\nJuly 26, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know how I could get through all this without my regular spiritual practice.<\/p>\n
Prayer, communion with Nature, offerings to my Gods and ancestors: these things keep me connected to the Source of my strength. They keep me focused on who I am and who I want to be, no matter the circumstances.<\/p>\n
Spiritual practice isn\u2019t a panacea. It doesn\u2019t provide protection from Covid-19, and it doesn\u2019t make the isolation and limitations of social distancing any more pleasant. But the practices and the spiritual foundation they\u2019ve helped me build make it possible for me to carry on when it would be all too easy to give in to despair.<\/p>\n
Some of you have spiritual practices. Some of you do meditation, Lectio Divina, or any of numerous other spiritual and religious practices. We don\u2019t all do the same things, and that\u2019s fine. We\u2019re Unitarian Universalists \u2013 we\u2019re united not by common beliefs or even by common practices, but by shared values\u2026 especially a commitment to justice\u2026 especially justice for those for whom it has long been denied.<\/p>\n
This service is not a primer in Unitarian Universalism, nor is it an introduction to spiritual practice. If you\u2019re new to either one or both of these topics, I hope it will show you what\u2019s possible with consistent practice\u2026 if you choose.<\/p>\n
Rather, this service is geared toward those who do have a spiritual practice. You\u2019ve been doing something<\/em> for a while\u2026 maybe for a long while. Like me, your practice brings you stability and comfort. It\u2019s something familiar in a world where everything is new and different, and not in a good way. You would never consider giving it up, and I\u2019m the last person who would suggest you do.<\/p>\n But as good as that practice is, every now and then you get the urge, the desire, the call\u2026 for something even deeper. And this morning I want to talk about that call to greater spiritual depth.<\/p>\n To say I grew up in a stable home would be a massive understatement. My parents were married for almost 50 years. I lived in the same house until I left for college. I never changed schools except for promotions.<\/p>\n I wanted to get away from home, but that was ordinary teenage desire for independence. I\u2019ve never had wanderlust \u2013 I wanted to get away from home and build a new home the way I wanted it to be\u2026 and then stay there. When Cathy and I built our first house shortly after we got married, I thought that was exactly what I was going to do.<\/p>\n And then my job went away, starting a process that led to three cross-country moves in six years, eventually bringing me here in 2001.<\/p>\n I like stability. If a situation is good, my preference is to stay there and use it as a foundation for further growth, not to walk away because something else might be better \u2013 because that something else might be worse. But if I hadn\u2019t made all those cross-country moves \u2013 including two I really didn\u2019t want to make \u2013 my life would be so much less than it is, in every sense of the word.<\/p>\n What happens in our religious and spiritual lives is similar to what happens in our lives as a whole.<\/p>\n Most of us did not grow up UU. The same is true of my other religious identity as a Pagan. We discover something new \u2013 something that speaks to us. We start participating, we read books, we take classes\u2026 we serve on committees. There\u2019s a process of experience, practice, and contemplation that leads to integration. We stop telling people \u201cI go to the UU church\u201d and start saying \u201cI am a UU.\u201d<\/p>\n That sense of religious identity leads to stability. We\u2019re no longer \u201cseekers\u201d because we found what we were looking for all along\u2026 even if we didn\u2019t know what we wanted when we started looking. That stability is a good thing, even a necessary thing.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s a fine line between stability and stagnation. If you\u2019ve been doing the same things in the same way for a long time, perhaps it\u2019s time to take on something new.<\/p>\n This is the Eight of Cups in the Waite-Smith Tarot deck, first published in 1910.<\/p>\n For most of that 110 years it\u2019s been called the Rider-Waite deck<\/a>, named for Arthur Waite<\/a>, who conceptualized the deck, and the Rider company, who published it. That name ignored the work of artist Pamela Coleman Smith<\/a>, a British woman of color<\/a> who drew and painted the 78 cards. Waite and Smith were both members of the Golden Dawn \u2013 by far the most influential esoteric order of the late 19th<\/sup> and early 20th<\/sup> centuries \u2013 but only Waite got credit for this amazing work of spirituality. That\u2019s finally starting to change.<\/p>\n Some UUs are skeptical about the Tarot, but you need not believe anything mystical to see the meaning and wisdom in this artwork. The person in the card has turned their back on eight cups, symbols of emotional fulfillment. They\u2019re starting off on a new journey over difficult terrain into unknown territory.<\/p>\n Why would someone leave a good situation \u2013 a stable situation \u2013 to wander off into the unknown? Or as the title of this service asks, \u201cI like it here \u2013 why do I have to leave?\u201d<\/p>\n One reason you might leave a comfortable practice is that you need to grow, and growth requires a stimulus. You need to take on something else.<\/p>\n Perhaps you\u2019re knowledgeable and experienced enough that it\u2019s time for you to start teaching. On one hand, our wider society has the idea that religious and spiritual teachers need to be holy people, specially trained in a specific tradition. The UUA has a rigorous credentialing program for ordained ministers, and another program for religious educators. There\u2019s value in that.