Holiday Letter

The holidays are a season of Christmas cards, Hanukkah cards, snail mail cards and internet cards, cards of all sorts through which we reach out to family and friends near and far away, to let them know that we’re thinking about them and that we love them. 

 

And sometimes, in the cards, we include letters. Updates on main events of the past year.

 

Here’s one of these end-of the year update letters, written by humorist Bob Schwartz:

 

Dear Friends, Family and those others who are somehow lucky enough to receive this Holiday Greeting letter,

 

2008 was a fantastic, spectacular, phenomenal and incredible year for the Schwartz family. Life is so wonderful, so prosperous, so stupendous and astounding that everything is coming up roses and what good would it all be if we didn’t have the opportunity to brag about it with you?

 

There’s more to it, but you get the drift. It’s all about bragging rights, whose kids are best, whose family and life is shiniest. I’ve read a few real letters like this, and maybe you have too.

 

And then there are the letters which don’t so much brag as stay on the surface of things. After all, how much can you say in a holiday letter? And, really, how much do you want to say? What if in 2008 you lost your job? What if someone you love got cancer, or you are desperately lonely, or your child has been having a hard time at school? What if? 

 

But this is life. This is our humanity. Shiny and dull. Stuff to brag about, and stuff to grieve. It’s just as William Blake once wrote:

 

Joy and woe are woven fine,

Clothing for the soul divine:

Under every grief and pine

Runs a joy with silken twine.

 

Words that have been in the back of my mind, as I’ve been thinking about my holiday letter this year, to you. Here it is:

 

Dear Friends:

 

As I reflect on this past year, what comes up for me most forcefully is what’s on the inside, what’s been moving in my spirit and soul. Chalk that up, I guess, to being a natural introvert. 

 

To say what I need to say, I’m going to draw on a memory of something that happened several years ago, when my family and I were still living in Chicago. It’s about the time Laura, Sophia, and I went downtown to the Kristkindle Mart to do some Christmas shopping. The Kristkindle Mart features the wares of craftspeople and merchants from Germany and Russia and all sorts of other far flung places. Foods and sweets are also sold, as well as beer and a holiday drink they call glug. A few words about this glug. It’s red wine heated and mixed with spices, goes down like fire, and it feels GOOD. The secret ingredient has got to be brandy or something equally potent. It’s powerful stuff.

 

So anyhow–I’m wandering around this outdoor faire and the light is starting to fade. I’ve got my hot cup of glug in hand and, despite the Chicago cold, I’m feeling pretty toasty. Laura and Sophia are off looking at a booth somewhere. I hear Christmas music nearby, and eventually I find three men playing “Silent Night” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and other favorites. I stand there and, in the fading light, enjoy the smiles of the people surrounding the musicians, their red cheeks, the rising cheer.

 

It’s then that I notice, nearby, the almost life-size manger scene. I wander over to it, not really expecting that it will be any different from any other manger scene I’ve ever run across before. I stand there, looking, and the critical voice in my head starts up. It didn’t really happen like that, it says. It says, By the looks of the statues, you’d think that everyone involved in the gospel story was a blond-haired and blue-eyed WASP.

 

And so on. I almost turn away, but my eyes fall on the tight circle of Mary holding the baby Jesus, and all of a sudden a realization comes to me, like a bolt out of the blue, and it zaps the cynical voice in my head, replaces it with a floating feeling of utter awe. What had always been before my eyes, I now suddenly see: that the birth of this great liberating prophet and spiritual teacher—this Bearer of the Light—happens in a time and place that goes contrary to all expectation. Greatness, goes the expectation, ought to be received by greatness. The Buddha was born in a palace. But it is all so different for the Christ. The birth of this Son of God happened in a cold and smelly manger, in an obscure backwater town of Judea, in the time of Imperial Rome with all its crushing greed and brutality. In circumstances even this unpleasant, even this obscure, even this unjust and hopeless, God can be born. 

 

All this is what I realized, standing there in the Chicago cold, looking upon the manger scene. Didn’t matter anymore, all the ways it might have neglected the historical facts. Like a classic work of fiction—which tells moral and spiritual truths better than any work of fact—it was conveying one of the deepest promises of the human spirit: that Bearers of the Light like Jesus can be born anywhere. Justice, compassion, hope: born here and now. Born to you and born to me.

 

And that’s the story. It happened a while ago, but it says it all for me this year. My continuing sense that something is trying to be born in and through the imperfect circumstances of our lives—something truly wonderful, a creative courage and love that can save the world. I’ll admit—some days I wake up and in no way can I feel the miracle that is trying to be born. I witness the suffering around me—people struggling with illness, or unhealthy relationships, or resentments. I read the headlines, and every day brings evidence of crushing brutality and injustice. I see the brokenness—the lack of compassion and lack of hope. Those are bad days. I know you know what I mean.

 

But the mystery is real, nonetheless. The miracle is real. With or without the glug, Christmas reminds us about one of the deepest truths of the human spirit. 

 

For you, as for myself, I wish for eyes of faith to see this unfolding miracle. In the manger of our world which can be so often unpleasant, so often obscure, so often hopeless: nothing less than the birth of God.  

Life is so short. Let’s live it to the full, and let’s never stop expecting miracles to happen, here and now.  

 

Happy holidays, and much love.

