Where are the Unitarian Paths?

The great thing about being a UU is the freedom; the horrible thing about being a UU is the freedom.

Unitarian Universalism has developed satisfactory answers for certain ills. The moral and intellectual oppressiveness of hidebound religious dogma. The need for a continually renewing spiritual awareness and spiritual understanding. The importance of radical inclusiveness and human-centered values. A balance between the life of the intellect and the spirit.

And yet I find in the area of religious practice it is lacking in depth and structure. I do not feel a lack of theological grounding, but I do find a void on guidance for how to be a "practicing" UU.

Perhaps my keen awareness of this fact comes from my own Jewish background. In Judiasm, there is a prayer for every situation; a holiday for every season; a rich palette of rituals and practices interwoven with meaning. The grounding in literature, community, and spiritual practice is manifold and deep.

In Unitarian Universalism, I am not sure how to have an active or deep spiritual practice. The problem is not that there are no spiritual practices available, but rather that there are too many. I can pray if I want, I can pick and choose from a lengthy list of UU prayers and prayer books. I can engage in Zen Buddhism meditation. I can enter chalice circles, reading groups, discussion groups. I can participate in social action groups or attend a peace rally. But it seems that no matter what I do, it is based upon an individually constructed and chosen practice. My path will be entirely my own, the meaning I construct will be individual, almost secretive, and the accountability and motivation will be mine alone. Perhaps there is something lofty and idealistic about this individually constructed spirituality. But on the other hand, it can make you feel lost, without grounding, without a clear path forward.

I long for a clearer path of Unitarian Universalist committed practice. It is not so much that I wish to be told exactly what to do, but perhaps to be able to choose among a package of practices that have been worked out to be effective for people with similar theological orientation. An "order" of Unitarian Univeralism, for those of us who are serious about spiritual practice and having spirituality infuse our everyday existence.

The Virtues of Being The Worst

I've recently joined a few new activities where I was clearly and markedly the worst by a large margin.

The first is I've joined the "back-up" choir at my UU church.

The second is I went out for some pick-up Ultimate Frisbee this past weekend.

In both cases, there was a sense of anxiety that I might be (OK, was) dragging down the group. It can be tough to know that you are the bottom end of that bell curve, scraping against the right edge of the graph.

But I think that I also experienced a broader sense of liberation. Being the worst, once it has been clearly and definitively established, frees you from any pretence of image or competition. You can immerse in an activity for whatever it is, on its face value. The subjective experience of being in the moment becomes so much more important, because you are clearly not impressing anyone.

It's a great thing to sing, and greater still to sing surrounded by voices of beauty. The music stays with you as you walk - you hear its echos and resonances in the days between rehersals and performances. It's a great thing to run, to jump, to catch. The feeling of synchronicity between mind and body, flying object and receiving hands. These are great things even when they don't achieve their precise aim, although we are so accustomted to thinking of things as only having value in a comparative sense - that only the best or at least the much better has any value.

It's also easier to appreciate other people's skill for what it is, when you have attempted said skill and failed to reach it. One of the greatest sins of our age is the sin of ingratitude - we are so used to things going so well so often that we fail to appreciate what we have. The flaw in the American Dream is that it often makes us oblivious to the American present. There is something beyond striving and achieving that makes a life rich and meaningful.

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from my 7-Month Old Son

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from my 7-Month-Old Son (Almost)

• If you can eat, drink, pee, and poo without incident, you have much cause for satisfaction.
• The best way to get our needs met is to articulate them clearly, repeatedly, and, if necessary, with volume.
• It's in our nature to learn, grow, and try new things, with our own interest as our best guide.
• The best way to learn something is to take an iterative approach rather than a linear one; learning by nature is two steps forward, one harsh bump on the tush.
• If you're paying attention, the world is a pretty fascinating place. Shadows are particularly interesting because you can't pick them up.
  
• The foundation of happiness is being with people who love you for who you are.

Can't wait for the next 7 months...!

Lost Connections

I've been thinking about modern life and how as an unintentional result of modern convenience we lose our vital connections with the earth and its cycles.

I've been reading Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, which reveals
how thoroughly we've lost touch with the source of our food as a culture. We have little or no understanding of the places, processes, and full price of the sources of our food. Pollan particularly dwells upon the denial that is required for the current system of industrial processing of animals to be acceptable in our culture. He essential says that if we knew where our meat came from, we wouldn't eat it.

On another front, the political front, I've increasingly come across the dilemma that many local governments are facing. They are running out of revenues to perform the services their constituents demand, but there is increasing resistance to any type of tax increase. It seems we have lost ourselves in our own political rhetoric - we no longer connect the benefits we receive from federal, state, and local governments with the taxes we pay. The services we get are just there, just taken for granted background, while the taxes we pay have become in many minds theft, an unnatural taking by a corrupt few from the hapless many. We've lost the connection between the common wealth we create and build together and the dues that make that common wealth happen.

On a third front, I've been increasingly stymied by the concept of where all of our waste goes. We talk of throwing trash away, but there is no 'away' that I am aware of on this earth. What we mean by 'throw something away' is that someone else carts off our trash, someone else worries about where it goes and what kinds of problems it causes. If I've paid someone to haul my trash away, it's not my problem any longer. And this has resulted in a disposable society, where we buy new things rather than fix old, where it's easier to throw away a container than to clean a plate, where most people don't think twice about using something just once and then tossing it. We're truly disconnected with our physical impacts on the planet, oblivious to all the places and habitats downstream.

I don't have answers to any of these dilemmas. But it strikes me how all the virtues of the modern world - convenience, speed, mass production - serve to disconnect us from the consequences of our actions, and serve to make us less cognizant of our many interdependent relationships with the world around us. And it seems to me there is a relationship between our disconnection with the world around us and our dissatisfaction, our modern ennui. When we become primarily or exclusively consumers, optimizers, an audience, a target market, we lose much of what makes life gratifying and grounded. Ultimately, life is not a product and happiness is not found in maximizing comfort or convenience. Life is found in balance and in connection, and my suspicion is that it may be nearly impossible to enjoy life while plugged into the machine of the modern American economy.

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to unplug. I strive for moderation in my consumption, but even so I'm overwhelmed with choices and even more overwhelmed with information. It seems to me part of the answer is to re-establish these connections - to know where our food comes from, to know what our taxes pay for and what our local government does, to know where our trash goes and take some accountability for these things. This would start to bring us around to where we can really see ourselves for what we are, to where we can really be in relationship to the world around us.

Celebrating Memories

Sometimes I wonder if our forward-looking culture does not underestimate the value of making and cultivating memories. We have so many catch phrases for focusing on the future. What's past is past. We need to focus on the task at hand. We need a plan for going forward. Just do it.

But life at any stage is composed at least as much by memories as by opportunities, by the path we have followed as much as the path we have ahead. In fact, we are much more likely to discover ourselves by looking backwards than by looking forward. Life has a way of revealing through experience things that would never occur to our imaginations alone.

What rituals, what practices, what customs do we have to cherish memories? Our holidays commemorate our civic history, but what about our personal history? Do we use birthdays to reflect backwards? Anniversaries? Graduations? Are we afraid that if we look backwards we will see opportunities missed, rather than life lived?

If life is worth living, then it is also worth remembering, and worth telling. Our stories should not just come from entertainment professionals, they should also come from ourselves, from our own lives rich with experience.