Weekly Bread #224

I guess I really was tired last week. I mis-numbered the post as 220 when it should have been 223. It might have been because my brain was weary too, and not just my body.

I guess I have mostly recovered physically, though, as I did two harder than average hikes this week. One I had done before several times, but there was elevation and rocks and it was hot so it wore me out. And maybe I wear out a little quicker these days. The other hike was on Mount Tam and was one I had never done before. It was beautiful and we hiked down to Muir Woods on the Canopy trail. Muir Woods really is a special place. That trail was OK, even though it was all downhill, as it was mostly switchbacks. I did get stuck getting down some too steep roots but some younger women came by and lent me a hand. I might do that trail again, (navigating root ladders usually get easier when repeated). But going back up we took “lost trail” which had a gazillion rock steps and was super steep. That one I won’t do again. Out and back on Canopy would work, and there may be another way up. Sometimes you try stuff and then it is just too hard. It stops being fun and you just want it over. It is good to try new trails, of course, because sometimes they are wonderful. But no reason to do them twice though if they aren’t. There are usually other ways to get to where you want to go.

Of course, sometimes you have to just keep “keeping on” even when it gets really hard,

Which brings me to the Church retreat I went to last weekend. Our family attended those retreats almost every year from 1995 to 2006 when we left Marin so I could serve as a minister in other churches. Those retreats meant a lot to all of us, and especially to our kids, and this year was our first time back after almost 20 years.  Retreats are both time “away” and time to connect and “go deeper.” I know a retreat has been a particularly good one for me if I think about it after it is over.

One thing I will remember about this last retreat is the workshop/discussion about the proposed 8th principle of Unitarian Universalism. A lot of this reflection went out via email to people that were at that workshop with me

“We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote: journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.”

Background on the 8th Principle can be found here. The congregation will be voting on this at our annual meeting next week.

Attending the workshop reminded me again about how important anti-oppression work is – and also how hard it is. I spoke about my experience when first attending back in the mid 90’s when Anne and I were the only obvious gay people.  We came because of a newspaper article that said gay people were welcome here.  We were actually rather warmly welcomed by most in the congregation.  An older lady actually followed us to our car that first Sunday to tell us about her lesbian daughter who lived in Iowa with her partner and children. She called us later in the week to tell us she really hoped we would come back.  So there were positives for sure, because we did keep coming back.  And there was a lot of cluelessness as I mentioned in the meeting, people asking if we were sisters and stuff like that.  And there was some weird /offensive stuff too – the man (no longer a member) who followed us to our car a different Sunday to tell us he was “tri-sexual.”  We thought he was really creepy, which he sort of was, but as we got to know him we found there were some positive things about him too – and we learned how and when to shut him up and down.

What really changed the feeling of the congregation, however, was when we went through the Welcoming Congregation Program, a formal UUA sponsored process that required a lot of workshops before the vote was taken.  Action was required as a result of the vote – changing RE registration forms to be more inclusive was one of the smaller but so important ones. The workshops, which I helped lead, were hard as the heterosexuals worked to unpack all the assumptions they had learned about LGBTQ people.  Some things were said that were very hard for me to hear and I broke into tears more than once during those training sessions. And we got through it, and the vote was unanimous, and more openly queer people started attending and other people came out of the closet. Some people stayed clueless of course, because some people always do, but it was a whole lot more comfortable for us after we went through the training process and took the vote. There were finally enough “straight allies” who helped us deal with the cluelessness and continued the open hearted learning process. 

Our recent Beyond Categorical Thinking survey results made it pretty clear that you can’t do education and take a vote at one point in time and then stop. Because the larger culture will almost inevitably creep back in.  

Racism, homophobia, sexism, classism, ableism, ageism, sizeism – all the isms really – are part of the patriarchal culture of white supremacy that we live in.  It is the water we all swim in.  Changing that, building an inclusive multicultural beloved religious community takes work.  So much work.  Hard work.  Frustrating work.  Imperfect work. Maybe even endless work.  And I think that work is worth it, no matter how hard it is or how long it takes.  And I don’t think we really have a choice if we want to survive, not just as a congregation or an institution, but also as a nation and even as a planet.  People aren’t just hurting; too many are quite literally dying from the impact of oppression.  And if we can’t feel empathy for someone else’s pain, then who are we?  What is our own life worth?  If we cling to the powers and privileges that were accidents of our birth, if we deny the reality of that power and privilege what does that say about us?  About the content of our characters?  About our spirits and our souls?  An earlier book about the anti-racism anti-oppression work in Unitarian Universalism was entitled “Soul Work.” It IS work for our souls and it is the work OF our souls. We need to be allies to each other.  Confronting hetero-sexism can be hard for me at times because it can make me feel too vulnerable. It is so much easier for me, as a “white” person, to point out racism and those micro-aggressions, but even there, sometimes I can hesitate, wondering if I will “get it right.”  If we can work together as a diverse community it will make us stronger, braver, and wiser too. We will never be perfect, but we can be so much better. We can help build the world we all dream about – for ourselves and for our children’s children.

