Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Rainy day morning thoughts

There is something highly attractive in this morning’s cool rainy weather. The diffused light enhances the golden color of the maple tree outside my window. The sounds of water falling to earth, dripping off the roof, light and deep, form a symphony. From the patter to the drips to a rhythmic thumping of drops collecting and then falling, there is a peace and a diverse natural order. Somewhere in the side yard, a bird calls out.

I sit, propped up in bed, my laptop invisibly connected to the World Wide Web and read the variety of articles and email alerts that come into my inbox. Sandwiched underneath the relentless headlines is a pervasive theology of consumption and privilege that is contrasted by the free-falling rain. I have become sensitive to these null messages where concern for the other and for the earth is discounted in the face of the economic realities that we face.

I interpret the political maneuvers in Congress about health care reform and big oil company Chesapeake’s announcement in today’s Times that they will not drill in the New York City watershed as strategic moves of a selfish body that are designed to further one’s position and opportunity for corporate gain.

I do research for a paper, “Theology of Consumption,” that I will write as a final requirement for an online class on Unitarian Universalist theology. In it, I will use the exploration and extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, the huge formation of shale that runs from West Virginia, much of Pennsylvania and into the Southern Tier of New York, as a case in point and explore how it relates to the UU principle that affirms the importance of the interdependent web of existence.

I gather resources including Sallie McFague’s “Searching for a New Framework” in which she espouses that our current environmental crisis creates a need for a paradigm shift from an anthropocentric view of God and our place in the world to a cosmological interpretation and way of being in the world that supports the flourishing of all life. She concludes that changing this emphasis, actually embodying our theology of respect for all life in all that we do, is a form of activism.

My to-do list, which includes a one-page summary of said aforementioned paper, will prevent my attendance at the first public session where the New York State Department of Conservation (DEC) is presenting its proposed supplemental guidelines for the extraction of natural gas to the public. I had wanted to attend so that I could experience first hand the context in which the DEC places this activity and to have the opportunity to hear the various positions, pros and cons and in betweens, held by members of the community.

In a perfect world, I would been prepared with a compelling statement about process theology where we become transformed by the process of our exploration of the issues and how deep listening and not creative positioning yields best management practices and environmentally and socially responsible behavior. Like listening to the rain and simply noting the different sounds that make up the symphony, holding the realities of those whose differ from our point of view, articulating our common interest to not harm the earth or our communities, gives us the opportunity to underpin this potentially life-threatening activity and exploitation to something that is life affirming.

I am hopeful that that dialogue and process begins tonight.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Process theology and fog


There is a layer of fog that lays over the river as I return from an all day meeting in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Crossing the Roebling Bridge and turning north along the river, the roads are damp, and the orange-red-yellow landscape glistens. I surmise that the river is cooler than the air.

I always like that fog happens, and see it as a magical manifestation that occurs when one reality meets another. Cold meets warm or warm meets cold and something physical is manifested. That same concept was introduced in my reading this week about process theology.

In Henry Nelson Weiman’s article called “The Human Predicament,” he writes that “Jesus engaged in intercommunication with a little group of disciples with such depth and potency that the organization of their several personalities was broken down and they were remade. They became new men, and the thought and feeling of each got across to the other.

“It was not merely the thought and feeling of Jesus that got across. That was not the most important thing. The important thing was that the thought and feeling of the least and lowliest got across to the other and the other to him.

“Not something handed down to them from Jesus but something rising out up out of their midst in creative power was the important thing. It was not something Jesus did. It was something that happened when he was present like a catalytic agent. Something about this man Jesus broke the atomic exclusiveness of those individuals so that they were deeply and freely receptive and responsive each to the other. He split the atom of human egoism, not by psychological tricks, not by intelligent understanding, but simply by being the kind of person he was, combined with the social, psychological, and historical situation of the time and the heritage of Hebrew prophecy.

“But this was not all; something else followed from it. The thought and feelings, let us say, the meanings, thus derived by each from the other, were integrated with what each had previously acquired. Thus each was transformed, lifted to a higher level of human fulfillment. Each became more of a mind and a person, with more capacity to understand, to appreciate, to act with power and insight, for this is the way human personality is generated and magnified and life rendered more nobly human.”

