Community UU Matters

2018-12-29

From the Minister, Sat Dec 29

The 2018-19 UUA Common Read: Manish Mishra-Marzetti and Jennifer Nordstrom, eds., Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment. Available from UUA Bookstore HERE; from Amazon HERE.

This week, chapter 3: Sheri Prud'homme, "Ecotheology."

“A prevalent theme in ecotheology is the radical interdependence of all existence and the accompanying mandate to view humankind as embedded in a complex web of relationships with other organisms that have intrinsic value.”

With these echoes of the UU 7th principle – and the 1st – ecotheology is substantially connected to UU theology. Significant ecotheologians include Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, John Cobb, Joanna Macy, Sallie McFague, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Catherine Keller.

“All that exists in in relationship with everything. As Ivone Gebara writes in Longing for Running Water, it ‘is not a mechanical interdependence but a living one: a sacred interdependence that is vibrant and visceral’.”

Ecology becomes ecotheology when it encounters a sense of mystery, when the study of the relations of life forms to one another and their environment evokes awe and wonder. Theology, historically and currently, may serve the interests of dominance and empire by coopting God into a story that underwrites the social inequities of its time. Mindfulness of mystery can help protect against such cooptation. African-American writers such as theologian James Cone and Shamara Shantu Riley express the connections between oppression of people, exploitation of animals, and ravaging of nature.

For many ecotheologians, God does not precede the cosmos, but arose and unfolds with the cosmos. Ecotheology lends itself to pantheism (God and the universe are the same thing), or to panentheism (God and creation are inextricably intertwined, but not identical, as they participate together in creation’s unfolding).

“As McFague explains in The Body of God, ‘Everything that is, is in God and God is in all things and yet God is not identical to the universe, for the universe is dependent on God in a way that God is not dependent on the Universe’.”

Unitarians and Universalists of the 19th-century foreshadowed many of ecotheology’s concerns. UUs today

“are increasingly able to participate powerfully in ecumenical and multi-faith efforts when we draw on God language and images that are inclusive, expansive, immanent, and intermingled with the unfolding of creation.”

The writings of ecotheologians provides us a language for connecting with people of other traditions yet one UUs can use with integrity.

Ecotheology’s ethic emerges from seeing that the source of evil always lies in a good and necessary need taken to excess. Virtue is skill in balancing all needs.

Questions

What seems to you attractive about ecotheology? Are there aspects that give you pause?
How does the power of beauty affect your work for justice?
Ecotheologians are apt to say “God (the holy, the sacred) is in all of the created universe,” or that “God (the holy, the sacred) is the universe,” or that “God (the holy, the sacred) is creativity itself.” How might these thoughts support the work for environmental justice?

Yours in faith,
Meredith

The Liberal Pulpit New this week:

Some Brueggemann and Some Poems (Part 1 of "Reality Amid Ideology")
Imagination Shortage (Part 2 of "Reality Amid Ideology")
Prophetic Call to Neighborliness (Part 3 of "Reality Amid Ideology")

Index of past sermons: HERE. Index of other reflections: HERE.
Videos of sermons are on the Liberal Pulpit Youtube Channel: HERE

Practice of the Week: Deep Time Journeys /Ecospiritual.
Our arrival on Earth was quite sudden when considered from the perspective of the Earth itself. Gaia blinked, and suddenly found all of us here! But blink again, and we will pass like smoke on the breeze. Life, and the Earth, will go on without us. This realization can have a profound impact on how we view ourselves as a species. READ MORE.

Your Moment of Zen: Trust /Choose your mentors and guides carefully, and then give them your trust. This is risky. You might not choose well. It's risky even if you choose well. But it's necessary.

Case

Porcupine then asked, "Is trust in the teacher important for the practice?"
Raven said, "Indispensable."
Porcupine asked, "Can't that create problems?"
Raven said, "Interminable."

Verse

That joke about why the dog:
The punchline, Because he can,
Answers a lot of questions.
To exercise a capacity: reason enough.
Why does one love? care? trust?
Why does one study? Follow a teacher's direction?
Why does one hurt so when any of these goes awry?
Why does one bother with sadness and happiness?
Read the paper on the commuter train?
Toast the New Year? Sit Zazen?
Why does one grow present to one's life,
Or want to?
If one couldn't, there'd be no reason to.