Letter to Mary

December 21, 2008. Dear Mary: It was two thousand years ago in a stable, surrounded by oxen and donkeys and your husband Joseph, when the main event was supposed to have happened: your giving birth to Jesus. The image of it is one I have known all my life, from Christmas cards, paintings and works of art, outdoor manger scenes, and even from some Canadian and American stamps I used to collect as a boy. The image of you holding the baby Jesus; the strength and protection of your arms. To this my eyes would always go, even if there were other amazements to look at, like wise men, or shepherds, or the Star of Bethlehem. There’s something special about you. 

 

And I’m not alone in my feelings about this. Through the ages, and around the world, feeling for you has always run deep. Catholic, Orthodox, and some Anglican Christians out-and-out venerate you. In your honor, Mary, they compose poems and songs; they paint icons and carve statues; they kneel before your image; they even pray to you for intercession with your son. I know this personally, for my own grandmother was Ukrainian Catholic, and I can still remember her fervent prayers, the depths of her reverence.

 

But it’s not that Catholics like my grandmother, or Anglicans, or Orthodox are setting you up as some idol. They don’t see you as God. It’s just that honor is being given where they feel honor is due—you, after all, are supposed to be the bearer of a God. Even Muslims, who deny that Jesus is God, honor you. You are the only women in the Koran who is directly named; and along with Jesus, you are said to be Ayat Allah, or the “Sign of God,” to humankind.

 

That’s what I call special. You are important for so many people around the world. Hunger for you is great. And that’s what this letter is about, Mary. The comfort and protection of your mothering arms. Your strength. People can’t seem to get enough of it. It all begs for a closer look.

 

Though right at the start, I need to acknowledge that opinions differ about the exact nature of the strength I’m talking about. Perhaps it boils down to a question that Christians have had from almost the very beginning: what you needed to be like to give birth to one who was supposed to be without sin. To raise a person like this. Did you have to be without sin, too? Or was your ordinary, imperfect humanity good enough? Exactly what kind of strength are we talking about?

 

The question is one of perfection vs. imperfection, and Catholics in particular have opted for perfection. That’s the official position, anyway. They see you as having a miraculous kind of independence from sex and death. This is what gives you your perfection and your strength. All sorts of doctrines laying this out. The doctrine of the Virgin Birth, according to which God directly impregnated you. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which says that you yourself were the product of a miraculous virgin birth. The doctrine of Perpetual Virginity, meaning that all of Jesus’ brothers and sisters had to have been cousins, or they had to have been children from a previous marriage of Joseph’s. And then the doctrine of the Assumption, proclaimed by Pope Pius XII in 1950, which says that you never physically died, and that you ascended bodily into heaven at the end of your days. All of these are doctrines Catholics have discerned over the years, as ways of articulating your strength and explaining how you were able to be the kind of mother you needed to be, to nurture and support the perfection of your son. Your miraculous qualities made you strong. 

 

Mary, my own mother’s family believed this, being the good Catholics they were. But I myself grew up Protestant and eventually became Unitarian Universalist, and both influences lead me to balk at all these doctrines. I never grew up thinking that life in a body and all that it implies is tinged with sinfulness. As a Unitarian Universalist, I absolutely do not. In being born, in sensuality and sexuality (whether gay or straight), and also in dying, all people possess inherent worth and dignity. I believe it.   

 

I also believe that you did not need to be perfect to meet the challenges of raising your son. Your ordinary, imperfect humanity was good enough, and gave you the strength you needed. In fact, there’s a sense in which it’s to everyone’s advantage that you were imperfect, since the idea that God could be born through someone living just an ordinary life is scandalous in a wondrous sort of way. The thought that people could be used by God for great things despite any and all limitations is wondrous. A source of great hope.

 

Mary, I really resonate with this idea. That you could be strong despite your flaws and imperfections. That you could be strong exactly because of your flaws. The Unitarian Universalist in me loves this, and every day, I walk in trust that the universe will receive whatever I offer up to it, however flawed, and turn it to some good, somehow. This is the core of my religious faith, and above all, it’s the core of my faith as a parent. As a father, the responsibility of parenting would be unbearable if I didn’t believe that being good enough was good enough. Know what I mean? This belief is sometimes all I have to go on, to get me through the times when I feel I’m totally screwing things up, and there won’t ever be enough money in the proverbial therapy jar my daughter will draw on to set things right. I just have to trust that being good enough is good enough.

 

