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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April, 28, 2013

Fiery and Fearless: Olympia Brown. Rev. Olympia Brown, a suffragist, is seen as the first woman to graduate from theological seminary, and the first woman ordained to full-time professional ministry in the U.S.

I have preached a few sermons on Unitarian history. Here is a little slice of Universalist history for you. The Universalists are a Christian denomination of people who believe in the divinity of Jesus (which makes them Trinitarian as opposed to Unitarian) and the love of a God who would not send anyone to hell. This is the story of a woman Olympia Brown, born without a lot of patience, who had lost it all by the end of her life. This is the story of a woman who got a lot done, the story of a person who, like all of us, had good times and hard times. This is a story of a person living her soul. This is the story of one way social justice happens.

The first of four children, Olympia Brown was born in 1835 to Universalist pioneers in Michigan. After beginning her education in a schoolhouse her dad built on the farm, Olympia went to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. In first year English, the instructor assigned in-class orations and readings, stating “all of the young men will be required to give speeches before the class. “The young women must bring manuscripts to class and read from them.” Many believed women inferior public speakers to men, and unable to recite from memory. Olympia did not argue, but when her turn came the next day, she delivered a rousing oration with her manuscript rolled up in her hand. Olympia and other independent young women caused Antioch continuing consternation. In the mid-1850s the Amelia Bloomer dress came into fashion, a sort of pants-skirt combination, comfortable, practical, and scandalous, as it only reached halfway down the calf. Apparently a woman’s ankles had the power to cause great excitement! Bloomers let the young women move freely, so they could run and climb stairs quickly. Olympia always wore her Bloomer dresses as a student, and ignored the ridicule she received from the many outraged Yellow Springs students.

Physical education was not available for Antioch women in Olympia’s day, and she and her friends took long walks for exercise. When the college president found out that young Antioch women were seen in nearby towns laughing, running, and talking noisily, he sent to Boston for a professional chaperone. No such person had been hired to watch the men, so Olympia and her friends expressed their displeasure by teasing the poor woman relentlessly — in German. The chaperone lasted a week.

She and other students invited Antoinette Brown to come speak. Antoinette Brown was a Congregational minister who had gone to Oberlin. “It was the first time I had heard a woman preach,” Olympia said in her autobiography, “and the sense of victory lifted me up. I felt as though the Kingdom of Heaven were at hand.” She decided she wanted to be a minister, and finally found one seminary that would admit her. It was a hugely radical thing to do on the part of the seminary.

It was not the Meadville Theological School in Pennsylvania, which on June 16, 1861, sent this response to her application: After apologizing for having kept her waiting for a reply, a Mr. Stearns wrote: “were it my private concern, I should say at once ‘come!’ I have no prejudice against a woman’s studying anything she can or against a woman’s speaking in public. From what I’ve heard of you, I’d be glad to have you for a pupil and more like you. But I have no right to commit the Institution to a new course of action.” I heard that a lot too, as a young seminary graduate, interviewing with search committees. “We have no personal sense that women shouldn’t be ministers,” they would say, “it’s just that my congregation would have difficulties. They’re not quite ready…”

Finally Olympia received a letter from Ebenezer Fisher, president of the Canton Universalist Divinity School at St. Lawrence University advising her to study Greek there and board with a private family. He confirms September 25, 1861 as the beginning of her study. This was one of only three theological seminaries in the Unites States that would admit women students. At the end of the letter he adds: ” It is perhaps proper that I should say you may have some prejudices to encounter in the institution from students and also in the community here. Nothing very mighty or serious, I trust…The faculty will receive and treat you precisely as they would any other student. My own judgment is that it is not expedient for women to become preachers, but I consider it purely a question of experience and not at all of right–the right I cannot question. The other matter of expedience or duty I cannot decide for you. I am willing to leave it between you and the Great Head of the Church. (For the few of you who may be confused by that, he was talking about God, not the President of their denomination!) If you feel He has called you to preach the everlasting Gospel, you shall receive from me no hindrance but rather every aid in my power.” (June 21, 1861) Quite amazing, actually, for a man of that day. I head much the same thing from fellow students at Princeton Seminary. They would say “I’m so concerned about your feeling that you have a call to the ministry. Can you tell me what the story of that is? Can you tell me why you feel you would be a good minister?” In other words, “justify yourself.” Women students were asked to justify their presence daily. Some of the male students were there (and this is no fault of theirs) because they weren’t sure what else to do, or because someone had said “You have such a nice voice, you should apply to seminary. Here, let me help you fill out the application.” I’m sure there are places where men have to justify their existence every day too. It makes you tough. You have to be determined. Olympia Brown was determined.

