safe has been eroding for decades. Instead, we’ve been erecting a more and more pervasive framework of fear, the four key elements of which are deprivation, suspicion, punishment, and isolation.

We’ve been erecting and fortifying borders to keep THEM away from US. This has only reduced our safety. Our fears grow and grow, fueling counterproductive reactions that further reduce our safety in a vicious cycle. Instead we need to cross borders, reach out to whoever is, or has been perceived as, OTHER. WE keep us safe – as the book’s original title says – and we can do so only if we embrace a larger WE instead of fearfully shrinking our WE.

So what do we do about that? Well, Unitarian Universalists are doing a lot – there’s a lot of ways to join in – and I’ll be more specific about that next week. Today, I want us to pause a moment and look behind that question. Sometimes when we ask “what do I do about it?” – or “what does our congregation do about it?” – the question behind the question is: "How do I make other people agree with me? How do I change THEM?" We think: “I see the problem; I am not the problem. It’s those other people, people who watch the TV news of that reprehensible network, and who voted in these reprehensible leaders."

Thus the war between relatively privileged red America and relatively privileged blue America upstages the needs of the more-often-politically-disengaged poorer communities most at risk. The challenge for us is to find ways to cross two different borders – to open our hearts across the red/blue divide and across the class divide.

“How do we change the system?” is a good and important question, but we must always also be asking: how do we change ourselves? To help us think about that question, let’s recall together an old, old story – possibly familiar to you – about a woman who did cross a border, and the difference it made. Perhaps it will inspire you to creatively imagine a way that you might reach, and step, across a border that you have for too long treated as impermeable.

The story is that of Ruth, the Moabite, who crossed borders to stay with her mother-in-law Naomi as she returned to Bethlehem in Judah. I’m inspired to bring that story to our attention this morning because of the work of Padraig O Tuama and Glenn Jordan, two Irishmen who a few years ago began leading workshops bringing together people across the divisions of the Brexit issue. In the face of the deep and wide social and political divisions, O Tuama and Jordan led people through an exploration of the Book of Ruth. The story of her border crossing helped participants cross the borders that separated them from others. O Tuama and Jordan were looking for

“a story that might lead us to say things other than the things we are shouting at each other in the letters section of newspapers, comments sections of websites and social media, shouty parts of shout programs on radio and television” (Borders and Belonging: The Book of Ruth: A Story for Our Times xii).

In these polarized times, O Tuama and Jordan asked:

“Can we be held in some kind of narrative creativity by a story whose origins we do not know?”

The Book of Ruth, they found, offered just such a container of narrative creativity. The book of Ruth is short -- just four chapters – a drama in four acts.

Act 1. It’s the time of the judges. A famine comes to Judah. Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their sons Mahlon and Chilion cross borders and go to Moab. Elimelech dies. The two sons marry Moabite women, but then, after about 10 years, the sons also both die. Naomi packs up to return to Bethlehem. Her two daughters-in-law expect to go with her, but she tells them to return to their own mothers and remarry. One of them, Orpah, reluctantly does so. But the other, Ruth, pleads: “Do not press me to leave you or turn back from following you. Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die – there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you.” So Naomi and Ruth cross the border and return to Bethlehem, and arrive at the beginning of the barley harvest.

Act 2. Word gets around Bethlehem of Ruth’s remarkable loyalty and devotion to Naomi. To support her mother-in-law and herself, Ruth goes to the fields to glean. As it happened, the field she goes to belongs to a man named Boaz, who, impressed by what he’s heard of the young woman’s devotion to her mother-in-law, is kind to Ruth. Ruth tells Naomi of Boaz's kindness, and Ruth continues to glean in his field through the remainder of barley and wheat harvest.

Act 3. Boaz, being a close relative of Naomi's husband's family, is therefore obliged by the levirate law (or may feel obligated by the spirit of that law) to marry Ruth to carry on his family's inheritance. Naomi sends Ruth to the threshing floor at night where Boaz slept, telling Ruth to "uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what you are to do." Ruth does so. Boaz awakes and asks her who she is. She answers, “I am Ruth, your servant. Spread your cloak over your servant, for you are a redeeming kinsman.” Boaz tells her there is a closer male relative. In the morning, Boaz sends Ruth home with six measures of barley, then he goes into the city.

