Advent

First Sunday of Advent

Overview: On the Christian Calendar, today is the first Sunday of advent. Advent is a time of anticipation or expectation – of preparation and reflection for something new, for the coming of love made flesh to dwell among us. In the Christian tradition, it is a time of spiritually preparing for the coming celebration of Jesus’ birth. Our Unitarian Universalist tradition teaches that love is made flesh and dwells among us every day, in every act of caring. By longstanding tradition, we set aside December 25 to particularly celebrate this fact. In preparation for that celebration, the Advent season invites us to reflect on the incarnations of love in our lives – and how we can participate in a new birth of compassion and kindness. For the first Sunday of Advent, the theme is Hope.

And as we light our chalice, we also light the first candle of advent, a purple candle signifying hope.

Reflection: We enter Advent – the season of preparation, of expectation, of reflection on the celebration which is to come. This first Sunday of Advent the theme is hope. Hope is the energy that allows us to make commitments, to engage in projects that bring love and justice into fuller flower. The voice of hope tells us that there is a place in this world for our intentions. There is no certainty – no guarantees. Our passions and efforts may never yield the results we pursue, but we and our pursuits belong, whatever they may yield. Hope is the assurance that trying matters, our intentions and efforts belong -- whether we accomplish our aim or not. As we reflect in these days about what Christmas means for us, what it could mean, we consider in what ways we see love becoming incarnate and in what ways we can lend our intentions to those incarnations. Where can our hopes combine with hopes of others to promote love, and build justice, for justice is what love looks like in public?

Second Sunday of Advent

Overview: On the Christian Calendar, today is the second Sunday of Advent -- a time of anticipation, expectation, reflection, and preparation for Christmas. Our Unitarian Universalist tradition teaches that love is made flesh and dwells among us every day, in every act of caring. By longstanding tradition, we set aside December 25 to particularly celebrate this fact. And in preparation for that celebration, the Advent season invites us to reflect on the incarnations of love in our lives – and how we can participate in a new birth of compassion and kindness. For the second Sunday of Advent, the theme is Peace.

And as we light our chalice, we also light the first and second candles of advent – the first purple candle signifying hope and the second purple candle signifying peace.

Reflection: The invitation of Advent is to reflect and spiritually prepare for the celebration which is to come. This second Sunday of Advent, with the second purple candle now lit, the theme is peace. Also, the first candle is re-lit. The first one is hope, the assurance that engagement in life matters – it makes a difference, whether or not it makes the difference we intended. Our energies are worth it – though perhaps in ways we cannot foresee. Now the second purple candle is peace. The peace at issue is conveyed in the Hebrew word, "Shalom," which implies wholeness, harmony with oneself and others and with the universe; healing of damaged relationships; and justice, fairness, and equity for all. We set our intention to what we can do to contribute to worldwide shalom, yet none of us can, by ourselves, make peace real. The path to peace calls for coordinating with others, revising our intention in light of their intentions and their needs. We cannot do it by ourselves, yet no one else can do for us what is our part to do.

Third Sunday of Advent

Overview: On the Christian Calendar, today is the third Sunday of advent: a time of anticipation, expectation, and reflection for something new, for the coming of love made flesh to dwell among us. For some of us, it is a time of spiritually preparing for the coming celebration of Jesus’ birth. Our Unitarian Universalist tradition teaches that love is made flesh and dwells among us every day, in every act of caring. December 25 is our day to particularly celebrate this fact. In preparation for that celebration, the Advent season invites us to reflect on the incarnations of love in our lives – and how we can participate in a new birth of compassion and kindness. For the third Sunday of Advent, the theme is Joy.

And as we light our chalice, we also light the first three candles of advent – the first purple one signifies hope. The second purple one signifies peace. And today’s candle, the pink one, signifies joy.

Reflection: The invitation of Advent is to reflect and spiritually prepare for the celebration which is to come. This third Sunday of Advent, with the pink candle now lit, the theme is joy. Also, the first two candles are re-lit. The first one is hope, the assurance that engagement in life matters – it makes a difference, whether or not it makes the difference we intended. Our energies are worth it – though perhaps in ways we cannot foresee. The second one is peace: the letting go of attachment to results, the assurance that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well. Now out of that hope, and that peace, emerges joy. Not happiness, which is a passing mood, which comes and goes according to circumstances, but rather abiding joy. Joy is the fulfillment that comes from connecting with something beyond ourselves. Some of us conceive of it vertically – something higher, or something deeper. Or we might conceive it horizontally – not a higher power, but a broader power. Joy is the connecting with a wider reality than our narrow self-interests. It is the embrace of common cause with all beings. Happiness is mutually exclusive with sadness, but joy abides even in the midst of sadness. Indeed, a sharp awareness of the world’s pain, its griefs and losses, is essential to the complete connection and identification with the interdependent web of all existence – a connection and identification that is the ground of joy. We are one.

Fourth Sunday of Advent

Overview: On the Christian Calendar, today is the fourth and final Sunday of advent: a time of anticipation, expectation, and reflection for something new, for the coming of love made flesh to dwell among us. Our Unitarian Universalist tradition teaches that love is made flesh and dwells among us in every act of caring. By longstanding tradition, December 25 is our day to particularly celebrate this fact. And in preparation for that celebration, the Advent season invites us to reflect on the incarnations of love in our lives – and how we can participate in a new birth of compassion and kindness. For the fourth Sunday of Advent, the theme is love.

And as we light our chalice, we also light all four or our Advent Candles – the first purple one signifies hope. The second purple one signifies peace. The third candle, the pink one, signifies joy. And the final purple one signifies love.

Reflection: Dear Spirit of Love, We have lit your candle, the candle of love, on this fourth Sunday of advent. We know love is continuously becoming flesh and dwelling among us – in the birth of every beloved child, and in every act of caring and kindness -- yet this is the time of year that we, by convention, direct our attention to celebrate that fact: the fact that thou, love, art born, and born again and again, and that thou art what saves us. The advent season invites us to grow toward this celebration of love, to grow into that celebration over several weeks, preparing ourselves, deepening our appreciation of the message. We have lit again today, as we first did three weeks ago, the purple candle of hope: the assurance that it matters what we do. Even if it doesn’t matter in quite the ways that we intended, it matters that we did intend something, and we did act on that intent. This is hope. We have lit again today, as we first did two weeks ago, the purple candle of peace: the acceptance that comes to us when we let go of attachment to results. We offer up to the world what we are. We do what we can. We then leave it up to the world what to make of it. This is peace. We have lit again today, as we first did last week, the pink candle of joy: for out of hope and peace emerges joy, which comes from connecting with something beyond ourselves, whether something higher or something wider. Happiness is a passing mood, but joy may abide even in the midst of sadness. And now, as the culmination of advent, we have lit the purple candle of love. “And the greatest of these is love,” for love is the fruition of hope, peace, and joy – yet also the ground from which hope, peace, and joy grow, in an ever-widening virtuous cycle.

A Daily Practice: Take Centering Moments

Adapted from Edwin Lynn, "The Sacred Moment,"

in Scott Alexander, ed., Everyday Spiritual Practice.

Life is precious. Every day is blessed, and living our lives fully doesn't happen automatically. The tasks of the day sometimes require our focus to shift away from simply experiencing our world just as it is, and ourselves in that world.

We can, however, create sacred moments. Several times a day -- at least once every day -- stop and drink in the moment for a minute or two. This practice works especially well outside: pausing during a walk, say, or stepping out your back door for moment. To better remember each phase of this practice, memorize these six “S words":

• Sight
• Sky
• Stance
• Smell
• Skin
• Sound

1. SIGHT: Look around. Note what's in view: trees, grass, the color of buildings, or of the dirt. If you're stopping in a spot where you've stopped before, try to notice new discoveries and be aware of subtle daily changes in the blossoms, leaves, shadows, and colors. If you're by a pond, for instance, you'll notice the water changes moment by moment, depending upon the wind and sun. Water is especially sensitive to light, and the breeze creates a ballet of changing reflections.

Don’t just look. Let the sights sink in. Let them integrate in awareness with your other senses.

2. SKY: Often, we see only what is at eye level, without being aware of the sky. Whether it is cloudy or bright, you'll find that when you are aware of the sky, you are more aware of the day. The sky gives context to the day and reminds us of our physical and spiritual presence in the world.

3. STANCE: As you look out at your surroundings and the sky, become aware of your stance on the ground, your rootedness and connectedness with the earth. Feel this relationship through your legs and feet. Notice the ways you are centered and grounded.

