Earning Easter

My stepfather, now a deeply committed Unitarian Universalist, was raised Catholic.

And not just casually going through the motions Christmas and Easter Catholic, but practicing, every week, went to a Catholic Boys Choir School, observe Lent kind of Catholic.

And as an aspiring novice sinner in his youth, he had little to give up during Lent, so he and his siblings were forced to give up sweets.

And this giving up of the sweets for Lent was huge for him.

Not because he so loved candy, but rather because by some cruel trick of fate, his birthday came smack dab in the midst of this time of spiritual focus and denial.

Though his family was never big on birthdays, often giving him socks and underwear, still there is something so tragic about a little boy seeing his birthday come and go with some carrot cake with no icing or zucchini bread with a lone sad candle signifying its transformation into cake.

 

As a lifelong Unitarian Universalist I have been long fascinated by Lent, by this time when so many of our Christian co-religionists observe this time of spiritual focus, of self denial, of preparation for Easter.

And that's part of why I have always been fascinated. Because we UUs love us some Easter.

We hold a vastness of theological beliefs, we have all kinds of spiritual paths and practices within this spiritual home, many of us don't consider ourselves Christians, but Easter Sunday is carved in stone in our liturgical calendar and we love it.

I love it.

I love the celebration of renewal and rebirth, I love the bunnies and the chocolate, the flowers and the dresses, all the pageant and promise...

And... I find myself this year missing Lent.

Because for me Lent is a reminder to go deep into the uncharted waters, to dig down and face the rich and sometimes terrifying darknesses which lurk within, to do the spiritual work which is before us.

And this is the path of Unitarian Univeralism, this is the path of our chosen faith, to transform ourselves and this world around us.

And not to transform ourselves for the sake of vanity or habit, not to transform ourselves to fit into someone else's preconceived notion of what goodness is, or what holiness is, but in a very practical way, to transform ourselves, to grow ourselves so that we can be ready when life calls on us. So that we can be ready when the going gets tough.

And it seems like it does get tough now and again. And again and again.

 

Twenty years ago, the mother of one of my best friends was at an ATM machine.

While she was making a withdrawal, someone came up behind her, and ordered her to take out more money, and not to make a move or struggle.

He then kidnapped her and took her to another ATM where he tried to force her to get still more money out. My friend's mom struggled and tried to break free.

She was stabbed and left there to die. She was found the next morning.

The loss, of course, tore across my friend's family.

Each of her two siblings wrestled in different ways.

As the murder was random, the police had no leads.

Her murderer was not found.

And so the family was left to make its way, to go on with their lives dealing with this loss.

I first met my friend years later at a conference on creativity and spirituality.

I knew when I first met her that she was a person of great depth and wisdom. She has been a thirsty spiritual seeker for some time. When we first met we were both studying with the same teachers, and you could tell that she had done some deep wrestling.

As we grew close, I heard of the story of her mother's murder, and how her process of grieving and healing helped shape her.

After a few years we began offering workshops together, leading large groups through spiritual practice and community building seminars.

Together we taught about the power of love, about practices of meditation, about compassion and the lessons that life tries to teach you over and over.

Over the years as we worked together I saw her blossom into even deeper knowing.

She is a wise woman.

Thoroughly human and flawed and all the rest, but wise.

 

Last year she got a call saying that her mother's murderer had been found.

He had been in prison for another crime, and had confessed that he had been that man at the ATM.

So much came rushing back in.

So many feelings. Rage and sadness and confusion.

My friend and her sister went to the first trial, went to see the man who had forever changed their lives.

I traveled to be with them, to give them whatever love and support I could.

She said that when she saw him that day she was moved.

She still felt the whole host of feelings, the anger and rage, the loss of her mother, she felt the total of all that had been taken from her.

But seeing him, she also felt compassion for him.

She could see and feel the circumstances which brought him to that ATM that night. He had witnessed his father kill his mother when he was three. He was raised in poverty with no opportunity.

Seeing him there that day, something opened in her.

He had confessed, and so there was to be another date set for sentencing.

They knew that he was going to be put to death.

Having seen him, having opened her heart to this man, my friend could not in good conscience be party to his death.

She talked to her siblings and together they agreed to appeal for his life, to ask that his life be spared. They knew that their mother wouldn't have wanted him to die, and that neither did they, no matter what he had done.

Months passed, and when the day finally came for the man to be sentenced, my friend and her partner and her sister all came to the court for the sentencing.

The family was invited to say some words, and both she and her sister had written something.

Her sister went first and told of the woman that their mom was.

As it turned out she was a lawyer, and she had devoted her life to working with Juvenile offenders, people just like the man who ended up taking her life.

She spoke of how her mother's murder forever changed her life. Of how she dealt with it as a teenager, and how she deals with it now, of how she misses her.