Act 4. Boaz meets with the unnamed closer male relative whom he had mentioned. Boaz says, “Naomi is selling the parcel of land that belonged to our kinsman Elimilech. As the closest male relative, you have first shot at redeeming it if you want it.”
The relative says, “I will redeem it.”
Boaz says, “You will also be acquiring Ruth to maintain her dead husband’s name on his inheritance.”
Then the relative says, “I cannot redeem it for myself without damaging my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption yourself.”
So Boaz redeems the property, and Ruth. Ruth and Boaz marry. They have a son named Obed. We are told Obed will become the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David.

To understand what this story is doing in the Hebrew Bible, first we need to understand what Moab means to the Israelites. Moabites are despised. As Glenn Jordan explains:

“In Hebrew folklore Moab was stereotyped as a place lacking in hospitality, and with some justification. There is a memory preserved in the words of the Torah from another time of hunger and distress. In Numbers 22, the Israelites, recently freed from Egypt, are travelling through the wilderness on the way to the land of promise and they camp in the land of Moab. There is a reference in Deuteronomy 23:4 to a request made by the people to the Moabites for bread and water. The king of the Moabites, Balak, terrified by the number of people he would be required to supply… refuses their request for aid and shelter. Balak even hires a man to pronounce curses on them as he expels them from his land.” (27)

So, the Israelites do not like Moabites. They despise them with a special vigor beyond their general distrust of foreigners. The sentiment is codified in Deuteronomy 23:3:

“No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.”

And Ruth is a Moabite, as the text continually emphasizes. Hardly does the text ever say “Ruth,” without saying “Ruth the Moabite.” At one point, Boaz's fieldhand even describes her as, “Ruth the Moabite,...from Moab” --just to emphasize that her country of origin is not to be overlooked.

Yet Ruth’s devotion, her lovingkindness to Naomi, is clear. She declares: "your people will be my people." When they get to Bethlehem, Ruth takes the initiative in providing for them, saying, “let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain.”

And, the story tells us, Ruth ends up the great-grandmother of King David, Israel’s greatest ruler. She makes a big contribution to Israelite history.

But does the Hebrew Bible really need this story illustrating that foreigners can be decent people who make a positive contribution so we shouldn’t be hostile toward them? The admonitions were already in Exodus:

“You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” (22:21)

And in Leviticus:

“When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” (19:33)

Evidently that was not enough, and to see why, we need to look back to what was going on in Judah around the time when the Hebrew Bible was taking its form.

By about 601 BCE, the kingdom of Judah was a vassal state paying tribute to Babylonia. Judah made a series of attempts to escape Babylonian dominance. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia laid siege to Jerusalem in 597, and again, 10 years later, in 587. He razed the city, destroyed the walls, demolished Solomon’s temple, and exiled the Jews to Babylonia. About 50 years later, Persia conquered Babylon, and Cyrus, King of Persia, decreed that the Jewish people return to Jerusalem. It was during the period of Babylonian captivity, that the Hebrew Bible began to form as various oral and written traditions were brought together.

Just after the exile, further writings were added – in particular the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Ezra the priest and Nehemiah the governor were the two best-known leaders of the Jewish community in the years just after the return to Jerusalem. In the books for which they are named, we read that Ezra insists on obedience to the Mosaic law’s separation from non-Jews, and that Nehemiah encloses Jerusalem with a wall and purges the community from all things foreign in order to build a distinctive Jewish identity.

It's in that context that this little story of Ruth, which had probably been a part of the oral tradition for a couple of centuries, got written down and emphasized, so much so that it became scripture. I’m saying maybe the Book of Ruth is in the Hebrew Bible specifically to push back against the rather xenophobic outlook of Ezra and Nehemiah. As Glenn Jordan writes, there may be

“occasions in history when the proper response to the times is not another war or new legislation, not even an election, but a work of art. In this case, the process of gathering an oral account and committing it to writing stands in front of the juggernaut of history in an attempt to divert the hearts of people towards some lasting values, and to remind them of their better selves.” (47)

So maybe that’s why this story is there: to address a felt need to counterbalance Ezra-Nehemiah. In the face of the insularity and division and the border-enforcing of Ezra and Nehemiah, we needed Ruth, the Moabite, the immigrant, the border-crosser, to call us back to our better selves.

There’s Nehemiah proclaiming, “We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons” (10:30), but a few books away there’s Ruth the Moabite standing before us to say, “Excuse me?” While Deuteronomy had said, no Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord even to the tenth generation, the Book of Ruth tells us that the great King David was just three generations down from a Moabite.

