Wellspring: inspiration and guidance for a spiritual journey

Empty Nest, by Libby Moore

My husband and I were gone for a long weekend back in June, and when we got home, we found that a robin had come back to nest for a second year in the hanging planter just outside our garden room. She was shocked to discover us moving around on the other side of the glass, I think, lights going on at night, eyes peering through the glass. But she went ahead and laid her eggs anyway, one a day for four days, and then proceeded to sit on them faithfully through rain and heat and hunger.

A couple of weeks ago the eggs hatched, leaving impossibly small bits of fluff in the nest, barely obvious as birds. A few days later they became all gaping beaks waiting for one of their weary parents to ferry in another worm or bug. The babies crowded each other in the nest as they grew, jockeying for position and ready for food all the time.

Then yesterday morning three of the babies left the nest. They went suddenly, almost falling out of the confined space and into the great world, where they hopped quickly toward the nearby undergrowth. One flew up to a tree branch, but the others remained out of sight. They had been stretching their wings for a while, though, getting ready for this moment, and they've been growing so fast they're probably out there pecking away at worms and looking just like the other robins.

Yesterday was a particularly auspicious time for these babies to leave the nest and find their wings. It was the morning when participants from last year's Wellspring groups led the Sunday morning worship service. Their topic was the theology of joy, one of our favorite sessions. With poetry and music and their own moving words, they tested their wings and flew, offering themselves and their wisdom to the congregation with grace and love. All year, we've been trying to nurture souls in the confined space of small groups, offering bits of wisdom and a safe place to grow in the company of like-minded seekers. This service yesterday was an expression of that growth, a gift to our congregation.

I am grateful for the many ways in which Wellspring participants have contributed to our congregation, and especially for the beauty they created yesterday. May they fly well, wherever they choose to go from here.

Reflections at the end of Wellspring

At the final session of our Wellspring group, each participant brought something of meaning to reflect on the year's work together. Several offerings have been posted here already – Kim's lovely blessing for our group, Melissa's comprehensive reflection on learnings she's taken away from the program. Carolyn's poem "The Meadow" will be posted next week.

The reflections honor our Unitarian Universalist heritage in their individuality, their thoughtfulness, their commitment to living deeply and well in our faith. It seems fitting to share them with others in the Wellspring community through the blog. I am grateful for the time we've had together in this group – ten months of sharing our souls, our personal stories, our love and laughter and joy. We move onward in our different paths now, nourished by one another. May we all continue to love one another and to live with joy.

Libby Moore

Gold Star Mothers, by Tina Simson

So it was Mother’s day and the newspaper in my town did a story about the Gold Star Mothers, the women who have lost children to war. I read the article, as far as I could, until the tears blurred my vision and rage pierced my heart. I agree that these women have experienced an unimaginable loss, but their loss is not a noble sacrifice, or the ultimate patriotic deed. That’s part of the myth they tell us to make the loss seem bearable.

Women lose children everyday, to disease, addiction, depression, accidents. It is no more gallant a loss when a flag drapes the coffin. In fact it is the ultimate failure. We fail our children when war is the solution to any problem. We fail as a society and as humankind. When we choose war, we squander the dedication, commitment and devotion of our children who serve in the Armed Forces. We call them peacekeepers and then send them to fight. What a dissonant concept. And when we lose sight of a war because our own lives are complicated by more immediate concerns like the price of gas or food, we fail them again.

There is an indelible image in my mind. It’s 2005 and while staying at a hotel in the Midwest, I wander into a parking lot filled with buses of new soldiers. They are dressed in desert fatigues and filing into the hotel. Their faces are fresh, so young and so eager. My car is blocked, so I wait patiently while they stand in lines talking about the hot breakfast and the cozy bed that awaits them. We talk… “Where are you from?”
“Alabama, Vermont, Texas, Washington”, “Where are you going?”
“Iraq”

I realize then that my role is to stand witness to these beautiful children, to be there on behalf of their mothers who will follow every moment of this journey in their mind’s eye. I affirm their beauty, their innocence and potential, and the love they freely express for those left behind. I plead with all that is holy to wrap protective arms around these men and women. We chat, and I learn about families, children and plans for “when they return.”
Then I see a small ragged Elmo doll, stuffed into the pants pocket of a big strapping young man. Elmo’s head peaks out.
“I see you have a friend in your pocket?”
“Yep” he says, “Elmo has been with me my whole life. I thought he should come to Iraq too.”
I am at a loss… “I hope he keeps you safe,” I say.

“That’s what I’m counting on.”

Isn’t it time we all stand witness and choose to keep our children safe?

Gold Star Families for Peace
Military Families for Peace
Military Families Speak Out

God as verb, by Joy Collins

Previously I wrote about the gift of my 81 year old mother. Today I write about the unlikely teaching of my elderly dad.

