Uexpected moments are what light up our holidays

With Thanksgiving past, we are now on the holiday express, which for many can become an emotional rollercoaster ride. High expectations, memories of past holidays, financial worries - up and down, it is a volatile mix. For some it is a cherished time with loved ones; for others a time of loneliness and isolation.

Black Friday has come and gone. So has small business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. We hear stories of folks lining up for days, even pitching tents; and stories of violence - fighting over a $2 waffle maker or using pepper spray to disable competitors. There is such irony in this contagious grasp for goodies, taking place during a season that celebrates peace and goodwill toward all.

This shopping mania is driven, I think, partly by our desire for the perfect - the perfect gift, the perfect holiday. And in the name of the perfect, we find ourselves running ragged, with little time to reflect on why we care and what we are trying to say with the "perfect" gift.

I have certainly given my share of gifts I thought were perfect, only to find out they were a bust, or completely misunderstood. I once gave what I thought was a beautiful comforter to my daughter, something we now laughingly recall as "the most disappointing gift she ever got." I once gave my father what I expected would be a deeply meaningful gift, which merely baffled him. The sooner we realize that the perfect is impossible, the better!

If you are beginning to feel the hound of time dogging your heels at every moment, as you purposefully pursue the check list for a merry Christmas, it may be good to be reminded that: "It is the time you have wasted crafting a scarf, stuffing a toy, writing a note to a close friend, reading, meditating, or thinking, that makes Christmas come alive ... Kick at pebbles, watch stars, notice all the quiet unimportant yet essential things that happen around you. These can be your ritual of waiting for Christmas .. ways of making it a spiritually beautiful event." (D. Cole)

What is important is leaving some space in your life, some emptiness, so that there is room for moments of fellowship, creativity, reflection; room for the holiday spirit to find you.

It is what Albert Perry is asking in one of my favorite seasonal readings:

"Too Full or Fulfilled?"

How full was the inn at Bethlehem? Too full?
How full are our lives? Too full? Too full of society and societies to have room for family?
Too full of activities to have room for accomplishments?
Too full of responsibilities to have room for simple joys?
Too full of business to have room for religion?
Too full of busy-ness to have room for thought and prayer?
Too full of self-interest to have room for common needs?
Too full of regrets to have room for hope?
Too full of fear to have room for faith?
Too full of suspicion to have room for love?
Make room! Clear away the debris!
Open the doors to your heart!
The things that matter will not clutter and crowd your life.
The things that matter will enlarge the orbit of your being until you are large enough to contain all that is worthy of being welcomed.

Make room, yes! Much of the joy of the holidays, I find, comes from the unplanned - the chance encounters, the unexpected cards, calls, visits - given or received. I have also discovered that the deepest joy comes after letting go of trying so hard, and simply opening to receive the season. The Spirit "bloweth where it listeth," after all, in mysterious ways awakening us to all that Love makes possible.

This is a tough year for many people. Christmas, Hanukkah, and the Solstice all take place as we approach the time of greatest darkness, before the light begins its slow return. These holidays remind us that in the midst of darkness, new beginnings can shine forth. They tell us that peace among people is a real possibility, not some far off dream. It is something we can each nurture, standing in love and solidarity with those in our "larger" family - local and global - who need our compassion and our help.

Breathe deeply. Let go of trying so hard. Make room for silence, music, for the spirit. May the spirit of love and generosity come alive in our hearts this holiday season. And may peace and good will remain long into the New Year.

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Much has been written about the ways that religion can bring out the best in people, and also enable some of the worst to be done, in the name of God. "I'm not afraid of your Allah/ Jesus/ Yaweh," sings Holly Near. "I'm afraid of what you do in the name of your God."

Religious faith empowers some of the great movements for justice, estimable acts of sacrifice, and can bring a sense of meaning to our lives. It encourages us to look inwardly and to question our attitudes, and our blindspots.

I've been thinking about the ways that works of art - plays, poetry, the visual arts, music - also invite us, to make that inward journey as well. I recently saw a production of "Clybourne Park" at Trinity Theater in Providence. It is about race and real estate and the ways we imagine our motives and attitudes to be more acceptant than they are, unaware of our own hypocrisy. "There are no villains," said one of the actors. "Everyone is a little bit right and a little bit wrong in what they assume, and how they respond."

Art has the power to place us in the shoes of others, to deepen our understanding of what another's reality might be. Well done, it can dislodge our prejudices, or assumptions - those blocks to finding our shared humanity. Art, like religious experience, can open us to the truth of others' lives as well as the truth of our own - to the ways that truly loving our neighbor may be challenging, when it involves our own neighborhood, when underlying fears emerge.

Though the play may be cynical on the surface, it asks "profoundly humanist questions," including: "Why can't we live together? Why do history and greed and pettiness stop us from being truthful and kind? Why, as a people, do we claim to be selfless and just, and then act in the most self-interested and unjust manner?"

Those are also religious questions. All of the world religions ask a version of them. Who is welcome at the welcome table of your faith? Everybody? And who does everybody include? It is a question we may ask more intentionally as we arrive at this thanks giving time. This year there is particular need to consider how we can make a difference for the increasing numbers of people in our neighborhoods who are finding it difficult to make ends meet.

A colleague remembers as a youngster that every Thanksgiving at his Grandma's, along with turkey and trimmings, she would prepare his favorite dish - a delicious, piping hot bowl of Spaghettios. "I am probably one of the few people on earth who has been served Spaghettios from the finest china!"