4. SMELL: Smell is the most fundamental of our senses, strongly associated with deep memories. If you've had the experience of returning to a place after being away for some years, you may have noticed the distinctive smells, rather than the landscape, are what you most vividly remember. A delicate sniff can catch the subtle aromas of a pond’s misty moisture of natural flowers or of local vegetation. Attention to aroma heightens the reality of the moment.

5. SKIN: Bring attention to what you're feeling on your skin: the temperature, the movement of air. We usually pay little attention to the wind unless it's very brisk. Most of the time, though, there is at least a slight breeze -- which you'll notice if you train yourself to. Maybe you can feel the breeze differently on different parts of your face? How warm or cold is it? The feeling of warmth from the sun or the damp chill of penetrating cold is also a part of the moment about which your skin can tell you.

6. SOUND: Sound is the crucial focus of a sacred moment: listening is its theme and its essence. Listening keeps us in the moment so our minds don’t wander. The sacred moment intensifies and lengthens our time of seeing into a time of being. To reach a sacred moment, look relatively straight ahead and don't allow yourself to be distracted by any moving sights. Listen to the wind, the leaves, the water, and the birds. With these outer sounds, the chatter of inner thoughts is kept from intruding upon the moment. If you are not listening, you know you are not in the experience, but still trapped in your head, thinking of the past or the future.

See the landscape and sky, feel the ground and the breeze, smell the water. And in particular: listen.

You can certainly also create a sacred, centering moment while you're indoors. In the morning while showering, for example, you can use to time for this practice. The sights are obviously limited, and you cannot see the sky, but stance, sense, and smell are particularly acute. Listening to the water as it splashes on your body throughout the shower is the key. It makes the shower more enjoyable. It also connects you to the larger waters of lakes, rivers, ocean, and skies. To make breakfast another sacred moment, avoid watching television or reading the newspaper; there will be time for those connections later. The morning is an optimal time to let heightened awareness engage the glory of the day.

The difficult part is allowing the extra time. It is very easy to rationalize that one doesn’t have the time. But if you'll take these pauses, you'll probably find you're always glad that you have.

Then, an end-of-the-day walk is a great time not only for the exercise -- with the usual daydreaming -- but for applying the principles of this practice to create a walking meditation. The sights and sounds are richer, though the distractions are more plentiful. Be especially aware of the sky and of the variation in smells from place to place — even of the wind changing direction along the way. Again: listening is key to staying in the moment.

The preciousness of the day is enhanced in direct proportion to its number of sacred, centering moments. Through sacred moments, we can quiet our mind’s inner chatter, and transform our experience of merely seeing into one of more fully being.

A "Faith" for Everyone

Faiths are different. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Daosim, Confucianism, Sikhism, Jainism, animism and others -- and the variants of these, sometimes numbering into the hundreds -- are all different. This is unavoidable. Religious diversity does raise some problems and challenges for us, but addressing those problems calls for learning how to accept -- and if possible celebrate -- differences rather than suppressing or erasing them.

So when I say, "a 'faith' for everyone," I do not propose to lay out some common core that all, or most, religions have, or should have. Instead, I urge a way of understanding what faith is. This understanding may be shared by everyone, regardless of their faith.

Thus, atheists, too, have (or, as I shall suggest, "do") a faith -- though atheism is not it. Atheism rules out certain faith traditions, but does not itself constitute a faith. In the same way, "non-model-airplane-builder" rules out a hobby but does not itself constitute a hobby. But while a person may not have any hobbies, everyone has/does a faith. The faith of an atheist may not have a name -- but ze does have/do one. Like any faith, it may be weak, middling, strong or any gradation thereof. It may not, however, for a functioning human being, be nonexistent.

Faith is:

1. Committing to the fullness of our being;
2. Opening our hearts to the unknown;
3. A way of interpreting existence.

Before I unpack these, I need to acknowledge a common cultural conception (that is, a conception of what "faith" means that is common in English-speaking culture). According to this conception, faith is a non- (or perhaps ir-) rational conviction of the truth of certain propositions for which the evidence is nonexistent or, at best, weak.

You may want to argue that the meaning of the word is determined by the way that most people use it. So if this conception is indeed common -- if that is the way that almost everyone understands what the word "faith" means -- then that IS what faith means. We can't very well go around employing new and different definitions of words if we expect to be understood when we speak.

In fact, though, people commonly do associate faith with rather more than simply "believing without evidence." Faith is imagined to be personally transformative, to bear some relationship with transcending ego-centric desires, with enabling us to face life's uncertainties and unknowables, and with how we make meaning of our experiences and our lives. These are widely understood functions of faith. Let us understand what faith is by its functions. Whatever, then, serves these functions -- whether it also involves believing without evidence or not -- deserves the name of faith. Let us now take a closer look at each of these functions.

First, as Virginia Knowles writes by way of describing the thought of Unitarian theologian Henry Nelson Wieman:

“Religious faith is the act by which we commit ourselves with the fullness of our being, insofar as we are able, to whatever can transform and save us from the evil of devoting ourselves to the transient goods of social success, financial opulence, or even scholarship or beauty or social concern.”

This fits the traditional understanding that the outcome of faith is personal transformation and transcendence of ego-centric desires. This important function may be served without any non- or ir-rational conviction that flies in the face of evidence. Faith is a name for whatever it may be that commits us to the fullness of our being rather than the limited and narrow parts of our being concerned with what Knowles and Wieman call "transient goods."

Second, American Buddhist writer Sharon Salzberg describes faith as "the act of opening our hearts to the unknown." This fits the common understanding of distinguishing faith from reason and evidence. While reason and evidence tell us about what we can know, faith is an approach -- specifically, an open-hearted approach -- to the unknown. Rather than merely believing without evidence, however, faith is a willingness to go forward to take in new evidence and new experience, ever-willing to be transformed. This throwing ourselves into the unknown can feel like leaping -- hence, "leap of faith."

"Faith" names the antidote to ego preoccupations with achievement and with knowing. Faith is the courage to offer up all that we are to the world around us, not knowing what the world will ask or what we will find in ourselves to offer. Faith's opposite is not doubt, but despairing withdrawal.

Third, from theology professor James Fowler: faith is “a way of knowing, construing, and interpreting existence.” This preserves our very common sense that Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. are faiths. They each know, construe, and interpret existence in a particular way.

The common conception of faith as a set of unshakable convictions impervious to evidence does convey, for all its misdirection, one implication that is true: evidence alone is not enough. Evidence is not the same thing as meaning and does not suffice for meaning. Mere phenomena present us with “a blooming, buzzing confusion” (William James) until interpreted, contextualized, made sense of. Animals -- most notably humans -- must make meaning from the raw phenomenal evidence. There are many various ways to put the same evidence together into a structure of value and meaning, and each way is a faith.

Faith is best understood not so much as something we have or lack, but as something we do and sometimes fail to do. We "do faith" when we commit to the fullness of our being, with hearts open to the unknown and minds engaged in meaning-making.

Charge to the Minister

On Sun Apr 7, I was at Fourth Universalist Society (160 Central Park West, Manhattan) for the ordination of Leonisa Ardizzone, with whom I had a mentoring relationship during 2016-17, while she was a student at Union Theological Seminary. She is a long-time Buddhist practitioner and led a Buddhist Meditation group at Fourth Universalist for a number of years. I was asked to give the "Charge to the Minister," and here's what I said.

[Holding up copy of Order of Service] It says here I’m supposed to charge the minister. Wait. Is there a minister here? Where? Who is a minister?

Some 15 years ago, the Zen master Ruben Habito and I were sitting face-to-face, cross-legged on the floor, about 3 feet apart – just the two of us in a smallish room. It was a formal zen interview called dokusan, and Ruben was my zen teacher. At the end of this particular interview, I asked him a question I'd been meaning to ask: "Are you enlightened?"

“Who? Who’s enlightened? Where?” he said, looking around the room that only had the two of us in it. Then he rang a little bell, and I bowed and departed.

In that spirit I now ask: Who? Who’s a minister? You? You?

To continue in the vein of Buddhist references: according to legend, Siddhartha Gautama sat down beneath a pippala tree beside a river determined to see his true nature. All through the night he sat. As day was dawning, he glanced up and saw the morning star, which triggered an experience of awakening. That was the moment Siddhartha became the Buddha, and the words that came to him to say (aloud, apparently – to no one and yet to everyone) were these:

“Behold, all beings are enlightened exactly as they are.”

His enlightenment was the clear realization that all beings are enlightened. Similarly, then, I say: your ministry is realized in grasping that everyone is a minister. There’s nothing special about it.