No woman at the time, most books say, was ordained by more than one local church. No woman was ordained with the full authority of a whole denomination, which is what Olympia Brown wanted. She thought this would be a step in women’s access to authority and roles in decision making. When the Northern Association of Universalists were in session, she successfully presented her case for ordination.

When she was ordained in June 1863, Dr. Fisher, who had had such doubts about her coming to St. Lawrence, participated in the ceremony. He participated in the ceremony. That makes him a hero in my book. Rev. Olympia Brown later paid tribute to Dr. Fisher, saying: “This was the first time that the Universalists or indeed any denomination had formally ordained any woman as a preacher. They took that stand, a remarkable one for the day, which shows the courage of these men.”

The way it works is that the ones without power have to push and push and be told they are rude. They have to put up with folks acting like they are crazy or thoughtless or disloyal for pushing for change. Again, this isn’t the fault of individuals as much as it’s the way culture is. When you are Ôout of line,” when you are calling for justice, you all know that first they ignore you. When that doesn’t work and you become a little more powerful, they begin to ridicule you. Next, when you have more people gathered to your side, they begin to fight you. When you prevail, they say they were with you the whole time. In fact, it was their idea. Someone on the inside has to have the courage to stand up, to stand with those asking for justice if justice is to be done. You have to have help from the inside.

The Presbyterians did not ordain women untill 1955, the Episcopalians in 1973. The Roman Catholics, not yet. The denomination I grew up in, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church? Not yet.

1864 she was called to her first full-time parish ministry in Weymouth Landing, Massachusetts. At this time Olympia Brown became active in the women’s rights movement, working with Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and other leaders. She and the people in that first church loved one another. It was not so with her next parish, a Universalist congregation in Bridgeport, CT. More about that in a moment, but first, her husband.

While still in Weymouth, she’d met John Henry Willis, a member of her congregation’s Board of Trustees, and they married in 1873. She “thought that with a husband so entirely in sympathy with my work, marriage could not interfere, but rather assist. And so it proved, for I could have married no better man. He shared in all my undertakings.” As did Lucy Stone, Olympia Brown kept her maiden name, with Willis’s agreement. It was a most felicitous marriage. When her husband died, unexpectedly in 1893, she wrote: “Endless sorrow has fallen upon my heart. He was one of the truest and best men that ever lived, firm in his religious convictions, loyal to every right principle, strictly honest and upright in his life,….with an absolute sincerity of character such as I have never seen in any other person.”

Her ministry at the Bridgeport church seemed to have been one fraught with peril from the start. It was a struggling church, the only kind then open to having a woman minister. There is a letter written to her that first year begging her not to leave, as this parishioner felt the church is just starting to prosper under her guidance. He regretted the difficulties she had encountered in the past year, but was optimistic about a brighter future and noted that, “with one exception, all are satisfied with your course.”

That one was a Mr. James Staples, “a bitter agitator,” who stepped up his pecking away at her ministry “like a raucous crow.” When she took a leave of absence for the birth of her first child, ministers were brought in to preach who would say to anyone who would listen, “What you need here is a good man.” Despite the efforts of her many supporters in the church, including PT Barnum, she was able to stay there only six or seven years, before he ran her off and split the church. Churches suffer when the raucous crow doesn’t get shut down by members craving the health of the church. She had lots of support, even powerful help, but apparently James Staples was allowed to continue pecking away at her. I wonder if anyone in that church said to him “You are not just hurting our minister and her family, you are hurting the church when you do that.” Perhaps they did and he kept on. Perhaps this was the reason it was a struggling church when she got there. It was split and weakened when she left. She was strong and mighty, and she endured for seven years.

She and her husband moved to Racine, WI, where he published a newspaper and ran his own printing business. Olympia was pastor of the Good Shepherd Universalist Church in Racine, WI. It was a disheartened church, apathetic and broke. She was asked to come turn it around. Under her leadership they perked up somewhat, and it was a happy time for the family. Both of their children became teachers: Henry Parker Willis was professor of banking at Columbia University and key in writing the Federal Reserve Act, and Gwendolyn Willis taught classics at Bryn Mawr.

At the age of 52, immersed in the fight to enfranchise women in WI, she left the full time ministry Women could vote there on matters pertaining to the schools. Olympia and her fellow suffragists were of the opinion that every vote eventually had something to do with the schools. They won the fight, but two months later the new law was overturned by the state Supreme Court.