This now-grown man reflects: "Grandma taught me from earliest childhood that there is room at the table for someone who is a little bit different from the rest. The memory of that bowl of Spaghettios continually reminds me to make room in my heart for people who are a bit odd in their tastes and dispositions. There can be room in our hearts for diversity. There can be a place at the table for everyone, even the most finicky children of God." (C. Buice)

James Carroll wrote these timely words in The Boston Globe: "Who is this 'God' in whose name so many diverse and troubling things take place? ... Most striking about so much talk of 'God,' both to affirm and to deny, is the way in which many who use this language seem to know exactly to what and/or whom it refers ... What if every possible affirmation that can be made of God, even by the so-called religions of revelation, falls so far short of the truth of God as to be false?

"What if God's unknowability is the most illuminating profundity humans can know about God? That would mean that religious language, instead of opening into the absolute certitude on which all forms of triumphal superiority are based, would open into true modesty. The closed creation, in which every question has an answer, would be replaced by an infinite cosmos where every answer sparks a new question. If what we mean by "God" is the living pulse of such open-endedness, then God is of no use in systems of dominance, censorship, power."

Amen.

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"I will be a hummingbird."

- Wangari Maathai

I heard the news report last week that Wangari Maathai had died of cancer. And I was flooded with sadness I had not known I would feel, for this Kenyan woman I have never met; this woman who changed the face of Kenya.

Wangari Maathai was the founder of the Green Belt Movement (1977), whose mission was to plant trees across Kenya to fight environmental degradation and poverty. She was the first woman in East or Central Africa to receive a doctorate in veterinary anatomy, and the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace prize (2004). She was an extraordinary woman who persevered, despite multitudes of obstacles, in saving the lives and livelihoods of so many. She is one of my heroes.

Her life expressed a deep compassion for all life, and commitment to the common good, which manifested as a fierce sense of justice. She took action on behalf of not only human rights, but also on behalf of the "rights of Nature, of Earth." She became an advocate for the Earth, and a voice empowering women to participate in saving not only the life of their communities but the earth itself.

A huge forest is being consumed by a fire. All the larger forest animals come out, and are transfixed, immobilized, as they watch the forest burning. They feel overwhelmed and powerless, all except for a little hummingbird that flies to the nearest stream, takes water into its beak and flies back and drops the water on the fire, then back to the stream. Back and forth the tiny bird goes. The other animals stand watching and say to the hummingbird, "What do you think you can do? You're too little, this fire is too big. You can only bring a small drop of water at a time." Undeterred, the hummingbird replies, "I am doing the best I can. That's all anyone can do." That, to me, is what all of us should do ... I may feel insignificant, but I certainly don't want to be like the animals watching as the planet goes down the drain. I will be a hummingbird. I will do the best I can."

Wangari Maathai was a force of nature - unstoppable. Quitting was not an option. She was a person of passionate faith in the beauty, balance and goodness of creation and of life. She understood in her bones that one couldn't stand by and watch the demise of the planet, the expiration of sustainable ways of co-existing. She persisted - one tree at a time.

Thank you Wangari Maathai for the gift of your life. You changed many lives, including mine.

In her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Dr. Maathai said: "In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. ... That time is now."

The Rev. Sandra D. Fitz-Henry is the minister of Murray Unitarian Universalist Church in Attleboro. Her columns are published monthly on The Sun Chronicle's religion pages as part of our Voices series featuring members of the area clergy. They are online at thesunchronicle.com/columns.

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Finding your Trusting Place
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, July 16, 2011

I was recently reading the poem "First Lesson" by Philip Booth. A father teaching his daughter to swim speaks to her:

"Lie back, daughter, let your head/ be tipped back in the cup of my hand. / Gently, and I will hold you. Spread/ your arms wide, lie out on the stream/ and look high at the gulls ..."

The father is teaching his daughter not only to float, but also a life lesson about trust; about allowing yourself to be buoyed up and held by something larger than you are, that can hold you up when you are at the end of your strength.

"As you float now," he writes, "where I held you/ and let go, remember when fear/ cramps your heart what I told you: / lie gently and wide to the light-year/ stars, lie back and the sea will hold you."

Reading this poem evokes such a sense of total trust. What is it we trust, I ask, in a world that teaches us to distrust almost everything? In a world that feels increasingly insecure, we are surrounded by free-floating anxiety.

Who and what can we trust - in our work lives, our private lives, our spiritual lives? What we call the journey of faith may be to find that trustworthy place within, that community, which holds us when we need connection to a larger life, a greater Spirit; what one parishioner called GUS - the Great Universal Spirit.

"God is not God's name," Forrest Church wrote. "God is my name for the mystery that looms within and arches beyond the limits of my being. Life force, spirit of life, ground of being, these too are names for the unnameable which I am now content to call my God."

Trust is fragile - it makes us so vulnerable, and yet it is so strong. It is what underlies lasting relationship. Our trust is challenged sometimes, misplaced, betrayed. Sometimes the God of our childhood is not a god that survives into our adulthood.

When I was 10 and my sister 8, there was a game we played, a form of trust walk. One of us was blindfolded, the other served as the guide. Once when my sister was guide, I lost my balance and suddenly landed on my head upside down in a recessed cement window well. I hit so hard I saw stars! How had it happened? Who knows?

To this day she and I joke - accident or premeditation? My trust was shaken up!

Unitarian Universalists are asked to trust the unknown, not blindly though, but to trust that there is goodness and truth in a universe that bends toward justice; that truths continue to emerge and evolve, and that we as human beings are a part of this creative process of unfolding love.

Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg writes, "In my understanding, whether faith is connected to a deity of not, its essence lies in trusting ourselves to discover the deepest truths on which we can rely. This faith is not a commodity we either have or don't have - it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience."