When my spouse LoraKim Joyner was preparing to be ordained in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2002, she selected a musical piece she asked the choir to sing in the service: “Circle of Life” from the musical The Lion King. One of the choir members quipped: “From The Lion King? Are you sure you don’t want, ‘I Just Can’t Wait to be King’?”

But, of course, it’s just the opposite. One actively pursues a vocation as minister – which is to say, pursues clarity of insight that all beings are ministers – because one just can’t wait to NOT be king.

The ego insistently weaves its story of how you are the center of the universe – the sovereign of all you survey. Maintaining that story is wearisome and dreary work, but it’s no easy thing to stop. On the one hand is a yearning to live in a bigger world than the constricted realm of self-interests. On the other hand, there’s no idea how to get there.

Some of us here made a stab in the dark and enrolled in divinity school. Others of us here have taken other paths, made other stabs in the dark at abdicating the tedious throne and de-centering the ego. Leonisa and the rest of us here today in black robes thought maybe divinity school, Clinical Pastoral Education, a ministerial internship, and all the other preparations and trainings for professional ministry would show us how to get past our ego defense mechanisms and live in the truth that all beings are enlightened ministers. Others of us here followed other paths, or, perhaps, are just beginning to grow tired of the kingly illusions of our own significance, or maybe aren’t tired of it.

Still, all of us are ministers, whether we know it or not. Some of us have been trying hard to know it and never forget it.

Today, it so happens that Leonisa is the one whose name is on the order of service, the one upon whom our hands were laid in the "Laying on of Hands." But in ordaining her, we ordained and re-ordained ourselves. The hopes and anxieties of all life poured through our hands and into her – and into each other – into every one of us. They are pouring into us always, and, when we aren’t preoccupied with our self-interests, then we know that they are.

I am here to charge the minister. We have identified who "the minister" is: everyone, all of us -- represented for purposes of this ceremony in the person of Leonisa. Now to the charge.

Let’s see. [Fetching jumper cables] Red to positive, right?

On the positive: Do remember that you are never alone -- that enlightened ministers surround you always, including all sentient beings.

Do remember that you won’t always remember this. Repeating the words – these or any other -- grows empty. In the quiet silence the observing mind discovers the knowledge afresh – and it must be constantly made fresh. Be the good dog, and sit. Every day.

When you sit, the whole world sits with you. And when you don’t sit – well, there are still some of us sitting with you anyway – with you, for you, as you. See your teacher regularly.

For all of you on a path to recognize yourself for the enlightened minister that you are, I charge you to be diligent at your spiritual practice, whatever yours may be.

Thus do I charge Leonisa. Thus do I charge you all.

On the negative – for the charge will not transmit unless the negative terminal is also connected: You have demons. You know the ones – the insecurities and addictions that you went to divinity school to run away from – those. They are with you still, as you’ve probably noticed. No need to run away. They are part of you. Seek not to exile any part of yourself, for that is not the path of wholeness.

Demons are there to tell you important truths. But remember, demons are poets following Emily Dickinson’s dictum to "tell the truth but tell it slant." Take care of your demons and listen to them, but what they say is not to be believed literally. They speak in metaphor. If one of them tells you, for instance, that you’re worthless, don’t believe it literally. But do listen. It’s a metaphor for something that might need attending to. You will need help interpreting your more cryptic demons. See your teacher regularly.

Thus do I charge Leonisa. Thus do I charge us all.

So! Terminals connected? I think we’re ready. Start her up!

Voting and Belongingness

Why do we vote? I mean, those of us who do.

I'll begin with something that appears completely different: the case of a German rueful about insufficiently resisting the Nazis in 1935. From there, we move to the broader question of Kantian fantasy -- and from there to our popular rationales for voting, and why they miss the point.

Milton Mayer's book, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (originally published 1955) includes a story of a German who says,

"The world was lost one day in 1935, here in Germany, and it was I who lost it."

The man tells how, in 1935, Germany adopted the National Defense Law. The man was employed in a defense plant at the time, and the new law required him to take an oath of fidelity. The man opposed it in conscience, was given 24 hours to think it over, and, in those 24 hours, changed his mind. He took the oath -- and, in so doing, he recounts years later, "I lost the world."

There was certainly coercive pressure. Had he not taken the oath he'd have lost his job. He would also, he knew, have been blackballed from subsequent employment. He could have left the country and found work elsewhere, but he rationalized that he might be able to help some people from "within" -- whereas leaving the country would make him powerless to help any friends in trouble. How did the oath of one defense-plant employee "lose the world"? The man explains:

"There I was, in 1935, a perfect example of the kind of person who, with all his advantages of birth, in education, and position, rules (or might easily rule) in any country. If I had refused to take the oath in 1935, it would have meant that thousands and thousands like me, all over Germany, were refusing to take it. Their refusal would have heartened millions. Thus the regime would have been overthrown, or indeed, would never have come to power in the first place. The fact that I was not prepared to resist, in 1935, meant that all the thousands, hundreds of thousands, like me in Germany were also unprepared,...if my faith had been strong enough in 1935, I could have prevented the whole evil."

Empirically, this is untrue. The man's decision to refuse the oath would not have caused anyone else to refuse the oath. The day I decided to become vegetarian was not a day -- or even a decade -- that hundreds of thousands of demographically, economically, and educationally similar people also decided to become vegetarian. If I enter my voting booth and decide to vote for a minor party candidate who has been polling at about 2 percent, changing my mind from what I told (or would have told) the pollster the day before, that candidate will still finish with about 2 percent of the vote. Moral decisions made in the individual isolation of conscience are, unsurprisingly, individual and isolated.

"Don't waste any time mourning. Organize!" telegrammed labor organizer Joe Hill in the days before his 1915 execution on false charges. Hill understood that mass movements that bring real change require organization. One person's strong faith doesn't strengthen anyone else's faith unless there is an organized effort to frame and disseminate a certain story about that person. Case in point: Hill's own faith mattered because the story of that faith became the rallying cry, "Don't mourn -- Organize!"

The German man's reasoning adhered precisely to the ethics of his country's philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who argued that the "categorical imperative" was to "so act that the maxim of your actions may be willed a universal law for all." When considering a choice, Kant is saying, we should ask ourselves, "what if everyone did that?" Kant seems to have mostly had in mind bad consequences. If everyone lied, or murdered, then society would be destroyed -- no one could wish for a world in which everyone lied constantly or murdered even occasionally -- therefore, we should not lie or murder. The man in our story is imagining a good consequence: if everyone had refused the oath, Nazism would have collapsed. Either way, it is a fantasy to imagine that "the maxim of your action" could become a "universal law for all" -- or even a regional law for a few. So whether the imagined consequences be good or bad, what we're seeing is ethical reasoning via Kantian fantasy.

As long as we recognize Kantian fantasy as an ethical exercise and don't make the mistake of imagining that mass movements really will form around our example, Kant's fantasy is sometimes helpful. Asking ourselves, "What if everyone did that?" isn't the only question worth asking in an ethical context, but it is one of the questions. The empirical utilitarian question, "What will actually be the results of my action, to the best of my ability to predict?" -- and the question of calling, "What is it that I, and I alone, am called to bring to the world?" -- are very different but also worthwhile questions to consider.

Let us now consider the matter of voting. Here's a case where the arguments encouraging people to vote tend to indulge Kantian fantasy. The individual voter is asked to imagine that her vote matters because if lots of other people followed her example then it would matter. The nonvoters who could have voted tend to be poorer, younger, and disproportionately people of color. If they voted in larger numbers, then more Democrats would win more elections. But from the standpoint of a single individual deciding whether to go to the bother, it is Kantian fantasy to imagine that her decision will have any effect on a significant portion of everybody else.

An NPR story this morning asked why so many Americans don't vote. (SEE HERE.)

Let us not ignore the fact that, as the NPR piece points out, "Hundreds of thousands of nonvoters want to vote, but can't." Restrictive voter ID laws, registration difficulties, or ineligibility due to a criminal record are true and real problems (or, for the party that benefits from suppressed turn-out, true and real solutions).