So if you're asking, "What can I do about divisions all around us, and the mistreatment of people on the wrong sides of those divides?" and what you mean is, "What can I do to change those other people who are so foolish and pigheaded as to disagree with me?" then I don't know if that can be done. But if you're asking, "What can I do to commit myself to the open-hearted devotion and loving-kindness across borders that Ruth exemplified?" that is a more promising question.

And if that's your question, let me turn it back to you: What can you do? You yourself can best answer that -- if you set your mind to answering it. May that question, and not our fears, command our attention -- that question: What can I do to commit myself to loving-kindness across borders? May this question be our guide. Amen.

Training in Compassion 4: Don't Get Stuck on Peace

We’re drawing on a list of ancient Tibetan teachings called Lojong, and Norman Fischer’s explication of these. We had the teaching “See Everything as a Dream." And then we had "Examine the Nature of Awareness." If you took those practices to heart and plunged into them, then we may now need a caveat: Don't get stuck on peace.

That’s our training in compassion this week: Don’t get stuck on Peace. Every truth, no matter how important, can also become something you get stuck on – including the teaching to see everything as a dream and examine the nature of awareness. It's important to grasp that our senses create for us mere useful illusions of the world, and that our brains generate a subjective sense of a self which is also an illusion, but these truths can make you feel a bit removed from your life.

You begin to focus on the uncanny feeling of time passing, and time begins to seem strange and profound. It begins to dawn on you that your usual sense of self is some kind of mental habit that might not have any actual basis. You notice how clunky and crude many of your self-thoughts actually are. You might find this a little bit disturbing.

Or, on the other hand, you might be thinking, "This is great! Everything really is a dream!” That’s an important and liberating truth. At the same time, it quickly becomes the next trap to escape. Don't get stuck on peace.

Seeing clearly that what is naively taken for reality is an illusory dream -- and that there is no self at the center of that illusion -- is a crucial step. But it is not the last step.

The point of "don't get stuck on peace" is: don't get excited about the empty, dream-like nature of everything, because you've now conceptualized it and made it into something, an idea, and soon that idea is going to trip you up. Forget about how great it is to be nobody, because that's just another excuse. It's too easy to make these slogans into belief systems. The important thing is to hold them lightly. Don't think you have understood them. They are just devices. Take them with a grain of salt.

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More detail on this spiritual practice is in this longer version here.

Borders and Boundaries

Our monthly theme for February is Borders and Boundaries. These two words are synonyms – or they used to be. They both mean the outer edge, the bound or the limit of something. In recent years, though, the words have come to be used in different ways. A “border” is more often now used to mean the kind of line that shuts people out -- like a "border wall," either personal or national. We’ve come to think of a border as something to be crossed or surmounted or maybe expanded.

And boundaries, on the other hand – like your personal boundaries – are something to be maintained and respected and upheld. So, for example, "Doctors without Borders" is a wonderful organization, and a wonderful concept – providing necessary medical care without regard to the political or social borders that function to limit access to care. But "Doctors without Boundaries" sounds like a bad re-boot of the TV show, “House MD.”

Some lines, it’s good to cross. Other lines are better respected. You’ve probably heard the verse by Edwin Markham, titled “Outwitted.”

He drew a circle that shut me out -
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him In!

In those four lines we see both the good and the bad of the lines we draw – the boundaries and borders we put up. Some lines shut people out. Other lines hold people together. And sometimes it’s the same line: holding US together and keeping out THEM.

Our Unitarian Universalist seminary, Meadville Lombard in Chicago, has had a requirement that students design a focused project to carry out during their internship in which the student shows how they cross borders in their ministry – borders of race or culture, gender or generation. Crossing borders is a crucial component of building a more just and harmonious world – a more beloved community. At the same time, Meadville Lombard’s course offering also include one called, “Healthy Boundaries, Healthy Ministry.”

Those lines that shut people out: we have to find ways to erase them or at least move across them with greater facility. Boundaries, on the other hand, are a good thing. Having good boundaries is a part of being psychologically and emotionally healthy, and a key to effective leadership. What I’d like to do today is first talk about good boundaries: what that means and why it’s helpful to have them. Then we’ll take a look at borders – the lines we draw that shut people out. The objective is some greater clarity on what sorts of lines we should be looking to cross, and what sort to respect and uphold.