A congregation built a new sanctuary. Ten days before the new church was to open, the local building inspector informed the pastor that the parking lot was inadequate for the size of the building. Until the church doubled the size of the parking lot, they would not be able to use the new sanctuary.

Unfortunately, the church had used every inch of their land except for the mountain against which it had been built. In order to build more parking spaces, they would have to, yes, move the mountain out of the back yard.

Undaunted, the pastor announced that he would meet with all members who had "mountain-moving faith." They would hold a prayer session that evening asking God to remove the mountain, and to provide enough money to have it paved before the scheduled opening the following week.

The next morning there was a knock on pastor's study door. A construction foreman appeared.

"Excuse me, Reverend, I'm from Acme Construction over in the next county. We're building a new shopping mall over there, and we need some fill dirt. Would you be willing to sell us a chunk of that mountain behind the church? We'll pay you for the dirt we remove and pave all the exposed area free of charge, if we can have it right away."

The little church was dedicated the next Sunday as planned.

Even skeptics and non-believers love stories like that. We've all had some of those moments, when help miraculously arrives, whether we called on God - or GUS.

"Faith is ... an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience." Trust is finding that inner place where you can "lie back and the sea will hold you."

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It's Time to Commence Anew
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, June 18, 2011

It's graduation time. Graduates stream across stages in robes, with mortarboards on their heads, tassels swinging, to shake the hands of dignitaries and to receive high school diplomas, or college degrees. And those brief moments ceremonially mark the completion of one period of their lives and the beginning of the next chapter. They are transitioning before our very eyes. Maybe that's why there are always tears - we know we're witnessing irreversible change - endings and beginnings intertwined. Graduates are commencing the rest of their lives.

At this time of year I listen to commencement speeches, mostly college commencement speeches, online. There is a theme shared by many of the speakers - most of them "successful" in their field - actors, inventors, writers, politicians. Almost to a one they speak of the immense importance of failure, at some point in their lives or careers. It was failing to land the dream job, or having been fired from a job, or taking a risk that did not pan out, that ultimately led them to discover the next part of their life, a part they couldn't have foreseen.

Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studios, said in his commencement address (Stanford, 2005):

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

What a wonderful phrase: the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything." What a perspective on "failure"! Ellen DeGeneres spoke at Tulane University's Commencement (2010) about her decision to risk her career when she "came out" on her sitcom. As a consequence, her show was canceled; the phone didn't ring for three years. Yet she was "getting letters from kids that almost committed suicide, but didn't, because of what I did. And I realized I had a purpose." Looking back, "I wouldn't change a thing. I mean, it was so important for me to lose everything because I found out what the most important thing is, is to be true to yourself ... to live your life with integrity

J.K. Rowling, the wildly successful author of the "Harry Potter" books, gave the commencement speech at Harvard (2008)::

"The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination." Seven years after graduation she had "failed on an epic scale." Her short-lived marriage had imploded, she was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in Britain, without being homeless.

"So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. ... I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

Failure may ultimately lead to finding the truest path. Having lost it all, stripped away the inessential and hit rock bottom may become the new foundation upon which to rebuild. Not achieving what you thought you wanted, may somehow allow the thing you truly love to emerge.

It is an experience spoken of in the sacred texts of many world religions. That what may seem an end may be a beginning. That what appears as the face of darkness may lead to the way of transformation, the pearl of great price. I am a believer in new beginnings. My faith reminds me that as long as we have life and breath we can begin again ... as individuals and as a human community.

How do I want to spend my time? Am I living my life doing what I love, serving a greater good in some way? What is it you love? And how will we live our lives in this interconnected web of all existence of which you and I are a part?

"Your time is limited," Steve Jobs told graduates, "so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Let us all commence.

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Questions for us - and God
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, May 14, 2011

One summer, many years ago, while driving our daughter to college, I was surprised to see, on those signs at the side of the highway with the symbols for lodging, food and gas, a big question mark! Each time that huge question mark appeared, it caught me off guard and before I knew it I was wondering: "What is the question?" Was this an encouragement to be philosophical, as you sped along the interstate, to consider the why and wherefore of your life as you traveled?

None of the above, of course. The symbol simply meant that the next exit had information for travelers!

But something about that experience made me realize that the question mark had become, for me ... well ... a "religious" symbol. Religious because questions set us spiritually seeking. Questions lure us out of places and ideas we may have become too comfortable with; nudge us in a direction we're not always sure we want to go.

Questions are alive; and some last a lifetime. During my childhood we lived in the South, and I asked, "Why are there drinking fountains marked "for coloreds only?" As a youngster, I couldn't make sense of that. I never did. The question set me seeking to understand how inequalities and oppressions are perpetuated, and to want to be part of change. Our life may become an answer to a question we didn't choose to ask, but rather, one that was asked of us.

The refreshing thing about the kinds of questions kids ask is that they are still free-ranging and imaginative, outside of the boxes and limitations of grown-up assumptions. In a collection of "Letters to God," a youngster queries: "Dear God, In Sunday school they told us what you do. Who does it when you are on vacation?" "Dear God," wrote another, "Did you mean for the giraffe to look like that or was it an accident?" Another wondered, "How did you know you were God?"

In one way or another we are all born theologians, partly by virtue of being, so far as we know, the only species that knows that we have a limited time. Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die. (Forest Church). Who are we? Where are we going? How do we attain spiritual health or wholeness? How can we live a life befitting our promise? How should we face death? And how, when our lives reach their close, can we be sure they will have been worth dying for?

The Unitarian, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote that "Nothing is secure but, life, transition, the energizing spirit ... No truth so sublime but it may be trivial tomorrow in the light of new thoughts. People wish to be settled; only in so far as they are unsettled is there any hope."

