Why I Dance - CL

I grew up in a musical family. 

My father played in a band and was a member of the Air Force traveling show  "Tops in Blue" early in his career. My brother played multiple instruments, and enjoys songwriting and producing even today. I loved the fact that music was often being played in our home. Whether it was my dad on the guitar, my brother on the trumpet or piano, or my mom feigning opera, there was a lot of music around. I took piano lessons for a few years in elementary school and I never connected to the act of playing music. I considered joining the orchestra in middle school, but was more attracted to theater and speech. I considered myself, for most of my life, "not musical."

I realized in the past several years, however, that I am indeed "musical." My connection to music comes through movement… through dance. I am not drawn to playing or singing music. Rather, I connect to rhythm, melody, and harmony through dance. I simply cannot sit still when hearing good music! If you've seen in me in Sunday Services, I struggle to stand and sing without tapping my feet, clapping my hands, bobbing my head, or swaying my hips. I feel music more than I hear it.

I took years of dance training, including ballet, modern dance, jazz, and even hip-hop in graduate school. But I am not what you would call a "good dancer." Not in the traditional sense of the word. I'm never in the front row while performing. I'm not particularly graceful. But I love the feeling of allowing my body to do what it wants when the rhythm strikes.

I learned to let go of my preconceived notions about dance and movement in college, when I took a Dancehall Jazz class. The class was taught by a man from Jamaica, and we mostly danced to songs by Beyonce'. He would work and work with us to learn the steps, then he would tell us to "forget everything and just feel it". 

 At the time of that class, I was struggling in my life. I was battling an eating disorder, anorexia, which had twisted my mind and made me believe my body was an enemy. I thought I should control my body, and take up less space. But Marlon, my teacher, helped me learn to trust my body, to work with it rather than against it, and to listen to my body's needs and wants, and not just my mind's. He taught me to take up more space. "Bigger movements!" he would shout. "Bigger hips!" "Bigger eyes!" …And with that, I was on the beginning of a journey of integrating my head, my heart, and my body. My arms, my legs, my torso, my bottom, my feet, and joints… All of these parts together made me whole. 

I am glad that particular struggle in my life is past. But I know I still struggle, as I know many of you do, with body-acceptance. We are taught to be thinner, or stronger, or taller, or faster, or louder, or quieter. We worry about our noses, and our hair, and our freckles, and our skin tone. Dance, for me, is one way to remind us that our bodies are good. We should care for our bodies, feed them well, allow them rest, and listen to their needs. We should also be grateful for our bodies. My best friend Jenn, who died four years ago from Muscular Dystrophy, was wheelchair-bound and very limited in her movements. But she was an excellent dancer. The joy she radiated when she bobbed her head, moved her hands, and allowed her friends to spin her in her chair, is what made her a good dancer. We only get one body. Let's make the most of it!

Betsy Kraning, our UUCA Music Director, loves to say "anyone who can talk, can sing." I love to say, "anyone who can move, can dance."  It is a natural thing. 

Look at this video of these tiny babies dancing to their father's music: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to7uIG8KYhg

This is why I am hoping you will come out to the 1st Annual "Dancing on the Side of Love" dance on Saturday, February 9, from 5-8:00pm. We'll provide heavy snacks and non-alcoholic drinks and great tunes from all generations to get people of all ages dancing together. Most of the songs will be free-dance (like you remember from your school days). But from time-to-time we'll introduce a song with a particular dance. Think: Hokey Pokey, Hand Jive, Electric Slide, The Twist, Soulja Boy, or Gangnam Style.  We'll invite people who know the dance, to teach it. And if you don't know it, to try to learn it!

This dance will be an exercise in Beloved Community. We will be working together to learn from one another, as well as being willing to try new experiences, and possibly mess up! But then we'll try again, and help each other out. It's all in good fun, and a way to have fun with your UUCA community.

If you want to see some brief snippets of the dances we might be trying, here's a funny video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg 

Dance can just be a fun way of connecting to music, and connecting to community. 

I hope you'll join us!