It was hard for her to get through it. And she collapsed in tears when it was through.

And then my friend spoke.

And she said that we are not our actions, that we are more than our behaviors.

That we know that with children. We don't look at the actions of a child and condemn them forever, rather, we help them learn and grow.

She spoke of what she learned about death through her mother's murder, how she had felt her clearly long after her death, how through this she knew that we are more than this life, more than this flesh and this bone.

And then she turned to her mother's murderer and offered him a prayer.

She prayed that he grow in this life, that he takes the time he has and that he does the work before him. She told him that he has an essence, that he has a core of goodness, no matter what he has done.

By the end, she too was in tears and then the judge asked if the accused had anything he wanted to say.

He rose to his feet and he spoke.

He said "You know people say I don't feel, that I don't have feelings, but even though you don't see me crying, I have a river of tears inside.

I don't think I could do what you all are doing if I was you. But I am grateful."

He said that not a day goes by that he doesn't think of what he did. He said that he also feels her, this woman he killed, that at times he has felt like she was even watching over him.

After he was done the judge said that he had never seen anything like this. Usually, he said, the family doesn't come, and when they do, they rarely speak.

He said that he had known the mother and that her death was felt even still by many. He said that he believed that the man's sorrow and regret were genuine.

The man was given life, and everyone left.

I saw them later that day and they were just beaming that exhausted beautiful beaming of good, hard work well done.

I saw in my friend then, the living of her spiritual work, the embodying of her truth.

 

It is one thing to affirm belief, one thing to say that we believe that all people are good, that we, even, are fundamentally good, but quite another to practice it, to be it and remember it when we are up against the wall.

Our spiritual lives are not some abstraction. We are not seeking some far off cloud-filled gilded goal, unless you are and we can support you in that, but the point of our common strivings is...

How does this help me live a life of transformational wholeness right here and now.

Ours is an embodied faith. It is about our lives as we live them for the other six days, about the many stories we hold and how they help shape and grow the story of our world.

 

In her book, "Drinking, A Love Story", Caroline Knapp tells of her journey with alcoholism.

She is a successful writer in New England and her alcoholism slowly starts eroding her entire life. It affects all her relationships, and through the course of the book you watch her life fall apart.

As with so many held tight in the grip of addiction it seems like there is no way out.

It seems like she is irrevocably far away from the person she wants to be.

Health and wholeness seem so far.

But as so many do,
As we all can do,
She gets there.

After she has been through rehab she writes,

"Better. The word seems thin, even a little deceptive. Sobriety is less about "getting better" in a clear linear sense than it is about subjecting yourself to change, to the inevitable ups and downs, fears and feelings, victories and failures, that accompany growth. You do get better, but that happens almost by default, by the simple act of being present in your own life." ¹

Part of what happens in addiction is that this growth, these ups and downs are pushed away, are deadened by the drink, or drugs or work, or whatever it is we cling to or crave.

So much of the unraveling, so much of the healing and reclamation of life and being is in simply being there, showing up for the fullness of life, opening to it, being willing to be changed.

The spiritual practice of recovery, she says, slowly makes you more and more able to be there, for even the very hard things that happen.

Things which would have compelled you to drink or to use, things which would have pushed you to escape or shut down, these ups and downs of life, you simply experience.

You are there for so many feelings you might have even forgotten you had.

Knapp writes, "In my third month of sobriety, my family buried my mothers ashes, underneath a cherry tree. We dug a hole, poured the ashes in, then filled the hole and covered the spot with things she would have liked: a ring of white stones from the beach, a circle of dark, smooth stones inside that, some feathers and bits of sea glass. Later after we all had gone indoors, I slipped back outside by myself.

Many AA groups give out chips for people in their first year, a way of marking different lengths of sobriety. They look like poker chips... I had my two month chip in my pocket, and I took it out and slid it under one of the rocks on the gravesite.

I felt tremendous sorrow in that act, in the accompanying acknowledgement that she'd never get to see me in sobriety, that we'd never experience a different, richer sort of relationship. But I wanted to send her a message of some kind, to tell her I was okay, and standing there alone, I had the feeling she knew." ²

She didn't drink that day.

Her practice, her experience of recovery opened her to the feelings which came flooding in. Feelings which might have crushed her in another time.

And that's all that we are asked.

To open.

Over and over again to the fullness of life.

To dig down, to go into the uncharted waters of our depths.

And to learn what can be known, and live what we learn.

 

May we be so holy and so bold.

May our practice of religion, our practice of spirit be one of full living.

So that when we are called by tragedy, when we are pushed by the flow of life into circumstances which just might break us...

That we rise.

That our actions,
That our living,
Embody our truth.

 

Amen

 ♦