I don’t know. Did you have to be perfect to do true justice to your child Jesus? To be strong enough for him? What’s clear is this. I’ve read stories in the Christian scriptures that hint at your parenting style, and I’m impressed. You really knew what you were doing. Here’s one story that springs to mind. It’s the story of Jesus turning water to wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. There you are, at the wedding with Jesus, who by now must be around 30 years old. He’s never performed a miracle before, and let’s assume that he’s wanting to be very careful about choosing the right first miracle, since the first of anything can be a predictor of everything else to follow. The first miracle has got to be special. It’s got to be right. And Mary, you know this. You also know that people can get so anxious about getting things right the first time that they might never even allow for a first time—to them, no time will ever seem special enough, nothing will ever seem good enough. So when you learn that the wine has all run out at the wedding party, you see that this is your opportunity to do a little mentoring. Light a little fire under your son, the brilliant rabbi. So you go to Jesus … and nudge him. “There’s no more wine,” you say. Jesus catches your drift, senses the pressure you’re putting on him, and he replies, rather testily, “Woman, what concern is that to you? My hour has not yet come.” In other words, Mom, stop trying to rush me! Stop pushing, already! Jesus is not very nice as he says this—calling you “woman” is just not nice—but you know that the bark is worse than the bite. I’ll bet you even rolled your eyes. You are the Mom, after all. And the rest is history. Jesus turns the water to wine, and this really was the perfect first miracle. It really was. It couldn’t have happened at a better, more joyous time (during a wedding party)—and the central message it telegraphs, essentially, is that the power of God (or whatever Mystery that that word “God” stands for) is everlasting abundance. Everlasting abundance that people can tap into even in the midst of moments of scarcity and loss. Even after the worst has happened. Even after all that, the best wine can still come. Don’t give up hope. Don’t give in to despair. Mary, this is a great message, and you are the one who nudged Jesus into making it. You helped get him unstuck. You were part of a great mentoring moment.

 

That’s got to be one of the reasons for why people can’t get enough of you. It’s about your awesome responsibility as a parent, and the great job you did, perfect or not. There’s also this: the way other people have experienced your parenting and protection, long after your physical death (or, as the Catholics would have it, long after your bodily ascension into Heaven). Here’s what I mean. I was reading the other day about the history of a country named Portugal and its political struggles, particularly in the early 1900s. The country’s monarchy had been ousted and replaced by an almost totalitarian regime, and this regime was determined to eradicate the country’s Catholicism. Religion, it thought, was pure superstition, and destructive, and wrong. Tolerance towards religion is just part of the problem, and only makes things worse. So this regime closed the churches down, and it confiscated their property. It banned religious holidays, as well as the teaching of religion in schools and colleges. Its actions were so aggressive that even people in rural areas—people who are usually unaffected by the quicksilver fads of urban sophisticates—took notice and went underground with their spirituality. Things got very, very bad. This is when you came in. The story goes that, in 1917, you appeared in a vision to three children from the rural village of Fatima. You encouraged them to stay hopeful in their religious faith, to pray for sinners, to keep on saying the Rosary. You appeared any number of times, and it is said that in your final appearance, on October 13, 1917, the crowd was far more than three children—something like 70,000 people, including newspaper reporters and photographers. Eyewitnesses said that it rained heavily that day, but at one point, the clouds broke and the sun took center stage, at which point it spun like a disk, radiated flames of scarlet, yellow, and purple, and then plunged towards the earth in a zigzag pattern, finally returning to its normal place, and leaving the people’s once wet clothing completely dry.

 

That’s the story. And whatever the reality happens to be, at least one thing is clear: religion in the hearts of the people is irrepressible, and it’s going to break through the walls put around it, every time. Whatever political or intellectual regimes do or plan to do, you, Mary, are not going to allow them to carry the day. You are a defender. People hunger for your presence, and you show up. And not just in Fatima, but all over the world, over the course of centuries. That’s what the record shows. I’ll grant that all we might be talking about here is some kind of communal hallucination—many explanations presuming nothing supernatural have been put forward—but what’s definitely real as real can be is that you are in people’s hearts and minds. You are there. And when the threat to religion or to life is great, they draw on you for strength, they take comfort from you, their imaginations soar with and through you.

 

Dear Mary, again and again, people go to you for strength. Some people might say that you were docile, and compliant, and weak, but I don’t believe it. You were strong enough to parent Jesus and give him good guidance and mentoring, and you’ve been strong enough in the hearts and minds of Christians through the ages to appear to them as a protector in times of tribulation. That’s what I call strong.

 

Yet there is one more thing that comes to mind when I consider people’s fascination for you, and it has to do with a different kind of strength. The strength it takes to step into the unknown. The strength it takes to be vulnerable and let go. The strength it takes to step back from broken dreams, and let them die, and still know that you are OK. Mary, you understand all about this. Blessed among women, you were condemned to witness your son’s execution on the cross. That’s what I call a broken dream. You know all about broken dreams. You know all about what it takes to step back from a dream, and let go.

 

This is the real reason for why I am writing this letter to you today. Perhaps the influence of my Catholic grandmother is stronger than I knew, and really, this letter is a prayer. For, you see, I’m praying for the strength to move into the second half of my life, and to let go of all my sadness and regrets. I know it’s not as dramatic as the death of your son on the cross, and yet there it is. I’m firmly into mid-life now, and with this has come a strange pressure building and building in my life, one that is pushing me to perform what I guess is itself a kind of miracle. Forgiving the fact that my body is changing and is not like it used to be; forgiving the fact that I was not able to accomplish everything I wanted to; forgiving the fact that all the brilliant, beautiful Christmases of my childhood will never come back again; forgiving the fact that precious people have died out of my life, and I will never be able to share with them who I am as an adult. This miracle of forgiveness. Water into wine. I need to perform it. I need to. It’s so I can make peace with my regrets. It’s so I can draw from my past in a healthy way. It’s so I can truly appreciate all the wonderful things I have right now: my family, my friends, my job, my health, my future. It’s so I can move forward, and keep on moving forward. It’s so I can believe that the best wine of my life will indeed come last, never fear.