Blessings...   -Rev. Christina

Law of Attraction (JC)

The Buddha said, "What you have become is the result of what you have thought".   There is power in belief.  How do we begin to believe in the things that will attract the right kind of people, places and things into our lives?  We make a decision!  It’s time in 2013 to make a decision on how you want to feel.

In recent years there have been numerous books and discussions around the idea that people attract what they desire whether positive or negative.  It’s been called the “Law of Attraction”.  Esther Hicks, one of the pioneers of the Law of Attraction says: “You are a creator; you create with your every thought.”   

 

Wikipedia says that “attraction is when  …people experience the corresponding manifestations of their predominant thoughts, feelings, words, and actions.”  This is basically saying that we have direct control over reality through thought alone.”   That is, a person's thoughts (conscious and unconscious), emotions, beliefs and actions are said to attract corresponding positive and negative experiences.   I get that—do you?  Good.

But I caution you…  Look at the Law of Attraction and understand that it has some merits and flaws.

The idea of ATTRACTION was born during The Great Depression through a guy by the name of Napoleon Hill who wrote the book Think and Grow Rich.  It’s a good read.  In fact, at the time of Hill’s death the book had sold over $70-million copies.  His bestseller book made the ideas of attraction popular and over time led to the development of what we know today as the “Law of Attraction”.   Incidentally, my favorite chapter in Think and Grow Rich is titled “Sex Transmutation—why most men don’t succeed until after 40.” 

CHAPTER 11 THE MYSTERY OF SEX TRANSMUTATION The Tenth Step toward Riches

 You have to be smart with the idea of attraction. It works for the individual but should never become a social or moral philosophy.  Simply ask yourself this:  Do people in Third World countries living under ruthless dictators attract those circumstances?  Do the innocent civilians in Afghanistan attract the bombs and mortar fire they experience every day and night?  

     

 Does 2/3 of the world that is poor attract their poverty and disease? Or more personally, do kids in a classroom attract some psycho-path killer—OF COURSE NOT!   
We have to be careful here… 

I am a believer in some aspects of the Law of Attraction but we have to understand it contextually.  In fact, it is clear to me that the Law of Attraction, as it is presently taught, is a First World philosophy most effectively applied in democratic and European countries. This philosophy is most applicable for those among us who are privileged.

Now with my disclaimer’s out of the way let’s look at what the Buddha said once again:  "What you have become is the result of what you have thought".   

Think about that for yourself the individual.  It’s true. 

There are many opportunities in our lives when we attract the very thing we wanted.  It’s magical!  When we really want something our minds and bodies place us where we can experience that something, for better or for worse.  We put our intention out and it comes back fulfilled.  We literally move toward what we want and want we want magically moves toward us.  As they say “Be careful of what you ask for”.

I challenge you to try again and ask for what you want. Pray and meditate daily, commune with nature, practice being more open, real, honest, transparent, intimate, joyful, blissful, happy, and thankful and what you ask for will be answered.

For 2013 I want you to trust your connection to Spirit—to all things.  Allow your mind to be open to new and refreshing thoughts and I promise you that you will watch amazing things happen!  But remember you first must believe.  

 

Words from Neil Donald Walsch add a fitting close to this blog:  “Little by little, what changed WAS my perception of what was happening... As soon as my perception shifted, I began to see a shift as well in my experience of life...”  

Blessings!

Rev. John
 

Peacebots and Other Arcane Devices

Peacebots and Other Arcane Devices - DG

Greetings from Brooklyn! I intended to write a more ambitious, anachronistically stylized entry involving the late-Victorian misadventures of certain Dr. Horatio Danville Gregoire this week, but decided to pare it down a bit, and focus on my reflection on mass media and Peace our theme for the month.                

When I consider the ways that violence seems to surround us in the present day, it can feel like drowning in a relentless sea of the stuff. There is violence in all the media we consume, and it comes as an endless stream of destruction, hurt, separations and sorrow, much of it wasteful and unnecessary. I think that the media also consumes us in a way, constantly chipping away, perhaps dissolving bits and pieces of our worth and dignity. What can we do to stay afloat and retain our integrity?