Oh, if we could only remember that when we are arguing with another, insisting, re-articulating our own position, over and over again. Even when we are being semi-respectful, “I understand that what you are saying is …. We generally follow it up with, "But, what I’m saying is…”

Couldn’t we just be like the fog and allow our warm air to meet another’s cold air and have a mist occur because we’re listening? Couldn’t our cold air meet another’s warm air and actually develop more capacity to understand, to appreciate, to act with power and insight?

I think of this deep emphatic listening, this ability to hold another's point of view, as I think about gas drilling.

I attended a panel discussion and reception last Friday afternoon at Grey Towers, and I repeated over and over again to anyone and everyone who would listen that something magical, something creative, and something transformational could occur if we could actually hold the other's position.

The gas company representatives and others said they liked the idea. "Let's draw a line on a piece of paper," one Hess representative said. "I'll list my concerns on one side, you list yours on the other." He was speaking to DRBC Executive Director Carol Collier. She thought the process would be a good one.

I suggested there would be more lines on the piece of paper; I volunteered to be the scribe.

Now there are some who would tell you that someone with an agenda will tell you anything to have their agenda come to fruition.

But I ask you, if having things go better means holding another's truth close to you, so close that you become transformed, would you be willing?

It's amazing how scary that feels. Especially when the stakes are so high.

Especially when the stakes are so high, how can we not try?

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Early snow


Reports of an early snowfall motivate me to put away garden tools and get the space ready for next season. As I pull dead plants and the plot begins to open up again, I am reminded of early July when everything showed itself to be planted too close. Now with a single row of broccoli in the large open space and some carrots, beets, leeks and Brussels sprouts in the raised beds, not surprising, there is plenty of room.

Back in the house, just as the first flakes start to fall, I roast the hot peppers that Stephen had harvested last week. We have been growing this particular variety of “salsa” pepper for some years now. In the past, we found that the raw pepper had a kick but lost some of its hotness with cooking.

This year, the peppers remain hot, no matter the cooking time. Stephen is delighted and can hardly keep a grin off of his face whenever we talk about it. I, on the other hand, liked the flexibility of varying the hotness of a dish by determining when the peppers were to be added.

I roast the peppers slowly and thoroughly, thinking that they might mellow and lose some of their fire. I remind myself that I am making them for Stephen and that my desire for a tender hotness is not the main objective. I am surprised, even with intention, how challenging it is to remove my own likes and dislikes, challenges and motivations as I move through my activities.

I wear a pair of yellow rubber gloves and am aware that the room is filling with a thin haze of smoke as the pepper sizzles slightly against the hot cast iron skillet. I think about natural gas exploration and make a connection between potentially harmful fumes being released by the peppers and being released with the drilling.

It’s not the same thing, of course. I open the door to mix in a little fresh air, something that will not be possible if this region becomes industrialized as planned.

This week, there is news that a Sullivan County economic development agency has new leadership who promise to be more aggressive about advocating for development projects despite environmental objection. The newly elected board chair is quoted as saying that all environmentalists object to projects for their own self-centered motivations and that their dissemination of “misinformation” must be countered. The organization is on record saying that they support gas drilling as long as environmental consequences can be mitigated. I wonder where they will get their “information” and how they will get beyond their own likes and dislikes, challenges and motivations.

Packing the peppers into a jar and covering them with olive oil, I notice that there is a hole in the rubber glove, right at my thumbnail. I wonder whether the hotness burned through or whether I inadvertently sliced through it. I make a mental note to get another pair, as the damaged one will no longer protect me from the caustic oils.

If only other potential hazards were dealt with so easily.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Address to the Hemlock Farms
Community Association Women’s Club
Steer Barn Meeting Room, October 10, 2009, 10:30 am.


I wasn’t pleased as a teen when I asked my mother whether I was pretty or not and she responded that she thought that I would be a late bloomer and that I would be beautiful and not pretty in a traditional sense. Now at 53, when I am find myself comfortable in my skin, I’m delighted with the idea that, as a late bloomer, there is great potential in this second half of my life.

And while I realize that my question to my mother was about physical appearance—I was a petite, reddish-brown frizzy-haired, shy, artistic adolescent in the midst of a long-legged, blond, straight haired, beach-party stereotyped groupie of the 1970s—I believe my question was about how I fit in the world and how I would make my way.