Case by Robert Aitken; introduction and Verse by Meredith Garmon

RAVEN INDEX
Zen at CUUC, Sat Dec 29: HERE

2018-12-27

Religious Education News: Dec 30

Last Sunday was Fun Day for the children and youth, with children’s music director Lyra Harada taking the lead for holiday and seasonal festivities. With Christmas only two days away, everyone was excited and jubilant during this pre-“big day” event. Two of the younger children assisted me in lighting the chalice and then we sat around in a close circle talking about what the kids liked the most about Christmas and what they were looking forward to. There were quite a variety of eagerly anticipated activities, starting with watching Lord of the Rings all day, to eating lots of cookies, to opening up at least “fifty” gifts. If you are going to wish, it might as well be big! Lyra spoke to the children about the season of winter and how music can make you imagine different feelings. She asked them to close their eyes, listen, and demonstrate different “winter” feelings such as shivering, brrrr, snowflakes falling on their face, jumping up and down to keep warm, or ice skating. Well, we had quite a few terrific impressionists from those shivering away and chattering their teeth, to graceful dancing, to jumping jack workouts. With all this acting, it was time to hear the Nutcracker, which was beautifully choreographed by a mom and her twin daughters displaying lovely ballet moves (no training required). To round out the morning, everyone got to play musical chairs and board games. It seems to me that fun, spontaneity, and the simplicity of laughter is a common thread among our children. However childhood innocence is not reserved for just Christmas nor just children. Adults can be children as well and we can collectively live this treasury of emotions now and throughout the New Year.

Michele Rinaldi
Religious Education Coordinator

This Sunday in RE, Dec. 30
There is no RE this Sunday. Childcare will be available.

Last Call for the Mitten Tree
Bring warmth to the men, women, and children in local shelters. Donate mittens, gloves, scarves, and hats for all ages.

Faith Development Friday, Fri Jan 11
Our evening of learning, spiritual growth, and community. 6:15pm Pizza & Salad Community Dinner; 7:00pm Programs; 8:30pm Coffee. Programs include Adult RE and Family Journey Group. Adults may also just come for a slice and unstructured social time together. All are welcome to stay after the programs to share coffee and a chat. RSVP to CUUCevents@gmail.com by 12:00 noon on Friday.

2018-12-21

From the Minister, Fri Dec 21

Let's talk about the Common Read!

Manish Mishra-Marzetti and Jennifer Nordstrom, eds., Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment.

Available from UUA Bookstore HERE; from Amazon HERE.

This week, chapter 2: Paula Cole Jones, "The Formation of the Environmental Justice Movement."

In 2014, UUs from around the country assembled in Detroit for a "collaboratory" to learn and reflect on our denomination's environmental work. Detroit was a good example of the intersection of environmental issues and urban issues. As local environmental activists showed the UUs around the city, they saw a city

"dominated by abandoned homes, crumbling industrial plants, and sparsely traveled streets."

They met people

"fighting for access to municipal water services and the enforcement of clean air stands at recycling plants,"

and saw the work to develop "urban agriculture to meet the city's goal of food sovereignty." They witnessed commitment to the principle, "No one is expendable. Everyone matters."

When waste sites and polluting industries are located in poorer and darker communities, this may appear to be following the path of least resistance. But this explanation

"takes the focus off of the systemic nature of oppression; specifically, who gets to make the decisions."

It leaves out the role of

"racial and ethnic segregation, income inequality, and limited access to resources and policy makers."

The environmental justice movement, still relatively young, corrects this lack. How did this movement emerge?

The post-WWII boom substantially increased both prosperity and industrial waste and pollution. These two factors led to the modern environmental movement, landmarked by the first Earth Day in 1970. The movement was slow, however, to attend to ways entrenched racial inequality affected environmental decisions. Research by African American sociologist Robert Bullard, published in 1983, found that

"African Americans making $50,000 to $60,000 per year are much more likely to live in a polluted environment than poor white families making just $10,000 per year."

In 1982, the environmental justice movement broke through to national recognition in a case from Warren County, North Carolina. The sending of PCB-contaminated oil to a landfill in Warren County's poorest and most heavily African American community was resisted by activists seeking to protect their groundwater.

"More than five hundred people were arrested, including Congressman Walter Fauntroy and pastors Benjamin Chavis and Joseph Lowery."

A citizen class action suit was filed.

"They did not win the case or stop the landfill, but they successfully launched the environmental justice movement."