This line of thinking occurred to me most distressingly as I sat through a recent screening of Django – Unchained with friends in New York City. Peace seems ever-fleeting, on a horizon we can’t ever get to; while, violence is the ever present star of the show.

My friends and I had various responses to the overlong, derivative (a ’la 1970s era Blaxploitation genre) and anachronistic film, ranging from disgust to delight. Django was probably meant to be many things for the viewing audience, and I would hazard a guess that none of those things had to do with historical accuracy, racial empowerment or physiological realism. So, it is hardly fair to judge the film on those accounts. And, I won’t.

What impressed me most had little to do with the film itself and more to do with my response to it. I was proud that I was disgusted by the film, and, more importantly proud that I have retained the ability to be disgusted by the absurdity of heroic violence, no matter how it is cleverly disguised. I was not amused, or jaded or even morbidly curious (which I imagine is the desired response of media elites) but fundamentally revolted. (Hooray for humanity!)

It is increasingly evident to me, and perhaps you have been seeing it too—that there is a concerted effort underway to eliminate our sensitivity to violence. I believe that the de-sensitization project is an ancient enterprise beginning in the earliest settled, agricultural societies, but has it has accelerated with the proliferation of lightweight, portable gadgets that do everything short of beaming the violent imagery directly into our neo-cortex (although, I am sure the folks at Google and Amazon [perhaps Facebook] are working on just such a sub-cranial device as I write this entry). This civilizational program of desensitization has worked for some people, and its effectiveness is evident in the responses to the super saturation of violence in film, print and electronic media. I think violence does breed more violence or the equally deadly apathy to violence.

Media elites are turning violence into a commonplace place thing that can unite friends, family and neighbors bringing them together in the warm glow of destruction, as entertainment. People yawn, dismiss it, ignore it, cheer it or laugh about! But, in all cases they are glued to their plush theater seats.

And, I am complicit in this vicious (sticky) project, we all are. I did buy a ticket to the film after all. If you haven’t seen the film, perhaps you will now wait for it to come out on Netflix and stream it into your home soon. I am not advising against doing that.

What is your response to the constant stream of easy to access violence? I hope it is never helplessness? I hope we don’t ever throw our hands in the air with frustration. (Heavens forefend!)

I hope we can join together in re-making ourselves and our communities, as Sites of Resistance, to use a term that pops up in liberation theology. That means becoming a place where we can voice our feelings of disgust and our sense of revolt to the violence, and develop plans of action to change the world, or at least change ourselves. I might remake myself into a person of resistance after seeing Django—Unchained, by researching stories of actual slave revolts, including the only successful one that occurred in my ancestral homeland –Haiti. I might continue my reading of the Battle Cry for Freedom by James McPherson. I might also continue to engage in compassion meditation and encourage others to do the same. Do something, don’t just sit there.

Resist! Desensitization every day and become an instrument for peace, a peacebot.

[With robotic voice-repeat]  I am a Peacebot—over.

Warning this is Not a Peacebot - but you get the idea.

The Common Good

You don’t know the half of it, like the old folks used to say

but the half of it is what I do know
What I don’t know is the other

-   Lucille Clifton, “God Bless America”

 

As 2013 drew closer, reminders of the year(s) past were everywhere.  Among the well-rehearsed stories brought to our attention was one which, yet again, described the complexities of the U.S. population – not only is it changing, but now changing more rapidly and noticeably.  Pundits tell us that a glaring example of this change was seen in the unwillingness or inability of many political candidates to see and hear the needs, ideas and beliefs of their constituents.  Defeated candidates were - it’s been said - out of touch with the future of America; their message was shaped by and to voters that are or will be in the minority, an America of the past.  “Past” and “future” are defined by beliefs, values, ethnicity and so many ways of defining and distinguishing 2012 citizens from our nation’s demographic history.

    What we learned in the year past is not new, our country has seen this coming from centuries.  This, in Lucille Clifton’s words, is “but the half of it [we] do know.”  We are a diverse people, this is something our country has always been.  While diversity has been part of the U.S. for hundreds of years, it has finally reached a place where it can no longer be ignored or dismissed as of little or no consequence (which is easy to do from places of power or isolation).  We, as a nation, I believe, must now recognize that there are consequences to the depth of diversity that is (and always has been) our nation.  We need to say more than " We are all Americans."  Yes we may be, and there is so much more to say and do.