Having good boundaries is also called being self-defined, differentiated, or having a well-developed self. Good boundaries are what let you be guided by what you think of yourself rather than other people’s opinions. Without those boundaries, your identity merges with the people around you. You’re more susceptible to “groupthink.” On the one hand, you’re more controlled by other people’s judgments. On the other hand, you’re also more controlling – more devoted to actively or passively trying to control others.

The self-differentiated person, on the other hand, is more able to say, “I’m going to do me, you do you. I’m not interested in judging you, or in your judgments of me, but I am interested in nonjudgmentally watching how we each are and looking for ways we might harmonize or complement each other. There’s not a right answer or a blueprint for how we should work together or play together or be together. Rather, as I do me and you do you, I’m open to being surprised, to discovering unexpected creative ways that our different gifts can synchronize, or contribute in different ways to a common goal.”

Many psychologists note that a person’s degree of self-differentiation, while it probably has some genetic component, is largely influenced by family relationships during childhood and adolescence. Once established, the level of self boundaries tends often to be set for life. It can be changed, but it’s hard. It takes a structured and long-term effort to change it.

People with poor boundaries may be chameleons or bullies, or vacillate back and forth. Chameleons depend so heavily on the acceptance and approval of others that they quickly adjust what they think, say, and do to please others. Bullies likewise depend on acceptance and approval of others, but pursue their need by dogmatically proclaiming what others should be like and pressuring them to conform. Disagreement is a threat to chameleons and bullies alike. In both cases there’s a need for conformity – whether by conforming to others or making them conform to me.

A third type of poorly differentiated person would be the extreme rebel who routinely opposes the positions of others. Reactionary opposition is just as much a way of being controlled by others as reactionary agreement is.

We are each unique and we bring unique gifts and perspectives to the table – of course. But when we don’t have good boundaries, we blur our own uniqueness, or seek to minimize others’, or both.

What about George Herbert Mead? The great American sociologist made the point that the self is a "generalized other." We create our sense of self from generalizing from what we learn about others. Does this mean we can't really be differentiated from others? No, it doesn't mean that. The self is a generalized other, but that generalizing is a creative activity -- in large part an unconscious creativity. We all come up with different generalizations. We are generalizing from different pools of experience with others, and even when two people, like twins, grow up with the same pool of other people around them, they creatively generalize in different ways. What’s more, we’re always learning, and the self is always growing and changing – but, again, this need not be a process driven by a felt need for conformity. What about our our historic seventh principle? That principle says there is an interconnected web of all existence in which we are a part. We depend on each other. But this also does not mean we can't be self-differentiated within that web.

A person with good boundaries can stay calm and clear-headed in the face of conflict, criticism, and rejection. They can assess criticism in the context of their own long-term principles and considered values rather only reacting from the emotions they’re feeling in the moment.

Boundaries keep you contained – rather than a puddle of emotions and needs for acceptance. Boundaries thus afford integrity: the ability to live from a more-or-less consistent set of more-or-less thoughtful values rather than being pulled this way and that by the shifting currents of opinion and judgment of others.

Last month’s theme was “Vow” – and the packet for the month included exercises for drawing out of yourself and articulating your great life vow. Implicit is the idea that other people will have different vows for their life. Keeping your eye on your vow, while also appreciating and collaborating with those with different vows: that’s good boundaries.

In a couple, when the partners are self-defined, they can each talk about what they’re thinking and listen carefully – rather than taking on anxiety about the partner’s issue and reacting out of their anxiety. Each can appreciate the other’s decision-making strengths while also able to think things through for themselves. Neither assumes the other generally knows best, but looks at each situation fresh. They can talk about their fears or concerns without expecting the other to fix or solve them, but simply because sharing our fears helps us think more clearly about them. When they bring their anxieties to each other, the interaction doesn’t escalate the anxiety. Their boundaries help keep the anxiety contained and thus manageable. Each is a resource for the other: emotionally available without either fixing or blaming.

It’s helpful here to recall the distinction between a request and a demand. The difference between a request and a demand is in whether you’re upset if it isn’t met. Sometimes its clear that a demand is being made: "Do what I’m saying or I’m going to be angry or upset!" That’s a demand. Other times, what is presented as a request is not revealed to really have been a demand until after the answer is “no.” But the extent to which you are upset if the answer is “no,” is the extent to which there was some demand in your request. You might hide the upset – the anger or disappointment – and pretend you’re not upset, but if you are, then you were demanding, not simply requesting.