I was raised Catholic during the 1960s and totally bought into “God the Father” as the white bearded guy with a staff, and “God the Son” being Jesus of the Sacred Heart. My teenage religious rebellion turned me toward the God of Rationality. Later, in my mid-30s I enthusiastically embraced the God of Psychotherapy. I will admit, I am an unabashed fan of therapy, having had many years of it. It truly awakened my emotional and compassionate side.

Yet at some point, it too, became not enough. My therapist, a most transformative person in my life, encouraged me as I experimented in the mid-90s with Unitarian Universalism. But I still felt caught. It seemed I had only two options: reject God altogether, as our humanist-oriented minister at the time indirectly advocated, or embrace my childhood image of a conscious, directive potentate who saw fit to allow child abuse and starvation. Neither route was appealing.

Enter Process Theology in the guise of my dad. 8 years ago, at age 76, he showed early signs of dementia. As their executor and eldest local child, I needed to delicately get more involved in his and my mom’s finances. Managing their money had been the center of, not only his retirement years, but his entire adulthood. I began spending hours sitting with him in their spare bedroom as he and I would go over investments, gifting, and bill paying. He had a brilliant financial mind that gradually was slowing to a crawl. During those in between years I had many minutes where we sat, him struggling and usually eventually succeeding, in grasping the work and conveying his ideas. All I could heartbreakingly do was practice patience, breathing, compassion and the fine line between taking over and sitting back. In an odd way, these were beautiful moments.

During these months, I was also nearing the end of my time in therapy. Our sessions had moved from dissecting my childhood to more forward-looking spiritual concerns. In one session in particular, I remember bemoaning my lack of connection to a personal God, the one my conservative Christian sisters took such comfort in. Because a just and loving God would not slowly destroy the part of my dad he most treasured.

And my therapist, in one of those simple, yet brilliant remarks, said, “God is in those conversations with you dad.” I probably stared at her blankly. She continued, “God is not a separate being. God is created in you each time you choose compassion with your dad. God is the love you are showing by letting him do what he can, and gently, with face-saving respect, offering to do what he can’t. God is the loving interaction.”

In a flash, I got it. Ten years before I ever heard of process theology, I got the concept. Rev. Gary Kowalski talks of the world/god “as composed of verbs rather than nouns.” Rebecca Parker says “we make God, as much as God makes us.” While this is still intellectually difficult to understand or articulate, I totally get the experience of God as Process. It has liberated me into being as “godlike” as I can in all my interactions. Thanks, Dad, for providing such an unusual but life changing gift.

Food for thought, by Tina Simson

Perhaps when we consider mindful eating we need to look at it as a moral act, what we eat, how we eat, what we teach our children about food and sustainability. Have you ever sat before your plate of food and traveled back in your mind to its origin, to the seed that was planted, to the rain, the sun, the farmer, the harvester? Do you imagine a sunny hilltop in upstate NY or an industrial farm in California with migrant workers?

Do you create a loving mealtime with conversation and laughter and time to sit, or do you grab food from the fridge and run out the door or plop down in front of the TV? What place does food and eating have in your life? Is it honored as the life-giving act it is? There is a reason all faith traditions “say grace” over their daily bread. Food nourishes our bodies and our souls.
I don’t write all this to make us feel guilty but to help us re-establish an honored and mindful place in our lives for eating.

I found some great ideas and resources from the Catholic Rural Life Conference on the Ethics of Eating. Here is their Code for Ethical Eating. It could easily be written by any honorable UU.

Eating is a Moral Act: Eaters Ethics in Food Choice

Human Dignity: Support fair wages, healthy working conditions for farmers, farm workers, food workers.

Human Dignity: Eaters have a right to nutritious food. Obesity is a public health issue.

Universal Destination of Goods: Support fair distribution of profits, not food cartel control.

Integrity of Creation: Support humane treatment of animals, restrict factory farms

Integrity of Creation: Protect the environment by the food you eat

Common Good: people around the world have a right to food security

Common Good: Limit “food miles” and reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Subsidarity: affirm local food production and local purchasing as a preference

Solidarity: Encourage fair trade practices

Option for the poor: provide nutritious foods for those who are hungry

The Sustainable Table is a site that will help you assess where you stand on with your personal practices and how to shift to sustainable eating.

Rochester Roots is a local program that is creating a locally sustainable food system that ensures community food security. Other communities and even municipalities are engaged in this type of endeavor.

And when you thought there was no hope for good decisions from the White House we have surprising news that the Bush Administration had appointed Brian Wansink, a professor of marketing at Cornell University, to head the US Department of Agriculture's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, the branch of the USDA that's responsible for dispensing dietary advice to the American public. Wansink is the author of the book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think -- a groundbreaking work on the psychology of eating. Take a look at thoughts about this on the blog World Changing.