I come from a line of long-living strong women. My grandmother died two weeks short of her 99th birthday, with her older sister outliving her by a couple of years, dying at age 103. My mother, at 79, swims a couple of miles a week, is working on her abs and declares that she will be contra dancing with her younger partner at age 100.

When I turned 50, I was happy to be on what I considered the right side of the century mark, to put the uncertainty of my teens and the turmoil of my 20s and 30s behind me, utilize what I found to be the centering years of my 40s and bloom into the next part of my life. I thank Jill Barbier for inviting me into reflection about how our lives take interesting twists and turns, always offering the opportunity to more fully find our place in the world, live a true expression of our love and bless the world with our unique gifts.

And while we think we have been meandering through our life in a rather haphazard way, using the metaphor of a stream, I am wondering whether we unconsciously make our way through our landscape, joining with other streams, merging into mighty rivers and finding our way to the wide-open ocean.

Unitarian minister and transcendentalist poet Ralph Waldo Emerson writes that if you watch a sailboat making its way across a lake, you will see it make 100 tacks, sailing this way with the wind, and then turning about and sailing the other way. And while the details of the experience is a zig zag, if you track the course of the boat, you will find it to be a straight line and that it was always on course.

I’m wondering whether that isn’t the path of our lives? We zig zag here and there and, in the end, wind up where we were going, even if we don’t know it in the moment.

In one sense, we are consumed in the now, distracted by the past and anticipating the future, but still encapsulated in our present. And with that notion of being in the present, I would like share a chant with you, which I will accompany on the Reverie Harp that is based on the philosophy of Eckhart Tolle, who wrote the book the “Power of Now” and “The Good Earth.” Some of you might be familiar with “The Good Earth” as it was featured on Oprah last winter. Eckhart is saying that all we have is the present moment, and that there is nothing that has happened in the past and nothing that will happen in the future that actually has the power to take away our ability to enjoy the moment. In the now, in this moment, this is all we have.

This is all we have. This is all there is.
There’s no place, but here. There’s no time, but now.


When I shared this song yesterday with Helene Langhorst, who said that she used to work in the developer’s office here at Hemlock Farms decades ago, she disagreed with the concept that we only have the now and added that she always had her dreams and that we could always relish the past. We created two more lines in our song:
We can dream our dreams; we can hold and cherish our past.

So how is it that this reddish-brown frizzy-haired, now grey-haired, artistic woman stands in front of you? Briefly, I started my work career as a camp counselor at Camp Speers Eljabar, just down the road. My boyfriend, whom I met at camp, was waiting for me to graduate with a degree in studio art from Douglass College, and had found a free house in Narrowsburg. We fell into the publication of The River Reporter, and after 30 years of work and life experience that could be made into a epic film of survival by my now 26-year old film editor son, and following a house fire and the subsequent divorce that broke my heart, along with my refusal to quit, I found that my newspaper work was a community ministry.

Interestingly, there was be no abrupt change in my life with this discovery and my attendance in seminary, a vehicle to more fully inhabit my transformation into becoming a community minister. But though this awareness, I more clearly name my lie motivation and the place from which I want to speak and relate and that is, and has always been, from the heart and soul, encouraging myself and other to live their own authentic lives.

Understanding that we have a unique place in the world; understanding that at any point in our lives we can step into our potential, no matter what the circumstances, is the message that I bring to you today. As I mentioned, I was devastated by the ending of my first marriage and thought it a great failure. It was not my choice, at least not that I was aware of. And I was sad and grieving for what seemed to be a very long time. (In hindsight, it wasn’t nearly as long as I thought.) But what struck me about the experience when I began a relationship with my now husband, Stephen, is that it wasn’t flawed; it wasn’t tainted. It was new. I likened it to a soccer game where you got yourself kicked up and down the field. In the next game, it doesn’t matter that you lost the previous one; it matters that you utilize your experience. It matters that you were willing to go out onto that field and play with all that the gifts that the previous experience has given you.

We are what we are. We are uniquely ourselves. And before we close I want to sing with you another song and the words are:

The sky is blue, the grass is green, and the light is yellow.

