New Consciousness

The videos on TV and the Internet of streams of refugees pouring through fields, across the border into Hungary breaks my heart.  There are so many people.  I've never seen so many people moving, like giant stream of migrating snow geese or multitudes of salmon swimming up a river.  When I look closely at the people, I see families, mothers with young children, teens, old people, crippled people in wheelchairs, I see a flood that will not be stopped.  The Europeans are calling them migrants, meaning they migrate for work but there is no moral imperative to help them.  But these people are refugees fleeing political instability of the failing states in the Middle East, war and outrageous extreme violence of ISIS not poverty.   These are people that have left everything they had behind seeking a safe place to live.  It is said this is the largest movement of people since World War II.  This is a time for the Euro-Zone and the world to look to their consciences and seek a solution.  So many lives in chaos demands a moral response.  As the Lakotan Native Americans told us last June, we, humans, are all one.  What happens to you, happens to me and vice versa.  And if this crisis isn't enough, we have the growing Climate Change crisis.  We are truly all in this together with our one Earth as our home.  Humanity needs to rise to a new level of thinking and leave behind the selfishness that has characterized our human history.   Things are changing and a new level of consciousness is needed to solve the problems we are facing.  It is too easy to fall back on past responses - taking care of ourselves.  Now we know we are all connected.  We humans must find a way to live together in a sustainable and peaceful way.  

Getting in Shape for Dingle

I'm more than a little anxious about a part of our upcoming trip to Europe: our walking tour in Ireland.  We thought we ought to do something exciting while visiting Erik in his new home in Cambridge UK and came up with the idea of a walking tour.  We're going to the Dingle Peninsula in SW Ireland.  The anxiety producing part for me is that we booked a private tour on which we're scheduled to walk 10-12 miles per day.  The Irish company arranges for the B and B, plans the tour, picks you up at the B and B hands you maps and drops you at the trail.  They also pick you up at the end of the day and take you and your luggage (which they have taken care of during the day) to the next B and B.  The good part is that we can walk at our own pace.  But the length of the walk and pace of my companions, two very tall, fast walking guys, has me stressed.  So to get in shape I've been walking the treadmill at the gym.  I feel a bit like a hamster, walking and walking, getting sweaty while going nowhere.  It's got me thinking about my attitude and expectations of myself.  I've remembered the truism that life is not about the destination, but the journey.  I've decided on this journey I want to have an attitude of openness, relaxation and spaciousness.  And I don't want to miss anything along the way.  In practicing on the treadmill it is amazing how quickly the minutes fly by; 106 steps per minute,  6,360 steps an hour.  It might not rain the whole time.  It might be incredibly beautiful.  I might have the energy to do this.  The key is I have control over my attitude and that might just be the most important part of this journey.

Slowing Down

I've been volunteering for about a month at the University of California Botanical Garden, not far from us in Strawberry Canyon.  There, time slows down and I enter another realm, one focused on plants.  I've loved plants as long as I can remember.  I'm especially fond of trees and flowers.  One of my earliest memories is of picking a huge bouquet of red tulips for my mother from our neighbor's yard.  I still remember being surprised when I was spanked and forced to go and apologize to the neighbor.  At the Garden, everyone loves plants.  Everyone pays close attention to plants, noticing when they are too wet or dry, in too much sun or shade, pot bound or otherwise unhappy.  We all know plants respond to their environment, only more slowly than animals do.  The tasks I am learning are not too hard: taking cuttings, repotting plants, watering, labelling, arranging and rearranging pots on the sales bench at the Garden shop.  I am learning to slow way down, so I notice everything around me.  I am volunteering so it doesn't matter if I am super-busy or just quietly taking my time to do what needs to be done.  I love the peace that soaks into me when I slow down.  Maybe this firecracker person that I am will finally do what mother always told me to do----slow down.

Is Freedom a Burden?

Last week Jeb Bush blamed President Obama and Hillary Clinton for ISIS's rise to power and its current successes.  Cheeky of him and wrong.  Doesn't he know it was his big brother who is responsible?  That's the superficial take on the problem of ISIS from the progressive perspective. We all know ISIS is a backward, brutally violent, repressive movement causing great harm to the people of Iraq and Syria.  But  this past week Mississippi State a young pre-med student at Mississippi State University and her fiance were arrested as they attempted to board a plane and begin a journey taking them to Syria to volunteer with ISIS.  What could lead a young American woman, presumably on the path to success, to make such a decision?  Friends and family were confounded saying the couple were unlikely candidates to be radicalized.  Was it for love that Jaelyn Young so changed?  Was it her yearning to be a part of something bigger than herself that lead her to commit to ISIS?  Did she have a religious conversion experience?  In an excellent op-ed piece in the New York Times(Saturday August 15, 2015) Roger Cohen tries to explain what it could be that attracts increasing numbers of American and European young people to ISIS.  He says ISIS recruiting "is tapping into something deep.  Perhaps that something is a yearning to be released from the burden of freedom."

I have been pondering for years what it is that attracts people to any kind of fundamentalism.  Or maybe the question is what is it that is missing in modern Western culture that is appears to be present in ISIS?  Jaelyn was raised Christian but was described as a wishy-washy Christian, not deeply involved.  I've wondered for a long time if our progressive Christianity is too bland, too sanitized of meaning to give our young people and the rest of us anything to hang on to.  Here, freedom is for all people, but where is the meaning for our lives to be found?  Is there anything left in the American Dream that isn't materialistic?  Have we failed to invite our people to a deep spirituality that feeds souls.  Is there too much choice and hypocrisy and a moral vaccuum here?   Maybe we are not as free as we would like to think but trapped in a shallow materialistic culture devoid of heart and soul.  Maybe the circus going on in Washington and in the Republican primary shows the political bankruptcy in our country.  Maybe these young people are holding up a mirror to us.