Welcoming the Stranger, by Libby Moore

In preparation for talking about our Universalist heritage, we've asked people to listen to Rob Hardies' John Murray lecture from General Assembly in 2006. Rob challenges us to practice radical hospitality, to open our hearts and welcome strangers with the kind of open hearted love with which Thomas Potter welcomed John Murray. "Welcome, my friend, I've been waiting for you for a long time," Potter said when Murray arrived, broken and shipwrecked. Admirable as it sounds, practicing this kind of radical hospitality can be a hard task, a stretch from our comfortable habits.

Thinking back to when I was "the stranger" helps, though. At the end of the turbulent '60's, I relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico from the East Coast to teach in an alternative school there. I moved with a man I later married, so I wasn't altogether alone. But we hardly knew anyone. We arrived in Santa Fe shortly before Fiesta, which is a very big deal there. It starts off with the burning of Zozobra, a great fireworks display to dispel Old Man Gloom. On someone's advice, we drove up into the brown, juniper-covered hills to watch the spectacle. Sitting on a blanket, waiting for darkness, we discovered that people were joining us –people we had met at the school, people we had run into as we explored our new community. They seemed like old hands, having lived in Santa Fe for a while – three months, a year, five years – and they welcomed us as instant friends. This congregation of people on the side of the mountain became our community, our family, later sharing our wedding and Thanksgivings and the birth of our son. It was a miracle of hospitality for us, giving us the warmth of community to support our new lives so far away from our families.

Radical hospitality goes beyond just welcoming the stranger, though. It asks us to open our hearts to other's ideas as well, and to welcome the presence of love in every encounter. The other day I had a phone conversation with my non-church-going brother, who was raised Unitarian but has a somewhat skeptical attitude about my "religious" life. I was telling him about Wellspring, and he asked if I was a "believer," which started us talking about what we both believe about God – and I discovered that we're closer than either of us had thought. We share more in our beliefs than we would ever have known if we hadn't opened ourselves to this discussion. Welcoming the opportunity to listen to each other gave us a new understanding and appreciation for the other. May all of our encounters be open to the unexpected presence of God.

Evolutionary or Revolutionary?, by Joy Collins

Last weekend my spouse and I were in New Jersey to attend a civil union ceremony. New Jersey legalized same-sex commitments earlier this year. The couple, in their mid-60s, have been in love for 47 years. One of the pair, Marge, is a practicing Catholic, active as a lay leader in her parish. Though she knew the answer, she asked her parish priest to perform the ceremony. He declined, but asked if he could come, without his collar. So the ceremony was instead performed by a federal judge, with “Father Mark” incognito. Both Marge and Father Mark have chosen to stay in the Catholic Church, trying to evolve it from within. They take a lot of heat from their more revolutionary friends. Father Mark told me it’s his and Marge’s church too, and if they leave, the powerful win over the loving. Some might think Marge and Father Mark are weak-spined.  However, I think theirs is a courageous stance. The stance of hanging in to slowly move an institution forward.

In Rochester on the other hand, our city gained notoriety 10 years ago when Father Jim Callan not only blessed same sex unions, but allowed all worshipers to receive communion and allowed a woman in vestments on the altar. The Vatican removed Jim as a priest, and he and his 1,000 person congregation are now part of the American Catholic movement at Spiritus Christi Church. I think Father Jim is courageous too. Each is expressing their radicalism in a different way.

I compare this to almost 500 years ago. Our Rochester Wellspring groups are currently reading For Faith and Freedom, a short history of Unitarianism in Europe, by Charles A. Howe. There are two chapters dedicated to Michael Servetus, who by daring to challenge John Calvin’s Protestant doctrine was burned at the stake in 1553. He believed Jesus was human as well as divine – a heretical threat to the prevailing power structure. Micheal Servetus, the first (and unfortunately not the last) Unitarian martyr, was willing to lose his life for his beliefs.

We don’t ask our Wellspring participants what they are willing to die for. We DO ask them what they are willing to lose, in order to stand up for their beliefs. There is no right answer. Are Marge and Father Mark “right” for working within, some say supporting, the Catholic dogma, or is Father Jim Callan “right” in forcing the Vatican’s hand, and being ousted? I believe we are each called to shine a light to support the “inherent worth and dignity of every person”. And we need to be willing to lose something in that endeavor. At the same time, where we are on the evolutionary – revolutionary spectrum is up to the conscience of each of us.

Unitarian with a Rudder, by Joy Collins

Last week I was at a restaurant with two other Unitarian Universalists and one “non-UU.” We discussed the latest topic for the monthly small covenant groups. The question was, “what do you want to be sure to do before you die so that you don’t have regrets?” We decided to go around and share our responses over our Greek meal. As then often happens, these responses called us to deeper conversation in general, mostly about spiritual matters. The non-UU, a dear friend with a different set of beliefs from mine, looked at me and said, “I think you’ve chosen a more difficult path, not being a theist, and therefore so rudderless.”

