And in all the celebration and joy, I nearly forgot that hate itself was not conquered, just quieted, in this place, so that loving became the louder sound.
But I know that elsewhere love still speaks quietly in dark places, I know that even in NY, hate can be loud as gunshots sometimes.
But we will celebrate, because love is powerful, and it overcame something so big I didn't think I would ever be able to see around it. So we celebrate. And we speak our pronouncements (I now pronounce you..) like incantations against the space/time when they could not be spoken. Or like little prayers to protect a small, sacred thing,. "I now pronounce you...." Like the way a new mother pronounces her baby's name for the first time. "Wife and Wife." "Husband and Husband." Amen.
I believe in love. I believe in love the way I believe in air, a soft thing I can't always sense, but a necessary thing without which there is just empty space between separate beings. I need love to connect it all, to be the fascia of the divine body, the substance that allows commerce between us. I believe that love must be there, at the bottom of everything, between two people, any two people, when the eyes are open and clear enough, I believe there must be love. Love being a kind of subtle recognition of a common thing. There must be that recognition. And dear God, let there be a common thing to recognize. There must be a unifying love. Or else I don't know anything at all.
Sometimes, when I hear old hate in this new time, it makes me feel like I don't know anything at all. How can you argue a simple thing? How can you explain that your body is fiber and marrow enough to be called a human body and that your spirit is full of God enough to love the God unfurled on your bedsheets?
I believe in love. I believe in celebrating love, after a long fight for love. And I know it is not over, not until our love is no longer a controversial thing. Not until our equality is a simple truth rather than a political stance. When our love can just be love, then we can fully lay down our sword and shield. But what has happened means something.
There used to be a mountain here.
In this place, in this time, we have worn it down.
So let's enjoy the soft sand we have made.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
A Short Sermon
I don’t have access to an ounce more wisdom or truth than you do. I don’t know what happens when we die, I don’t know why we are here, and I don’t know if anything matters. But sometimes things feel true, or sometimes I hear something that I really want to be true, and so I believe it. And maybe I stand up and talk about these things, the things that feel true to me. But I am not that certain. I just invested my life in a few beliefs that might give it meaning, and for the sake of my investment, for the sake of feeling like something more than an empty passing occurrence on this earth, I hold on to my beliefs. But I don’t really know. And that is why I am Interfaith, I believe in the equality of the beliefs we choose to give ourselves meaning. I believe in the equal ability of all people to access what truth is for themselves.
I don’t need to be here. You don’t need me here to tell you what my truth is. You have truth of your own, go find that and you stand here. My truth is equal to yours. You don’t need a stole, and if you do, you can borrow mine. A stole doesn’t make you a minister. If you want to be a minister, speak your truth and get out of the way for other people to find and speak theirs. The history of the world is not a one woman show. Each of us says a few things, does a few things then lets someone else take the stage. Speak what you believe, the real truth of yourself as clearly as you can, then make room. God(dess) speaks through everything. Me speaking my truth can only be useful to you if it helps you to find your own truth.
The thing about truth, when you hear real truth, you feel it, it clarifies things, it clears the fog out of the room and you are left there, seeing what is really there and what is really there is you. You recognize yourself in truth, you feel truth in your body, it feels like there is more room for you to live. I am trying to make room for all of myself, and for you, room for all the ugly and the beautiful parts of you.
We have felt contracted for too long. We have lived on ideals and shoulds for so long that we have forgotten ourselves. We have felt like we have had to be something or do something. We have to be good people, we have to give to charity, we have to love and forgive everyone. You don’t have to be or do anything that isn’t true to you, and as a minister, I don’t have to be or do anything that isn’t true to me. I do not love everyone, it is hard for me to love even myself sometimes, I hold grudges and I give grudgingly. That’s my truth. You can judge me, but you will be judging yourself too because I know I am not the only one.
I just made room for that in me, and I am making room for that in you. I believe we have practiced so long at believing what isn’t there, at having faith in the unseen that we forgot to see and accept what is right in front of us, or in our bodies. Truth lets us make room for ourselves and when we make room for ourselves we make room for others too. Before you believe in the God that isn’t there, look for the God that is; the God of your body and the God manifesting as the person beside you. Close the bible and listen to the God reveling herself through another’s truth. Speak your truth like scripture. Your truth is equal to the truth that anyone has ever said or written. Your truth can set us free as much as the truth of Jesus or the Buddha. But don’t find the truth for us, find your truth for yourself.