    Let me reiterate: We have always been a diverse nation.  Diversity is part of who we are as the United States.  As our diversity has grown, the differences have become striking and shaping.  In recent decades, these differences have accelerated and many - including disappointed candidates and their supporters - were lost in the gap between a distant past and an emerging future.  And now we are long overdue in becoming collectively intentional about focusing our attention and direction on our diversity.  This is called pluralism: while diversity happens (after all, the human race is diverse), pluralism - learning to live with (and celebrate) diversity – is intentional.  Right now, it seems to me, we are struggling with being intentional.  My sense is that individuals and institutions (including Unitarian Universalism) are all struggling with what it means not only to be diverse, but how to embrace and welcome pluralism.

    Pluralism assumes an appreciation and desire for individuality, but not individualism; life in the U.S. for the 21^st century will be about more than individual freedoms, freedoms often described as “rights.”  Some describe these freedoms and rights as though they are intrinsic to being human, but many/most of them are not.  Most of these freedoms and rights are found in laws and proclamations that were created by us, in a particular time and space, and they can be tempered or even removed when necessary.  It seems to me that the biggest challenge our nation and its institutions face is how to support the common good, which may or may not support individual rights to which we have grown accustomed.  Might it be that the belief in individual rights is rooted in diversity where the common good grows from pluralism?  If this question is an important one to answer, then it begs an additional one: What rights are you willing to moderate or relinquish in order to deepen the common good?  It is my hope that these are questions we can address together in 2013.
    Take care and see you soon,

            Fred

   

   

The Time of Our Lives… CL

Every year my family has the tradition of watching A Christmas Carol (the movie version starring George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge) around this holiday season. We have watched it so many times that our VHS copy fell apart and we had to get a DVD. So many times that I have most of the lines memorized. And yet, it never occurred to me that the central theme of the story is not about money… but about TIME.

I have recently read a very good book. I chose it in response to my desire to improve and sustain my meaningful work here among you, and to do so in a way that keeps me healthy and happy, but allows me to serve more fully in this ministry we share together. The book was entitled "Beyond Busyness: Time Wisdom for Ministry." It is decidedly Christian in theology, and clearly written for clergy, but its central messages are not unique to the ministry. Time is a gift to all of us. How do we honor time?

In A Christmas Carol, the ghosts who visit Scrooge embody the fullness of time… The Past, the Present, and the Future.  Scrooge's primary tactic of bullying Bob Cratchit is to be a stickler about time.

As Stephen Cherry, the author of "Beyond Busyness" notes, "Ebenezer Scrooge's number one problem was not that he was mean but that he did not have time. Anxious about the pennies, and believing Franklyn's half-truth, "time is money", as if gospel, he gave all his time to his work."

Our culture is set up to treat time like a unit of currency. We speak of time in the same terms we speak of money. We say "We spent time," or "Saved time," or "Wasted time." We might even "Invest time" in some worthy cause. It is true that time is limited. The finite nature of our time in life makes it even more precious. Tragic events such as the massacre in Newtown Connecticut last week remind us to value our moments with loved ones.

But our experience of time is also relative. Waiting for Christmas morning takes, for many children, what seems like weeks. A child grows into a teenager in, what seems to a parent, only days. Time is not a clear-cut thing, no matter what our clocks and schedules say. What we need is not to "Manage" time (another financial metaphor) but rather to honor it as the sacred all-pervading entity that it is. Stephen Cherry closes his discussion of Ebenezer Scrooge with this: "The lesson of A Christmas Carol is this: rather than being money, time is priceless."

As we close out the winter holidays and look toward a new year (a turning of the calendar, a recognition of the cyclical and yet ongoing nature of our perception of time), how might we honor time rather than manage it?  

Here are some suggestions that I hope to utilize, myself…

- Honor time by "filling" it but not "spending, wasting, or saving" it.