When we have good boundaries, when our perceived worth doesn’t depend on things going our way, we can make true requests – that is, requests which, if answered no, we can roll with that answer without getting upset or anxious.

Good boundaries aren’t a barrier against caring, but are a protection of our integrity. They don’t make us detached or aloof, but allow us to be present to a situation without taking anything personally, without taking on the anxiety. The notion of being a nonanxious presence in the midst of anxiety once seemed self-contradictory to me. My strategy for being present was to show that I was just as worried or scared or angry about the situation as anybody else. My strategy for being nonanxious was to check out, become detached, emotionally distant. But the reality is that taking on someone else’s anxiety isn’t really being present to it. Nor is detaching and not being present to it being nonanxious – detachment is one way anxiety may manifest. The only way to be truly present is to be nonanxious, and the only way to be truly nonanxious is to be present. And that requires being self-differentiated, having good boundaries that allow you to know that your worth, your dignity, the worth-while-ness of your life is not threatened by whatever mess of which you might happen to find yourself in the middle. Having good boundaries solves the 84th problem. Do you know what the 84th problem is? I’ve told the parable before, in a sermon last May, and it's worth re-telling. The Buddha comes to town, and a farmer comes to see him and starts complaining about his problems. His wife this; and his children that; and the ox is sick; and the soil is poor; and there hasn’t been enough rain and, if there were, the roof would leak; and the people to whom he sells his rice are cheating him.
The Buddha stops him and says: You have 83 problems.
Farmer says: That sounds about right. How do I fix them?
Buddha says: You’ll always have 83 problems. Maybe you solve one, or it goes away on its own, but another pops up to take its place. Always 83 problems.
Farmer says: Well, what good are you?
Buddha says: I can help with the 84th problem.
Farmer says: What’s the 84th problem?
Buddha says: You think you should have no problems.

For the person with good boundaries, problems don’t bother them. Problems arise. One responds to them as well as one can. This is life. Whether you call them problems or challenges, there’s always the next one to meet. Having good boundaries doesn’t keep out your 83 problems, but it does keep out the 84th problem. Your problems then don’t define you; you aren’t consumed with the thought that you shouldn’t be having this problem.

The 84th problem is the extra. Your problems (or challenges) are enough by themselves; you don't need to add anything extra. But we often do add extra problem to our problems. Whenever we're annoyed by the problem, when we think it's wrong that the problem exists, when we let the problem trigger our reactivity and upset our equanimity, we are adding extra problem to our problem. Good boundaries keep out that extra bit. Life IS problems, or we’d have nothing to do with ourselves, no reason for being. This is a very ancient spiritual insight and teaching. All things belong. On the one hand, being mindful that all things belong eases anxiety, irritation, annoyance, anger. On the other hand, it’s also true that if all things belong, then so does your anxiety and anger. This, too, is recognized in ancient spiritual teachings, though the very modern perspective of evolutionary psychology helps us understand it.

Anxiety belongs because our ancestors needed anxiety. Anxiety about that lion prompted them to run away, anxiety about a brewing storm prompted them to seek shelter. Homo sapiens emerged with a particularly advanced capacity to worry about the future, to imagine dangers that weren’t immediately visible. This was probably driven by the processes that made us not only social animals – as wolves, orcas, emperor penguins, chimpanzees and others are – but ultra-social: able to adaptively cooperate at an extraordinary level because of an astonishing capacity to imagine ourselves into another person’s situation, grasp what they’re trying to do, so we can help them do it.

We were motivated to be helpful because we were able to imagine the future – farther into the future and in more detail than other species. I would help you because I imagined a future in which you would help me – and that capacity allowed systems of reciprocal altruism to begin to form. As our symbolic language emerged, we were able to communicate to create shared imaginary futures, and then cooperate to bring them about. Which is all very wonderful. But there’s a rub. Our ability to imagine the future, and to be goaded to appropriate action by a little anxiety about that future, can easily go too far. Evolution gave us these goads, but it didn’t give us very good mechanisms for turning them off when they’re no longer helpful. Our brains were built to worry, and it’s very easy for them to fall into a pattern of worrying even when it does us no good, and only produces chronic stress and anxiety.

