We welcome Barbara, Georgette, Joan Hill and Joan Clark into membership today. We accept them fully for who they are. We do not expect them to be any different than who they are.
We have come to know Barbara’s deep, no nonsense approach to life, her expertise and awareness of the natural world around her, especially the birds.
We have come to know Georgette’s commitment to truth and her ability to overcome her fears, most recently illustrated by her timid approach to reading aloud and then doing a wonderful job of presenting the sermon “Do you have human fatigue?” two weeks ago.
We have come to recognize Joan Hilll’s sense of beauty and the light and sophisticated artistic way that she moves through the world. We remember her sense of hope that for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows, that somewhere in the darkest night, a candle glows, that for everyone that goes astray, someone with come and show the way. That she believes that all will be well.
We have come to understand Joan Clark’s soft determination. We honor her perseverance as she cares for Nathan, who is spending his days at Wayne Woodlands.
We would not expect them to be different than they are. And we welcome them whenever we are together.
Additionally, if they were to come in with a sling or a patch, the attire that Carol sports today, we would ask them what happened; we would extend to them our care. If we didn’t see them for a while, we would inquire after them. For that is what this congregation has articulated as a value and a gift of membership: that we care about and for each other.
We do this for all of our members, new and not so new. We extend a hand of welcome and a loving heart, to members, visitors and friends, regardless of race, gender, age, nationality or sexual orientation or affection. We are a community of equals concerned with each other’s well being, spiritual development and individual search for truth. We extend our concern to the community outside these walls.
And we help each other, whether there’s something that we don’t understand, whether we need help with a chore, whether we need encouragement to spiritual growth.
We are here.
Song interlude: We are here to find meaning in the darkness. We are here to find meaning in the light. We are here. We are here. We are here, we are here. Meaning in the darkness, meaning in the light. Meaning in the darkness, meaning in the light. We are here.
Yes, the Upper Delaware Unitarian Universalist Fellowship is here and our mission is to be a vibrant liberal religious community that nurtures the individual spirit and collectively works to build just and sustainable community through creative worship, good works and individual expression. Let’s give ourselves a hand. We are, indeed, a fabulous group of people who gather together in religious community to celebrate our unique gifts and a sense of community. (Can you hear the but coming?)
Now some of you might be thinking about the title of this service “To be announced,” and the write up that talked about letting go when things are out of control. Or maybe you’re thinking “Oh, this is kind of fun, relaxing and entertaining so I’ll just see where it goes from here. I’ll stick with traveling north for a while, even though I thought I was going south.”
So here’s the rub or the but: we accept that Barbara, Georgette and Joan and everyone else as uniquely who they are; we take care of them when they are not well, and check in with them when they seem to be absent. But can or do we extend that courtesy to ourselves?
Or does our uniqueness have that but word stringing off of it. “I did a pretty good job but … The program went well but … I tried to get there on time but ….” Additionally, do you find yourself frustrated when things aren’t going the way that you think they ought to? When you find yourself going north when you actually through you were going south. And to make matters even more complicated, are you impatient with yourself when you are frustrated because you think that you ought to be handling things differently. When you are sad, do you think that you ought not be? You probably don’t; it’s probably just me.
According to Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal and Jon Kabat-Zin in “The Mindful Way Through Depression,” these emotions are tell us that something is not as it should be, the feeling is distinctly uncomfortable. It’s meant to be. The signals are exquisitely designed to push us to act, to do something to rectify the situation. When the problem that our emotions are signaling needs to be solved is “out there” and causes us to react in a way that allows us to avoid or escape, it makes sense. The brain mobilizes a whole pattern of mostly automatic reactions that help us deal with whatever is threatening our survival, helping us get rid or avoid the threat.
But when what is making us uncomfortable is “in here” and not “out there” those same reactions are counterproductive and even dangerous to our well-being when directed toward our own thoughts, feelings, and sense of self. None of us can run fast enough to escape our own inner experience. Nor can we eliminate unpleasant, oppressive, and threatening thoughts and feelings by fighting with them and trying to annihilate them. (page 35)
The authors, who are scientists and doctors, say that when we react to our own negative thoughts and feelings with aversion, the brain circuitry involved in physical avoidance, submission, or defensive attack (the “avoidance system” of the brain) is activated. Once this mechanism is switched on, the body tenses as if it were either getting ready to run or bracing itself for an assault. We can also sense the effects of aversion in our minds. When we are preoccupied, dwelling on how to get rid of our feelings of sadness or disconnection, our experience is one of contraction. The mind, driven to focus on the compelling yet futile task of getting rid of these feelings closes in on itself. And with it, our experience of life itself narrows. Somehow we feel cramped, boxed in. The choices available to us seem to dwindle. We come to feel increasingly cut off from the possibilities that we long to connect with.
When we react negatively—with aversion—to our own negative emotions, treating them as enemies to be overcome, eradicated and defeated, we get into trouble. We run into trouble because the unhappiness we are feeling now triggers old, extraordinarily unhelpful patterns of thinking from the past.
But what to do? The answer lies in our second story. Awareness. And if you need to have that expanded out, it’s awareness, awareness, awareness. And what does awareness, awareness, awareness mean? Awareness.
Becoming aware and developing a sense of mindfulness begins to alter these patterns. Surrendering to the moment and not expecting it to be any different than it is can also be helpful.
Many of you might be aware of Contemplative Prayer. Championed by Fr. Thomas Keating, it is a practice of sitting in silence for a period of time each day and emptying your mind. Keating says that this deep listening begins a process of unseating the “false self.”
One of his colleagues has taken this concept of stripping oneself of the false self a step further and developed what is called the Welcoming Prayer. Based on the seventeenth-century French spiritual classic Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Welcoming Prayer does what its name suggests: it welcomes every moment in an open-hearted embrace of what it is. It’s similar in a way to our understanding of how we welcome Joan, Georgette and Barbara. With them, we have no problem accepting them as they are. Can we extend that same thought when we sit in traffic, or suffer through a less than adequate township meeting? Can we accept it for what it is, acknowledge our frustration, anger, fear or sadness and have our minds open up rather than shut down?
Can we, in that moment, become aware of how tense we are and bring ourselves back to an awareness of our commitment to be agents of change and connect with our intention to build a more just and sustainable world? Additionally, can we remember that we have company in this journey to be more spiritually aware, balanced and integrated?
In closing, I have one more concept and one more story. According to the authors of “The Mindful Way through Depression,” there are multiple interpretations for the same set of facts and that many situations are ambiguous and the way we interpret them makes a huge difference in how we react. This is the ABC model of emotions. A represents the facts of the situation, what a video camera would see and record. The B is the interpretation we give to a situation: this is the running sotry, oftenjust below the surface of the awareness. It is often taken as cat. The C is our reaction: our emotions, body sensations and behavior. Often we can see the situation (A) and the reaction (C) but are unaware of the interpretation. We think the situation itself caused our emotion and physical reactions, when in fact is was our interpretation of the situation. (Page 21) Consider this final story.