 

Mary, I need a nudge from you, just like you once gave your son. I need you to light a fire under me, I need you to help me know that there’s no perfect moment for forgiveness, that there is no better time than now. Mary, in this Christmas season, I am praying to you for strength, for myself and also for so many others who are where I am right now, in one way or another. Whatever the age. Whatever the situation. Experiencing life changes. Facing the unknown. Feeling vulnerable. Strengthen all of us. Nudge all of us. Light that fire. And if we should snap back at you like your son did, and say, “Woman, what concern is that to you?” I know you’ll understand that the bark is worse than the bite. Just roll your eyes. You are the Mom. You’ve been there, done that. You know. Just show us the way to the most amazing kind of strength there is: to be hurt and yet come back; to be broken and yet to be whole; to endure ruined dreams and yet still dream; to give up so much, and yet, in the end, find more than you ever used to have. Water into wine. The best wine saved till last.

 

Mary, I thank you for your life, and I bless your name. Be with all of us this Christmas time.  

 

I am yours, sincerely,

 

Anthony

Making Peace With Death

A favorite reading this time of year for many Unitarian Universalists comes from religious educator Sophia Fahs, who wrote, “For so the children come, and so they have been coming. Always in the same way they come, born of the seed of man and woman. No angels herald their beginnings. No prophets predict their future courses. No wisemen see a star to show where to find the babe that will save humankind. Yet each night a child is born is a holy night. Fathers and mothers—sitting beside their children’s cribs feel glory in the sight of a new life beginning. […] Each night a child is born is a holy night—a time for singing, a time for wondering, a time for worshipping.” This is what Sophia Fahs says, and in this way, she reminds us about our Unitarian Universalist First Principle: That all people have inherent worth and dignity. Birth—any birth—is a revealer of this mystery, and no angels are needed, no prophets, no stars. Our worth and dignity is INHERENT, and with every birth, the point is made again and again.

 

This morning, I would have us consider how this is also true about death. How it is a revealer of the mystery of inherent worth and dignity as much as birth. Death, like birth, is an integral part of what it means to be human, and it is from our simple humanity that our inherent worth and dignity flows. Not just from part of our humanity, but from all of it. The entire paradox of our being, which is a being-towards-death. “For everything there is a season, and time for every matter under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die.” One time takes nine months and involves a lot of hard pushing coming into the world; and the other time involves its own kind of hard work, much pain and vulnerability in the leaving. Both times tell a story about the drama of life and its basic value, which nothing can take away.

 

All people have inherent worth and dignity. Affirming this fully requires us to make our peace with death, allowing us, in turn, to discover how it is that even this fearsome part of our existence can be a teacher, and lead us into dimensions of meaning that cannot be fathomed in any other time of life.

 

But first we have to make our peace with it. That has to come first.

 

And how do we do that, when death in our culture is taboo? Sociologist Goeffrey Gorer says that the subject of death has become as unmentionable today as sex was in Victorian times. “Death is the last and greatest taboo,” adds psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, and this is evident above all in the clear discomfort people have when they find themselves in the presence of one who is terminally ill, or near death. Culture spends plenty of time telling us all about how to defy death, and presents multiple options for life extension. Culture whispers in our ear, “Age is a treatable condition,” and it agrees wholeheartedly with writer W. Somerset Maugham when he says, “Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. My advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.” That’s our culture. It tells us all about how to handle ourselves during this occasion and that occasion; but as for the occasion of death, our culture is no help. Death is taboo. So we don’t know what to say. We don’t know what to do. The note to someone who is dying never gets written, the call never gets made, the visit is repeatedly put off. Or we do write the note, we do make the call, we do take the time to visit, but we end up isolating them even further, and intensifying their pain. They want to share their sadness, or their fear, but the anxiety is too much for us, and we shut them down, saying, “Oh, you’ll be fine. Don’t talk that way. Think positive. Try harder.” They want to know that they are still the person they always were to us—that in essentials, we still love them—but we may fidget in their presence, talk to others in the room like they are not there, stand or sit a little too far away. They want a taste of normalcy in the midst of all the craziness—talk about the weather, talk about politics, talk about neighborhood gossip—but we don’t follow their lead and decide instead to force a heavy existential conversation about life, the universe, and everything. They simply want to be seen in all their wholeness and fullness, but we act as if the only valid thing about them is their dying, we trap them with our concern, we oppress them with our compassion. We just don’t know our manners—because for our culture, the source of manners, death is taboo.

 

We just don’t know any better. Death has become for us, today, unknown territory. “Most of us,” says health journalist Virginia Morris, “reach our thirties and forties without ever having seen a death or helped someone through a terminal illness. We may not have even heard about anyone’s death in great detail—the gradual decline, the fear, the treatments, the pain, or the intimacy that can occur in the final stage of life.” That’s what she says, and it is no help whatsoever to see actors pretending to die on TV, or in the movies—whether perishing in some violent way, or dying yet still looking beautiful and in control. This is not real death. Death is messy. How do you make your peace with something you aren’t even directly familiar with? Death has disappeared, for the most part, into hospitals, nursing homes, and other similar institutions, in sharp contrast to only a short hundred years ago, when death usually happened at home, under the care of family, friends, neighbors, and often some spiritual guide, such as a minister or priest. People knew death back then, but now, not so much.  