I must admit, I broke all the polite conversation rules about pausing before speaking or making a reflective listening statement. I jumped right in to defend myself, maybe I was even a bit too defensive. I certainly don’t feel rudderless. At least most of the time. Especially after being involved in Wellspring for 2+ years.

And yet why was I so defensive? I do feel misunderstood, and imagine other UUs face similar image problems. We UUs, without a common creed, a common deity, a common book of scripture, can certainly look rudderless. And then I got thinking that perhaps this is what Wellspring is all about. About not only finding one’s rudder, but also being confident and articulate enough to talk about it. And maybe I am at a stage of needing to not only feel my rudder, but to unapologetically share that more with others.

This week in our Wellspring group we looked at our Seven Principles and also an overview of the most frequent theological questions. The questions other faith traditions have ready-made answers to. Questions like, what happens after you die? What is the nature of evil? How did the world come into being? Are our lives pre-destined? What is the role of religious authority? One of our goals by the end of this church year is for each participant to be able to answer these questions, at least for him or herself. At least for right now. And as part of our “faith in action” to be able to articulate these beliefs, yes this rudder, even over a Greek meal.

Cleaning House, by Libby Moore

Our eighteen-year-old granddaughter is coming to visit this week, the first time she's come by herself since she was seven or eight, and we're really excited. I wanted to get her room tidied up and ready for her, which has led to days of scrubbing and washing curtains and getting rid of ancient dust bunnies in every room in the house. The truth is, I hate house cleaning, which is why it so rarely gets done and why it's taking so long now, getting into the nooks and crannies that have been long neglected.

The thing about housecleaning is that nobody notices unless it's not clean. When there are cobwebs in the corners, fingerprints on the woodwork and grime on the windowsills, people notice. When it's sparkling clean, that's the way it should be, and it's taken for granted. I notice dirt but my husband doesn't – as long as the house is reasonably tidy, he thinks it's fine. It's one of our minor continuing arguments. I get aggravated at feeling pressured to take care of it, but put it off and put it off.

It's one of those things where I know there's more I should do but I don't get around to it, like so much of the work I should be doing in the world. I'm in an odd space just now, trying to figure out what that work should be. In May I completed five years of work that I loved, mentoring teachers of young children. But the grant ran out, so there's no more work. I've been enjoying a real summer vacation but I haven't quite figured out what comes next, what the fall will bring. I do know that I need to do something of use in the world. For now, I'm trying to live quietly and listen for what comes, believing, as the Quakers say, that "way opens."

And so here I am as I wait, washing windows and vacuuming the ceilings, doing work that nobody will notice. Because it's the right thing to do. Gotta get back to it – I'm not done yet.

A Fourth of July paradox, by Tina

Today is July 5th, and much of the hoopla is over. I admit I did my share of celebrating the holiday. I watched the parade, wheeled the totally decorated little red wagon full of my red white and blue clad niece and nephew around festivities on the grounds of the town hall. I even tried to explain Independence Day to my nephew, quickly detailing our oppression under England. After my tale, he said, “Please pass the jelly.”

I also have to admit that this holiday is filled with conflict for me. This year my older son served a tour of duty in Iraq and my younger son has been working side by side with Muslim students in Turkey. I am proud of both my sons and yet I have lived this year in personal fear and anxiety, as I never have before. I hate this war, and the fiasco that this administration has created both in this country and in this world. I am embarrassed at the tainted reputation of the United States. I rant at the environmental irresponsibility we perpetrate in the world and I despise our lack of responsible action in Darfur.

And yet here is the paradox; our celebration yesterday was with my brother’s in-laws. A family we visit every Fourth of July. His father-in-law, was born on the Fourth and he’s an immigrant from Italy. His family arrived here soon after World War II, were they spent months hiding from the Fascists in caves, often starving and cold. His mother-in-law came from East Germany, escaping into the safety of cousins with open arms, here in the US. We don’t talk about these things on the Fourth, we go to the parade, eat hot dogs and potato salad and dress up in silly patriotic outfits. But under the surface of the celebration is a deep knowledge that all this is possible because we live in the US, because we are free and have rights unparalleled in the world. This family came here to this country and on hope and hard work has created a life of modest means with a loving family and deep friendships.

So I wrestle with this paradox, how do I love a country that has gone so terribly wrong? How do I not love a country that at its core is so right? What have I personally done that has allowed this to happen? What have I ignored? What can I do now? How can I make my personal efforts meaningful?

This paradox challenges me to think, to delve deeply into my beliefs and actions and I believe such wrestling is what makes spiritual journeys relevant.