Renewal Requires Reflection

I begin today with this question: How might personal reflection lead us to a deeper, more sustainable renewal? And with the following story, I begin to suggest an answer:

“Once, there was a very devout Buddhist woman who every day made her way through the rainy streets with her umbrella and shopping basket to the corner store for her daily supply of rice. The shopkeeper, though, was rude and often lewd to her, grabbing her and insulting her. The woman, keen on practicing mindful compassion, did her best to ignore the shopkeeper's bad behavior, breathing calmly and concentrating on the task at hand so as to not take his rudeness personally.

“But one day, she’d just had enough.  He grabbed her one time too many, and she hurled around and shouted at him: ‘ENOUGH, STOP it, you lout!’ To her utter shame, as she turned to stomp out of the store, who should be standing at the door but her own teacher, the Zen Master himself.

She apologized profusely for her lapse into anger and asked the teacher, ‘Next time I come here, what should I do?’

“The teacher replied calmly, ‘The next time he’s rude to you, I want you to breathe deeply, ground yourself in mindfulness, remember your vows, and then, very mindfully and with great compassion whack him over the head with your umbrella.’”

Whack him over the head with your umbrella! We need to reflect on that. Let’s reflect on why that –well, maybe not that, but something like it—is exactly what we need to do if we are being called to renew ourselves. We all know that compassion is a good path. We know that people deserve to be treated with dignity and compassion. But guess what—that means you, too—you and you and you—all of us. The grace, the dignity, the compassion we extend to others, we need to extend that to ourselves as well. I wish it were not so hard to see that we are each deserving of exquisite care. But it is sometimes so. How can we, then, all get better at it, before we resort to whacking each other over the head? Before we feel that we need to.

At the beginning of a new calendar year, we sometimes make resolutions. And these often amount to being “better” than we are better at self-discipline of one variety or another, better at a task, better at a response. The assumption here is that we lack something, we are less than we ought to be. And the resolution is meant to build us anew, to turn us into the gym rat or the master knitter or the fully generous and compassionate helper. And, most of our new year resolutions fail about this time, about three weeks in.

Maybe the challenge is that we are trying to change into something we cannot be, instead of transforming, becoming more deeply conscious and aware of who we are and what we have to offer the world.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t always know how to describe myself. I don’t always know just who I am, deep inside at the core of my being. Not just what I do, not just the work I produce, but that nugget of self that is really and truly “me.” I don’t know about you, but sometimes I think of myself the way we sometimes describe Unitarian Universalism. Well, it’s not Christian exactly, but we have Christian roots. And we welcome all kinds of thinkers, but lean humanist and liberal, so maybe some might feel excluded. And most of us or I think most of us don’t believe in a god, or at least not one in the standard world religions. You know, what we are not rather than what we are. I really don’t like to cook at all but I know I should because it’s creative and practical. And I wish I could really learn to knit something nice, but I just don’t have the self- discipline to stick with the learning. And I’m mostly a good person but sometimes, well maybe more often, but just a little more often, well certainly in traffic, I want to whack people over the head with an umbrella. A lot of self-criticism as self-definition. Too much self-criticism as self- definition.

The flip side of self-criticism is the “holier than thou,” better than everyone else, with little awareness of all that makes up anyone’s being. Either way, critical or superior, we are not living our faith as fully as we might, as fully as we need to live in this world, as it is. Where am. . .I? Where are we? How do we get to the small still voice? Poet and social critic Maya Angelou has a suggestion for us. We all have a need for rest and self-attention, even an obligation, for quiet, so as to be able to listen for and to oneself. She writes, “If we step away for a time, we are not, as many may think and some will accuse, being irresponsible, but rather we are preparing ourselves to more ably perform our duties and discharge our obligations.” She calls us to center into ourselves, stop the incessant doing, and be quiet.

Seeking the quiet is a readily available resource. It costs nothing. Nothing but a little time and the awareness that we need and deserve it.

Sunday worship offers small spates of quiet. Folk in our congregation offer more intentional practices to help us get to that small still voice inside, to reach the self-compassion we all need and deserve. There are many guides and companions in this congregation to help you develop more comfort with the practice. And you can practice anywhere. And practice we should, this we do, so that we know enough to put up boundaries against those who will not hold our dignity and worth in the same sacredness as their own, before we resort to an umbrella across someone’s head or loud words that hurt our own sacred selves.

