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The Great
Adventure: Habits for the Journey
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The
Rev. Naomi King
River of Grass Unitarian
Universalist Congregation
Plantation, Florida
May 4,
2008
©
2008
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One way to understand who we are and what
we are doing here is to recognize that we are a band of merry spiritual
adventurers. We see life as a grand adventure, with great values and
great promises. The purpose of religious education in this adventure is
to equip us with stories of our faith that inspire and encourage and
with the many habitual practices we will need to engage this journey.
We gathered here today to say to our young people, “Pause, look back in
wonder. We are thrilled for you. We love you. Go on now, we have your
back.” Then we say, “Now, go forward, in wonder, on your grand
adventure, with these tools and these symbols of our life and practice
together. Know that this is still your base camp, and we want you to go
out on these spiritual journeys, tasting and seeing and experiencing
what life is calling to you for.” You’ll have text messages from us
along the way, and encounter other Unitarian Universalist communities
as you grow and change and develop your own adult community.
The
questions and the technology brought by those who are coming into young
adulthood today are challenging all of us: a demand for greater
authenticity, more privacy and a stronger sense of interconnection (you
know, my space and ours), an expectation of sustainability and green
practices, having global connections living in a 24/7 world.[i]
You are already adventurers, equipped with cell phone, iPod™, a
FaceBook™ profile, a multitude of ways of connecting and exploring with
the poetry and majesty of life. You have more tools in this spiritual
generation than any that has come before you. In innovating with them
and sharing that with others, you teach all of us about being in this
fragile, enormous interconnected web of being, while not losing track
of our individual uniqueness. We covenant with you, to turn our hearts
together in our continuous development and growth in body and spirit,
companions forever. But we cannot keep this covenant if we do not
develop the habits necessary to being spiritual adventurers, to keeping
our hearts and minds open. We are required to change, and that means
following those six stages of change:
1. Precontemplation
(everyone else is wrong);
2.
contemplation (perhaps there’s something I need to do here);
3.
preparation (if there is, I need the perfect plan);
4.
action (embarking on the journey);
5.
habituation (developing the habits that keep the healing changes in
place);
6.
termination (THE END).[ii]
How do we
pursue these stages of change? How do we reorient toward the adventure?
How do we not become simply overwhelmed by the day-to-day, the losses,
the disappointments, the anger, the fear, the ennui? We clear a space,
by awakening laughter, shifting perspective, stimulating our
imaginations, generating creativity. But how can we do that, on demand,
without external chemical assistance?
This is
especially difficult for me when I’m waiting, when I’m in a space where
I have no clear destination or movement or plan to get there. I’ve
taken action – remember that is the fourth stage of change – and
accepted that sometimes we have to act without the perfect plan, like
the Hebrew people rising up out of slavery and fleeing mitzrayim. But I
haven’t yet developed the practices that allow this action to continue
habitually. I’m in danger of going back into mitzrayim – maybe not
actually returning to Egypt, but definitely in danger of losing the
initial clarity of purpose and energy from the commencement of the
adventure. Even if you do not think this will ever happen to you, I
hope you will listen, because it will happen to someone you know and
this will make you a better friend or family member.
Now that
we are in the period of Omer, of counting the forty-nine days while
waiting for receiving spiritual principles from Mount Sinai – except in
that waiting we don’t know that’s what we’re waiting for, we can
remember this truth of human nature: most of us do not take waiting
well (Exodus 16, 32). How many of us like to wait without any clear
idea of how long? How many of us feel completely at ease about how long
our Sunday service may be? Or how long the economy will pursue this
current track? Or how much time elapses before you hear from someone
you deeply love? Uh-huh. An ease with waiting in this grand adventure
of life is not part of human nature without significant work on our
part. When we’re on an adventure, we want to be on our way! And so we
lose sight of the adventure happening right that minute: of the
unfolding flower, of the taste of the orange, of the music of our
heartbeat, of the mystery of the world living without us at the centre
of it. Waiting, as part of the spiritual adventure is a practice to
return us in joyful creativity to the present moment.
If we
can’t entertain the creative approach long enough to engage the
adventure, we don’t keep learning. The adventure ends. Then we
experience what is called a spiritual crisis. That is when we most need
each other, a religious community. But do yourselves a favor; develop
the habit of staying connected to a religious community, of
continuously revitalizing yourself through relationships that matter,
through and teaching and learning about this grand adventure, based on
your experiences.
Educare,
the root of education, means “to lead out of”, and the basic work of
religious education is to lead out of life’s challenges and wonders and
what we each have learned from engaging those. We cannot teach what we
have not learned. During the period of waiting for Moses to return, the
Hebrew people had no lived experience with the openness of the day
(Exodus 32). Everything had always been scheduled for them. They were
told what to do, when to wake, when to sleep, how to be in every way
shape and form scheduled and overscheduled by the Egyptians. Sound
familiar? Freedom meant having to learn how to live without that
external scheduling and demands, with discovering how to initiate and
maintain relationships, with making their own meaning from their own
day, and in developing the practices that would keep them on the
journey they valued and not losing their lives to things and practices
they did not really value. There were mistakes. New practices developed
in response to those. The story was passed on, taught, from the
experiences. This is about cultivating the habits that reorient
our hearts to the mystery and wonder of or grand adventure together.