Gwendolyn Willis describes her mother as “indomitable and uncompromising, traits that do not lend themselves well to politics and leadership. She cared little for society, paid no deference to wealth, represented an unfashionable church, and promoted a cause (woman suffrage) regarded as certain to be unsuccessful. She was troublesome because she asked people to do things, to work, contribute money, go to meetings, think and declare themselves openly as favoring a principle or public measure.” (Olympia Brown: The Battle for Equality, Charlotte Cote, Mother Courage Press, 1988, p. 171) Thank goodness we have some folks like that here too!

No longer having the patience for a state-by-state campaign, Olympia joined the militant “Woman’s Party.” I belonged to this party before I was born,” she declared. At the age of 82, in 1917, she was one of 1,000 women who marched in freezing rain and strong winds, picketing the White House to make known to President Woodrow Wilson their demands for a constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage. Many of the marchers chained themselves to the fence in front of the White House when the police came to break up the demonstration. June 1920, when she was 85, she marched to demonstrate at the Republican Convention in Chicago.

Later that year women were granted the right to vote. Of all the pioneers, Susan B Anthony, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Olympia Brown was the only one who lived long enough to cast a vote in a Presidential election.

Asked to preach, near the end of her life, at her former church in Racine, she testified to the importance in her life of Universalism, “the faith in which we have lived, for which we have worked, and which has bound us together as a church. . . . Dear Friends, stand by this faith. Work for it and sacrifice for it. There is nothing in all the world so important to you as to be loyal to this faith which has placed before you the loftiest ideal, which has comforted you in sorrow, strengthened you for the noble duty and made the world beautiful for you.”

After the suffrage victory, Brown dedicated herself to promoting world peace and became one of the original members of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She died in 1926 at the age of 91. In the Universalist Church of Washington DC, a plaque honoring her reads:

Olympia Brown
Preacher of Universalism
Pioneer and Champion of Women’s Citizenship Rights
Forerunner of the New Era
THE FLAME OF HER SPIRIT STILL BURNS TODAY.

May it burn within each of us, when we feel a call, when something needs to be done. May our sense of a loving God sustain us, or our faith in the strength of justice and truth uphold us, may we honor those among us who have the fire. We need them.

Watch the streaming video of this sermon on First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin’s Facebook page.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 7, 2013

Immigration is an issue that is getting a lot of attention in the public arena. What are some of the elements to consider? How does our stance relate to First UU’s goal of being an intentionally hospitable church?

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
March 31, 2013

There are dying and rising gods all over human history. What might the resurrection be about?

This morning Christians in this congregation and around the world are celebrating Easter, the day of the resurrection of Jesus, when in the Christian faith story, he became not only Rabbi Jesus the teacher, but Christ, the savior of humanity. Often, joining with our Christian brothers and sisters, I preach from a Christian perspective on Easter. This year we are going to look together at the story of Ishtar. The holiday was probably named, not after her, but after a Germanic version of her named Eostra, goddess of the dawn and new beginnings. Her name is similar in many cultures. Astarte, Ashtaroth… these were traveling and trading cultures, and it is likely their stories would have traveled with them. There is even a moon goddess in pre-Columbian culture around what is now Guatemala named Ix Chel, whose consort is a rabbit. They share a similar story: a voluntary descent into death and darkness, of having everything stripped from you, then emerging transformed.

This faith story comes from the ancient lands of Sumer and Babylon, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, modern day Iraq. This five thousand year old story begins as Ishtar is born from the full moon as it touched the river. The first full moon after the spring equinox, that moon we saw in the sky this week, became known as “Ishtar’s egg.” As the poem about her descent into death begins, she bends her ear toward the underworld. The word in Sumerian for “ear” and for “wisdom” is the same, so you could say she was puzzling about the underworld where her sister, Ereshkigal lived. There was a funeral going on there she wanted to attend. Getting ready, she puts on seven things: a dress, earrings, a breastplate, a necklace, a belt, or girdle around her waist, bracelets on her wrists and ankles, and a crown. She leaves her consort, the shepherd king Dumuzi, or Tamuz, and their two sons. She leaves her temples where people worship her, and she arrives at the outer gates of the Underworld. There she announces herself as “Queen of Heaven, on my way to the East.” The chief gatekeeper of the underworld is skeptical and questions her. She replies that she wishes to descend because of her older sister, Ereshkigal, and to witness the funeral rites of Ereshkigal’s husband.