Does this mean that there is no certainty? Not at all. "To say that we do not have the whole truth is not to say that we have no truth. Like St. Paul, we see through a glass darkly, but we do see."(Mendelsohn) "The ground on which religious liberals stand is not an unchanging creed, but rather an embracing of theological pluralism, in which we affirm the human importance of our joint quest for meaning in life, without insisting upon the ultimacy of any single set of theological criteria." Sharing perspectives in the context of conscience and religious community is the great strength of liberal religion; understanding that no one religion has a corner on the truth.

History surely teaches that when people think they "know" with all certainty, the way is paved from righteousness to holy war - fought over religious differences, often in the name of love. The very intensity surrounding our sacred concerns and cherished values often becomes intolerance and violence.

As religious people, we can fervently stand for what we know and believe, but at the same time remind ourselves that we never "know it all." Surely people are less likely to destroy each other if they ask "why?" instead of assuming they "know."

In my experience, the answers to life's questions do not arrive in complete packages with all the loose ends tied up. It is rather in loving and living the questions themselves that we live into the mystery and multiplicity of this world; open to an unfolding and deepening Love that embraces all Life.

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Easter People in a Good Friday World
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, April 23, 2011

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Reach Out to Japan with Love, Compassion
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, March 19, 2011 1:47

Tomorrow is the first official day of spring. No matter what kind of winter we have had - and this one was a doozy - my heart lifts when we reach this "official" first day. When the calendar reads "Spring begins," I'm ready to believe it, in spite of temperatures to the contrary. There is something grounding about trusting that the rhythms of nature will continue bringing the seasons in their regular progression. That birds will sing and buds burst and the greening of our world will once again be seen in the land.

Nature will not let us down.

But nature's nature is also otherwise. The same nature that brings us spring is also the nature that we experience in hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and tsunamis. These incredibly powerful forces of nature are able to wreak enormous havoc, horrendous destruction; as well as to bring us the gentler rhythms of growth, rebirth and renewal. We watch with horror the terrible events in Japan, bringing so much destruction of life, loss of property, and the fear and insecurity of aftershocks. And now, the threat of radioactivity from the damaged nuclear reactors. It is a kind of nightmare in process. It is changing hour by hour. My heart breaks with the magnitude of this catastrophe and a sense of helplessness at how little one can do, beyond sending financial assistance, and holding this country and its these people in one's heart - prayerfully, compassionately.

On video I see mothers and fathers with their children. I recall how it was 25 years ago, after the explosions at Chernobyl. At that time my family was living in England. And each day the newspapers and newscasts mapped the progress of the radioactive cloud that blew west - over Europe, over England, over Ireland. Should we keep the children inside? How dangerous was this radioactivity that we could not see, but knew was dangerous to human health? I remember how afraid I was, not knowing.

How much more fear there must be, for those close to those reactors and their continuing unsettling changes. In some way, it seems these Japanese families are my family. But, amazingly, in the midst of all of this destruction, what we see and hear from Japan, are stories that speak of an astounding resilience. An attitude of planning for the future, for rebuilding. A sense of being part of a community that is in this together. A sense that one is able to take hold once again with determination and a patient persistence. Resilience. An astounding power to meet adversity on its own terms.

In the Japan of years ago, I learn, "there were wildflowers that grew in the far, cool region of mountains. The bricks of Hiroshima, down below, were formed of clay from these mountains, and so the walls of houses and shops held the dormant trumpet flower seeds."(L. Hogan). After the atomic bombings that brought World War II to an end ... "the mountain flowers began to grow. Out of the crumbled, burned buildings they sprouted. Out of destruction, bomb heat and the falling of walls, the seeds opened up and grew ... speaking of survival, of hope beyond our time." The life force of nature - strong and unstoppable; the human spirit sharing this nature.

The possibility of transformation and renewal, of reawakening, is offered to us over and over again in life. Almost everyone has felt at times the death-like darkness of despair. People experience terrible challenges, difficult passages, devastating losses, and somehow find it in their capacity to come through. It is the nature of life, or perhaps the nature of Nature, that it continues to invite us back into greater life, greater wholeness, into a larger awareness, a wider compassion.

As a Unitarian Universalist, one of the ways compassion stretches wider and faith deepens is in sharing with people of many faith traditions - believers and nonbelievers, theists, humanists and atheists - sharing their stories, certainties, doubts and questions; all the diverse ways that the Spirit lives in their lives. Discovering what is sustaining in all its forms - named so many ways - as the Sacred, God, the Holy, the Spirit of Life and Love.

The great world religions teach that waking up, paying attention to how you are living right now, what you are choosing to use your time for, is a religious question. This season of rebirth and renewal reminds us that what we give our lives to matters, and can make a difference.

Today, I am standing with those experiencing great tragedy, our Japanese neighbors, holding them in the Spirit of Love and Compassion. The Rev. Sandra D. Fitz-Henry is the minister of Murray Unitarian Universalist Church in Attleboro. Her columns are published monthly on The Sun Chronicle's religion pages, and online at thesunchronicle.com/columns.

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What Our Gift-Giving Means
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Wednesday, December 15, 2010

A colleague cautions: "You receive a Brooks Brothers blazer in the mail from your grandmother. Maybe it means, "I love you so much, and you're such a handsome guy, and I know you love Brooks Brothers blazers, so Happy Hanukkah.' Or maybe it means, '...You never will learn how to dress like a grown-up, but I'm giving you this blazer, and since you don't make very much money I know you'll have to wear it, and then you'll look more like what I want you to look like. Merry Christmas!' Or how about, 'I never was a very good grandmother to you, and now you're all grown up, so I'm sending you this expensive blazer even though I'm living on a fixed income established in 1947, and I hope you'll visit me soon.' " (J. Rzepka)

Gifts can be about all sorts of things: about control, or guilt; about forgiveness, or love, or light-hearted goofiness, or hope for the future of a relationship. But they often "speak" imperfectly.