One of
the most important ways we teach from our own lives is when we utilize
humor to regain our grip on this life adventure. A spiritually
grounded, healthy humor opens the heart and reorients us toward the
adventure and our highest values. It is something frequently taught to
us by our mentors. Dr. Dorothy Height, a great educator in the history
of our country, describes an incident from her mentor, Mary McCloud
Bethune. You may be familiar with Bethune-Cookman University up the
coast in Daytona. Originally Mrs. Bethune opened that school in 1904 to
provide a place of higher education for African American women. Like
Horace Mann, Mrs. Bethune saw education as the preventive reform –
creating opportunities to change lives with positive rewards, not
disincentives. Dr. Height says one of the things she learned from
Mrs. Bethune was that, “A sense of humor is extremely important. It
helps you separate the things that are personal from the things that
are not – and Mrs. Bethune had a great sense of humor. One time she was
on a train in the dark days of segregation and the white conductor came
through. He opened the door and said, ‘Auntie, do you have your
ticket?’ She responded, ‘And which of my sister’s sons are
you?”[iii] Separating out what is person from what is not is the
beginning of reorienting ourselves to the person – not the symbol –
that is in front of us, of reclaiming humanity for both and beginning
this first practice of dialogue. Humor can give us that space, if not
in that moment, then in the next.
We all
struggle against descending into mitzrayim at some point in our lives –
often at more than one point -- to stay present to the mystery and
adventure of life, further sending us out of the action stage and
regressing into the unhealthful, anti-spiritual habits we have picked
up over time. We can become lost in the surge of boredom or rage or
depression or grief. That’s when we most need a creative boost to
create the space to reorient our hearts to this grand adventure.
Now, I
use every tool I can to create the conditions for me to return to the
creative space. So today, I use my iPhone™ to carry three nearly
instant trips into laughter and creativity for me. One is an
advertisement, two of them are mini animated films. What they share is
engaging in the use of laughter to create a sense of openness, of new
perspectives, of new possibilities. The person who taught me to use
these little pieces of laughter was a spiritual teacher – also a
spiritual co-journeyer and adventurer. We teach what we learn. The
double reward is not only do we continue to learn – and the joy of
that! – but that we can then be of use and connection with another
person in teaching what we have learned. Using these to laugh and
jostle my perspective is the second of six habits that undergird
lifelong religious education: interpersonal perspective-taking, or
stepping into someone else’s shoes.[iv]
That
double reward is important, and sometimes we don’t pause long enough to
consider it in our lives. The double reward is not only do we continue
to learn – and the joy of that! – but that we can then be of use and
connection with another person in teaching what we have learned. The
Rev. Giles Bailey wrote in 1871, in The Sunday School Helper, a
Universalist magazine for religious educators, “The successful Sunday
school teacher, like the successful teacher in any school is so,
because he is himself a diligent student in the things he teaches…The
teacher, then, while instructing others, is instructing
himself.”[v] We share the habits we learn that allow us to stay
present to the mystery and wonder of this life, that keep our hearts
open and turned toward this greater destination, these higher resolves
we share.
Think
back on a relationship you’ve had with someone you would consider your
mentor or a spiritual teacher and find an experience you had where that
person helped lead you out of mitzrayim and showed you a habitual
practice to use to keep yourself in this grand adventure. That’s
religious education: opening and reorienting our hearts to the wonder
and mystery unfolding in and around ourselves. There are four
more habits developed through lifelong religious education:
critical, systemic thought (parts, patterns, evaluation); dialectical
though (recognize and live in contradictions, resisting closure);
holism (life’s interconnections); sharing practical wisdom.[vi]
These are
lifelong habits for us to cultivate: dialogue (exchange), empathy or
interpersonal perspective-taking (interchange), critical systemic
approaches (big picture dynamics), dialectical approaches
(connections), holism (interconnections), practical wisdom (teaching
what you’ve learned). Not surprisingly, these six habit parallel six
stages of faith development, but we cultivate them at all stages and
ages of life. These are the habits that support action away from
destruction and addition. These are habits that equip us throughout our
lives to be prepared for this grand adventure, with the awe and mystery
and wonder that is ours for the making. That’s what religious education
does: it prepares us and supports us in living spiritually grounded
lives in a complex world of challenges and contradictions. Religious
education is one of the supporting habits to be cultivated in order to
maintain dynamic change for health. Religious education is central to
the fifth stage of change, and as such is a central practice for the
healthy congregation and the well-lived life. We are required to
imagine a religion – that world in which we actually wish to live – and
observe where we are now and strike out for where we want to go. That’s
spiritual growth. Embodying that in a program with curricula and
teachers empowered to share what they’ve learned and learners seeking
knowledge for the journey with joyful and open hearts oriented together
on the adventure that is faith development. It is our heart, beating as
one, loving this free life we have, taking this adventure one step, one
day, one moment, one orange segment, one marvelous miracle at a time.
Amen.
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[i] Philippe Dordai and Joseph
Rizzo, “Echo Boom Impact”, American School & University Magazine,
November 1, 2006,
http://asumag.com/DesignPlanning/university_echo_boom_impact/
[ii] Dennis Meacham
(2004) The Addiction Ministry Handbook. Boston: Skinner House Press,
10-12.
[iii] Laurent A.
Parks Daloz, Cheryl H. Keen, James P. Keen, Sharon Daloz Parks (1996)
Common Fire: Leading Lives of Commitment in a Complex World. Boston:
Beacon Press: 100.
[iv] Parks Daloz,
Keen, Keen, Daloz Parks: 108.
[v] The Rev. Giles
Bailey, “The Double Reward” originally appearing in The Sunday School
Helper 1871, in Elizabeth Strong (2004) The Larger Message:
Universalist Religious Education’s Response to Theological and Cultural
Challenges 1790-1930. Chicago: Meadville Lombard Theological School
Press: 100.
[vi] Parks Daloz,
Keen, Keen, Daloz Parks: 108.
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