The gate is opened a crack, and the attendant asks her to take off her crown. When she asks why, he answers: “Quiet, Ishtar, the ways of the Underworld are perfect. They may not be questioned.” At the second gate the earrings are removed from her ears, at the third gate the necklace from her neck, at the fourth gate the ornaments from her breast, at the fifth gate the girdle from her waist, at the sixth gate the bracelets from her hands and feet, and at the seventh gate the covering cloak of her body. Ishtar protests as each symbol of her power is taken from her, but the guardian says this is the experience of all who enter the domain of death. When her sister sees her she is enraged, and she turns on Ishtar the “eyes of death,” inflicting on her diseases, judging her harshly, insulting her and accusing her. On a meat hook in her sister’s chambers, her corpse hangs like rotten meat. Three days she is down there. Her faithful hand servant, a warrior woman and advisor, charges two small animals with going after her disguised as flies, the lowest form of life. “You will hear the bitter queen of the underworld lamenting, moaning in pain as if she were giving birth. Moan with her and she will favor you. She will want to give you a gift – ask for Ishtar’s corpse. Sprinkle the body with this food and water of life, and she will come alive again and return with you.” They did as she asked, and Ishtar, alive again, was allowed to return with them to the land of the living. Attached to her, though, were two demons, who demanded that she send back a replacement for herself in the underworld. Returning to her palace she found Dumuzi /Tammuz the shepherd ruling, not having missed her. Suddenly she sees the perfect one to give to the demons. His sister, desperate to help him, offers herself, and they each end up spending six months in turn in the world of the dead.

Ishtar and Tammuz are among the many another dying and rising gods, along with Osiris, Dyonisius, Krishna, many of whom were conceived by a virgin, born in a cave, threatened with death when they were babies, and adored as having saved the world with their suffering. Ishtar’s worshippers in the land between the rivers would rise early on the day of the full moon after the equinox and greet the sunrise. Then the families would go hunt eggs, Ishtar’s eggs. They told the children these eggs came from the rabbit in the moon.

I’m not giving you this information to say “Oh, those silly people who believe this literally….” I’m telling you that the archetype, the pattern of dying and rising is engraved deeply in the human psyche. We don’t only see it in nature, in the lives of our bodies. We see it over and over in the course of our living. This story is of hitting bottom, of having the things that matter to you stripped away one by one. Many people in this room have had times like that in their lives, where everything was taken, where they were attacked by their dark inner sister, accused, destroyed, immobilized. There are heroes and sheroes among us: the people who have done the descent. They have hit bottom. They are not afraid of losing everything, because it has already happened. Maybe they have lost all their money, had their children taken from them, maybe they have lost their sanity. Marianne Williamson, renowned spiritual teacher, says a nervous breakdown is a highly underrated way to achieve enlightenment.

The Easter story is the story of losing everything. You are sick in your body or your spirit. Hope seems absurd. Part of you has died. You’re in the dark. Suddenly someone sends a tiny thing down there to help. Does it help by cheerleading and telling you everything’s going to be okay? No. It helps by joining in the moaning of your bitter and angry side. Then a little food and water sprinkled on the dead meat might make it begin to stir. You have been in the tomb and now you emerge. Is it just a human dynamic? Is it just about grass and corn? Is it about the earth or about the earth and more? A liberal Christian humor magazine called The Door offers a liberal Easter hymn. The words say “Jesus Christ is risen today, alleluiah…” in the title they have crossed out Easter and written ‘pretty yellow flower day.” In the verse, they cross out is, and write “may or may not have,” so it reads “Jesus Christ may or may not have risen today.”

I suddenly wanted to title this sermon “Your mama’s a pretty yellow flower.” How can they scorn a flower when it goes through the same things Ishtar did. The same things any dying and rising god does. It has to abandon its beauty, first losing its petals one by one, then its stem turning to slime, it seeds buried in the cold cold ground for a time, the water there tormenting it until it bursts open, then struggling back to the surface, through the dark, being tiny and vulnerable until it grows into its beauty again. That’s a rough journey. Our babies today have had a journey through darkness as well, closed up inside, then going on a harrowing journey to break in to the light. And we will all go back to the earth when our time has run.