We don’t need to learn something from someone else to survive. We have access to everything we need to know. We don’t need anyone else to tell us what is true, we know truth when we feel it. And when we have some truth, well that’s a gift that you can choose to share or keep to yourself. You don’t owe your truth to anybody, and you don’t need to hide your truth from anybody. I choose now to share my truth and pray that this truth leads forward the discovery and revelation of still more truth in each of you.
Let it be. Amen.
What is your name?
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.
-Howard Thurman
Tonight, I am thinking about the sacred dreams for our lives that we hold close to our chests like newborn babies.
The ones that take courage to name.
Tell me the name of your dream. Come in close, whisper it to me. I will guard it like a little flame on a candle. I will offer you handfuls of kindling.
There is a thing uncrafted, a way not made, a wild unwritten thing I feel the aching loss of, and I think you know the thing. The thing we are missing, the thing that could make us all a little more whole inside.
I was raise on stories of things undone. Of time that moved too fast and circumstances that wore down at the life we had in mind, like the water that wears at rocks. Sister brother, I know the sound of your cannots, cannot was my first language. My first response to anything was a good reason for nothing. And I spoke fluently for years. I am ready to hear the names of things I have not heard. I am even now learning to speak the name of a thing myself.
I want to know the truth of you. Tell me who you were and what you did in that dream you didn't want to wake up from. Tell me the youness of you when you are proud. And I want to tell you the truth of me too. I want to be known. I want to be manifested like a revelation. And not just my hope for my life, it's bigger than that, it's my ((I am)) that I want to be known for.
There is a reason that God calls Him/Herself "I am." It's the most powerful thing we can say. It is the act of choosing to manifest yourself. It is ratifying the moment of your birth. It was the impulse to be that was so loud it made a Bang that made the whole universe. I see you there. What a miracle you are. Tell me your name and mean it.
According to hadith, God said "I was a hidden treasure, and I wished to be known, so I created a creation, then made Myself known to them, and they recognized Me."
I recognize something in you.
The divine impulse behind creation is the desire to be known. Everything in existence is God manifesting Her/Himself so that She/He might know Herself fully, in all the forms She could make. This is God playing out Her full potential. God learning about what She can be.
In Hinduism, there is the concept of Lila, God-play- the belief that everything in existence is just God playing.
The world is to be enjoyed. We are here to learn about our true nature, to manifest ourselves beautifully into anything we want to be. To be known, and to be loved by those who know, and to love the ones brave and trusting enough to be known by us. And not with solemnity, but with playfulness. All of this, somehow, is for the fun of it.We are here for the mere pleasure of being here. In this form, in this way, for a time, until we find ourselves expressing differently.
Getting to know someone is divine work. Letting yourself be seen is sacred. And behind and under it is that primal fear and anxiety- what if there isn't anything interesting to know, what if who I truly am is unlovable, what if I am not enough, as I am. Friend, you are everything, made perfectly. You are full of God. You are sacred as you are. Everything in the universe is enfolded in you. Be brave, have faith in the vastness of your being, and learn about your nature in everything you see. All God Godding. All You Youing. It is sufficient. It is enough.
So there's God, opening Her feathers like a peacock at a cocktail party, and here we are trying to contain our vastness in the little cavern of our bodies. There is a reason for the pressure pushing out of your chest, God is calling something into existence in you, through you. And sweet one, you are watching that television or blogging till dawn just to drown out the impulse to come alive, but coming alive is your nature, it is the desire imprinted in every atom of that sacred body of yours. And it is exhausting not to. As hard as the thing you are called to do may seem, stopping it from happening is harder.
Have you ever felt the easiness of being in the right place? Have you ever experienced the world making way for you? Everything coming into position to support you? I wish that for you. I believe you being you more fully will be easy. I believe you will feel everything get softer around you, maybe not all at once, maybe it will take a little time, but then you will realize, effortlessness. It is the gift that God gives to a piece of God that is riding the wave, in the flow, accepting itself.
But as it stands, there is a thing uncrafted, a way not made, a wild unwritten thing I have not read and I feel the yawning space of it. You have a piece, and we can't be whole without you. God broke Herself into pieces to see the shapes, to feel the pleasure of breaking open, to see what's inside. And you sister, you brother, are a piece. A piece of God that only you can manifest. And we are missing you. We are looking everywhere. Though you may not know it, though we may not know it, but I know. We are saving your place.