Still, many nonvoters could vote. They just don't. Here are some excerpts from the story:

"Some are apathetic or too busy. Others don't like their choices, they don't think their vote matters, they think the system is corrupt, or they don't think they know enough to vote....Megan Davis, the 31-year-old massage therapist in Rhode Island, never votes, and she's proud of her record. 'I feel like my voice doesn't matter,' she said on a recent evening at a park in East Providence, R.I. 'People who suck still are in office, so it doesn't make a difference.'....Tammy Lester, a 42-year-old fast food worker in McDowell County, W.Va., can't remember the last time she voted. 'We vote these people in and they don't help McDowell County,' she said, as she walked along the deserted streets in the rundown downtown with her daughter. 'There's nothing...there's no jobs when our kids graduate, they have to leave....What good does it do, though, when they'll promise you anything and then it's a lie?'....'I just don't think my vote matters,' said Josh Mullins, as he pushed a stroller along the street in McDowell County. The last time Mullins, a 33-year-old unemployed former restaurant worker, remembers voting was in 2004 for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Nowadays, he sees no point, saying the system overrules what people want....Many analysts predicted that Donald Trump's offensive rhetoric about Latinos would mobilize records numbers of Latino voters in 2016, but turnout remained relatively even with 2012. 'You may be upset about somebody like Donald Trump and what you're hearing,' said Romero. 'But if you don't see how or why...politicians and the political landscape matters for you...you don't think you have agency.'"

Included in the audio of this story, but not in the on-line print version of the story, is a brief interview with a nonvoter named Raymond Taylor, who explains that his vote won't matter because his state is a red state anyway. The reporter goes on to add,

"He told me the one and only time he voted was in 2008 for Barack Obama. He said he wanted to be part of history. But this idea that his vote doesn't matter because of the political leanings of the state he lives in is something we see across the country. If you look at turnout from 2016 you'll notice that some of the states that had the highest turnout were places where the margin of victory was less than five percent."

All of these rationales for nonvoting are perfectly rational and true. But did you catch that brief aside -- so minor a point that it didn't make it into the print version online? Raymond Taylor voted in 2008, because he wanted to be part of history. He wanted to be part of something. Something bigger than himself. He wanted to add meaning to his life by placing it in the context of something as large as "history." Voting didn't make any more difference in 2008 than it has any election since -- but when it meant joining a larger context of meaning, he voted.

We don't vote to make a difference. Manifestly, as individuals, we don't make a detectable difference. Even in an incredibly close race, decided by only a few hundred votes, my decision to vote will not make even a few hundred others also vote. We vote -- those of us who do -- because we feel we are a part of something bigger than our ourselves. Voting is an act of social-spiritual connection. It places the meaning of our lives in a larger context, joins us with something bigger.

This makes sense of why it is that nonvoters tend to be poorer, younger, and people of color. These are people who would naturally have a harder time feeling a part of the larger systems that constitute the body politic. As I listened to the NPR story, what I heard nonvoters Megan Davis and Tammy Lester and Josh Mullins expressing was that they don't feel connected to their fellow citizens in one big decision-making body. Without that connection, voting is only about, "Will it make a difference?" And it won't. But when you do feel that connection, voting is not about, "Will it make a difference?" It's about participating in action that affirms, enacts, and embodies connection.

Voting is an expression and affirmation of belongingness, of being a part of something bigger than ourselves. When we don't feel belonging, we're a lot less likely to vote.

Kantian fantasies will not persuade nonvoters to vote. They see right through that. If we want more people to vote, we have to think about what would help them feel they belong and are connected in meaningful community with their fellow citizens.

That "Letting Go" Sigh

Asking myself: What exactly do we do when we "let go"?

It occurs to me that: We sigh. Sighing is the physical correlate of letting go. Or is it?

I gave Science a call. Science and I chat regularly. She is particularly keen to bend my ear about climate change -- and she has quite persuaded me that the matter is indeed urgent -- but she is also happy to chat about lots of other things. About sighing, Science says that a sigh is a fundamental life-sustaining reflex. It’s not just a sign of frustration or despair. “A control system in the brain keeps humans sighing about a dozen times an hour,” says Science.

Apparently our lungs have tiny sacs called alveoli, and regular breaths don’t inflate them fully. They need periodic full inflation to stay healthy, so we have a control system that tells us to take some deeper breaths from time to time -- like, about every 5 minutes. Most of the time we don’t notice that we’ve sighed.

“So, Science,” I says, “when I’m going about my work, I’m not thinking about my breathing much – which is great, because I have other things I need to be thinking about. So I'm happy to have an unconscious control system handle the breathing. But when I’m meditating, my breath is very regular – and also each breath is a little deeper, I think, than regular breaths. I don’t sigh when I’m meditating – and I know because I’m paying attention to my breathing at that time.”

Science said, “Well, but you do sometimes sigh during meditation.”

And I had to admit that, it’s true, my meditation isn’t always totally focused. My mind may get to wandering, and thinking about something sad, or the items on my to-do list, and then I’ll sigh. And I’ll notice that I’ve sighed – which reminds me to refocus. But there are also days when a 25-minute sit goes by without any sighing. Is that because I’m taking somewhat slower-and-deeper-than-regular breaths, and that’s enough to keep the alveoli happy? Science said, “I don’t know.” (Science says this a lot.) “We need more research,” added Science. (Science also says this a lot.) “But I will point out,” added Science, “that when the timer bell rings to end your 25-minute sit, the first thing you do is take a somewhat deeper breath.”

Good point, Science.

The occasional slightly heavier breath aside, none of this addresses the association of sighing with, you know, the usual associations: exasperation, regret, despair. These are the real sighs – not merely somewhat heavier breaths that happen 12 times an hour, but long, audible (especially on the exhale) breaths. What’s going on with that?

My hypothesis is that the especially heavy breath gets more oxygen into your blood stream, which helps you relax AND LET GO of whatever the issue is. Something problematic comes to your attention. Can you do anything about it – or, more to the point, will you be doing anything about it immediately? If so, your body gears up to spring into action. You might take a deep breath before taking the plunge, but this is not a sigh (the exhale doesn’t come out all at once). If not, then your body may want to sigh just to help it relax. A sigh is the letting go of anxiety about a situation that you're not going to take action to change right away. The sigh is fundamentally a device for letting go.

“What do you think, Science?” I asked when I had finished explaining my hypothesis. Science didn’t say anything. But I’m pretty sure I heard her sigh.

Dear SBNR

Dear "Spiritual But Not Religious" person,

I'm encouraged by the interest in spirituality -- in spiritual growth and development. There are lots of ways to walk a spiritual path: books, classes, spiritual directors and counselors, practices you can undertake by yourself, guided by a teacher, or books, or youtube videos.

Even without intentional cultivation of spirituality -- without any books, classes, counselors, teachers, or videos -- "being spiritual" might just mean that you're open to, and value, those intimations of wonder and peace when they come: seeing a sunset, hiking in the woods, or strolling on a beach, say.

My path happens to be more the intentional kind. I find that following some disciplines helps me be open to wonder. My path also includes congregational life as a central aspect.

Congregational life brings some unique features to one's spirituality. Some of these features may not be all that attractive -- so I can understand a decision to be "Spiritual But Not Religious" (where "not religious" means "not participating in a congregation"). For better and for worse, congregational life includes these five features you generally won't find on other paths of spiritual development:

1. Self-governance: involvement with committees; democratic participation in, and approval of, the budget process; deliberating about policies, procedures, bylaws; creating and leading programs. Yoga classes or sessions with a spiritually oriented therapist don't include giving you a role in running the institution. I know that the prospect of being on a committee may not be very appealing. For me, spiritual community that is run by the seekers themselves offers a unique level of richness, meaning, and connection. The activities of self-governance form an inseparable and integral part of my path of growth and deepening.

2. Group Identity and Belonging. Again, this may not be much of a selling point for you. In fact, the “tribalism” of religious groups may be a big part of what turns you off about "religion." I have found, nevertheless, deep satisfaction from being a member of the Unitarian Universalist “tribe.” Belongingness in a community of care and concern is a deep human need. Many such communities -- including Unitarian Universalist ones -- work at mitigating the negative, insular aspects that some communities develop. We want to ensure our identity as “UUs” doesn’t exclude other identities. UU Christians, UU atheists, UU Buddhists, UU pagans, UU Jews, UU Humanists, and others, all find belonging as Unitarian Universalists.

3. Family membership. Adults and their children share in congregational life. The concept of family involvement in a faith institution -- belonging together as a family rather than as separate individuals -- is an integral feature of congregational life. You don't get that with a spiritual counselor or a yoga class.

4. Caring for each other. Call it shared pastoral ministry: the love and care that congregation members show to other members – building friendships in church, visiting each other for social occasions and when one of us is sick. These things will naturally happen among a circle of friends, but congregational life affords the chance to have a bigger circle. It’s nice to care and be cared about by people that know you well. Caring and being cared about by group members that may not (yet) know you all that well adds a rewarding layer of meaning to life.

5. Social justice action as a faith community. You don’t have to be in a congregation to work for social justice, but in congregations justice and spirituality are integrated. This may not be so true in some denominations, but it tends to be the Unitarian Universalist way. Working with fellow congregants on justice projects is an essential part of our spiritual path.