In 1991, three hundred people of color gathered for the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. The Summit adopted seventeen “Principles of Environmental Justice” which continue to frame and guide the movement.

Paula Cole Jones concludes:

“As Unitarian Universalists continue to work on environmentalism and climate change, we must operate with the knowledge of structured racial and economic inequality so that we are truly confronting oppression and doing our part in building the Beloved Community.”

2018-12-19

Religious Education News: Sun Dec 23

A No-Rehearsal Christmas Pageant… who would have ever thought? Well it happened here last Sunday and believe me, Radio City has nothing on us! With some uncertainty I took my place in reading the script, not sure what was going to unfold. There were a multitude of Marys and Josephs, not to mention an exemplary number of angels. Shepherds came forward but didn’t leave their flock behind. Oh yes, we had sheep and horses and goats and let us not forget a few baby Jesuses. Rounding out our ensemble were an impressive number of Magi going for the gold - gold crowns that is! Seeing all the children, youth, and adults enjoying themselves was contagious. The sanctuary was filled to the brim with smiles and laughter, voices raised to the heavens in song, and genuine celebration. Being part of the whimsy and magic as well as observing, I had an epiphany of how a special message transcended the reenactment of the birth of baby Jesus that we constructed. We were honoring the day that this man came into this world. There is no need to examine opinions on the concept of deity, but instead just to remember how he lived his life, in very much the same way congregants of CUUC seek to do. Christmas is not the gifts, the flurry of activities and parties, but really -- to some people’s disbelief -- simplicity. Jesus was a simple man, fearless and brave. He stood by his personal convictions and talked about love, and peace, and honoring one another. He turned no one away, but instead embraced a diversity of people. He fought for the oppressed and taught mercy. He embodied and embraced all the virtues that Unitarian Universalists value 365 days of the year. With this thought in mind, I say thank you for the gift of community that you have generously extended to me. I wish for everyone a sense of purpose and gentleness and most of all, love and serenity this season and throughout the New Year. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Michele Rinaldi
Religious Education Coordinator

Looking ahead...

This Sunday in RE, Dec. 23
All ages in Fellowship Hall for Fun Sunday activities, including music with Lyra Harada, our Children's Music Director.

Help Decorate our Mitten Tree
Bring warmth to the men, women, and children in local shelters. Donate mittens, gloves, scarves, and hats for all ages.

Mon Dec 24, Christmas Eve Service, 5:30 pm
All ages are welcome to attend the Christmas Eve Service. childcare is available for those who need it.

Sun Dec 30
There is no RE on Sun Dec 30 but childcare will be available.

2018-12-18

Music: Sun Dec 23

Christmas music from a variety of traditions and a range of perspectives is featured this Sunday morning at CUUC. The French composer Olivier Messiaen composed his Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jésus for solo piano in 1944. These “Twenty Views of the Child Jesus” are highly evocative, sonorously enchanting meditations on the Christ child. “Regard de l'étoile" or the View of the Star, is the second work in the cycle. Full of bell chiming and distant twinkling, the piece also presents the “Theme of the Star and of the Cross,” a musical idea developed throughout the suite. The following program is suggested in the subtitles in the printed score: the shock of grace….the star shines naively, topped by a cross….

Other works performed include selections from Franz Liszt’s “The Christmas Tree,” a set of piano pieces written for the composer’s granddaughter, an arrangement of a popular Catalonian Christmas carol, and more settings of celebrated holiday tunes by Donald Waxman, a renowned author of teaching materials for young piano students. Read on for programming details.

Centering Music: Adam Kent, piano

Regard de l’étoile from Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jésus
Olivier Messiaen

From “The Christmas Tree”

“The Shepherds at the Manger” (In dulci jubilo)

“Scherzoso: Lighting Up the Tree”

“Old Provençal Christmas Song”

“Psallite”

Franz Liszt

Opening Music:

El cant dels ocells (The Song of the Birds)

Traditional Catalan Christmas Carol, arr. by Joaquin Nin-Culmell

Offertory:

From A Christmas Pageant

“Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabelle”

“Good King Wenceslas”

“We Three Kings”

“Ding Dong Merrily On High”

“Yule’s Come and Yule’s Gone”
Donald Waxman

Interlude:

From “The Christmas Tree”

Adeste Fideles

Liszt

2018-12-13

From the Minister, Thu Dec 13

Let's talk about the Common Read! This week, chapter 1: Jennifer Nordstrom, "Intersectionality, Faith, and Environmental Justice," in Mishra-Marzetti and Nordstrom, eds., Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment.