Copy-Cat

Today we babysat our grandchildren, age 5 and 2 1/2 because their daycare in Palo Alto is closed.  Before they came, I wondered whatever were we going to do all the day long.  I was also concerned whether I had enough energy to keep up with the two of them, even with Bob's help.  At the hand-off in downtown Oakland, the kids were clinging to daddy and not very happy to see their grandparents.  But on the way to our house, the ice began to melt and they both began to chat with us, noticing lots of things.  They were downright cheerful by the time we got to our house.  Upon entering they perused the environment and settled down- Liam by the big red bucket filled with toys his father played with as a boy and Elsa at the art table with scissors, tape, markers and white paper.  Before too long Elsa decided she wanted to make cookies, which we did.  The preparation interested Liam, especially my big well-worn Kitchen-Aid mixer.  Elsa enjoyed measuring the sugar and flour and especially tasting the final products.   The highlight of the morning for Liam was a visit to Bob's workshop where he learned to use the electric power drill.  Imagine, it is the same tool I used for the first time in June at the Rez and he is only 2 years old and learning to use it.  And we wonder about gender bias.  For lunch we went with Bob to a lab picnic at Codornices Park.  Liam managed to slip and slide down a dusty hill twice and fall in the ashes behind the barbecue before we got our food.  The sausages were rejected as too spicy (oh well) the fruit rejected being in too big chunks (too bad) but thank goodness they liked the bread.  Then they ran off to the children's area, attracted to the long cement slide which is at least as high as a second story.  We watched the older kids sliding by on pieces of cardboard, squealing with pleasure racing past us.  Both kids headed up the stairs, "Wait Liam!"  I cried out and just caught him.  He went to the lower slide and I was interested he took with him a piece of cardboard and copied exactly all those on the bigger higher cement slide.  He probably could have done the big one.  Elsa found it scary but insisted on going down twice.   They both played hard and I thought "this isn't so hard, especially at a park!"  Immediately, getting in his carseat, Liam flew asleep.  It's quiet time for Elsa now and I see that our day together today is mostly over.  It's been a pleasure to watch them play, and observe how they learn and see how much they have grown.

Great love

Shakespeare spoke of love and asked how one shows the ways?  The ways of love are as many as there are couples who love one another.  This past weekend we went to the most extravagant show of love one guy could imagine in celebration of 50 years of marriage.  The whole event was kept secret from his wife, somehow, even though the planning took 8 months.  Nine couples from all around the world arrived Saturday afternoon at the rented mansion overlooking Emerald Bay on the shores Lake Tahoe.  The wife had been distracted by her daughter with a massage and facial.  The large house was decorated with more than a hundred helium filled gold balloons with photos from their many years together tied on.  We, the women, thought the wife would know something was up, but she didn't and she was breathless and joyfully surprised.  Her graciousness in receiving the surprise and all of us showed her style and generosity of heart.  Many toasts to the couple followed and the wife was presented with a necklace of fifty Tahitian pearls with a center piece of seventy five diamonds in thanks for the years together and hope of many more years to come.  We ate a gourmet catered meal on tables with blue and white floral arrangements with live background music and then danced under the stars to 50's songs.  The next morning we all blessed them as they reaffirmed their wedding vows in the cool shade of tall redwood trees and then brunched on the patio.  The weekend festivities were topped off by a sailboat cruise on the Lake. It was the gold standard party weekend, perfect in every tiny detail.  But what made it really so special was the evident great love of the couple magnified by the happiness and love of their family and friends.  What a way to spend a weekend!  Bravo for their celebration of love!!

Golden Threads

I don't know what happens to us after we die.  I honestly don't know, even though I am a minister.  I often say that I can't believe the spark that animates living things, that spark that leaves when we die, just dissipates into entropy, disappearing into the cold grayness.  I like to think that like the molecules that make up our bodies, like that spark, go back somehow into a pool of matter and energy that is God.  Yesterday I went to a Memorial Service for a former favorite student of mine.  His death at 45 was a tragedy.  The service ended with a friend of his singing a song he composed on the day after my student died called "To Be a Tree".  The song-writer and my student had talked about death and mutually decide the best outcome after death was to become a tree.  I've oftened thought the same thing and even chosen the kind of tree I want my ashes buried under so that my molecules can be recycled and become a part of my favored tree, a copper beech.  I don't share that with church folk.  Instead I often tell them that when we truly love someone, there is a Golden Thread that is formed - heart to heart and  to God's heart.  I like to imagine that this Golden thread of love does not break with separation or even death.  Today I experienced these enduring Golden Threads from a congregation I served for 5 1/2 years in the Almaden Valley.  I had not been back in the pulpit there since I left 11 plus years ago and the love between us today was so strong that the Golden Threads were tangible, almost visible.  It was for me a strong affirmation of my call into ordained ministry.  When we truly love, that love doesn't end when we are no longer present for whatever reason.  The Golden Threads of love are woven together into a beautiful garment and today I wore that garment in church.  It was a great blessing.