I find these to be essential components of a rich and empowering life. That's why I choose to be Spiritual and Religious.

Good Women, Bad Women

There was something telling in one word, a mere conjunction, buried in a sentence in the 19th paragraph of an article in this morning's New York Times. Under the headline, "The Daughter of a Maverick Goes to Battle" [it has a different title online], the Katie Rogers' article began:

"As Meghan McCain delivered a eulogy for her father on Saturday, she was at times too grief-stricken to catch her breath. As she described his sickness from brain cancer or his love for her, she struggled to look up at a crowd full of boldface Washington establishment figures who had gathered at National Cathedral. But as Ms. McCain shared one of her father’s dying directives — “Show them how tough you are” — her voice stopped wavering. The warrior’s daughter steeled herself, drew her eyes up and stepped into battle."

I love that description. I went and watched Meghan McCain's full eulogy on Youtube, and I loved that too. Yes, I'm certainly ambivalent about glorifying warriors and violence, but warrior metaphors -- evoking, outside of contexts of violence, a determined and fierce resolve to represent or defend ideals one sees as more important than one's own life -- can powerfully move me.



Later in the article is the word I want to invite us to reflect on -- and it has no direct connection to the eulogy itself. (So, fair warning: the topic of this post is about to drastically change. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, in case some of my readers don't know: I'm a man.) The word at issue comes as the article moves to reviewing Meghan McCain's various political views -- as expressed on "The View" and in her writings -- and notes that she

"has long confounded Republicans who say they cannot easily suss out her beliefs, and she has frustrated Democrats who want to believe that she is secretly one of them."

Offered as an illustration of a position that confounds or frustrates is this sentence:

"She has said that abortion is tantamount to murder, but has been a proponent of sex education and birth control."

The perplexing word here is the conjunction "but." "But" indicates that the bit before (saying "that abortion is murder") and the bit after (being "a proponent of sex education and birth control") run contrary to each other. This is false. If you think that abortion is murder, then of course you would be in favor of what reduces the number of abortions -- birth control and sex education. Nothing could be less contrary to an opinion of the wrongness of X than support for steps that mitigate X. Right?

In terms of the rhetoric of partisan divide in this country, however, one cannot fault journalist Katie Rogers for this use of "but." She is correct in her assumption that "abortion is tantamount to murder" is language associated with one party and that support for birth control and sex education is associated with the other party. So Ms. McCain's position, cast solely in terms of party orthodoxy, does have one bit that runs contrary to another bit. I get that. But this begs the question: how did party orthodoxy get so crazy?

In particular, what is going on in the psyches of people who are so horrified by women's reproductive choice that they seek to . . . ? oh! I see it now. They seek to restrict women's reproductive choice because they are horrified by women's reproductive choice. Duh.

Of course, this is not what supporters of banning abortion say. They don't come out and say that they are against reproductive choice tout court. Rather, they draw a distinction between reproductive choice before conception (which is fine) and reproductive choice after conception (which is murder). But if this is really what they think, then why the opposition to measures to ensure reproductive choice before conception -- i.e., sex education and access to birth control?

I don't know. I suspect they don't know either. (None of us understands very much of our own motivations, and others can often see them better that we ourselves can.) My guess is that they really are, despite what they say, uncomfortable with reproductive choice tout court -- whether before or after conception. Here's how I think that works.

There's a moral narrative about "good women" and "bad women." There are many variations on this narrative -- and they usually include some internal contradictions when unpacked -- but a common thread is that good women don't get pregnant outside of marriage. Pregnancy and motherhood are the appropriate consequence for bad women: either as a punishment for being sexually active, or as a way to bring them under control (subdue them into the domesticity of child-rearing), or both. It's offensive that bad women would be allowed to "gallivant around" (i.e., be sexually active in a way that is acceptable in men), yet continue, between liaisons, to carry on their lives "acting" as if they were good women. The social order requires that the bad women be clearly demarcated -- and if they don't get pregnant, how can they be identified? That these "hussies" would get to "parade" around as if they were "normal, virtuous" women is intolerable. Women themselves sometimes pick up on this narrative, and, seeking to prove themselves to be among the good women, or adopting a device for condemning a female rival for a man's loyalty, become reinforcers and perpetrators of the narrative. Hence the proportion of women that support an abortion ban is only slightly lower than the proportion of men who do.

There are also class and race aspects to the narrative. Poverty is itself a moral failure, according to the narrative, and dark skin an indicator of suspect morality, so poor and darker women are in particular need of moral policing. That is, wealthier and paler women may be allowed more sexual freedom because they are basically good women. Their virtue entitles them to a certain gallivanting -- just as wealth entitles them to a more expensive car (or a car at all) to use in the process. Part of what's going on is that the spectacle of poorer and darker women being as free as wealthier and whiter women is difficult to abide.

When you have a moral narrative so powerfully at work, all the attention is on the moral judgment. Empirical facts are beside the point. Standing upright against moral evil is important -- conducting and paying attention to research on what will actually, in fact, reduce that evil is not important. Thus, it's irrelevant that empirical findings show that sex education and access to birth control reduce the incidence of unwanted pregnancy and thus reduce the number of abortions. The important thing is to stand against evil, not to reduce it.

We don't always know what the elements of our moral revulsion are. Studies have found that moral revulsion is tied to sensory revulsion: people standing next to a smelly trash can, for instance, express harsher condemnation of, say, first-cousin marriage. So I imagine that revulsion against images of fetal dismemberment is part of the picture among proponents of an abortion ban. I have a negative reaction to those images, too. But, for me, positive associations with images of fierce and independent women (e.g. "the warrior's daughter steeled herself, drew her eyes up and stepped into battle", or, say, Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman" speech) are stronger. I don't doubt that pro-ban folks truly are horrified by fetal death. But I think that horror is significantly boosted by an underlying and often unconscious horror at women's, especially poor and darker-skinned women's, sexual freedom.

How does one get to a place of moral outrage while not caring about what would reduce the purported evil? In this case, one arrives there from a sense that the evil is not, or isn't just, the purported one (abortion). The deeper evil is the prospect of women being free and in control of their own sexual and reproductive lives.

Why else would "but" be the conjunction between "has said that abortion is tantamount to murder" and "has been a proponent of sex education and birth control"?

"Hey Boss, You Don't Want Your Employees to Meditate"

When I saw the headline of the recent New York Times Op-Ed -- "Hey Boss, You Don't Want Your Employees to Meditate" -- I thought: Oh, good. This will counter the criticism that meditation and mindfulness in the workplace are tools for corporations to improve productivity while avoiding correcting the injustices that produce workplace stress.

Let's look at the criticism and how the study by Kathleen Vohs and Andrew Hafenbrack, who wrote the Op-Ed, addresses it.

First, the American workplace is often stressful. Ronald Purser and Edwin Ng cite a Stanford-Harvard study that identified the stressors:

"A meta-analysis of 228 studies showed that...major workplace stressors were associated with a lack of health insurance, threats of constant layoffs and job insecurity, lack of discretion and autonomy in decision-making, long work hours, low organizational justice, and unrealistic job demands...Stress is shaped by a complex set of interacting power relations, networks of interests, and explanatory narratives."[2]

Corporations care about this stress because it reduces productivity. Rather than address the problems by pushing for universal health insurance, by lowering job demands and shortening work hours, and by providing job security, worker autonomy, and organizational justice, some corporations have introduced mindfulness programs. Kristen Ghodsee worries that these

"employer-sponored mindfulness programs obscure the insanity of our American work culture." [1]

Purser and Ng suggest that mindfulness is being used to promote quietism. Mindfulness, perhaps,

"merely amounts to employee pacification and a form of passive nihilism." [2]

In an earlier piece, Ronald Purser and David Loy wrote that mindfulness training:

"has become a trendy method for subduing employee unrest, promoting a tacit acceptance of the status quo, and as an instrumental tool for keeping attention focused on institutional goals." [3]

Training in peace and acceptance might lead employees "to spiral into complacency and subjugation" [4]. Practices that encourage altruism may also make people easier to exploit. Corporate mindfulness may be the latest version of workplace "cow psychology" -- so called because contented and docile cows give more milk. Ghodsee concludes:

"There is something insidious about corporations and universities promoting mindfulness among their employees, particularly those who might otherwise fight for necessary institutional change." [1]

But wait. If acceptance of reality demotivates people from agitating for institutional change, would it not equally well demotivate them from pursuit of the company's productivity goals? Docile cows might give more milk, but companies want workers who are motivated and energized, not merely docile.

Actually, two points. One, my experience suggests that meditation and mindfulness don't demotivate activism. Two, meditation and mindfulness apparently do demotivate the pursuit of productivity goals for their own sake.