Making matters worse, the futures we imagine aren’t just worries about the weather, or predators, or food sources. Our imagined futures are heavily peopled. "Can Bob be counted on?" "Was Sandra lying, and she’ll stab me in the back?" Our brains evolved to negotiate the fantastically complex balancing act of wanting and needing to cooperate, but also guard against being taken advantage of – balancing the costs and risks of cooperation against possible benefits.

This balancing act is carried out through – or manifests as – our sense of fairness. We are as ultra-social as ants or bees, but for us, our sense of fairness is the crucial regulator of our sociability. My brain is built to monitor possible future scenarios of people being unfair to me, and whether they’ll think that I’m unfair to them, and whether they’ll think I’ll think they’re unfair to me – it’s exhausting. Or, rather, it seems like it would be exhausting, but in fact our brains seem to rarely tire of thinking about fairness. Our ability to think about fairness in such complicated ways is also our beauty as a species.

So we are built to worry what other people think, and to want to be in agreement with them. Yet, the more clear we are about who we are, the less need we’ll have to be self-protective, i.e., defensive. Ironically, the better your boundary is, the less need you have for a protective border wall of defensess. That is: those who are self-differentiated don’t have to be self-protective. When difference and conflict aren’t a threat to your sense of self, then ego defense mechanisms don’t get triggered, and the walls that block empathy don’t go up. When boundaries are solid, borders don’t have to be. When we’re comfortable with ourselves, we can let people in -- we can take down the walls that shut them out.

So how are your boundaries, would you say? Today, after the service, please pair off with one other person – next to you in line at the refreshment table, or anywhere. Pair off with one other person and exchange your self-assessment of your boundaries. Would you say your boundaries are excellent? Pretty good? A bit of a struggle for you sometimes? How are your boundaries? Pair off and share that with one other person after today’s service.

When we don’t require conformity of ourselves, or of others, we can be free to connect with and work with very different people, appreciating and not being threatened by their difference – while also appreciating and not being scared by our own differentness. This is true on the personal level, and it is true on the national level. As a nation, the US has lost its boundary -- that is, we've lost clarity about who we are as a people. We are, as it were, “out of bounds.” We used to have consensus about a basic story about what it meant to be Americans, and we were defined by that story. That old story had problems. It was a story shot through with patriarchal and white supremacist assumptions, and the critique that helped dismantle the old story was well warranted.

But a new and better story has not emerged. In the interim, we don’t know who we are, don't know what "America" is. In compensation for our lack of boundary definition, the national psyche instead turns to border protection. A lot of us want to put up a wall -- blocking empathy, blocking compassion, blocking our own growth, blocking the very connections that our spirits crave. We are afraid that if we let people in, they will change us -- and we have that fear because we aren't, as a nation, self-differentiated and clear about who we are to start with.

Emma Lazarus wrote the words that appear on our Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

She wrote that in 1883. We were then a nation with a clearer sense of who we were. We were confident that we could take in newcomers without losing our sense of national selfhood -- that newcomers would enrich us with their differences while at the same time would learn to cherish certain common values with the rest of us. Today, we do not have that confidence. So instead we are self-protective, defensive, erecting border walls, shutting out "the other," and cutting off our nose to spite our face.

It's true that that confidence was a confidence in white supremacy and patriarchy -- that the values we were confident newcomers would pick up were values that would leave the basic supremacist power structure unchallenged. Whether we can learn to have confidence in ourselves -- trust in ourselves and our neighbors -- as a nation of pluralism and equality remains to be seen.

As our national norms break down, lines are crossed. Lines of civility are crossed. These lines were helpful, as David Brooks once noted. Those lines, he said, help

"political leaders hold two opposing ideas in their heads simultaneously:...the first is that your political opponents are wrong about many things and should be defeated in elections. The second is that you still need them. You need them to check your excesses, compensate for your blind spots and correct your mistakes."

But it's gotten easier and easier to cross the lines that held our leaders in a system that helped them know how to work together amidst disagreements, and find and build on common ground while respecting the beneficial role of political opposition. Crossing those lines of civility and cooperation makes it harder and harder to cross the other lines, the ones that exclude and shut out -- the lines of enmity and othering.

The task before us is daunting. But as Rabbi Tarfon says, be not daunted. "You are not obligated to complete the task. Nor are you free to abandon it." The task is to strengthen our boundary – clarify our principles, our values – our vow -- know our story and stick to it, develop equanimity in our integrity, bring our nonanxious presence. Only thus will we be able then to cross borders, replace walls with bridges, join hands, and end the loneliness. May it be so. Amen.