This is longer than I intended, but sometimes it is hard for me to stop preaching once I get going.  Thank you all for showing up at the workshop.  And thank you too for inspiring me to a renewed commitment to this work. 
I am including two links to songs that have fed my spirit while I tried to do this work – give them a listen if you will. 

Ella’s Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYmaOzaGI-Q

Sweet Honey and the Rock – Would you harbor me? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0XBXJjoXJ4

Things that are worth doing are often difficult. This weight loss/maintenance journey of mine is no different. Even before weighing myself this morning, I knew I’d be up this week. Mother’s day brunch, retreat buffet meals, an after hike restaurant meal, and then a wedding buffet – they all added up. It is actually a minor miracle I wasn’t up even more.

L’Chaim

Average weight this week was up 1.2 pounds for a total loss of 145.3.

Weekly Bread #220

There are a lot of pleasures in life. Enjoying delicious food has always been one of mine. The picture above is from a Mother’s Day Dim Sum lunch that our children treated us to. Did I end that sentence with a preposition? Yes, because sometimes you have to break the rules. And sometimes you just want to break the rules, and sometimes you don’t want to break them but you do so anyway. Even if they are your own rules and not ones imposed upon you. I do love the messiness of life, kind of like surfing the different waves that come, sometimes riding them all the way to the shore, and sometimes wiping out and ending up with a mouthful of sand. I have never surfed, so don’t take that metaphor too seriously.

I was on a church retreat yesterday and last night and I am pretty tired today. Good tired, but I am just doing a short post to follow my self imposed rule of weekly posting. I am all and always a work in progress.

L’Chaim

Average weight this week was up .6 pounds for a total loss of 146.5.

Weekly Bread #222

Finally back on the trails this week and although I tripped a couple of times, I stayed upright and did NOT hit the ground! Yay! This pic is of the beach we hiked to and where we had lunch before looping back to the car. Only 6 miles, but it was a sweet loop on a sunny day with a good breeze so it wasn’t too hot even on the beach.

Not much to say this week, and I am just trying to keep trucking along.

Today should be fun as the kids are talking us out to Dim Sum for Mothers’ Day. And, yes, the apostrophe is in the right place. Two mothers and our 3 kids plus a couple of their partners. Families like ours are more common these days. We were pioneers of sorts back in the day, lesbians intentionally creating a family, and taking turns being pregnant. Our kids were all young adults before we could get legally married, but we did manage “second parent adoptions”while they were young. There were right wing administrative rules against such things then, but there were also social workers and judges who cared about children.

It is scary what is happening now with the heating up of the so-called culture wars. Evil people come into power by scapegoating the different and vulnerable, feeding the population on fear and hate. BGLTQ people, people of color, fat people, Jewish and Muslim folks, immigrants, old people, and people with disabilities – the list is endless of who can be blamed and targeted. Even civil servants and their children, remember the Oklahoma City Bombing?

We are all of us vulnerable, if not for who we are, then for our belief that all people deserve to be treated with both respect and dignity. Even straight, cis-gendered, able-bodied, young white men can run some risk if they act to protect others – our even work for a government agency as benign as Social Security. 13 employees of that agency were killed in the Oklahoma City Federal building bombing .

OK, my rant is over for now. I guess I had more to say. The day is young, however, and I am looking forward especially to some shrimp dumplings with hot chili sauce shared with our much loved and quite simply miraculous and awesome children.

L’Chaim

Average weight this week was down .2 pounds for a total loss of 147.1.

Weekly Bread #221

I didn’t hike this week, mainly because of attending an online conference the first half the week, some rain, roofers coming, and whatever. The conference was great! I will get back into hiking next week. My hiking pause wasn’t due to last week’s fall, however, although it will be awhile before I hike in shorts again. Long pants definitely offer some protection from scapes.

It felt kind of good to take a break from the trail, though. I expended a different kind of energy last Sunday, preaching and leading worship. It had been a while, and I was a little nervous. But WOW! Once I got up there, the Spirit took over and I loved being able to focus the energy, the laughter, the tears, in a way that I hope was healing. Maybe I should have been a stand up comic instead of a minister? I really did get a lot of laughs, something I think we all needed. Seriously though, behind all the jokes, there was a serious message. Perfectionism is a curse. As Leonard Cohen said, “There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.”

The image above is of a moonstone egg with sunlight shining through a gorgeous crack. The Rev. Norma Cordell gave me that egg while she was my minister, back in the 90’s. She was the one who told me, during a church board meeting that, “We’ll make a minister of you yet, Theresa.” I was the board vice president at the time and still amazed to even be in a church, much less being a lay leader in one. I came to the congregation broken, hurting and both desperate for and terrified of the healing the Spirit could provide. Religious language made me squirm. The idea of becoming a minister was totally inconceivable to me at that time, but something in her voice did something to me, and I gradually stopped squirming so much. A prophetic voice, Rev. Norma had, in so many ways. If she had lived, she would have spoken at my ordination years later, but somehow I know she attended anyway.

I continue to bounce into Graceland, one stumbling step at a time. Long pants remain a good idea.

L’Chaim

Average weight this week was down .5 pounds for a total loss of 146.9.