Boots and Blessings

I've been studying Bowen systems theory for about seven years now and though there have been many epiphanies, there are two that stand out. #1 Don't Trust Your Instincts #2 Healthy Boundaries are about Self-Definition, not Self-Protection Let's talk about #2. When my mentor in systems theory presented me with this concept, I felt like staggering backwards. (Which would have been weird, since I was sitting in a comfortable chair.) It was one of those moments where I somehow knew in my brain that this was theoretically correct, but I also knew I was going to have to sit with that for a while, in order to truly understand it. And sit  with it longer before I could truly begin living it out. On the face of it, it's a pretty radical notion. Because the messages we hear all the time are about the need to have boundaries for one's protection. We need to feel safe, the logic goes, so we need to establish and maintain boundaries. You know what the critical er...

"Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say: It is well, it is well, with my soul ." Life right now is unimaginably heartbreaking . Children are trained to expect a murderer to walk into their schools (because it happens with increasing regularity), people of color are shot just for living normal life, rights -- reproductive, voting, adopting -- are being stripped away, the earth as we know it is dying, and as it dies, we violently are oppressing those with the least power. Life right now is utterly amazing. We are questioning all the norms in our society, becoming more inclusive to all types of relationships, changing our words, rejecting "power over," breaking apart assumptions. Both can be true. Simultaneously. And in among all of that are the heartbreaks and miracles in individual lives. People are finding love, waiting for the biopsy results, mourning loved ones, getting new jobs, being deported, witnessing a birth - trauma and joy and relationship an...

"And I'll find strength in pain, and I will change my ways; I'll know my name as it's called again." We don't want people to hurt. Some people can find strength in pain, but for others, it weakens us. It distracts us from important things. And so any compassionate person would want to protect others from pain. In western civilization, we have gone to extremes with this. At one time, it was believed that denying emotional trauma was the healthiest answer -- if a child lost a parent, they were discouraged from talking about it, a soldier returning from war was told to just get on with their new life, a person who had been raped was told to forget about it, never think about it. And, the pendulum swung the other way, with therapy that involved going over and over and over the trauma, the idea being that the person would somehow "talk/cry it all out" and be done with it, rather than learn coping mechanisms for how to deal with the unwanted memorie...

"Everybody wants to be understood; well, I can hear you ...Don't give up. Because you are loved ." So we commit to beginning with love when we look upon each other, and being open to their ideas . But we also have ideas of our own. And our ethic of personal responsibility means that it is up to us to ultimately determine our beliefs and our courses of action. So what about if all those things start crashing against each other? It's not if , it's when. But that's okay, IF you have some clearly articulated guiding principles*. The key is clear guiding principles, by which I mean, statements rooted in our core values that we are going to commit to live by, even when we don't want to. You know, like a guiding principle to communicate with love and respect, not snark. (God, that's hard. Why did I choose that for a guiding principle? Oh yeah, I'm trying to live in integrity with my commitment to love the hell out of the world. Ugh.) We give our...

"I know you cannot read my mind, but  I hope you feel my vibe ; I think it's time I let you know that, I see the God in you." If we recommit to an ethic of personal responsibility , grounded in love , how do we interact with those around us? When William Ellery Channing preached the sermon where he named, claimed, and defined Unitarianism, he took as his text a line from the Christian scriptures that should still speak to us: 1 Thessalonians 5:21. Test everything, hold fast to what is good. But the line that prefaces that verse is this: Do not treat prophecies with contempt. Or as James Luther Adams put it , one of the core values of our faith is that we don't know everything. We need to be open to considering each other's thoughts. Religious liberalism depends first on the principle that "revelation is continuous." Meaning has not been finally captured. Nothing is complete, and thus nothing is exempt from criticism. Liberalism itself, as an ...

"Where you invest your love , you invest your life." First thing, let's begin with love. And never let go. Our Universalist forebears believed in a god of love. A god of such overflowing, unconditional love that the love would pursue you even after death, unrelenting . They believed that to know, really know, that love would mean that it would flow out of you and into everyone whom you then loved. What if we decided to truly believe in the power of love? Believed that there is a " sustaining, commanding, transforming reality ...the reign of love, a love that fulfills and goes beyond justice, a love that 'cares' for the fullest personal good of all." Believed in it down to the bones of our bones and acted out of that? I believe that we can be the big tent many have dreamed we could be, a big tent that this world aches for. It will take recommitting to an ethic of personal responsibility. And that ethic of personal responsibility is made more pos...

We don't want people to feel pain. Of course. We're compassionate people. But often this means that we're part of the problem rather than the solution. People come in to our UU congregations with wounds. Most likely, they aren't responsible for having received them. Those wounds came from other people, or our society. But the thing is, once the wound is in you -- like a piece of broken glass -- it's your responsibility. It has to be. It's in you. That doesn't mean you have to do your healing alone. That's one of the beautiful, painful, wonderful things about a UU church. You're not alone. Yes, some of your healing may need to take place outside of the church, with a therapist or a spiritual director or some kind of a therapeutic group. But you have a place to come back to. You have a community to come back to. I'm worried about our religious movement right now. I'm worried that we're about to repeat a failed experiment. In the 6...

My fellow Unitarian Universalists, I'm concerned. People come to UU congregations from other religious places, including from the theologically conservative. Over and over again, I hear their joy when they learn that in a UU church, yes, really and truly, you can ask questions!  It's okay to question the stories they've always been taught were true. It's okay to question whether God exists. It genuinely is okay to question the minister about her sermon last Sunday. (And ... it's okay to come to a different conclusion!) Increasingly, though, on social media, I see people attacked for asking genuine, non-leading, questions. Not for their commentary or opinions, but just for asking the question. What do we do about body metaphors? Do we decide that all are off-limits, or is there a clear guide for which we should avoid, and which are okay? We changed Standing on the Side of Love to Side with Love, but I read that this General Assembly is focused on "vision...