- Slow down your perception of time by stopping every so-often to notice and breathe. This mindfulness practice takes a moment but it extends the time you actually have available to your conscious mind.

- Notice your time-personality and work with it. Are you a morning, midday, or night person? Are you a natural procrastinator or do you like to plan ahead? Do you like to be busy or have more down time?

- Make a list that includes three things: "To Do", "Might Do," and "Don't Do." These priorities will help keep straight what is needed in your finite time, not what is simply urgent.

- Cultivate a sense of awe about time. As miraculous as the universe itself, the grandeur of time as a 4th dimension is beyond our mind's comprehension. And yet, the reality of time is magnificent. It is more than a wristwatch.

As we prepare in our minds and hearts to "begin again" with a new year, why not consider a new relationship with time? It is an incredible gift!

Making Sense Of It All (JC)

 
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
MEDITATION XVII.
NUNC LENTO SONITU DICUNT, MORIERIS.
Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die. 


Meditation 17 of Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, written by the poet John Donne, has been quoted by UUs, scholars and Statesmen from across the globe.  It is the second to the last paragraph of the meditation that is most often used:

"No man [person] is an island,  entire of itself; every man [person] is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were;  any man's [person's] death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind [humankind], and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." 

The subtitle of this poem says it all.  The writer is a man contemplating his mortality and  immanent death--the meaning of life.  But if you go deeper you discover that he is also realizing that he is a part of something much larger than himself--THE WHOLE.   

We are reminded in our First and Seventh Principles that we are individuals who have worth and dignity but we are also a part of something greater than ourselves--COMMUNITY.

Donne and our principles help us to see that we are not separate and isolated beings, rather we are communal creatures with some individual preferences.  You get it?  We are "a piece of the continent a part of the main."   That's the interdependent web existence.  But don't forget what Donne says next...  "any person's death diminishes me because I am involved in humankind."  I am "involved" meaning I am a participant in life's joys and sorrows and I, like you, know what it means to love and lose, succeed and fail; we are in this together.  James Marler said in his blog reflecting on John Donne's meditation:   

"It is not simply true that another man’s death diminishes me; but an injustice to another person is an injustice to me; physical harm to another is harm done to me...by extension, whatever responsibility is given to the one harmed is placed on my shoulders as well."


I feel diminished and partly responsible today. I am diminished and partly responsible for the lives lost in the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, perpetrated by another troubled young American.  A part of the collective human soul was murdered that day and I feel the pain, despair and aura of deep sadness hovering the American skies.  When I heard the news and listened to President Obama's response I wept as many of us did.  These types of situations are occurring far too often in recent years.  

I feel like I have not done enough to work against gun violence in America.  I like most Americans believe acts like these are anomalies--they are, statistically speaking.  However, if we understand the core of Donne's words we are all effected and affected by these kinds of tragic events.  We are stopped in our tracks and must pause, cry, mourn, and then I believe we must do something. I'm glad to hear that President Obama is doing something!

For now I am pausing for the holidays.  I don't have any nifty response.  I wish I did but I don't. I am meditating, praying and thinking about the families who lost loved ones. I'm thinking about my life, those I love and how thankful I am to have them in my life another day. I encourage you to do the same. 
  

Sometime in 2013 I'm going to be working with groups that recognize that something must be done to eliminate the use of assault weapons.  Also, together we've got to figure out how to properly treat mental illness of soldiers (past and present), youth, young adults and whomever needs treatment in this country.  We must get serious about these two issues. 

The debates over guns, violent video games, bad parenting and the like are already happening.  But, for me, it's time to stop and stare. I leave you with a prayer.  Page #86 in our gray hymnal "Blessed Spirit of My Life."  May these words give you the comfort you need over the next few days and weeks...

"Blessed Spirit of my life, give me strength through stress and strife; help me live with dignity; let me know serenity.  Fill me with a vision, clear my mind of fear and confusion.  When my thoughts flow restlessley, let peace find a home in me.

Spirit of great mystery, hear the still, small voice in me.  Help me live my wordless creed as I comfort those in need.  Fill me with compassion, be the source of my intuition.  Then, when life is done for me, let love be my legacy."