The first point doesn't have much evidence for or against it. I've found that meditation facilitates increased interest in the well-being of all beings, and that this strengthens rather than weakens interest in working for institutional change. But this, as the empirically-minded will note, is anecdotal. We don't yet have careful studies on whether either (a) nonactivists who begin a meditation practice are more likely to become social activists, or (b) activists who begin a meditation practice become more effective, more energetic, or less susceptible to burn-out in their activism.

The second point, thanks to Vohs and Hafenbrack, has a supporting study. Meditation apparently does function, in some contexts, to reduce worker motivation to pursue their company's productivity goals. Vohs and Hafenbrack write:

"Among those who had meditated, motivation levels were lower on average. Those people didn’t feel as much like working on the assignments, nor did they want to spend as much time or effort to complete them. Meditation was correlated with reduced thoughts about the future and greater feelings of calm and serenity — states seemingly not conducive to wanting to tackle a work project." [5]

Actual performance, however, was unaffected. Meditation brings both increased focus and decreased motivation, Vohs and Hafenbrack conclude, and these two effects seem to cancel each other out, leaving overall performance neither improved nor worsened.

This "decreased motivation" was for particular tasks. The tasks used in the study "were similar to everyday workplace jobs: editing business memos, entering text into a computer and so on" [5]. That is, these were tasks that had no evident connection to making the world better. They are tasks that would normally be motivated only by the prospect of extrinsic, self-centered, material reward.

Along with "focused, nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment," which, as Hafenbrack and Vohs say, characterize a state of mindfulness [6], meditation also facilitates an increased sense of connection to other beings, and thus increased compassion. It makes sense that a wider, deeper sense of connection, and of the interconnection of all things, would shift motivation away away from tasks with only a material or egocentric reward. Instead, motivation would tend to shift toward concern for others and tasks that support life. Jeremy Hunter writes:

"If people pay attention to their mind, body, and emotions, they begin to approach the world with more openness and inquisitiveness. Quite often that touches off deeper values, such as concern for others and the world at large. A decade ago, Mirabai Bush, founding director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, introduced a mindfulness program at Monsanto, a company that had been widely criticized for perpetuating shortsighted and damaging agricultural practices. At a corporate retreat, a top scientist approached her after a session and said, 'I realized that we’re creating products that kill life. We should be creating products that support life.' It’s a long journey from a personal insight like that to large-scale change, but at least we can say that mindfulness was starting to serve as a disruptive technology within the company.” [7]

We have yet to see American business culture make any notable shift toward compassion. But there is at least reason for seeing a connection between meditation and increased interest in compassion. An increase in workers who are more focused while also less interested in material rewards is a social good -- though not useful for the narrow productivity interests of corporate bosses.

Your boss might not want you to meditate -- though, since performance stays the same, your boss probably doesn't care. The rest of us who share this planet with you would love for you to cultivate compassion, acceptance, and focus.

* * *

[1] Kristen Ghodsee (Bowdoin College, Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies), "The Dangers of McMindfulness," ChronicleVitae, 2016 Apr 5.

[2] Ronald Purser, PhD (San Francisco State University, Professor of Management) and Edwin Ng, PhD (cultural theorist based in Melbourne, Australia; writes on Buddhism and mindfulness for the Australian Broadcasting Corp.’s Religion & Ethics blog), "Corporate Mindfulness is Bullsh*t: Zen or no Zen, You're Working Harder and Being Paid Less," Salon, 2015 Sep 27.

[3] Ronald Purser and David Loy (Zen teacher), "Beyond McMindfulness," Huffington Post, 2013 Aug 31.

[4] Norman A.S. Farb (University of Toronto Missauga, Department of Psychology), "From Retreat Center to Clinic to Boardroom? Perils and Promises of the Modern Mindfulness Movement," Religions, 2014.

[5] Kathleen Vohs (University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management, Professor of Marketing) and Andrew Hafenbrack (Católica-Lisbon School of Business and Economics, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior), "Hey Boss, You Don't Want Your Employees to Meditate," New York Times, 2018 Jun 14.

[6] Andrew Hafenbrack and Kathleen Vohs, "Mindfulness Meditation Impairs Task Motivation but Not Performance," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2018 Jul.

[7] Jeremy Hunter (Claremont Graduate University, Drucker School of Management, Executive Mind Leadership Institute, Director and Professor of Practice), "Is Mindfulness Good for Business?" Mindful, 2013 Apr.

"Oh, The Places You'll Go" Addendum

During this time of graduations and send-offs, Dr. Suess's "Oh, The Places You'll Go" is especially popular. It's also strikingly individualistic. It is addressed to "you," and describes "your" future as one of solitary challenges.

"You're on your own,"

it says on the second page. In the world of the book other people are scarcely alluded to, and when they are, they seem to exist only for the purpose of being bested:

"You'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead. . . .
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.
Except when you don't . . . "

There will be bumps and slumps along the way -- and while

"un-slumping yourself is not easily done,"

there's no mention of friendship and the support of other people in helping us through those difficulties.

The illustrations feature "you" in barren cityscapes bereft of other people, heading out of town into an equally uninhabited countryside, and standing all alone at difficult and nonsensical choice points. (The nonsense, of course, is what is most delightful about Seuss, though when combined with prevalent solitude it comes across as rather bleak.)

The book mentions loneliness:

"All Alone! Whether you like it or not,
Alone will be something you'll be quite a lot."

This loneliness will be scary, it says, but rather than urging the cultivation of friendships, as would seem natural, the book only says loneliness will make you not want to go on. But "on you will go," anyway.

The reward for your solitary perseverance is that "Kid, you'll move mountains." Why the mountains shouldn't stay where they were isn't addressed. There's no indication that your "success" would do anything to make the world any better.

The "jaunty, upbeat journey...encourages perseverance" (reviewer Robyn Raymer) but not relationship. It's all about success (which is "98 and three-quarters percent guaranteed"), and not about connection.

To make up for this lack, I humbly offer the addendum below. I welcome your further additions in the "Comments" -- in anapestic tetrameter couplets, if possible!

Doctor Seuss laid it out – the good doc got it right.
You will soar through bright days – and you’ll struggle dark nights.

What he failed to mention, no, he said not a word,
is you’re NOT on your own. That would be too absurd.

Life is for friendship, community, love:
The people, the beings, that you most think of.

He said you’d be lonely – that’s probably true.
You’ll feel heartsick, despairing, and anxious, and blue.
These feelings you’ll have tell you something that matters:
That friends make you whole when your heart is in tatters.

Oh, the places you’ll go, you won’t go alone.
(I’m not talking ‘bout Facebook, or swiping right on your phone)
The companions you’ll find, and the love that awaits you --
That's the besty-best part of where this life takes you.

Success feels nice, and failure feels sad –
Of both, you’ll have plenty, the good and the bad.
There’s Community, too – the folks who don’t see you
For mountains you moved, but for just how you be you.

Who you will be is such fun to be scheming.
WHOSE you will be is what gives it all meaning.

Cultural Appropriation: Hard Cases

There are some social debates raging on questions to which I don't know the answer -- in particular, debates in which charges of cultural appropriation are levied.

This is not to say that there aren't some relatively clear-cut cases. A white American wearing a Native American war bonnet as a "fashion accessory" was once universally acceptable among white Americans, and now a growing number of us see that as a social and moral mistake.

Cultural appropriation involves adoption of elements of a minority culture by members of the dominant culture. In contexts where it might not be clear which culture is dominant, or whether a given other culture is minority, cultural appropriation is difficult to assess. For the most part, however, 21st-century America has a more-or-less readily identifiable dominant culture, and, though there is fuzziness at the edges, the minority cultures in the US are also recognizable. Only members of the dominant culture can commit this appropriation, and only minority cultures can be appropriated from, and that's because the imbalance of power is the crucial dynamic at play in cultural appropriation.

Understanding the imbalance of power requires awareness of the long history of colonialism. Inaugurated with Columbus's voyages, European colonialism grew to Africa, India, southeast Asia, and the Americas, and was characterized by conquest, genocide, subjugation and exploitation of people, and appropriation of resources. Colonialism depended on white people's belief in the superiority of white culture, for according to colonial ideology, they were doing a favor to the colonized peoples by "modernizing" them. Such modernizing usually turned out to be highly selective: usually amounting to little more than efforts to train indigenous people to be more serviceable to European profit. Colonizers cited "economic development," while in practice, typically, the only economy that was developed was the export economy: thus funneling resources and goods into wealthier countries and further impoverishing the colonized host.