The word "intersectional" is big these days among people thinking about social justice. The word calls attention to how interrelated the various justice issues are. Nordstrom opens with mention of a 10-day "direct action and permaculture training camp" she attended in New Mexico to simultaneously learn sustainability and "build resistance to white supremacy and militarism." Growing food and growing cross-cultural relationships of equality and respect at the same time is one manifestation of "intersectionality."

The overlap of issues calls attention to the commonalities, but also the differences: "For example, women will experience sexism differently depending on their race, class, gender identity, and sexuality. People of color will experience racism differently based on their class, gender, gender identity, and sexuality."

In particular, Justice on Earth looks at Environmental Justice through the lens of intersectionality -- this is, in light of interconnecting systems. Nordstrom shares her experience learning that "communities of color were exploited and poisoned through the entire nuclear fuel cycle: from uranium mining on Indigenous lands to nuclear weapons production on Indigenous land and the contamination of surrounding Indigenous, Chicano, and Latinx communities to nuclear waste storage in communities of color" (4). Thus, militarism, colonialism, racism, and the environment interrelate.

We are thus lead to see that "the environment" "is not simply natural wilderness in need of saving" -- as UUs are prone to view it. It is also roads, industries, urban trees, other people -- everything around us, and all of it shaped by patterns of power. "There is not a single experience of the environment divorced from other relationships, or a single experience of humanity divorced from the environment" (5).

For too long UUs have done "justice work in silos" -- an approach that "is not true to our whole lives, or to the wholeness of other people." When we ignore intersectionality, our work "usually caters to the dominant identities within the issue" (6).

Yet, Nordstrom argues, as important as intersectionality is, equally powerful for us is faith. Our faith as UUs "can ground and nurture our work for environmental justice." Our situatedness in the interdependent web is our "call of the deep to the well of" our souls.

Related and Recommended: Kimberle Crenshaw's Keynote address to the Women of the World Festival 2016.(30 mins) HERE.

Questions: What overlapping patterns of power and oppression have you experienced in your own life? How have they manifested in the institutions in which you live and work? How have they affected your experience of you own identity?

What do you know of environmental justice organizations active in Westchester?

This week, read chapter 1. Consider and talk about the questions, and any other questions that come up for you. Feel free to click "Comment" below and share your thoughts here. Thank you!

Yours in faith,
Meredith

The Liberal Pulpit /New:

Justice on Earth

Index of past sermons: HERE.
Index of other reflections: HERE.
Videos of sermons are on the Liberal Pulpit Youtube Channel: HERE

The Dec 9 sermon, "Justice on Earth":

Practice of the Week: Get a Teacher /Key Supporting Practice. A critical reason to seek out a teacher is to make your practice accountable. We live busy, complex, and changeable lives. There are dozens of reasons why it is difficult to sustain daily practice over time. We are masters at rationalizing why we can't meditate. Being accountable to a teacher, a community, and a tradition outside yourself can help. READ MORE.

Your Moment of Zen: Still Lonesome /Someone told you once to be open to the other. They forgot to mention that there is no other.

Case

Mole spoke up after Raven had his exchange with Owl and said, "I have a different kind of question. Is there a way to practice in ordinary times?"
Raven said, "The robin! The dove! The linnet!"
"Is it just a matter of being open to the other?" asked Mole.
"Still lonesome," said Raven.

Verse

On the path,
First comes everything.
Second, everything again.
Third, return to first things.
Ordinal numbers
Mark ordinary time.

Case by Robert Aitken, adapted; introduction and Verse by Meredith Garmon

RAVEN INDEX
Zen at CUUC, Sat Dec 15: HERE

Get a Teacher

Practice of the Week
Get a Teacher

Category: Key Supporting Practice

Have a group. Whatever your spiritual practice, you need others that you get together with to practice it -- in addition to the ways you practice on your own. If, say, cooking or gardening is your spiritual practice, then find -- or form -- a group of people that gather weekly, fortnightly, or monthly to practice together. This doesn't mean merely cooking or gardening together -- it means being together in the activity in a way that focuses on the spirituality of what you are doing. As you cook together, share your experiences of what's spiritual about this activity; as you garden together, talk about the spiritual lessons of gardening.