As faith stories these proclaim that the Divine One is willing to descend, to empty herself of her power and suffer with us, that as she emerges she conquers the power of death, teaching us that there are pathways from here to there, and the great round continues to be danced. Behold the mystery: All that dies shall be reborn. May it be so in our lives.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
March 17, 2013

Sometimes you are halfway to a good answer when you finally formulate your question in a helpful way. What are some ways to come up with better questions?

SERMON: GOOD QUESTION

Great teachers are always asking questions. They know that if you give people the answer before they even ask the question, it’s a waste of breath. Socrates is famous for asking questions, so were the Jewish rabbis, so were Jesus and Buddha. This morning, picture me giving you a brightly wrapped box. As you open the box, out spill a pile of smaller presents. Those are my gifts to you this morning: some of the best questions I know. A good question can open your mind; a good question can make you think things you never thought before.

In my work as a therapist for the last twenty years, I can say therapy is certainly a question-driven process, from “How can I feel better?” to “What should I do now?” to “Why does watching movies with monkeys in them make me nuts?”

Sermon writing, much of the time, is a question-driven process. Often the sermon explores a question one of us has. Also, one of the ways I write a story or a sermon is to picture myself in the congregation or in the audience and ask “what would I want to hear about this subject if I were you?”

I had a religion professor at Duke who was in love with questions when my friends and I in the campus Christian organization were in love with answers. He had his work cut out for him. We kept trying to give answers to the ethical dilemmas he posed. He would shake his head impatiently and say we were going to the answer part too fast. I wasn’t used to getting C’s. That’s what I got on his midterm when I answered his question, which was something like “Talk about the meaning of life” by talking about my understanding of the meaning of life. I was frustrated, angry, confused. I thought “Fine, I’ll show him!” The final exam was, I think, “what is the meaning of death?” I answered with all questions. I mean, every sentence was a question. I got an A. I also learned something: I learned how much fun it was to ask question after question, and how one question led to another, and another.

If you have the right question, you are more than halfway to a good answer. If you are asking the wrong question, then you will get stuck. Lots of people come to couples counseling at first asking the wrong question. “How am I being controlled?” “What can I do to change you?” “What is wrong with you?” “What are my rights here?”

Better questions for couples are: “What part of my anger is anger at myself?” “How can I understand you better? How can I help you feel heard and understood? How can we both feel safer with one another?” Other good therapeutic questions can be: “What is your problem doing for you?” “What scary changes might occur if things got better?

When we do a child dedication in my church, I ask the parents “What is your job description for this child? So many of us grow up not knowing what is required of us. The default setting for this is “we just have to be perfect, then we will get our parent’s blessing.’ When you ask parents what they want for their kids, most of the time they will say “I just want them to be happy — you know — have a happy life.” It’s strange, then, that their kids have this sense that they have to be perfect. Anyway, it’s good for both sides for the parents to ask themselves that question. “What do we really want from this child?”

Asking questions is the thing to do when you are in disagreement with someone. Not like “What’s WRONG with you?” But “Tell me more about what you think about this. ” ” What led to you feeling like this?” Try to understand what they are saying before you try to make yourself understood.

If you are feeling attacked or misunderstood, a good thing to do is be quiet for a minute, breathe, and ask this question: “What are you doing?”

I was a chaplain in training at Walter Reed Army Hospital. My trainer was a wild man who asked great questions. If you answered him with “I don’t know,” he would look at you for a second or two and ask “Okay. And if you DID know, what would it be?”

Sometimes the gift of a good question can trick that inner mule you’ve got. Of course, you may not have one. it might just be me….

Another teacher, years later, asked me if I could figure out a system for doing laundry or something. “Oh, I don’t figure out routines very well,” I said. She looked at me somewhat sharply and said,” So — if someone paid you 1,000 dollars to figure that out, how might you do it?” WOW, that made it clear immediately!

What question are you dying for someone to ask you? Is there one? I would like to close with of my favorite questions: Think about a problem with which you are struggling in your life.

THE MIRACLE QUESTION
If you woke up and your problem had disappeared, how would you know a miracle had happened?
How would you behave differently? (be as precise as possible)
How would your family and friends behave differently?
How would they know a miracle had happened?
How would they see the differences in your behavior?
Are there parts of the miracle that are already happening in your life?
How did these things happen?
Can you get more of them to happen ?

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
March 3, 2013

The second element in Buddhism’s Eightfold Path is “Right Intention.” Your intention is the lodestar by which you steer your life. What is that, given your understanding of life, you intend to do and be?

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
February 17, 2013

What is fundamentalism? Why is its world view compelling? What is destructive about it? How do you let go, not only of the content of its thinking, but of the structure of its thinking?