I've heard the suggestion that to gain perspective on the gifts we really want to give to others, we might draw up a list of the nicest gifts we ever received. While we may recall a chemistry set or American Girl doll, I find that the lastingly memorable gifts are those that touched our spirit, and are now unforgettably part of us. Gifts of time, understanding, kindness, affirmation.

The best story I ever heard about gift-giving I heard from my colleague, David Blanchard. "It's about an African boy who wanted to give a gift to his teacher, who was going home to England. The child had no money and his options were few. The day before the teacher was to leave, the child brought her a huge seashell. The teacher asked the boy where he could have found such a shell. He told her there was only one spot where such extraordinary shells could be found, and when he named the place, a certain bay many miles away, the teacher was speechless. 'Why ... why it's gorgeous ... wonderful, but you shouldn't have gone all that way to get a gift for me.' His eyes brightening, the boy answered, 'Long walk part of gift.' "Most of the meaningful gifts we give to each other require some version of that long walk. The long walk we sign on for with children, who need our patience, wisdom, honesty, and our trust more than we might first have imagined. The long walk we share with our spouses, our partners, through unexpected territories of sickness and health, richer and poorer, better and worse. The long walk we take with our friends when they are grieving the loss of someone they love, and when they are ill, when they are discouraged. The long walk of reconciliation with all that separates us from a deep sense of life's great purpose and meaning."

Many years ago I received a "long-walk" gift. It was given to me by my daughter, Kate. When she was a young child, her aunt gave her the special gift of a small wooden cigar box, with a hinged cover. She had painted it red, with a bright yellow "K" on the lid. A tiny metal clasp kept the small box closed. Through the years it was box into which my daughter put her tiniest treasures - treasures that changed as the years passed and she grew and changed. Whatever her age, though, it was the beloved box that held what was meaningful to her at the time.

Long after she was grown and had moved away to live out West, I experienced a health crisis in my life, requiring surgery. While I was recovering, the mail arrived one day bringing a package from California. Inside was my daughter's treasure box that she'd sent to be with me during this recovery time.

Inside the box were colored leaves, pine needles, beach shells, material from a skirt worn when our family lived in Spain. Memories, shared life - silently, eloquently speaking. She couldn't be there, but she sent her treasure box. I felt she'd sent her heart - her love, her presence in spirit. Long walk part of gift.

In this season of giving may our gifts be in and of the Spirit. Spirit of Life and of Love, hold us fast during the rush of this holiday season, that its real gifts may be ours.

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Make Time for Burning Bushes
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, July 10, 2010

"Why should we live in such a hurry and waste of life? ...
I wish to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.
I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not lived."
- Henry David Thoreau.

I think of Thoreau at this time of year, imagining him 165 years ago deliberately seeking to step aside, to leave the hurly burly of life, and to examine his life and nature with exactitude. Thoreau went off to live by Walden Pond in a small self-built cabin, on July 4, 1845, to embark on a two year experiment in simple living. A time to observe, and to record; to ponder and to wonder.

Summer in all its fullness has arrived, and it is in this season that some of us are able to take time to relax, ponder, meander, wonder. Have some lazy, hazy days. We take our shoes off. Feel the earth. Enjoy the air on our skin. Perhaps take a swim. Or simply pause to take a long look around at all this abundance.

Early this morning I walked out on the porch to get the paper. Then I glanced at the bird feeder hanging from a nearby tree. Many birds frequent this feeder, but today someone else was feeding. Nearly motionless, a squirrel was hanging upside down on the feeder, hanging perfectly still by his hind feet, thus freeing his front paws to hold the seed he was nibbling. Undisturbed by my presence, there was something about his absolute stillness that captured my attention, and I stood transfixed by the purity of his focus. Giving full attention, I shared a purity of focus, held in relationship to a larger wholeness. Transfixed in - what is the word? - delight and gratitude for the astounding holiness of this moment of complete attention. Reverence.

Summer sometimes invites us to be at ease among our wonderings and our questions. Something about being surrounded by nature's green and flowery abundance invites us to pause, to come back to our senses, to feel our relationship to the amazing life around us. James Wright wrote a poem that stays with me. I imagine him writing it on a hot summer day: "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota."

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distance of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

I imagine the writer resting in the hammock, with the busyness of life far away. His consciousness is totally attentive to the life around him. Being fully present.

Then, that startling ending, that suggests that this at-one-ment of Being is all that is necessary, all sustaining, that he is part of a wholeness, held in this holiness. That this is the essence of life. The "waste" of his life is simply time that has not been spent in this present awareness. Experiences missed because we are hurried, and harried. Rarely able to simply be still and truly see - a butterfly, say, or a squirrel.

In a foundational moment in the Hebrew Scriptures (Exodus 3) Moses is tending his father-in-law's sheep and notices a burning bush. Rather than simply passing by and going on to his destination, he says, "I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up." He turns aside, to give it some attention, willing to set original plans to one side, so that he might more closely know what is at hand. In so doing, he turns toward profound and lasting relationship with the Holy, the Sacred. "Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."

We are passing by "burning bushes" everyday. In our busy lives we often don't take the time to turn aside, to pay attention.

One of the meanings of vacation is that we step outside, vacate our customary pattern of life and work. In summer we may come to our senses, get in touch with the Earth, and remember that the ground we stand upon, wherever it is, is holy ground.