 

All of this only intensifies our natural fear of death. Fear grows in darkness. Fear feeds on ignorance. It becomes seemingly impossible to talk about. But this is exactly what we need to do, and sooner rather than later. Says Virginia Morris, “Hanging on the edge of a precipice, engulfed by terror, is not the time or place to learn about emergency rock-climbing procedures; you have to learn them before you start the expedition. Likewise, we have to learn something about death now, while we are still healthy. […] No one said it would be easy. But by bringing death out into the open, by witnessing it, talking about it, learning about it, and trying in whatever way we can to accept it as an inevitable part of our lives, we can be better prepared, we can make better decisions when the time comes…” That’s what Virginia Morris says, and it is in connection with the issue of end-of-life decisions that the need to face our fears sooner rather than later is particularly crucial. During end-of-life care, doctors take their cues from their patients. If we have not worked through our fears, we will freeze up at the bedside of one we love; and while they might have asked that we spare them from any aggressive intervention procedures, when we are there at the bedside, full of our fears, overwhelmed by practical issues and considerations we had never once tried to think about before, we can find ourselves making decisions that will cause us regret later. In our pain we may hear ourselves saying to the doctor, “I don’t want to hear anything bad. I want you to fix her.” In our pain and confusion, for which we are so unprepared, we don’t know when enough is enough, we don’t know when to let go.

 

This is horrible. There has got to be a better way.

 

Which brings us to our reading from earlier, about the man voluntarily sitting down on his own grave. Doing this NOT with an attitude of morbidity but with one of honest affirmation, and as a result finding his life here and now deepened and enriched. It is a marvelous demonstration of living into our Unitarian Universalist First Principle, which, given everything I have said so far, is clearly a countercultural principle, calling us to reject culture’s taboo on death, calling us to go against the grain, calling us to refuse holding death at arm’s length, calling us to proactively prepare for the inevitable.  

 

It begins by turning on the light.  If fear grows in darkness, turn on the light. To this end, I highly recommend reading Virginia Morris’ book, entitled Talking About Death. It was inspired by her experience of her father’s death, just three months after giving birth to her own son. At one point she says, “When I was pregnant, I studied, practiced, and tried to imagine labor and delivery. I talked about it with friends, heard about their experiences, and got untold amounts of advice. But when my father had a life-threatening illness, I did nothing of the sort. I didn’t look things up or ask questions. My family didn’t even acknowledge—not in any meaningful way—that my father was going to die until he was almost gone.” This is what Virginia Morris says, and in great part, it’s the ironic contrast between her thorough preparation for her son’s birth and complete lack of preparation for her dad’s death that spurred her on to writing the book. When both rites of passage are equally momentous—both a part of what it means to be human—why should practicing for one be considered prudent while practicing for the other be shameful? Among other things, the book explores the up-close reality of dying, as well as suggestions for enabling a truly good death. It talks about how advance directives (as in a living will and a power of attorney for health care) are absolutely important but not sufficient in themselves to address all the complex and emotionally wrenching choices that arise when a life is in the balance. It even looks at the issue of manners I touched on earlier, how to be a truly comforting presence to one who is dying, as well as to his or her family. It’s about turning on the light. “The thought of death will always fill us with dread … but the fear is less paralyzing, less blinding, when we have knowledge…”

 

Turn on the light. Do this, and then next of all, talk. Talk about death with your loved ones. Talk about it when you are healthy, so that the subject won’t be so hard to broach when you are sick. Talk about it so as to clear away any vagueness and confusion about your end-of-life wishes, or the wishes of another. This is what Virginia Morris did with her mom, after her dad died. She says, “My mother always said that she wants to be ‘unplugged’ when she’s ‘at that point,’ and she has even said that she would like to be ‘done in’ if she is ever ‘like that.’ But the two of us never ventured much beyond these comments, and [I realized soon enough that I needed to clarify things.] So the two of us talked, and talked, and talked, and we discovered a number of things along the way. First of all, I realized that my mom, like many people, is not afraid of respirators and feeding tubes as much as she is afraid of being a burden. She does not want her children, or anyone else for that matter, to have to care for her. […] That was what she was thinking about when she said, ‘Do me in.’ [But] then I asked her about Dad’s death. Did she view that as a burden? Did she see his care as a drain? Would it have been easier if he had taken a vial of pills, which he had actually stored away for just such an occasion? No, she said, of course not. We talked about what caring for him had meant for us, what was hard about it and what was rewarding, and if there were any aspects of it we wished we hadn’t had to do, which there weren’t. We agreed that his care had not been a chore for us, but an honor and a privilege, a gift that has stayed with us.” That’s the conversation between Virginia Morris and her mom, and I have quoted it at length because it demonstrates how a willingness to talk and talk and talk can make all the difference. Without it, Virginia Morris would never have known that the real problem for her mom was not so much certain medical procedures as it was the fear of being a burden, and as for her mom: she might never have connected the dots in her mind, might never have realized that her children caring for her would be just as important for them as was caring for their dad. A gift. A time of giving and forgiving and letting go. We need these realizations as well, with the people we love. We need these kinds of conversations too.  