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
February 10, 2013

“A Juicy Slice of UU History: Theodore Parker,”  “The arc of the Universe bends toward justice,” he said. Parker was a Unitarian minister, a tireless and militant abolitionist, and a proponent of women’s rights.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 27, 2013

The Eightfold Path. Buddhism teaches that there is a way to overcome suffering by coming to an understanding of the way the world is, and by living in a certain way. There is no requirement that you believe in it, they say, you just try it to see if it works.

I don’t know how many of you have seen the classic Buddhist movie “The Matrix.” In it, Keanu Reeves plays a young computer hacker who wakes up to the reality of the Matrix, a vast virtual reality grid that feeds off of human energy. Humans are kept asleep in embryonic eggs while a virtual life is played in their brain. The first message he gets from the deeper reality is: “Wake up Neo!” In the movie, once Neo woke up to the fact that the reality of the Matrix was an illusion, he grew capable of grasping that the bullets coming at him weren’t real, and he was able to move around among them. He was able to move around in the pseudo reality of the Matrix, aware of it as an illusion, more and more aware of the deeper reality.

This is the first of eight sermons, over the upcoming months, on the eightfold path of Buddhism. The Eightfold Path is not like eight steps, or little boxes you check off one by one as you accomplish them. It is a path of eight elements interwoven, braided together, having to do with understanding, practice and behavior that Buddhism says will take you on a journey away from suffering and toward freedom. The first component of the path is “Right Understanding.” “Getting it” is the first and continuing job of the person on this path. You get “wake up, Neo” messages. You catch a glimpse of the truth of how things work. You have a glimmer of a sense that many people create their own suffering, that disquietude lurks at the corners of most lives, that grief, hope, fear, hunger for security or pleasure or acceptance drive people to do what they do and that satisfaction is elusive. A deeper reality crooks its finger at you and whispers in Laurence Fishburn’s voice: “Wake up. There must be satisfaction somewhere, let’s go look for it. ”

One of the things I find most relaxing about Buddhism is that it doesn’t ask you to take any of this on faith. It asks you to try it out and see if it works for you. Buddhism asks you to start with your experience. Most people’s attention is squandered on the anxiety, all the worry, and the fear in their lives. What will happen to us? Am I doing this right? Will people have a good time at my party? Will I get well again? Will I end up a bag lady? I have one friend who is haunted by the picture of people milling around at his funeral shaking their heads and saying “It’s a shame he never made much of himself.” Moment after moment, for most people, is filled with hope that things will go well and fear that things won’t. That life is a rollercoaster. In the words of the poet John Prine “Some times you’re up, some times you’re down, it’s a half an inch of water and you think you’re going to drown.”

Things happen to you, then you make stories about the things that happen: that they shouldn’t be happening, that they are a punishment for something you did, that your life is unfair, that you are unlucky and unblessed. Buddhism says all of these thoughts about what happens, all of the rollercoaster emotion caused by hoping and fearing makes you suffer. There is a way to end the suffering. In your life, you will have pain, but you don’t have to make yourself extra suffering over the pain. The eightfold path, with its eight elements, is the way to train yourself morally, mentally and emotionally, to be free from suffering from the thoughts you have about what happens. Here are the eight elements: right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

Right understanding, the first strand of the Eightfold Path, “getting it, ” involves seeing how things are. You understand that you suffer because you have attachments to how things should go. You crave, you cling, you hope, you fear. You have hopes that an interview will go well. You are anxious about it. You worry afterward about whether they liked you. If you get the job you worry about doing it well. If you don’t get the job you wonder why they didn’t like you. You have ideas about how it should go. You have interpretations of how it went, ideas from your interpretations, and you suffer over those.

Someone you love is drinking or using again. You worry about how bad it’s going to get. You feel the feelings from when it was at its worst. You interpret your friend’s using as his not loving you, because if he loved you he would want things to be good for you, and things aren’t good for you when he is using. It feels as though he is doing it to you.

In your thoughts is a way you wish things would go. You have fears about how things could be. All of these things, hopes and fears, cause you suffering. When you are anxious about these things you miss a lot of your life: seeing your other friends, you can barely hear what people are saying to you, you don’t enjoy your food, sleep, sex, beauty, things seem garbled and dim. You are suffering. How could that stop?