<\/p>\n On the other hand, there\u2019s the opposite idea that everybody\u2019s path is different and spirituality is something everybody has to do on their own, so nobody needs a teacher. Certainly we all have to do our own spiritual work.<\/p>\n But there are always times when we can learn something from someone who\u2019s been there and done that. And I can promise you that when you have the responsibility to teach someone else, you\u2019ll make sure you know the material as well as you can. Maybe it\u2019s time for you to take on the mantle of teaching, perhaps in our Religious Education program, or perhaps on your own.<\/p>\n Maybe you need to move into a leadership role. Again, some in our wider society have the idea that spirituality should be a completely egalitarian thing, that we should have no leaders. Those of us who\u2019ve spent any amount of time in an actual spiritual community know that without leaders, things tend to not get done. I\u2019m thankful for our Board and other lay leaders here at Denton UU.<\/p>\n At its core, spiritual leadership is about service: doing the sometimes hard and rarely glamourous work needed to facilitate religious community. It\u2019s serving on boards and committees. It\u2019s writing newsletters and answering e-mails. These days it\u2019s setting up Zoom calls and helping those with no computer experience or old technology to stay connected. It\u2019s doing all the things that somebody has to do and most people assume someone else will take care of.<\/p>\n Maybe it\u2019s time for you to take on a leadership role.<\/p>\n Or perhaps your call to greater spiritual depth is a call for more spiritual work.<\/p>\n Maybe this means more of what you\u2019re already doing. The greatest benefit in meditation and other spiritual practices is going from doing nothing to doing something, no matter how small. But we also benefit when we go from 5 minutes a day to 10 minutes, or from 10 minutes to 20. At some point the law of diminishing returns starts to take effect, but until you reach that point, perhaps you need to do more by literally doing more.<\/p>\n Or perhaps you need to add a new practice to your routine. Meditation, prayer, offerings, communion with Nature, devotional reading, singing, ancestor work, journaling\u2026 the list is long. Maybe you need to use this time of social distancing to develop your own monastic practices.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re trying to decide what to add, my suggestion is to add the one that most interests you, that seems like fun. If you pick something you like, you\u2019re more likely to stay with it, and consistent practice over time is where the benefits come from. That builds skills for when you need to take on a spiritual practice that\u2019s not so easy.<\/p>\n Teaching, leadership, longer practices, different practices \u2013 that call for more<\/em> that you\u2019re feeling may be answered with any of these responses.<\/p>\n For some of us, though, the call to spiritual depth is a call to re-examine our spiritual experiences, and what they mean for how we interact with the world.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been leading public Pagan rituals for 17 years. I\u2019ve been blogging for 12 years. My first book<\/a> came out three years ago. I write about what I do, which includes some first-hand religious and spiritual experiences that some people find\u2026 unlikely. Or even, impossible.<\/p>\n And yet, some of these very same skeptical people, in a private moment, will tell me things like \u201cI knew<\/em> this thing was going to happen and I had no way of knowing that.\u201d \u201cI saw something and I\u2019m sure it wasn\u2019t from this world.\u201d \u201cI had a conversation with my dead grandmother.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of us have at least one mystical experience that we can\u2019t explain. But our mainstream society tells us that people who see and hear things that others don\u2019t are mentally ill. Or they\u2019re under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Or they\u2019re lying \u201cto get attention.\u201d And so we rationalize our experiences away. Or worse, we tell ourselves they never happened.<\/p>\n A line from English literature says \u201conce all the land was full of fairies, but now no one can see them anymore.\u201d That was Geoffrey Chaucer, writing in the 14th<\/sup> century. In the early 20th century Walter Evans-Wentz collected stories of encounters with fairies in the Celtic countries. Most of his subjects were older people, since in his words \u201cyounger people pride themselves on their own exemption from \u2018superstition\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n In his book The Myth of Disenchantment<\/a><\/em>, Jason Josephson-Storm, Professor of Religion at Williams College in Massachusetts, provides ample historical evidence that it\u2019s always been this way. We all think our ancestors had all of these mystical experiences but now no one has them anymore. Meanwhile, our own mystical experiences become the \u201cgolden age\u201d for the next generation.<\/p>\n Maybe it\u2019s time to do something different.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/243\/2020\/07\/altar-07.26.20-2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI like stability<\/h2>\n
The process of religious depth<\/h2>\n
The Eight of Cups<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nWhy you need to leave<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nMoving into greater spiritual depth<\/h2>\n
Mystical experiences<\/h2>\n