May it be so,

Amen.

Rev. John

The Advent of Apocalypse: On the Art of Memorizing Future History (DG)

You’ve heard a lot about Advent from my colleagues, and I would add to what they’ve already said by saying that Advent is about being “alert”, being ready for something big. (No surprises there right?)

 Being “alert” sounds, similar enough the other descriptions we’ve heard this month. We’ve heard the terms, “anticipation”, “expectation”, even “Hope”? Hope in the cute baby messiah, anticipating that his little crèche will soon be surrounded by curious farm animals and expecting wayward astrologers to bring gifts?

 It’s an expectation, or “advent” of “The first coming”, in other words. Whether or not we believe in the historicity of a first coming (to be clear: I do not) is beside the point. For me Christmas is a useful and potent allegory that should guide us away from empirical facts to the unnameable and mysterious principles that lay beyond it.

The thing that might surprise you, and really fascinates me, is the way that advent actually points us to the more interesting “Second Coming”. We commonly refer that event, predicted to happen at some future time, as the apocalypse!

The most lurid descriptions of the Second Coming and the cosmic cataclysm that must precede it are contained in the last book of the Christian New Testament, The Revelation to John, or the Book of Revelation. Some of you know that The Revelation to John is one of my favorite texts--ever. It has epic battle scenes, dragons and sea monsters, triumphant heroes, geo-political intrigues and divine vengeance.

 It’s easy to see why The Revelation to John has kind of been the go-to text for revolutionaries, abolitionists, Liberation Theologians, poets and William Butler Yeats for 2,000 years. 

The book is absolutely confusing, and absolutely riveting, moving backwards and forwards in time, offering what seems to be a “present” glimpse of the ultimate cosmic realignment towards justice and beloved community. I am offering a class on The Revelation to John in the months of December and January. We meet in the Emerson Room at Fahs House on alternate Thursdays. Check In the Know for Details. I hope you will join us!

 I wonder how we might celebrate the apocalyptic aspect of the Advent season? I might even go out on a limb and say how should we celebrate the apocalyptic aspect of the Advent season?

 Would we reenact the final battle between the so-called “Forces of Light and Forces of Dark”? (I bet some of our kids would like that) Perhaps we would sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, all the verses, instead of Jingle Bells? Would we have a seven-headed beast rise up out of Hades in our Christmas pageant? Or perhaps it would be a Corporatized Octopus-type creature hooking us in its tentacles of consumer goods and services. Moreover, how would we depict the “New Heaven and the New Earth” that must rise out of the ashes of the old ones? All of these are important considerations. All of these make a new compelling narrative for the Advent season. (interestingly enough, there are some parallels to northern European “pagan” myths that would be apropos to this task)

I feel like a change is coming, maybe it will be a divine judgment of sorts for the wrongs of economic injustice and ecological abuses, or social inequality. Maybe the system will run out of steam and the Earth will cry out, “I am tired and I am not going to take any more.” Perhaps it will be a world turned upside down for a time.

 I am alert this time of year to how our world might be changed for the better. I am alert for how that change, if it is to be lasting, may not come as a little radiant bundle of joy, but rather as a bowl filled with wrath and poured out onto the world. In the end apocalypse means “to uncover” as well as “to reveal” but it is rightly associated with cataclysm and dislocation in the interim.

I am also alert to how each year; each day we are given a chance to start again and maybe avert the worse parts of the disaster that is supposed to await us in a kind of historic future. Advent is a chance for us to memorize that future history so that we might both anticipate it and hopefully avoid it. Furthermore, if we cannot avoid the future, perhaps we might find solace in better understanding how we will get to it.

 An apocalyptic advent reminds us that if we keep a certain course there will indeed be “hell” to pay, but that’s just one part of the story. While the future history may already be written we are still given the opportunity to write an alternate ending or at the very least, we can be alert and prepared. The “now”, "what was” and “what shall become”, three worlds, collide in the Advent of Apocalypse. 

When memorizing the past becomes old, I ask you: “how will you remember the future?”

See you in church!