Wake up. “Get it” that if you calm and focus your mind you can see reality more clearly. “Get it” that what happens happens. There are certain things you can do to make the interview go well, and you do them. Or not. Then it happens. You get the job. Or not. You can interpret it any way you want to. They didn’t like you? Maybe. Maybe they had someone else who was a better fit. Maybe this is not your job, maybe yours is coming. If the job wouldn’t have been a good fit for you, you would have been miserable in it. Is that what you wanted? At times I tell people they need to be unattached to outcomes. You need to do what you do and leave what happens then to the Spirit or the Universe. Usually they respond with “So you want me not to care?” What do you say to that? If caring means you suffer and your suffering adds no good to the situation, do you want to keep doing that? Can you care in a way that holds the outcome lightly? Can you care in a way that understands that your loved ones have to find their own way, make their mistakes, feel your support but not your direction.

Buddhist practice is the foundation of this possibility. Meditation, spending time in quiet with your breathing allows you to see more clearly, gives you spaces between your moments in which to understand what part of this is pain that exists and what part is suffering you are bringing on yourself and can stop if you practice. Some spiritual paths attempt to give meaning to suffering – this one says it can be avoided, eventually, with practice and understanding. Wisdom will be cultivated and ignorance will be shed like an outgrown snake skin.

In meditation we have the chance of seeing the story we are telling ourselves about our life. You can notice the thoughts you are having about what is happening in your life. There are a hundred different stories, and seeing your story is part of getting it. Another part of Right Understanding, of waking up, is understanding the law of Karma. Its literal name is “right view of the ownership of action” The Buddhist teachers say: “Beings are the owners of their actions, the heirs of their actions; they spring from their actions, are bound to their actions, and are supported by their actions. Whatever deeds they do, good or bad, of those they shall be heirs.” The Buddhist scriptures, like the Christian scriptures, talk about results of actions as “fruits.” “By their fruits ye shall know them.” If our lives are like a river, it’s as if we are all living downstream from our actions, and the dirty or clean water that runs because of those actions catches us later. Good actions are morally commendable, helpful to the growth of the spirit, and productive of benefits for yourself and others. Unwholesome actions, to use a more Buddhist word than “bad,” ripen into suffering.

Getting it means that you see that suffering occurs from craving, desire and attachment, that the way to end suffering is to end craving and attachment, that the way to end craving is to attend to the eightfold path of right wisdom and right behavior. To own your actions, your part in any situation, to let go of blaming and clean up what you are putting into the water upstream from where you live.

I have a friend who tells the story of her mother-in-law, Carolyn, at the drive-through window at the bank. The teller had sent out a pen for her to use in filling out her deposit slip. She had dropped the pen, which had fallen underneath the seat of the car. Carolyn could reach the pen, she could get her fingers around it, but she couldn’t pull her hand out with the pen in it. Finally they made a present to her of the pen so she would go on. We are caught like that with our grasping, unable to be free. What is the pen under your seat? What is keeping you from moving? Do you need to let it go? Do you need to drive to a safe place in the parking lot of the bank, get out of the car, move the seat, and get the pen? Either way, you get unstuck, and unstuck is where we want to be.

Podcasts of sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

January 13, 2013

What does forgiveness entail? Does one have to “forgive and forget?” How do we forgive ourselves? Another sermon having to do with our Covenant of Healthy Relations.

Forgiveness makes you strong. A spiritual practice is something you do over and over whether you feel like it or not, in order to have access to your inner wisdom when you need it, in order to be able to keep a heart of compassion, in order to keep your perspective when the going gets rough, in order to be unshakeable. Well, at least, if not unshakeable, a bit sturdier. Bitterness makes us brittle. Cynicism takes our hope. Ruminating on the wrongs done to us, or on the wrongs we have done, steals away our joy in life. A spiritual practice can help us let go of that kind of ruminating. The meditation we just said together is one such practice, and it can help with forgiveness.

Forgiveness is related to both emotional and physical healing. This week I read a study by Alex H. S. Harris and Carl E. Thoresen called: “Forgiveness, Unforgiveness,Health, and Disease” done in 2005 at the Center for Health Care Evaluation, which is part of the US Dept of Veteran’s Affairs. They concluded that hostile rumination was a chronic stressor with negative effects on health. It led to chronic hyperaroused stress response, which, to put it unscientifically, just wears a person out.

Feeling that you have been wronged is not good for you. You need either to talk about it until you can do something about it or let it go and move on. Holding on to impotent anger makes us cramped and closed. “Impotent anger ” is anger that is not doing anything for you, anger that has no fruitful power. Anger’s purpose is to move you out of hurtful situations, protect you from hurtful people, energize you to do what you can to make things better for yourself. Almost any time you are angry, one question that can move you forward is this one: “How much of this anger is anger at myself?”