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Love's Transforming Power
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, February 13, 2010

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Live by King's Words
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, January 16, 2010

Last Thursday, I attended the Area Interfaith Gathering - a clergy and lay group that has been meeting for three years or so and who meet to explore a suggested theme. Members take turns hosting the monthly gathering at their church, temple, synagogue, or meditation center. This meeting was held at the Al-Noor Academy in Mansfield, a private middle and high school, which serves the Muslim community. The space was arranged for by a Muslim member of the Interfaith group, and we were graciously welcomed by the principal.

It was an unusual setting for the group. Here we could occasionally hear, and sometimes see, the students: the young women in long dresses, headscarves; the young men in their dark trousers and white shirts. At the end of our meeting, we were invited, if we wished, to attend their early afternoon prayer time; and to either participate or simply be present.

I couldn't help reflecting that this invitation allowed us, literally and figuratively, to step inside the practice of a faith that is less familiar to many of us, and to experience it firsthand. It was a wonderful experience, on many levels. In a brief visit one doesn't learn in depth. But there is an experiential dimension that remains - the faces of the students, the obvious dedication of the teachers, all of the students meeting for prayer each day.

At a time when almost every newspaper details reasons to be suspicious and distrustful of those who are different from us - who believe differently, behave differently - this was an opportunity to step inside a place of difference and simply "be" in it. Invaluable.

It seems a metaphor for one of the most valuable dimensions of these Interfaith gatherings. Through our meetings, we are gradually coming to understand what living another faith means, from the inside out. No one is trying to convert or persuade anyone else. It is rather a time in which to deeply listen, and to be deeply heard. It is also an opportunity to observe in oneself, how very difficult it is, sometimes, to hear passionate beliefs that seem beyond belief to you. You realize, of course, that your beliefs may sound equally untenable to others! This is a chance to stand in our difference, together; to understand more deeply. It is a blessing. With this trustful practice of attentive listening, it is possible to move beyond stereotypes and misconceptions; to appreciate that religious difference need not mean divisiveness.

There is a folk tale which tells about God taking a walk across the earth, disguised as an old man. He makes his way through fields where a group of friends are working, and decides to have a little joke with them. He puts on a hat that is red on one side, white on the other, green at the front and black at the back.

As the friends walked home that night, they talk about the old man. "Did you see that old man in the white hat walking through the fields?" asked the first.

"No," the second replied, "It was a red hat."

"Don't tell me that," retorted the first. "It was definitely white."

"No, I saw it with my own two eyes, and it was red."

"You're both blind, that fellow's hat was green," chimed in the third.

"What's the matter with you all?" rejoined a fourth. "It was a black hat. Anyone could

see that! What fools you all are!"

And so the argument continued, and before they knew what was happening to them, the group of friends had become a band of enemies. And the strife continues. To this day, the descendants of those former friends still go on arguing the "White Hatters" vs. the "Red Hatters, the "Green Hatters" vs. the "Black Hatters" - each party believing that it knows, beyond any doubt, the color of God's Hat.

This simple story is a helpful reminder that no one person or religion has a corner on the truth. We perceive from many angles, our hearts understand in different ways. Listening and learning from diverse voices is foundational to my Unitarian Universalist faith. It calls me to a wide and inclusive love, an understanding that difference can be enriching, not threatening. Again and again I discover that through understanding others' beliefs, one comes to understand one's own faith more deeply.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we celebrate this Monday, wrote these words more than 40 years ago:  "This is the great new problem of (hu) mankind. We have inherited large house, a great 'world house' in which we have to live together - black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu - a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace."

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There's No Better Time to Give Thanks
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, November 21, 2009  

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Seize Precious Spiritual Moments
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, September 26, 2009 

"The winds of grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail."
- Ramakrishna

Through the ages, religious institutions have often incorporated the assumption that there is a quality of spirituality that is accessible only through the intercession of holy persons or clerics, as if only those with special knowledge hold the keys to the kingdom, the gates to grace. Sacred and secular have been characterized as separate spheres.

Over and over again, it is my experience that the sacred dimension of life is available in our daily life, and that a spiritual epiphany can happen at any moment. And when it does, when we experience a moment of grace, a holy moment, we know that secular and sacred are not worlds apart, but are in fact the same world, seen with different eyes.

"We experience intimations of the divine in a lover's embrace, a rainbow, a baby's smile, a bird's flight overhead, a friend's forgiveness, a dolphin's leap, or the selfless service of a volunteer." And when that happens we may sense that, "Our lives extend beyond our skins, in radical interdependence with the rest of the world." (Joanna Macy)

Sometimes we experience this sense of deep connectedness and extension in small ways. The wonderful phone call, note or even an e-mail message, that comes on the very day when you are wondering what in the world you are doing in your life, or feeling particularly ineffectual or perplexed about a relationship. That call, card or e-mail can change your day; alter your thought and the way you are feeling about life. Each one of us has the capacity to "make someone's day."

As Daniel Goleman points out in his book, "Social Intelligence," "The brain itself is social. One person's inner state affects and drives the other person. We're forming brain-to-brain bridges - a two-way traffic system - all the time. We actually catch each other's emotions like a cold." We are astoundingly interconnected.

We are astoundingly interconnected! But often these moments of grace, epiphanies, and great insights are lost to us because we are in too much of a hurry to notice them.

In the scriptures of world religions, these moments, messengers, strangers who presage a transformation, are usually so extraordinary that they cannot be overlooked. Jacob wrestles with a divine being and is transformed. Angels announce to shepherds great tidings that will change the course of history.

In our extraordinary ordinary lives, we are often too busy to notice the moment that wants our attention. But sometimes during an unlikely occasion, an unlikely creature can become a "divine messenger," so to speak; and a reminder of our belonging to a larger community of being. I know, because it happened to me not long ago.