Given this history, its not surprising that minority cultures catch whiffs of usurpation, exploitation, and arrogance when white Americans continue -- consciously or not -- the habits and assumptions of colonial superiority.

That said, here are three recent cases that, to my mind, aren't clear-cut. I think these are hard cases.

1. In 2015, Diep Nguyen, a Vietnamese freshman student at Oberlin, objected to the Banh Mi sandwich offered at the Dining Hall. The student newspaper, The Oberlin Review, reported: "Instead of a crispy baguette with grilled pork, pate, pickled vegetables and fresh herbs, the sandwich used ciabatta bread, pulled pork and coleslaw. 'It was ridiculous,' Nguyen said. 'How could they just throw out something completely different and label it as another country’s traditional food?' Nguyen added that Bon Appétit, the food service management company contracted by Oberlin College, has a history of blurring the line between culinary diversity and cultural appropriation by modifying the recipes without respect for certain Asian countries’ cuisines. This uninformed representation of cultural dishes has been noted by a multitude of students, many of who have expressed concern over the gross manipulation of traditional recipes." The item was pulled from the dining hall menu. Should it have been?
 
2. In 2016, Dana Schutz, a white woman, painted "Open Casket," which hung at the Whitney Biennial exhibition in New York in 2017. It is a portrait of Emmett Till, a black 14-year-old boy who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955. African-American artist Parker Bright protested the painting, demanded that Schutz's painting be removed and destroyed. He wrote: "it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun." Others joined in Parker Bright's objection, including another African-American artist, Hannah Black, who wrote, "The subject matter is not Schutz’s. White free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights. The painting must go." Schutz and museum curators defended the painting and its inclusion in the exhibit. Who was right?
 

3. A couple months ago, on April 22, Keziah Daum, a white high school senior in Utah, wore a Chinese-styled dress -- a red cheongsam that she found at a vintage store in Salt Lake City -- to her school prom. She posted on social media pictures of herself in the dress alongside her friends. A number of people posted objections. Jeremy Lam, for intsance, wrote, "My culture is NOT your prom dress." He went on to say, “I’m proud of my culture, including the extreme barriers marginalized people within that culture have had to overcome those obstacles. For it to simply be subject to American consumerism and cater to a white audience, is parallel to colonial ideology.” Lam's tweet was retweeted 42,000 times and spurred an onslaught of similar criticism of Daum's sartorial choice. Daum replied: "I don’t see the big deal of me wearing a gorgeous dress I found for my last prom. If anything, I’m showing my appreciation to other cultures and I didn’t intend to make anyone think that I’m trying to be racist. It’s just a dress." Who is right?

My answer to all three questions posed by these cases is: "I don't know." In general, the "not knowing" stance has much to recommend it. Opinions tend to be pricey and high-maintenance, so it's wise to have no more than are necessary. Not knowing has been encouraged by diverse thinkers from British poet John Keats (who, in 1817, praised "negative capability" -- the capacity to be "in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason," able to be comfortable leaving matters ambiguous, indeterminate, or unknown) to Korean Zen master Seung Sahn (1927-2004, who frequently told his students, "only don't know," to encourage them to set aside their conceptions).

But not knowing does not mean not engaging. In fact, in many ways it is just the opposite, for what we "know" may entice us to view a situation only through the lens of prior knowledge and thus miss details that make the case at hand unique. The not-knowing stance is one of openness and curiosity. It begins by resisting impulses to exclaim, "That's ridiculous!" and continues into training ourselves in how to articulate (even if only to ourselves) the most sympathetic possible version of other viewpoints.

Before we get to the question, "Who is right?" (and if we never get to that question, perhaps that's OK) let us ask: Who is hurting? What is their pain? What skillful and compassionate response to that pain is possible? What's needed is listening and understanding.

Some social issues need us to jump into the fray; others don't need any additional combatants, but do need attentive empathy and understanding. The hard cases where cultural appropriation is charged fall into the second category. These situations call for people who are attentive to the issues raised (neither withdrawing from the subject nor dismissing it) and empathetic to the hurt that's being manifested.

How would you attend to the pain and bring empathy to each of the three cases?
What more would you need to know?

Earth Day Attention

A tale in the Zen tradition has it that a student came to visit a master, a spiritual teacher. Finding the teacher at calligraphy, the student asked, “Please write for me something of great wisdom.”

The teacher’s brush glided over a fresh sheet, writing a single word: “Attention.” The student said, “Is that all?”

The master wrote, “Attention. Attention.” The student, perplexed, said, “That doesn’t seem profound or subtle.”

So the teacher wrote, “Attention. Attention. Attention.” The student paused, unsure, before asking, “What does this word ‘attention’ mean?”

The master replied, “Attention means attention.”

Speaking of calligraphy, some years ago, I was gifted with a lovely wall hanging of Japanese calligraphy. According to the note taped to the back, the translation is: “It is mind that deludes mind, for there is no other mind. O, mind, do not let yourself be misled by mind.”

So there you have it. The spiritual path is simple: attention. But, the mind plays tricks on us.

On this glorious day, celebrating our planet home, we attend. The winter’s beauty of white subsides to spring’s beauty of green, and we feel the salvific power in this reliable rhythm.

Ecospirituality – attention to how our experience of the divine comes through the natural world – connects, and connecting to the sacredness of the earth saves us – saves us from being only half-alive. Attention is what will save the Earth, if it will be saved.

One of the lessons – insights that come on the spiritual path of attention – is that reality is never depressing. Being in denial, being out of touch with reality, pushing it out of consciousness, so that it has to sneak around, come at you from behind, and crawl up your back (for reality eventually finds a way to get through to us), THAT can be a source of depression. Resisting reality is stressful -- reality isn’t. Attention to exactly “what is” cultivates joy. Even if “what is” is pain.

Dear ones, the good news is: you and I are going to die. That’s great news because it means we don’t have to figure out how to live forever – get everything solved, all threats removed, so that we can then relax into our immortality. We don't bear that responsibility. We only have this short time -- a day, a year maybe, or possibly a few decades -- and all we have to do is show up for just this brief time. That's all. Knowing I am blessed with an ironclad exit strategy, knowing the divine takes form only temporarily in the body and set of ego defenses called "Meredith," I am liberated. My task is no more (and no less) than to manifest this transience that I am – to pay attention, for time is short.

Yes, drink in this day: how good the sunlight and warmth feel, how delightful the budding green, how fresh the springtime air. Let not this manifestation of the divine pass unnoticed. Let not creation play to an empty house. Attention!

And attention, also, to the pain and grief: climate change, deforestation, species extinction, lost biodiversity, soil degradation, ocean acidification, air pollution. Hold all that sadness, my friends – for it is the Earth’s pain, and therefore it is yours. Shrink not from it, for our capacity to fully experience sadness is equal to our capacity to fully experience joy is equal to our capacity to fully experience life. In other words, love is love is love is love, as Lin Manuel Miranda put it.

Reality is never depressing, but it does contain much pain and loss. Taking in the sadness is actually the opposite of depression, for depression is disconnecting, while holding the sadness is an act of connecting. Depression is dull while grief is sharp.

Attention. Attention.

Yet the mind plays tricks on us. It retreats from attention, unable to sustain its hold on the exquisite sharpness of life. It slips back into sedative notions.

“It’s futile,” the mind whispers. “You can’t prevent climate change, or deforestation, or any of the threats.” But this is not what the spirit asks. The spirit simply asks for your attention.

“Perhaps technological breakthroughs will solve everything,” the mind muses. News stories this week, for example, touted the discovery of enzymes that eat plastic. So, yes, 1 million plastic bottles are sold each minute, only 14% of them will be recycled, and many of the rest end up in the ocean in huge plastic garbage patches. But these new enzymes can take care of all that.

Maybe.

Maybe we’ll develop economical technology to suck carbon out of the air and sequester it. I might point out that we already have a really economical device for doing that. It’s called a tree, but worldwide, we’re still cutting them down faster than we’re planting them.

We might be about to develop cold fusion: unlimited, nonpolluting energy for everyone forever.

“Oh, mind, do not let yourself be misled by mind.”

Yes, technological development happens, but remember we’ve never been able to predict where the developments will occur. And when a development does occur, we are similarly lousy at predicting its side-effects. We see the solutions offered but not the new problems caused by every new technology.

Attention. Attention. Attention.

Small acts of attention and care – therein is salvation. “To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal,” said Wendell Berry, “is our only legitimate hope of survival.”