-Howard Thurman
Tonight, I am thinking about the sacred dreams for our lives that we hold close to our chests like newborn babies.
The ones that take courage to name.
Tell me the name of your dream. Come in close, whisper it to me. I will guard it like a little flame on a candle. I will offer you handfuls of kindling.
There is a thing uncrafted, a way not made, a wild unwritten thing I feel the aching loss of, and I think you know the thing. The thing we are missing, the thing that could make us all a little more whole inside.
I was raise on stories of things undone. Of time that moved too fast and circumstances that wore down at the life we had in mind, like the water that wears at rocks. Sister brother, I know the sound of your cannots, cannot was my first language. My first response to anything was a good reason for nothing. And I spoke fluently for years. I am ready to hear the names of things I have not heard. I am even now learning to speak the name of a thing myself.
I want to know the truth of you. Tell me who you were and what you did in that dream you didn't want to wake up from. Tell me the youness of you when you are proud. And I want to tell you the truth of me too. I want to be known. I want to be manifested like a revelation. And not just my hope for my life, it's bigger than that, it's my ((I am)) that I want to be known for.
There is a reason that God calls Him/Herself "I am." It's the most powerful thing we can say. It is the act of choosing to manifest yourself. It is ratifying the moment of your birth. It was the impulse to be that was so loud it made a Bang that made the whole universe. I see you there. What a miracle you are. Tell me your name and mean it.
According to hadith, God said "I was a hidden treasure, and I wished to be known, so I created a creation, then made Myself known to them, and they recognized Me."
I recognize something in you.
The divine impulse behind creation is the desire to be known. Everything in existence is God manifesting Her/Himself so that She/He might know Herself fully, in all the forms She could make. This is God playing out Her full potential. God learning about what She can be.
In Hinduism, there is the concept of Lila, God-play- the belief that everything in existence is just God playing.
The world is to be enjoyed. We are here to learn about our true nature, to manifest ourselves beautifully into anything we want to be. To be known, and to be loved by those who know, and to love the ones brave and trusting enough to be known by us. And not with solemnity, but with playfulness. All of this, somehow, is for the fun of it.We are here for the mere pleasure of being here. In this form, in this way, for a time, until we find ourselves expressing differently.
Getting to know someone is divine work. Letting yourself be seen is sacred. And behind and under it is that primal fear and anxiety- what if there isn't anything interesting to know, what if who I truly am is unlovable, what if I am not enough, as I am. Friend, you are everything, made perfectly. You are full of God. You are sacred as you are. Everything in the universe is enfolded in you. Be brave, have faith in the vastness of your being, and learn about your nature in everything you see. All God Godding. All You Youing. It is sufficient. It is enough.
So there's God, opening Her feathers like a peacock at a cocktail party, and here we are trying to contain our vastness in the little cavern of our bodies. There is a reason for the pressure pushing out of your chest, God is calling something into existence in you, through you. And sweet one, you are watching that television or blogging till dawn just to drown out the impulse to come alive, but coming alive is your nature, it is the desire imprinted in every atom of that sacred body of yours. And it is exhausting not to. As hard as the thing you are called to do may seem, stopping it from happening is harder.
Have you ever felt the easiness of being in the right place? Have you ever experienced the world making way for you? Everything coming into position to support you? I wish that for you. I believe you being you more fully will be easy. I believe you will feel everything get softer around you, maybe not all at once, maybe it will take a little time, but then you will realize, effortlessness. It is the gift that God gives to a piece of God that is riding the wave, in the flow, accepting itself.
But as it stands, there is a thing uncrafted, a way not made, a wild unwritten thing I have not read and I feel the yawning space of it. You have a piece, and we can't be whole without you. God broke Herself into pieces to see the shapes, to feel the pleasure of breaking open, to see what's inside. And you sister, you brother, are a piece. A piece of God that only you can manifest. And we are missing you. We are looking everywhere. Though you may not know it, though we may not know it, but I know. We are saving your place.
Life
Being a minister in the world is a strange thing. This week, I have written a Baby Blessing for my baby cousin, a Memorial Service for my Uncle, and a Wedding for a wonderful couple I met only a few days ago. As a minister, the grand events of life get juxtaposed in such a way that it can sometimes leave you speechless. What can you say to a child newly born, after writing a memorial for a man that died too young? It's hard to honor life as your life's work. How can there be professional distance when I am so implicated in all of it? There is always a part of a minister that gets married along with every couple, is reborn with every baby blessing, and comes to rest beside every casket. And so, this blog, although it is a professional blog, will also be personal. I celebrate and mourn with you. I walk with you, by your side.