Strange to say, it was in the midst of a funeral for a young man who had died tragically. A very young man, a father, had been killed in a terrible accident. The service began and an overwhelming sadness settled over the gathering, this community of the grief-stricken.

Right in the middle of this terribly sad service, a dog somehow gained entrance to the funeral parlor and came bounding into the ceremony. He was wagging all over and ever so friendly, with absolutely no "respect" for the solemn occasion at hand. He was just being his doggy self, happy to see a nice seated crowd of people to get all friendly with.

The dog was hotly pursued by the embarrassed funeral director, who bounded around after him. It was like something out of an old Hollywood movie! As we watched the director corral the creature and usher him back out the door, we were all totally transfixed; and transformed. In that moment, among that "frozen" gathering of mourners, a palpable saving grace entered. Some smiles lightened faces, and Life took heart again. A life had ended, but Love would not end. Life would go on.

Thanks to our doggy friend, we knew that the Spirit of Love and the community of the living, were stronger and more enduring than death. My Unitarian Universalist faith understands Spirit as immanent in all of life, sometimes manifesting in unexpected places; that we are all deeply interconnected with one another; that our destinies are mutually interwoven one with another; and that ultimately what touches you touches me.

"The new survival unit is no longer the individual nation; it's the entire human race and its environment. This newfound oneness is only a rediscovery of an ancient religious truth. Unity is not something we are called to create; it's something we are called to recognize," writes William Sloane Coffin.

"Grace happens when we act with others on behalf of our world."(J. Macy) What does this call us to do on behalf of all of us? I ask each day.

The Rev. Sandra D. Fitz-Henry is the minister of Murray Unitarian Universalist Church in Attleboro. She is the mother of three grown children, and has one grandchild. She was an artist, religious educator and hospital chaplain, before entering parish ministry full time.

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Let Us be Awakened to Life's Surprises
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, May 9, 2009

“All things must change: the vision pass,
The shadow lengthen on the grass,
The ship go down behind the sun,

The passion of the heart be done.
The flower droops : we cannot stay
The lovely miracle of May.
From “In the Time of Change,” Theodore Roethke

I got up early one recent morning and headed for my study. It's a tiny study - a room where all walls are bookcases. I arrived at the study door, and there, blocking the entrance, was a very large chaotic pile of books. During the night a couple of the shelves in the bookcase to the left of the doorway had let go, emptying their entire, and considerable, contents onto the floor.

Surprised, I wondered: Is this a message? Is life trying to get my attention and tell me something? Am I being blocked for a reason? Is something deeper trying to get my attention, to shake me awake in some way?

Then I remembered the poem of the 13th Century Persian poet, Rumi, that begins:

“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
And frightened.
Don't open the door to the study
And begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.”

Was this pile obstructing the doorway gently “suggesting,” enough with the books? Yes, books are good, wonderful even, but there are other dimensions of living? Don't get me wrong, I know these are cheap bookcases that had simply reached their load limit and given way. But why now?

A lot of life lands in our lives blocking the way. We didn't see it coming. No advance signs and warnings. You get up one morijing, and there it is. It has arrived in your life. In whatever way, small or large, it “blocks the doorway” to life-as-usual.

Rumi, and Buddha too, probably, would see these unexpected events --large or small -- as inconvenient, perhaps difficult nudges to wake up and get more deeply in touch with ourselves, and with life.

“Enough with the books,” that doorway pile was telling me! “Here we are, surrounded by the miracle of spring -- this amazing period of flowering trees and new growth. Catch it if you can! The green plants near the mailbox grew 6 inches in seven days! Spring doesn't stay still, waiting for you. Notice what is happening now.” “We cannot stay the lovely miracle of May.”

Sometimes it takes a surprise event to shake us awake to a deeper meaning calling for our attention. Sometimes it takes the unexpected, to knock the blindness off our eyes and open our senses and our mind to the world around us. I wonder if what we call the miraculous is what we would see all around us every day, if we paused long enough to witness. I've heard it said that the burning bush is the way all of nature appears when it is seen through unclouded eyes -- radiant, holy and life-bearing.

I am convinced that when we live with compassion and non-judgmental openness, we will understand that, as the Dalai Lama said so simply, last Saturday, “We are same. Emotionally, mentally, physically, we are same ...” And in his talk he emphasized the importance of valuing all faiths.

Over and over again, as our life un- folds, we are awakened and invited into a life more abundant; we are called to a wider compassion; called to be a participant in life; to be part of justice making in the world.

Being part of diverse and open religious community nurtures our embrace, with love, of the messy and mysterious miracle of being alive in this world. It allows us to share and magnify this gift of life -- this precious life in which we are privileged to be both witness and participant -- our hands reaching out, our eyes opening beyond their blinkers, our feet walking our talk; our spirits growing toward greater wholeness.

Mother's Day reflections

Tomorrow (May 10) is Mother’s Day. “It's a well-known fact amongst ministers that Mother's Day is a next to impossible thing to preach on. For every person who brings a sainted mother to church on Mother's Day for a little well-deserved appreciation, there is someone else gritting their teeth over the utterly inadequate job that their mother did of raising them,” writes a colleague.

This day of all days brings up more mixtures of feelings than almost any other. There is no simple way to talk about motherhood. There are those who had difficult mothers, those who adore their mothers, those who lost their mothers early on and have felt that sadness all their lives. There are people who are mothers, who struggle with the difficult job of being a “good“ mother, with how hard and-challenging it is. There are those who long to be mothers and find, for whatever reason, that it is not possible. There are mothers who have lost a child.