 

Turn on the light, talk it out, and then do this: open your heart to your own death. Invite the thought of death in. It will surely bring sadness. Absolutely. The thought of all the loss, the thought of leaving; how this will impact the people depending on us, how the party will go on without us. Inviting the thought of death will bring sadness, and it will also trigger fear: fear of losing control, fear of the unknown, the fear of the caterpillar who cannot possibly know ahead of time the great changes in store for him, and what comes next. Sadness, fear, depression—and yet, our will to live nevertheless remains. We foresee the end, and the end gives meaning to all that comes before. It is as philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once wrote: “Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.” To the degree we allow ourselves to live with the thought of death, to sit on our very own grave and see ourselves from that perspective, our understanding and appreciation of what we have and of the life that is before us grows.

 

“I have done this many times now,” says Virginia Morris. “I imagine how I might respond if I were told that I had a terminal illness. I think about how I would react if I were caring for my husband, refusing further treatment for my mother, saying goodbye to a friend. I think how I might feel, whether I could act, and what I might regret. I walk through the process, and as I do, I sob pitifully into my pillow. Then I lie still, exhausted but not sleepy, staring out the skylight above my bed at the darkness beyond. I roll onto my side and see the bright red numbers on my clock. Then I creep quietly down the hallway, going first into one room and then another, so that I can gaze upon my sleeping children. I stroke their soft hair, listen to their gentle breathing, pull up the covers, kiss their cheeks, and draw in their sweet scents. Then I go back to bed, oddly fulfilled. Cold from the trek, I snuggle close to my husband, feel his warmth, love him enormously, and fall asleep.” That’s what she says. The end gives meaning to all that comes before. Meaning throughout the lifespan, from first to last. Even in the face of death, people’s worth and dignity remains, is inherent, IS.

 

Making peace with death. Turning on the light, talking things out, opening our hearts, and then this, finally: trust. Affirming our inherent worth and dignity by trusting the rhythm and flow of the life we are given, woven seamlessly into the larger life of the natural world. The natural world holding us in its embrace, and we love ourselves even as we love it. We see nature as a revelation of the sacred, and we see it in ourselves. “I am not ready to die,” says Unitarian Universalist poet May Sarton,

 

But I am learning to trust death

As I have trusted life.

I am moving

Toward a new freedom

Born of detachment,

And a sweeter grace—

Learning to let go.

 

I am not ready to die,

But as I approach sixty

I turn my face toward the sea.

I shall go where tides replace time,

Where my world will open up to a far horizon

Over the floating, never-still flux and change.

I shall go with the changes,

I shall look far out over golden grasses

And blue waters….

 

There are no farewells.

 

Praise God for His mercies,

For His austere demands,

For His light

And for His darkness.

 

 

My Neighbor, Myself

December 7, 2008. Dear Expert in the Law: I’m writing this letter today because, recently, I had the opportunity to look again at one of the most famous parables in the Christian scriptures—the Parable of the Good Samaritan—and this time, it struck me with particular force that the center of the entire story is really you. Your thirst for eternal life. Your anxiety to justify yourself as having already “earned” it. What Jesus said to you, and how you might have actually heard it. Then his concluding invitation: “Go and do likewise.” Your learning and your growth are the real story here, and as I reflect on it, I see so much that relates to my here-and-now world. Your story speaks to mine, as well as to the story of the congregation I serve in Atlanta, Georgia, though we are separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles. Thus, this letter.  

 

I’ll start by acknowledging how your fellow Jews needed you. Devout Jews needed “experts in the law” because there are 613 commands that come out of the foundational texts of your religion, the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Five books, collectively called the Torah, conveying 613 laws which devout Jews are to practice so as to bring God into every aspect of daily life and to maintain right relationship with Him. Rules about talking, eating, walking, bathing, dressing, buying and selling, honoring one’s parents, no lying, no stealing, and on and on. A lot of rules, yes, but devout Jews saw themselves as privileged to have this kind of structure in their lives, one which gave them a rock-solid spiritual identity and kept their minds constantly on God. And yet, because of all the rules, no wonder people needed an expert. At the very least, just to remember them all. And then there were times when circumstances seemed impossibly complicated—circumstances in which multiple rules seemed to apply but also seemed to conflict with each other, and so people found themselves wondering how to balance the differing obligations in tension. Sometimes it wasn’t just an internal struggle but one between people, people who differed—sometimes violently—on what they saw as fair. In all such moments, they needed you: an expert in the Law.

 

Not that we do not require experts in the law today. Plenty of devout Jews these days who aspire to infuse their lives with God rules. And then there’s everyone else, us, whose lives in one way or another are, at one and the same time, both organized and complexified by rules of some sort or another. My congregation, for example. Its legal existence articulated through ByLaws. Its purpose defined through a mission statement, together with a statement of ends describing all the basic ways in which we want to bring positive change to people’s lives. Then what are called Executive Limitations, which basically hold us accountable to our highest hopes, and call us to stay within proper limits in our work together. Then its Covenant of Healthy Relationships, together with all the other guidelines, procedures, principles, precedents, and on and on, which help us get on the same page, and which we sometimes fight over. Some will think that there are way too many rules. Yet it sounds like a lot only because we are a large community, and the larger a community gets, the more explicit it needs to be about rules. Smaller communities, families even, have just as many rules, but many of them are tacit, unspoken, taken for granted, and usually you realize them consciously only when you blunder into them—and suffer the consequences. Not a helpful thing in a community as large as the one I serve. 