* * *
Video of the complete service that this reflection was a part of: HERE

The Vice of Toxic Masculinity

Here are some virtues:

courage/fortitude
assertiveness
health/vitality
fairmindedness
temperance/moderation
wisdom/sagacity
prudence
learning
creativity
generosity
compassion
empathy
friendliness
cooperativeness
truthfulness
integrity
trust
trustworthiness/reliability
commitment
reverence
humility
patience
confidence
determination
resilience

Others might make somewhat different lists. (A longer list is HERE, though it leaves off prudence, health/vitality, empathy, and resilience.) Some things to notice about virtues:

They are individual goods -- that is, they make the lives of those who exemplify them better.

They are also social goods -- they make society better, and it is a task of a society to cultivate and encourage the virtues among its members.

Many of the virtues themselves represent a balance, a "middle way" between opposing vices. Temperance/moderation is the general virtue of steering between extremes, but several of the virtues represent a middle way between specific opposite vices. Courage, for instance, is a balance between paying no attention at all to appropriate fear (thus being reckless) and being wholly governed by fears.

Other virtues are susceptible to being taken to an extreme and becoming a vice. In these cases, the virtue needs counterbalancing from another virtue. Too much humility can make confidence difficult (and vice-versa). Same for patience and assertiveness.

Not all good qualities are virtues. Attractiveness, I think, is a good to the individual, but it isn't a virtue and isn't the sort of thing that society needs to think about how to encourage.

Virtue is nonpartisan. William Bennett's 1993 Book of Virtues briefly made it seem as if virtue was the exclusive province of conservatives -- and right-wing support for Donald Trump in 2016 has (also temporarily, I presume) made it seem that conservatives have abandoned concern with virtue. In fact, any influence between one's political leanings and which virtues to regard as most important is slight. Talking and thinking about virtue is how a society collectively works out and expresses its hopes for its children, and the virtues I've listed are recognized across the political spectrum.

Virtue and Gender

The virtues on my list constitute good qualities for both women and men, and most of them are as prevalent (or scarce) among one gender as among the other. Possible exceptions -- virtues that, perhaps, are not equally prevalent -- include empathy, which might be, on average, better developed in women, and assertiveness and confidence, which might be, on average, better developed in men. It's unclear whether there's any biological basis for this difference or whether it is wholly a product of differential socialization. In any case, empathy is nevertheless a virtue for men, even if often more developed in women, and assertiveness and confidence are nevertheless virtues for women, even if often more developed in men.

Unfortunately, popular ideas of "masculine" and "feminine" have fostered the idea that the virtues appropriate for boys and for girls are different. The West has a long history of promoting different virtues to boys than to girls: "virility" for boys, "chastity" for girls, for instance (neither of which is on my list). This has been a problem. The advance of gender equality will require a broad commitment to raising our boys and girls alike to strive to hold themselves to standards of virtue that are not sex-specific.

This does not, of course, mean that we deny or ignore gender differences. Testosterone, we know, makes a difference. Raising or lowering anybody’s testosterone level, male or female, has affects on mood and on what gets attention and doesn't. Testosterone also seems to increase preoccupation with one’s status. Studies, however, “refute the preconception that testosterone causes aggressive, egocentric, and risky behavior.” Testosterone “can encourage fair behaviors if this serves to ensure one's own status.” (Science Daily, 2009 Dec 9)

Toxic masculinity, then, is not the fault of testosterone. It's the fault of an ideology of masculinity that encourages boys to be domineering. Domination is not a virtue, but, in fact, a vice, and the measure of the toxicity of any concept of masculinity is the extent to which it encourages dominating behavior.

Dominance undermines and counteracts virtue. I am convinced that, indeed, dominance is the one evil at the root of all social ills. The rise of agriculture 12,000 years ago gave rise to a dominant class and put us all in service to whatever was hierarchically above us. Women are to serve men, the poor are to serve the rich, people of color are to serve whites, and the Earth and all its nonhuman species are to serve humans. (I write of this in more detail in two posts HERE and HERE.)

The task of replacing domination with compassion and empathy – and with the virtues generally -- will not be easy. Domination, vicious as it is, has persisted because in some sense it has "worked": it has allowed individuals, particularly males, to get ahead. We are up against entrenched toxic masculinity: deep patterns that train boys to be dominant. Misogyny, homophobia, sexual assault, and domestic violence are all about establishing and expressing dominance. The bullying and aggression that men learned as boys, and that plays out in adulthood in misogynist impositions, is the product of a notion of masculinity that is truly toxic.

Showing feeling connects us with ourselves and others, and thereby facilitates virtue development, but toxic masculinity stifles emotional expression as incompatible with domination. Boys taught to dominate become emotionally stunted men: damaged people inflicting damage on others.

In the history of the West, male concern with status manifested as an interest in "honor." Honor is perhaps too old-fashioned to be revived as a significant influence on culture today, but its opposite, shame, is as powerful as ever. Rape culture will end when men -- much closer to universally than at present -- understand sexual aggression as shameful.

Whether the influence of boys' testosterone is channeled into aggression and dominance or into, say, fighting for social justice, is up to us. A society that expects and rewards its boys to be strong in pro-social ways, that won’t tolerate sexual aggression, can get what it expects.

As one writer about masculinity suggested: we don’t want to be sheep, but that doesn’t mean we have to be wolves. We can be the sheepdog – protecting those who cannot protect themselves. Maybe sheepdog isn’t the best metaphor – it seems to retain hierarchy – but the point is that we don’t have to diminish characteristically male energy. We do need to channel it in virtuous directions and stop rewarding the vice of domination.

Western culture has been lousy at teaching boys what to do with the energies and interests that testosterone nudges upward. The #MeToo movement is helping dismantle the structures that for so long have rewarded aggressive dominance. That’s a very positive development for the prospects of happier, healthier, more complete men.

So They Won't Change Me

Some years ago I read about A.J. Muste and something he said. Looking for that quote, I came across this passage from Denise Roy's essay, "The Mother is Standing" in the anthology, The Maternal is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change (2008) -- which includes the line from Muste that I was looking for:

"Our protest that Good Friday morning did not change the world, at least as far as we can see. Nevertheless, it changed me, and it changed our community. A reporter once asked A.J. Muste -- a social activist who, during the Vietnam War, stood outside the White House night after night -- 'Mr. Muste, do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night with a candle?'

"'Oh,' Muste replied, 'I don't do this to change the country. I do this so the country won't change me.'

"When I am willing to cross the line of how much I think I can love, I am changed. When I am more in touch with what I love than what I fear, I take a stand. My prayer is that more and more of us, on behalf of all children, will use the energy of a mother to touch the seeds of courage and love within us for the sake of the world."

Don't get me -- or A.J. Muste -- wrong: knowing what we stand for, and standing for it, does change the country. And the world. There's certainly a place for strategic thinking, and choosing where to put our energy for maximum effect. But we never get to the strategy questions unless we are clear and firm about who we are -- what we are willing to stand for even when a particular instance, or a million particular instances, make no apparent difference at all. Taking action that grounds us in our own values is ultimately the only thing that can change the world.

On Sun Feb 25 afternoon, Cindy Davidson and I were outside Governor Andrew Cuomo's home in Mt. Kisco. We were there participating in a vigil calling for the Governor to be more active on climate change: stop statewide fossil fuel projects, including shutting down the Algonquin pipeline; release the results of a risk assessment study of the pipeline that the Governor ordered two years ago; and commit New York to being fossil-fuel-free by 2030. It was a chill and drizzly afternoon. Soon there was no feeling in my toes. Still I was glad to be there -- glad to be putting my shivering body on the side of love for our planet.

When a reporter asked to speak with me, she asked a few questions and then pointed out that the Governor did not appear to be home -- so how could we hope to have any affect on him? At that moment, A.J. Muste's words came to mind. I didn't quote them quite right, but was close.

When we place our bodies into the postures that show what we love, what we care about, it changes us -- and strengthens us against the kind of change that would be a weakening of our commitments. It solidifies us as the beings we are, screws our courage to the sticking place, secures us against the dissolution, dissipation, and distraction that so easily happens. When we are unmoved in our resolve to be people who stand for loving life and our planet home that sustains us -- people who will not be changed into anything more complacent -- then power that changes the world can take root in us.

Channel 12's News Story

See also:
The Examiner, "Protestors Rally Outside Cuomo’s House, Demand Pipeline Risk Study"
LoHud, "Governor must reveal risks of fracked gas pipeline near nuclear storage"
MidHudson News, "Activists call on Cuomo to be ‘a climate hero’"
Patch, "Faith Groups Hold Environmental Vigil At NY Governor's House"
FIOS 1, "Activists call on Gov. Cuomo to take up commitment to clean energy: Interfaith group held vigil outside of governor’s home in Mount Kisco"