I first became a mother through adoption and am aware of the complex feelings of thoses who have never kown their birth mother, or those who have chosen not to parent a child to whom they gave birth, or who have chosen not to give birth to a pregnancy.

Mother’s Day, as I see it, can be a day to honor the people in your, life who have nurtured you, who loved and cared for you -- who may or may not be your birth mother; who may be your adoptive mother, or your step-mother, or foster-mother, or grandparents - or dads who are raising kids in families that might or might not have moms in them, but who do all the things that you might think of a mother doing.

Mothers are those who are nurturing. And today is a good day to honor all of them.

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Time to Spring Forward - And Cleanse the Soul
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, March 7, 2009

"It is of the greatest importance that humanity now and then should take out its beliefs for spring cleaning."
~ Julian Huxley

Spring is going to come, we know. Despite the foot of newly arrived snow we can feel it in our hearts, and our spirits. Mark Twain spoke of that rising sense of longing for - we know not exactly what - that spring stirs in us. When it really takes hold, we call it spring fever. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!

Perhaps it is noticing that the sun is setting later and the arrival of Daylight Savings Time - tomorrow! - that stirs anticipation of what is on its way. Perhaps it is the arrival of seed catalogues, and the promise of seeing new life poking up from the Earth, that causes us to take heart a bit. And suddenly there is that rising of the spirit in anticipation.

It's no wonder that as the birds become more vocal and the light grows longer, folks start to think about clearing out any clutter that has gathered through the winter, and doing some so-called "spring cleaning." As if there is a kind of new start that can happen as we begin to see signs of renewed life returning. Yes, it's a little early to see very many signs. But it's not too early for the heart to lean with a lift, in the direction of the coming of these lighter warmer days. New beginnings call to us in all seasons, but they do so with special poignancy as spring approaches. For me this lift and longing are our spiritual natures, calling us into deeper relationship - with the Earth, with our lives, with a Larger Spirit, that we call by so many names. And that rising of the spirit is as miraculous and as real as the buds that will soon be poking up through the Earth.

In consonance with nature, new beginnings call us to freshly re-engage with the meanings of our lives. But what nature does so "naturally," (effortlessly, it seems), usually requires of human beings a time of reflection, and sometimes new and sometimes hard choices and changes. It involves something more than going with the flow. There is a favorite meditation that I always revisit at this time of year: "Spring Housecleaning of the Spirit."

Many religious traditions incorporate a time in their liturgical calendars in which the faithful are encouraged to take an extended time of reflection and review of their life, leading to a renewed re-centering in a deepened faith. It is a time of inwardness, an active time of self assessment, and bringing ones life into right relation with oneself, ones neighbor, and with a larger Spirit. Spiritual re-alignment.

These times of review and realignment, are also often times when we are reminded of our own mortality. That, despite rumors to the contrary, we are not here forever; that none of us gets out of this alive. That our time is precious and it is limited.

I was reminded of the importance of using our precious and limited time well, as I heard the remarks of a greatly treasured colleague, the Rev. Forest Church. Having learned that his cancer has returned and is inoperable, he spoke of the process of making peace with self, and neighbor, and with God; of having been able to settle unfinished emotional business.

He offered the profound observation that, "The two saddest words in the English language are 'if only,' and they ring with the most poignancy at a time that a person gets word that he or she has a terminal illness: 'If only I had stopped drinking; if only I had dared to change careers when I could; if only I had reconciled with my father when I had a chance.' "

I have been meditating about his words ever since. There is some "if only" in almost everyone's life. Part of spring housecleaning may involve attending to "if onlys" in the making. Now, while there is still time.

I once told a 3-year-old friend, "Sometime we'll do that special project together. OK?" She looked at me, and replied, so very wisely, "Sometime never comes." And she was right. She'd already learned that, in her world, "sometime" was a promise for a future that never came. So, right then and there we planned for the particular day we would do our special project.

I am thinking that, since most "sometimes never come," now is a very good time to attend to those dusty corners, those unattended amends to make, those changes that beckon. This gathering spring reminds us that renewal is truly possible.

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No Doubt about Spiritual Uncertainties
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, February 7, 2009

Some of the most religious people I have known call themselves atheists or agnostics. That might seem a strange statement. A person might say to me, "I don't believe in God." And I might respond, "Well, tell me about the God you don't believe in. Chances are I don't believe in that God either." The reply I receive is often filled with a depth of spiritual honesty, and an unwillingness to assent to what does not ring true to personal experience. It often expresses a faith that is still "in transit," still growing in understandings, on a life journey through both darkness and light. The questioning and doubting do not mean a lack of faith, but rather are openings into a deeper relationship with that which may be beyond naming. They are religious questions, religious replies.

A person may not be conventionally pious, but we all have experiences in life which lead us into questions, searching for understanding in response to the mysteries of life and death. "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience," wrote the French philosopher, priest and paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin. "We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

We might discover as we grow that the beliefs we held as younger people no longer speak to us. For some, that is the day they discard the whole idea of religion as meaningless. For others, the day those beliefs cease is the day, as one person described the experience to me, "that the scales fell from his eyes." It was a day that he suddenly lost his childhood creedal faith. But he gained an authentic relationship to his own spiritual life and began to see life in a new way.

The person I describe as a "religious" atheist, (and who would probably disagree with this description) is a wonderful man who has lived a very long time. He is a deeply reflective person, a compassionate person, and a person who says things like, "The more I see of life, the more filled with mystery I feel things are." He is a person who has a sense of awe and a connectedness to all that lives. He is a person who has questioned and wondered his whole life.

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On Understanding, and Respecting, Our Differences
By Sandra D. Fitz-Henry for the Sun Chronicle
Saturday, November 15, 2008

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