 

But you know all about this. You are an expert of the Law. And it was as an expert that, one day, you decided to test the upstart rabbi that your neighbors must have been gossiping about. This teacher, saying shocking things. This Jesus of Nazareth. “Teacher,” you said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” As you well know, he gave this question right back to you, and I’m struck by your answer, which Jesus himself liked very much. Basically you said “love to God and love to people.” “Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.” I’m struck by this answer, for two reasons.

 

Reason #1: How the emphasis is on doing right things, not believing right things. Too many people today think that believing “10 impossible things before breakfast” is the pathway to eternal life, the hallmark of authentic religious faith, and I refuse to lose that word—“faith”—to such a poor definition. I refuse to put my mind (with all its questions and curiosity) in one box, and my faith (which sustains my heart and gets me up every morning) in another box. For me, faith is all about action. Or, rather, it’s all about acting in trust that my effort to connect with the Spirit of Life—to create, to worship, to study, to meditate, to appreciate, to forgive, to serve—that any and all such acts will lead to something positive, no matter how frail or flawed the effort seems to me. Acting in trust that my effort to love another person, no matter how small, will somehow make a difference. Faith is all about action, and keeps us acting, keeps us from getting paralyzed by our fears. What is eternal life, anyhow, if not a quality of life right here and right now? Eternal life as a richness in each moment, as a timelessness of meaning, a sense of poise and courage in the face of adversity, a sense of triumphant abundance, a sense of release from all that knots up our spirits. Brings to mind a story by a classic 20^th century writer named Dr. Suess. How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Wish you could see it—in particular the part where the Grinch realizes that Christmas doesn’t come from a store—means perhaps a lot more. The moment when his heart grows three sizes, the true meaning of Christmas comes through, he finds the strength of ten Grinches plus two. That’s it. That’s how the eternal breaks into life. That’s how we inherit it. 

 

But now let’s turn to the second reason for why I like your answer to the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Short and sweet: it implies something very positive about humanity and its place in nature. Take the part about “love your neighbor as yourself.”  I’m reading this book with my congregation right now—called The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt—and in the third chapter, the author talks about how large, relatively peaceful animal societies become possible. Amidst all the variety in the animal kingdom, we see it only among humans, termites, naked mole rats, and hymenoptera (which is a name designating one of the larger orders of insects, including ants, bees, and wasps). Talk about strange company! Nevertheless, it’s only here where we find individuals living in large cooperative societies—individuals reaping the benefits of an extensive division of labor. In the case of termites, naked mole rats, ants, bees, and wasps, the explanation is found in a mechanism known as “kin altruism,” a reproduction system in which a single queen produces all the children, and everyone is literally brother and sister to each other, and “love your neighbor as yourself” happens quite naturally. All are part of one big family; all share a common parent.

 

Of course, human reproduction is NOT a matter of a single queen producing all the children. For us, the way to “love your neighbor as yourself” isn’t through kin altruism. Rather, it’s through existence of a deep instinct for what scientists call “reciprocity.” As in, “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” An instinct that explains why it is, when someone does something nice, you reflexively want to return the favor even though you might not know them from Adam. Why it is, when people are sent Christmas cards from complete strangers, a great majority will go ahead and send a Christmas card in return anyway. It’s true! Reciprocity is hardwired in us. Part of our nature as human beings. And I think that that is cool. I know—“you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” is not actually on the same level as the Golden Rule, but it puts us on a path that takes us to it eventually. The instinct for reciprocity is a start in the right direction, and everything needs a start. Above all, the start is nothing supernatural. Nature puts us on the path of ethics and spirituality. It means, ultimately, that even our highest aspirations for heaven are rooted in earth. The earth is truly and fully HOME.  

 

But it’s not all peaches and cream. Nature gives us predilections for hell as well. “Natural selection, like politics,” says Jonathan Haidt, “works by the principle of survival of the fittest, and several researchers have argued that human beings evolved to play the game of life in a Machiavellian way.” Part of this has to do with something we see in your story, where, right after you answer your own question about how to inherit eternal life, you ask Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” You do that because you have overestimated your own virtue. You already think that you’ve earned eternal life, and that there’s nothing else lacking. In effect, you are daring Jesus to prove otherwise.

 

The tendency to see ourselves as in a “rose colored mirror.” I do it too. We all do. There is evolutionary survival value to this, very definitely; “evidence shows that people who hold pervasive positive illusions about themselves, their abilities, and their future prospects are mentally healthier, happier, and better liked than people who lack such illusions.” True enough. But there’s a downside as well. Jonathan Haidt puts it this way: “Such biases can make people feel that they deserve more than they do, thereby setting the stage for endless disputes with other people who feel equally over-entitled.” In other words, disputes over who is doing more of their fair share of the work, as in spouses estimating the percentage of housework each does, and estimates totaling up to more than 120%. Disputes like this. Disputes over who is more wrong, more to blame. Disputes over who understands and applies the rules more fairly. Our biological-based penchant for overestimating our own virtue gets us in trouble, time after time, and in effect blocks the reciprocity instinct within us. We stop listening to the other person and imagine their action to stem from, if not malice, then no reason at all, nothing that would make what they did at least understandable. We stop listening, and we get resentful, we get enraged. Because others are not doing unto me as I deserve, well then, the worse for them! They better watch out! So much for “love your neighbor as yourself.” So much for eternal life.