Forgiveness is difficult because when we are wronged, we stiffen into righteousness. Righteousness is the root of much wicked behavior. We feel that, because we have been hurt, we have carte blanche to hurt other people. We can speak in destructive ways, we can lay waste about us with the sword of our tongue. We feel that, because we are right, we can be brutal.

Forgiveness is also difficult because, as I’ve said before, being righteously wronged can be a semi enjoyable state. We have a picture in our mind of how the one who wronged us should apologize. We imagine conversations where we articulately explain our P.O.V. and the ones who wronged us slap their heads in enlightenment, in realization. We exercise our arguments toward that imagined conversation. We polish our grudges, we repeat them to ourselves; we can drop into the groove of recrimination and resentment at a moments notice, we can do it in our sleep. We lull ourselves with the recitation. The resentment can become part of who we are. Part of our personality’s clothing, our identity. Forgiveness is especially difficult when it is ourselves we need to forgive. We can get addicted to the guilt and pain of going over and over our transgression or our mistake. We hold ourselves to a higher standard than the one we use for others. Other people can forget things, be hurtful, lie or cheat or make a terrible mistake, but not us. It’s hard to accept that we are human and prone to error. If we’re just regular human beings, then how will we be in control of the world? We might rather think of ourselves as bad and still in control than to acknowledge that we’re just regular folks.

Forgiving requires a willingness to look at the harm being done to you by not beginning to forgive. If you don’t forgive yourself, you may not allow yourself to have a good life, which affects the people who love you. And it makes you insufferable when you’re in the “I’m a terrible person” place, because they have to live their lives and spend time reassuring you that you are all right, which equates to dragging you along like a heavy suitcase with a broken wheel. Being a righteous victim does you harm because you have a stiffening righteousness. It does you harm in that you are stuck. You are also stuck to the person at whom you are angry, or to the bad mistake you made. You cannot go anywhere without dragging them along with you. It does you harm in that you feel that other people might hurt you the same way. You become braced. Ready to be hurt, to be left, to be abandoned, to be betrayed. You don’t have to look at yourself, if you are a victim of mean parents or two timing lovers, or if you are just a tragically bad person. You get to be the right about them, about yourself.. Being right is a big part of not wanting to forgive. You can be right, absolutely, and still be hurt by harboring anger against yourself or the person who hurt you.

Jungian analyst, author and teacher Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes: “Forgiveness seems unrealistic because we think of it as a one-time act that had to be completed in one sitting. Forgiveness has many layers, many seasons. It is not all or nothing, if you can do a 95% forgiveness, you are a saint. 75% is wonderful. 60% is fine. Keep working./playing with it. The important things are to BEGIN and to CONTINUE. There is a healer inside who will help you if you get out of the way. For some, temperamentally, this is easy. For some it is harder. You are not a saint if it’s easy, not a bad person if it’s not. You are who you are and you do it the way you do it. All in due time.” Forgiveness also does NOT mean to overlook something, to pretend the thing didn’t happen. Estes talks about the stages of forgiveness.

1. TO FOREGO: to leave it alone. Take a break from thinking about it for awhile Get your strength back.

2. TO FORBEAR: Containment. Don’t act Keep your self-protective vigilance. Have patience. Practice generosity. Ask what would happen if there were grace in this situation?

3. TO FORGET: Refuse to dwell on it, Consciously release it. Some people are wary of this step, and make definitions of forgetting for themselves that include bearing the wrong in mind. At the Israeli Holocaust Memorial, they say forgive, but never forget, because if you forget it could happen again. Only you can be the judge of whether the wrong that was done to you is something you can afford to forget. If not, ask yourself how you can bear it in mind without it continually poisoning you.

4. TO FORGIVE: Regard the other individual indulgently. Give compassionate aid to that person. You don’t think about the incident any more. You have nothing to say about it.

The metta meditation we use is directly related to this. The first step in forgiving is to direct compassion and love toward yourself. Say: May I be free from danger. May I be physically happy May I be mentally happy May I have ease of well-being. Do that for three weeks, then say it about someone you like, about a neutral person, THEN about the one who wronged you. If you can’t, go back to sending lovingkindness to yourself. You don’t have to forgive all at once. Today, maybe, just think about being ready to begin.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776