Today I took my cat, Winter, out for some sun. And I took the baby blessing I was working on and sat with the intention of convincing a little baby that this world was the place to be. I wanted to tell her that this world is endlessly beautiful, and I believe it is, a lot of the time. And I wanted to tell her she would be surrounded by love all the days of her life. And God, I hope so. And this is how it goes, I write a sentence then pray for it to be true.
Just then I saw my little cat dart out of sight. I run over and find her furiously searching for something. Finally she catches some desperately squeaking thing in her teeth. I come to the center of my being, a kind of deep clarity comes over me, I feel I am witnessing some moment outside of speech and time- the moment that something dies. The moment that God plays out God's plan, or acts out Her own dark nature. The moment that a dark natural thing forcibly stops you from ignoring or forgetting its presence. And my cat seems to swagger or sashay, expressing her primal instinct to be proud of a freshly bleeding thing between her teeth. And I feel some kind of wisdom in it, in her so called senseless hunt. A wisdom that doesn't make sense to me but feels unquestionably true and therefore leaves me silent. There is wisdom in ferocity. I can't always understand, but I know when to be silent. I know when something vast and sacred is seeping out of a little furry thing now lying on the pavement. I know there is nothing to do but witness and wait. For a moment, I thought myself a hero, I thought myself very noble and considered ending its suffering. Me, the vegetarian, considering offering a lethal blow to what looked like an adorable little pointy nosed mouse. (Google, God(dess)'s manifestation of her all-knowingness, tells me it was a baby mole.) Me, Carri, Carolyn, Rev. Carolyn, the one who just yesterday, for the first time in her life, made an attempt to wack a bug, (a mosquito that has been feeding on her nightly), but intentionally missed, then promptly felt bad about even considering the venture and apologized to the alive and well bug intermittently for the succeeding half hour. So it was this courageous huntress who was consider finishing the job. After spinning around in place a few times, it became apparent that I was not the kind of person who "handled things" as the mosquito in my room can attest. And I decided instead, I was the kind of person who witnessed and honored and prayed,which I suspect is why I became a minister, rather than a marine. So I stretched out my hands over the little animal in the place that my cat had laid it. And I started offering it reiki energy. If I could not facilitate its healing, I prayed to facilitate its peaceful passing. Shortly, the little heaves of dying stopped and the sweet little one came to rest, as my cat and I looked on with reverence. My cat understood the game had ended, and regarded its ending with watchful and gentle silence. There is something primal about honoring death. So there laid this little baby animal, at rest. And I took my cat indoors, and I was still confused by how she could hold such gentleness and sweetness beside her senseless violence.
And so, in the middle of writing a Baby Blessing, I paused to create a funeral. I dug a hole beneath a tree, and laid the body down in it. I directed divine light to it, and cried, and prayed that it felt peace and love, and cried, and recited a poem from memory and cried. There is never a last final perfect thing to say. There is nothing one could say that would make one ready to cover over a little grave. So I cobbled together some feeble, well-intended words and resigned myself to the smallness of myself in the vastness of the thing that just happened and keeps happening, everywhere. As a minister, sometimes I feel like I am throwing words into vast dark spaces, as if the spaces are listening, as if I can make them brighter with my speaking. The truth is, there isn't anything I could have said that was more true and more loving than the attentive silence I offered at the moment of its passing. Attentive silence means so much. So I covered over the little grave and placed a freshly cut flower on it. I believe in marking the place, I believe in saying, the body of a once living thing rests here, no matter how small it is. I believe in honoring life.
And so I come indoors, and finish writing a baby blessing. Telling a baby about the beauty of the world. Not about its fairness, or its comprehensibility, but about its beauty, about God(dess) manifesting as the people around her. God(dess) manifesting as her. And I pray silently, in between the lines, that the God that manifests is a gentle one, a loving one, not the one that rummages through dead leaves looking for a living thing, but the one that snuggles beside you at night, and nuzzles you awake at dawn. I pray for softness for her, and for all of us. I pray for gentleness, and kindness. Beneath it all, I pray for attentive silence. Silence in which we can manifest ourselves, vulnerably, softly. Silence in which we can speak the best that we know and pray that it is true. Thank you for the silence of this blank space in which I can write. I pray it brings us peace.