In addition to a group, consider a teacher for guiding you on your path and holding you and your practice in a relationship of accountability.

from Wayne Arnason, "Finding a Teacher," in Erik Walker Wikstrom, editor, Faithful Practices, adapted, abridged

Waiting in the line of students sitting on cushions outside the abbot's dokusan (interview) room, my heart beat rapidly and the sweat on my palms did not match the unusually cool summer day outside. I was about to have my first personal interview with a Zen teacher. The senior monks running this "Introduction to Zen Practice” retreat had prepared us for this interview by encouraging us to think of one question to ask. The encounter would be short. There would be a little bit of personal exchange after the question was posed, but not a lot. For Zen students doing formal koan practice, an interview can consist merely of a recitation of the teaching story under consideration, an opportunity for the student to respond to a question or image in the story, and a response from the teacher. The teacher's response can be quite minimal, perhaps as simple as ringing a bell to indicate that the interview is over. The response can also be more expansive, with further questions or reflections about the koan before the student leaves.

The senior monks had encouraged me to treat this interview as an opportunity to ask the Buddha a question – which both made sense and was extremely daunting. Finally, it was my turn. I stumbled through my recollection of the appropriate bowing rituals that begin the interview. I sat down on my knees and raised my head to look into the eyes of John Daido Loori, the man who would become my teacher. I spoke my name and my practice and then asked my question: "What do I have to give up to follow this path?”

Twenty years have passed since I asked that question. Because I am still answering it, I am no longer sure what Daido Roshi said to me that day. The best summary would probably be that I had to give up my expectations about what the path would be like and just walk on it.

Like thousands of other North Americans, I had grown up with a church affiliation and involvement but with an eclectic commitment to spiritual practice. My Unitarian Universalist church community provided me with many opportunities to explore different disciplines, and I did. I did not feel the need to seek out or commit to a personal relationship with a meditation teacher until mid-life. I was struggling with a stuck feeling, a combination of boredom and frustration with the meditation that had previously brought me joy and contentment. I decided that I needed to find a teacher. After a year of research and visits, I turned to a monastic community and teacher five hundred miles from where I lived for guidance and support in how to deepen my spiritual practice.

Why this extreme step? During much of my twenty-five years of sporadic meditation practice, I was missing a teacher and a sangha. The sangha includes both the teacher and the community of fellow practitioners. Coming to terms with the fact that I needed a teacher was not easy for me. I had to confront many old images and expectations of who I was. I am a grown-up. (Kids have teachers; grown-ups don't.) I was raised and continue to be a member of a liberal church tradition. (We build our own theologies.) Ultimately, what was hardest was admitting to myself that I didn't know what I was doing. In spite of all the sitting, the retreats, and the books, I really didn't have a clue what living and acting from within my true nature meant. I needed a teacher.

No matter where your spiritual home lies, whether within Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist, Buddhist, or philosophical traditions, teachers are available, once you accept your need for one. Undertaking spiritual direction has become a vehicle for finding a teacher that requires no theological or participatory commitment to a religious tradition or institution. Developed within Roman Catholic spirituality, the skills of spiritual direction have become more widely available through teachers trained by respected nondenominational institutions.

Choosing a teacher well starts with knowing yourself, as well as learning as much as you can about the teachers available. Personalities, teaching styles, and teaching traditions vary. There are frauds.

A critical reason to seek out a teacher is to make your practice accountable. We live busy, complex, and changeable lives. There are dozens of reasons why it is difficult to sustain daily practice over time. We are masters at rationalizing why we can't meditate. Being accountable to a teacher, a community, and a tradition outside yourself can help.

The path I chose and followed for sixteen years was to become a formal student of the first monastery I went to in search of a teacher. As students, we committed ourselves to a Zen practice in our lives at home. We were expected to complete five “barrier gates” (five steps to help prospective students clarify their intent), sustain a relationship with a training director, attend two week-long sesshin retreats each year, and pursue our practice in each of eight different areas of training. The monastery also supported home practice through books and other resources as well as relationships with the teacher and training director.

When my teacher died, I searched again for a new teacher. That relationship became primary, and the residential experience became more difficult to sustain and less important to me. So I resigned my student status at the monastery. I may return to a residential sangha again, since it was such a valuable experience. I cannot imagine, however, being without a teacher.

For Journaling

Journaling question: What steps you would need to take to integrate the practice of working with a teacher into your own life?

* * *

PRACTICES INDEX