We have our own paths. We are blue like the sky, green like the grass, or yellow like the light. We have our todays, our nows; we have our pasts, we have our dreams. We are our journeys, our accomplishments and our injuries. Some of us know our place in the world right from the beginning; some of us are late bloomers and understand our way only after we have gotten there.

And while we might make a 100 tacks, like the sailboat, and need to make additional corrections to take into account unexpected currents and waves or places we have misjudged the strength of the wind, we move forward, always having the opportunity to more fully inhabit our authentic selves.

The Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, who served as a direct link between the non-violent teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

May it be so.

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Damage, skin deep

You can imagine my chagrin when I looked out the window this morning and saw that there had been a pretty hefty looking frost. I don’t know what prompted me to rise and look out the window since I usually remain facing forward, propped up, nursing, for some 30 minutes, the cup of coffee that husband Stephen brings me on whatever schedule I ask for the night before.

However this morning, I looked out the window behind me, and the sight of the white grass got me out of bed, into my clothes and out, fondling the harvest of peppers, which were quite frozen -- or seemingly so.

What could I do? Done is done.

There would be no sense in complaining. There were no frost warnings: I had asked; Stephen had checked. The meteorologists had failed us. We had failed ourselves. The niggling thought that it was time to harvest everything had been preempted by whatever task I thought I needed to do, then.

The peppers were lost, plain and simple.

I returned to the garden with a basket to salvage what I could, thinking that if I roasted them right away, before they deteriorated into mush, they would still be worth something. Interestingly, while feeling frozen, there seemed to be no damage. Which is what turned out to be: the plants and fruit were totally covered in frozen water, but it had not permeated the surface. It was, as it were, not even skin deep.

Tonight, I collected the bounty of butternut squash and covered the remaining eggplants, parsley, peppers and tomatoes. I thought about how we can be injured skin deep. I thought about how we can be covered with frost, in our relationships, in our sluggish thinking. Yet, we sustain the harvest; we keep on our chosen path with a certain intensity and integrity. We, complete with the plants, ideals, projects, and gardens we foster, survive sudden freezing temperatures that fill the night air. We survive situations that encapsulate us and leave us, somehow, unaffected.

We persevere or maybe we’re just lucky.

Tonight, frost warnings or not, that which I did not harvest is protected from the chill.

May it be so in your life.

Friday, October 02, 2009

Thinking about enough, now

It is late in the afternoon by the time that I make it to Nathan's room at Wayne Woodlands. He doesn't know that I am coming and when I walk in, he is sitting on the edge of at bed drinking a glass of water. "Look who's here," he says rather cheerily."

"Yes, look who's here," I reply, and ask him how he is.

I have a lot of pain in my stomach, he replies.

It is the aftermath of surgery we agree and he asks me if it is alright if he lays back down. He wants me to help him slide his feet onto the bed and to cover him up. At first I am reluctant, thinking that he ought to be making his own way if he wants to get out of this rehabilitation center, but when I realize that this is an opportunity to have someone carefully help him back into bed, my stance softens a bit.

I ask him if he would like me to play my harp. He indicates it would be nice.

I play wordlessly for a while, his roommate inching closer in his wheelchair. Thinking that he is simply listening, I continue to play. When I finish the song, his roommate asks me if I would mind moving my chair so that he can get out. I am amazed at my self-centeredness and quickly make room for him to slowly pass. He apologizes for being so slow, and I stand and wait, encouraging him that he is maneuvering through a tight spot with great dexterity. I somehow think it best if I not assist him, although I do not ask if my assumption is correct.

When Nathan and I are alone I wonder what it is that he would like to hear and I create a four line chant based on the teaching of Eckhard Tolle, Nathan's hero and mentor.

I sing it over and over again. "This is all we have. This is all there is. There's no time but now. There's no place but here." Nathan closes his eyes and seems to be resting.

When I am done, and he seems to be sleeping, I tell him that I am leaving. He opens his eyes and asks me how the Fellowship is doing. I tell him, that it's just fine and inquire whether he liked my Tolle chant.

"Yes," he tells me.

I ask him whether it was comforting and he tells me, again, "yes."

I ask because I wonder. When lying in a bed, recovering from surgery, in pain, with the concept of recovery seemingly miles away, is it comforting to know that now is all we have, and where we are is all there is?

It is enough that someone visits, sings a song just for you, and then leaves?

And what is enough?