Today I took my cat, Winter, out for some sun. And I took the baby blessing I was working on and sat with the intention of convincing a little baby that this world was the place to be. I wanted to tell her that this world is endlessly beautiful, and I believe it is, a lot of the time. And I wanted to tell her she would be surrounded by love all the days of her life. And God, I hope so. And this is how it goes, I write a sentence then pray for it to be true.
Just then I saw my little cat dart out of sight. I run over and find her furiously searching for something. Finally she catches some desperately squeaking thing in her teeth. I come to the center of my being, a kind of deep clarity comes over me, I feel I am witnessing some moment outside of speech and time- the moment that something dies. The moment that God plays out God's plan, or acts out Her own dark nature. The moment that a dark natural thing forcibly stops you from ignoring or forgetting its presence. And my cat seems to swagger or sashay, expressing her primal instinct to be proud of a freshly bleeding thing between her teeth. And I feel some kind of wisdom in it, in her so called senseless hunt. A wisdom that doesn't make sense to me but feels unquestionably true and therefore leaves me silent. There is wisdom in ferocity. I can't always understand, but I know when to be silent. I know when something vast and sacred is seeping out of a little furry thing now lying on the pavement. I know there is nothing to do but witness and wait. For a moment, I thought myself a hero, I thought myself very noble and considered ending its suffering. Me, the vegetarian, considering offering a lethal blow to what looked like an adorable little pointy nosed mouse. (Google, God(dess)'s manifestation of her all-knowingness, tells me it was a baby mole.) Me, Carri, Carolyn, Rev. Carolyn, the one who just yesterday, for the first time in her life, made an attempt to wack a bug, (a mosquito that has been feeding on her nightly), but intentionally missed, then promptly felt bad about even considering the venture and apologized to the alive and well bug intermittently for the succeeding half hour. So it was this courageous huntress who was consider finishing the job. After spinning around in place a few times, it became apparent that I was not the kind of person who "handled things" as the mosquito in my room can attest. And I decided instead, I was the kind of person who witnessed and honored and prayed,which I suspect is why I became a minister, rather than a marine. So I stretched out my hands over the little animal in the place that my cat had laid it. And I started offering it reiki energy. If I could not facilitate its healing, I prayed to facilitate its peaceful passing. Shortly, the little heaves of dying stopped and the sweet little one came to rest, as my cat and I looked on with reverence. My cat understood the game had ended, and regarded its ending with watchful and gentle silence. There is something primal about honoring death. So there laid this little baby animal, at rest. And I took my cat indoors, and I was still confused by how she could hold such gentleness and sweetness beside her senseless violence.
And so, in the middle of writing a Baby Blessing, I paused to create a funeral. I dug a hole beneath a tree, and laid the body down in it. I directed divine light to it, and cried, and prayed that it felt peace and love, and cried, and recited a poem from memory and cried. There is never a last final perfect thing to say. There is nothing one could say that would make one ready to cover over a little grave. So I cobbled together some feeble, well-intended words and resigned myself to the smallness of myself in the vastness of the thing that just happened and keeps happening, everywhere. As a minister, sometimes I feel like I am throwing words into vast dark spaces, as if the spaces are listening, as if I can make them brighter with my speaking. The truth is, there isn't anything I could have said that was more true and more loving than the attentive silence I offered at the moment of its passing. Attentive silence means so much. So I covered over the little grave and placed a freshly cut flower on it. I believe in marking the place, I believe in saying, the body of a once living thing rests here, no matter how small it is. I believe in honoring life.
And so I come indoors, and finish writing a baby blessing. Telling a baby about the beauty of the world. Not about its fairness, or its comprehensibility, but about its beauty, about God(dess) manifesting as the people around her. God(dess) manifesting as her. And I pray silently, in between the lines, that the God that manifests is a gentle one, a loving one, not the one that rummages through dead leaves looking for a living thing, but the one that snuggles beside you at night, and nuzzles you awake at dawn. I pray for softness for her, and for all of us. I pray for gentleness, and kindness. Beneath it all, I pray for attentive silence. Silence in which we can manifest ourselves, vulnerably, softly. Silence in which we can speak the best that we know and pray that it is true. Thank you for the silence of this blank space in which I can write. I pray it brings us peace.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Same-sex couples marry for free!
To reserve a time for your 15-minute ceremony please contact Rev. Annie (revannielawrence@gmail.com, 917-620-6307) or Rev. Will (revwillmercer@gmail.com, 646-753-2959).
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