 

The rose colored mirror gets us into trouble. It causes people to spin their case in their own favor, furiously, protesting innocence all the way. Russian author Leo Tolstoy said it like this: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” Dear Expert in the Law, this is what you were doing—trying to put the spin on Jesus, and he knew it. He saw exactly what you were trying to do. And this was the launching point for his famous Good Samaritan parable. This is what was in back of his mind when he said those words, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead with no clothes. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.….” Did it shock you to hear that this is what the priest and Levite did? Especially when they, if anyone, should know that the way to eternal life is love to God and love to people?

 

It probably didn’t shock you. You are an Expert in the Law, after all, so you understand why they felt justified in staying away. One of the 613 commands of the Torah says that people should stay away from corpses, which are considered spiritually unclean. In the case of the priest, if he had come over to help the man, and the man turned out to be dead, he would have contaminated himself and would no longer be allowed to officiate religious rites at the Temple. Not permanently—but he would have had to go through a lengthy, arduous period of decontamination to get back to ritual cleanliness. Thus his reason for staying away.

 

But for Jesus, the reason was not good enough. It was just something that the Priest and Levite used as a basis for spinning the case furiously in their favor. They looked into the rose colored mirror, they thought only about how they are commanded to preserve their religious purity, and in the end, this blinkered form of idealism made it OK for them to commit what was, in truth, a horrible sin. Being in a position to help someone in dire need, and not doing it. Not loving a fellow human being and, in this way, not loving God. One of the Hebrew prophets, Amos, puts this in perspective when he speaks for God and says, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. […] But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” That’s what Amos says. Where established law and genuine human need are in conflict, choose compassion, as far as possible. That’s what you do.  

 

The rose colored mirror. It makes it so easy for people to appear, to themselves, far more virtuous and innocent than they really are, and to spin their case in their own favor, protesting innocence all the way. Jesus challenged you, and he challenges all of us, to take a long hard look at ourselves. “Why,” he asks, “do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” Why indeed.

 

But Jesus is not done. He’s got more to teach you. Later on in the parable, Jesus describes how a Samaritan helps the man by the side of the road and so behaves in a way that leads to eternal life. “Go and do likewise,” Jesus says to you. How infuriating. For this is what you know: Samaritans are the historical enemies of the Jews. All your life, you were taught that their faith is wrong. That their society is wrong. The very thought of them makes you burn. For you, the mere phrase “good Samaritan” is an impossible combination of words. On your own, you would never put those two words together in a sentence. But Jesus did. Jesus was telling you that someone you viciously and virulently hated—someone you didn’t even see as fully human—was worthy of eternal life, and not you. At least not yet. How difficult it must have been to hear this. How outraged you must have been.

 

Dear Expert in the Law, I applaud your courage in addressing Jesus. I’d be scared to death to test him. In his time, Jesus always took people to challenging places, and he never pulled his punches. He still does that today, when people read his words, and they are open to them.

 

In the end, this is what I think he was trying to get at. Samaritans are beaten up in their own way, by the society that surrounds them and vilifies them. And so, just as the Samaritan in the parable helped the man by the side of the road, would you be open to seeing the Samaritans around you with new eyes? Jesus was suggesting that, to “go and do likewise,” you didn’t have to wait for a circumstance identical to the parable but that you could start immediately, right that moment. Bring to mind a social group you have grown up to distrust, or hate. At the very least, bring to mind a person you are angry at, whom you feel is treating you wrongly, unfairly. As you do this, notice how your heart hardens. Notice how you immediately start to spin the case in your own favor, imagining yourself all right and the other all wrong. Above all, own up to it. Acknowledge the rose colored mirror. Acknowledge the log in your own eye. Then do your best. Try to walk a mile in their shoes. Try to understand. If the way to eternal life is anywhere, it is here.

 

I want to close this letter with a story, which captures some of the essence of what I’ve been talking about. I hope you find it interesting. It comes from a contemporary spiritual teacher named Ram Dass, and it describes his effort to deal with a kind of Samaritan of his own time. 

 

Once there was a spiritual man named Ram Dass, and he lived in a turbulent time called … the Reagan era. He looked around, and he could find nothing that he liked. But his aggravation happened to settle on a particular target: Caspar Weinberger, Reagan’s Secretary of Defense. When Ram Dass thought about it, he realized that, in truth, Caspar was no worse than many others. But there was just something about him that got under his skin. So this is what he did. He got a picture of Caspar and put it on his home altar, together with pictures of spiritual heroes like the Buddha, Christ, Ramana Maharshi, and Hanuman. He included Casper right along with the rest. Each morning, when he’d light his incense and honor his heroes, he’d greet each with tenderness, and he’d feel waves of deep love and appreciation towards them. But then he’d come to Caspar’s picture, and his heart would constrict, he’d hear coldness in his voice when he’d say, “Good morning, Caspar.” Each morning he’d see what a long way he still had to go. But this is what he thought to himself. He thought, “Wasn’t Caspar just another face of God? Couldn’t I oppose his actions and still keep my heart open to him? Wouldn’t it be harder for him to become free from the role he was obviously trapped in if I, with my mind, just kept reinforcing the traps by identifying him with his acts? Do what you do to another person, but never put them out of your heart. It’s a tall order. But what else is there?”

 

And there it is, dear Expert of the Law. How shall we inherit eternal life? It’s all in the doing. What else is there?

 

I am yours, sincerely,

 

Anthony