Entering The Mystery — #UU talk #Ourstoriesmatter #WeAreAmerica

Yesterday morning at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration (in Philadelphia) I did a talk titled “Entering The Mystery.”  This talk was part of a larger service on “New Member Sunday.”

You can view the YouTube video below.  If you prefer, you can read the piece below the video. Thanks!

 

Good morning

 

“Janet?  Janet joined a church?”

I overhead this a few years ago when I was downstairs.  A woman I had known casually for a few decades through the women’s community was talking to my partner.

Her comment wasn’t judgmental or skeptical.  Rather it was innocent and incredulous — or maybe it was simply factual.  Was she hearing things correctly?

Could Barbara had said this? Was it true?

This was after a service when several members of the Anna Crusis Women’s Choir joined the Restoration Singers on Music Sunday. Our music director, Jane Hulting, formerly directed the Women’s choir and stays in touch with the “Annas.'”

Of course, I found the comments of this “Anna” amusing.

But I’m the first to admit that I’m an unlikely church member.

When I joined Restoration about four years ago, it was the first time I had joined a church.  I was raised secular – but always knew myself as a spiritual person.  Like many, I was distrustful of organized religion.

In one of my earliest spiritual memories, I remember standing on the beach as a child — having lost my parents — and looking out to the waves and praying to an amorphous and genderless “God” that I find them.  Then I turned around and my mother was walking toward me.

I played the guitar as a child, and in fifth grade sang “Like A Bridge Over Troubled Water” on the stage. The song has always had resonance for me.  Then as an adolescent, I crossed my own troubled waters.  Perhaps it was my spirituality that got me through.

When I started coming to Restoration, the time was ripe for me.  I discovered a religion that shared my values.  I had a life-time of alternative spirituality behind me and found a place that wasn’t rigid or narrow where I could explore traditional spirituality.

I also found a spiritual home for my partner and I.

Last week she said to me after we came home from the service that it was really wonderful that we have such a nice church to attend together.

There are so many people from the wider communities that we belong to here at Restoration. And there are so many others — who I wouldn’t have met otherwise.  It is good to be together.

It is good for me to be connected to all of you, to this Beloved Community – and to be connected to hope.

Shortly after the election, I heard a short segment on National Public Radio about how people in the United States tend to be divided into red and blue states and experience sameness rather than diversity.  They often don’t know the stories of anyone who is different from them.

Diversity helps to build empathy.

It also creates hope.

I really cherish being part of the diversity here at Restoration.

As a writer and as a creative writing teacher, I know that our stories are sacred. I spend much of my time alone and am fortunate in having a partner who respects my need for aloneness.  Solitude is necessary for a writer but so is being in the world – to a lesser extent.

I’ve been a reader all of my life.  As a child, the whole world opened up to me when I learned how to read.  I was described as a bookworm – as a child and as an adult.

Restoration’s emphasis on books drew me in as did its diverse and welcoming community.  But coming here most Sunday mornings is different than spending my time writing and reading. By coming here, I am part of a community that is connected to the world and to the cosmos.

A year ago, I would have said that the diversity of the congregation was important – today I know that it is absolutely essential.

As I mentioned, I was raised secular. Religion is still a bit of a mystery to me.  Everyone’s reason for joining a church is different.  I suspect that each person joins Restoration for a reason that might end up being different from what they may have thought originally.

Welcome to the mystery.

 

 

–Namaste

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Our Stories #amwriting #story

This morning at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration (in Philadelphia) I talked about my experience of work, writing, teaching, and the importance of telling our stories.  The theme of this week’s service was “Finding Balance.”

To see the reading and the reflection on YouTube, click here. (You can also view the YouTube video at the bottom of this post. Following is the text of my talk:

 

“The workplace is a conquering ground for neurosis,”

                                         –Dorothy Barenholtz

 

 

 

My friend Dorothy’s statement has stood in my mind for a long time. It is true – under the best and worst of circumstances. Dorothy is a friend — in her 90s who lives in New York City.  She worked as an administrative assistant across from the Central Park Zoo when my partner and I first met her at a woman’s spirituality festival where she was selling rubber stamps with some amazing patterns. Before her time as an administrative assistant she worked as a writer in various capacities.

I will always think of her as an excellent letter writer, which in our fragmented society of texts and Tweets, is a lost art.  Before she retired, she regaled us for years with work-related stories – all of which boiled down to how the issue of survival of the fittest is too often prevalent in the workplace, forcing us to extreme measures to retain our humanity.

But let me start with my own story.

A difficult job situation put me on the path to Buddhism. I would meditate every morning on the train to Center City in order to be able to deal with extremely difficult coworkers. I worked for a major nonprofit – and the work that I did brought me in contact with people with physical and intellectual disabilities who were truly amazing. I was very good at what I did and earned some major awards.

But the environment – a cubicle on Rittenhouse Square in Center City, Philadelphia — was not in keeping with my inner self. On that job, I developed a jolly outer persona – which I now see was a kind of survival. Every morning, I walked by the major bookstore next door to my office and looked into the window.  I was crying inside.  Not that I was anything like the writers in the window.  In that section of town, the books that were put in the window tended to be on the right of the political spectrum and far more conventional than I was.

I have written seriously since I was 29 – like Gertrude Stein – but I always wanted to do more with my writing – and I felt that I could, if only I had the time.

I wrote on weekends, holidays and vacation time. I wrote in the evenings when I came home from work.  I also taught in the evenings – and my grueling schedule is probably the reason that I was seriously burnt out by the time I was laid off.

In Life, Work and Spirituality, Dr. John W. Gilmore (a former ministerial intern here at UUCR),  writes that work is part of our identity (sometimes it is our identity) and we learn about work very early in our lives.  My father worked shift work in an industrial plant.  My earliest memory of work was driving to the plant with my mother at odd hours to drop him off and pick him up.  When I was in college, I worked summers at the plant and heard of more than a few old timers who dropped over dead in the guard house when they were clocking out.  I always thought it very unfair that they had spent their last hours at the job.

I never wanted a job to take over my life.

Nonetheless, decades later on Rittenhouse Square – when things had gotten very difficult – I said to myself (and out loud on at least one occasion) that when you have a good job, you don’t quit it – you just keep on going no matter what.

Deep down, I wanted to put my creative writing first. It was a desire that burned in me.  The universe heard me.  I had finally found a publisher for my book Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters and two weeks after I signed the contract, I was laid off.  Boom.  I had more time for my writing. Soon, I had a book to promote.

I managed to write and promote my book and also to job hunt – but the fact was that during this time I was a mess. A close friend, the wise poet Maria Fama, knew I was going through a period of extreme anxiety (to say the least) and gave me the advice to “put everything into your writing.” So I did. The result was that I have been doing what I consider to be my best writing.

I am also freelancing, coaching, and teaching and I am more of myself than ever.

Just last week, a student – a woman in her sixties – said to me that she always wanted to tell her story but she thinks that no one wants to hear it.

I’ll tell you what I told her.

There are people who will put us in categories. They may ignore us or think they are better than us.  But that’s their problem – not ours.  When we tell our stories we become more of ourselves.  We become larger and we connect – with ourselves and with each other.

Our stories are the glue that holds the universe together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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