Caring for ourselves includes making boundaries against those who would harm us. And so remember that list of commitments: to care for yourself, because you are deserving of exquisite care. To feel fully all your range of emotions without fear or self criticism. To forgive yourself and others when stress brings out some of the less pleasant aspects of ourselves. To remain open to new ways of being, surprising sources of joy, and unanticipated discoveries every day. Now, “hold that thought,” hold yourself, hold it with tender care—with your unique jagged edges and sparkle. Gentle self-compassion from the still small voice inside, to protect your own spark against those who do not honor it.

As we seek renewal individually, one call is to balance the drive for self-improvement with compassionate acceptance of the self as we are right now.

Away with the impossible resolutions. Instead, the compassionate knowing, the promise to hold oneself with worth and dignity. That makes the difference between contorting oneself into a pattern that does not fit and transforming, becoming more deeply oneself. A transformation not forced but inherent, the way a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. From a fat and wormy existence anchored to stalks and leaves to a hibernation in a chrysalis hanging from a fragile branch to colorful wings and the freedom of flight. The transformation from caterpillar to butterfly happens within the chrysalis, in that still small place hidden from view. And a good thing too, because this transformation is messy and unsightly. “Within the chrysalis, the structure of the caterpillar dissolves into a soupy organic mush.” Within this dissolution, the imaginal cells, which have lain dormant within the caterpillar, these cells become activated and begin to create the new structure of a butterfly. The imaginal cells do this specific work, “even though there is no similarity whatsoever between the two creatures.” It’s remarkable—one creature becomes a completely different one. And yet, that potential is completely natural, happening just as it ought to.

This Congregation is a place where you hear this call and take the risk to transform. For as much as we take this journey individually, it is in community that we can do it without loneliness and fear, with a chance to reflect and discuss and go deeper and learn more. Within the chrysalis, as the caterpillar becomes the butterfly, initially, each imaginal cell operates like a single celled organism, doing its job independently. And initially, the immune system of the caterpillar that still exists inside the chrysalis treats the newly awake imaginal cells as threats and attacks them. Transformation is resisted. Doesn’t that sound familiar! But the imaginal cells continue their work of transformation. They multiply, and they begin to connect to each other, forming clusters. “They start to resonate with the same frequency and communicate in the same language, passing information backwards and forwards until there is a tipping point.” Then the imaginal cells stop acting as individual, separate cells. The clusters grow. Single cells become a new, multiple-celled organism. The butterfly comes into being, ripening for its emergence. We let go of who we ought to be and embrace who we are. Our community becomes what it was meant to be all along.

Part of the goal in knowing ourselves, of seeing ourselves and allowing ourselves to be seen, of giving ourselves the exquisite care we each deserve. Part of the goal is for us each to be a self that can sustain the call of our faith. We need to be centered, self valued, to do the work the world needs, for each other, for this community, for the larger world. We take care of ourselves to maintain the capacity to help others. Our selves, our selves are needed, joined together in the work of making the world what it can be: fair, equitable, and just. Lively, life-giving, beautiful.

Those still small voices within call to each of us, call to all of us, call us to each other, urging us all to persist in claiming a life of joy and justice.

And so we must each and all carve out a time for the renewal of our own hearts, despite the din demanding our attention, luring us towards fear and cynicism. Together, for and with each other, we must refuse to let grief undo us or to let our dreams get lost along the way. Despite all the forces of fragmentation, the disappointing ways we fail ourselves each other, we lean on each other, we help each other know our individual worth and dignity, we help each other safeguard our hearts and our being against the forces of brutality and violence, indifference and dismissal. As individuals, we foster our own inner sparks. As a community, we sustain and foster each other.

Let’s end this time with a moment of reflection and a brief meditation:

There is a still small voice within each of us, a spark of divinity unique to each of us and linking us with each other and with everything.

Listen for your still small voice. . . .
Be with your breath as it is. . . .
Let go of certainty. . . .
Let go of any idea about what you should be thinking,
accepting your thoughts exactly as they are. . . .
Allow openness. . . .
Allow curiosity. . . .
Be loving in your curiosity about each thought. . . .
Recognize yourself, your worth, your dignity, your wholeness . . . .
Let go of who you ought to be and embrace who you are. . . .
We let go of who we ought to be and embrace who we can be. . . .
. . . .
May it ever be so.

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great%20improvement%20on%20their%20previous%20existence.