We are living through a new phase of the pandemic. One filled with uncertainty and mixed messages. Despite armed protests and the distorted tweets and declarations from our President touting his success and victory over the virus; fact based evidence demonstrates we have a long, dark road ahead. While this pandemic has brought human planetary domination to a pause, we are still in grave danger. We are at yet another threshold. What we manifest at this threshold has a profound impact on just about every area imaginable: on our environment, on our political system, on our educational system, on our economy, and on our very social fabric. The uncertainty of what is and what is to come is surreal and overwhelming. I feel at times as though I am trapped inside a Ray Bradbury story or like at any moment Rod Serling’s voice is going to broadcast out of an invisible intercom, “There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man….That’s the signpost up ahead – your next stop, the Twilight Zone!” But today, I want to stay in reality and to offer you active hope and reassurance. I want to remind you that the decisions we make, at this threshold, both individually and collectively will resonate for generations to come. I am reminded of Victor Frankl’s words, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” Almost daily, I feel pressed into this space Frankl describes and I am learning, gradually, that the choices I make do make a difference.
So, what will I manifest individually at this threshold? What will you manifest individually at this threshold? What will we manifest collectively in our crossing over? How do we activate our true sense of interconnectedness to save our lives and the life of the planet? Though I don’t have all of the answers, my one great hope is that in crossing over we can shift, both individually and collectively, from approaching these inevitable uncertainties with fear and anger to an approach more grounded in love and compassion. One great truth I have been reminded of while standing at this threshold is that life is sacred and not permanent. And to approach the sacredness of human life with fear and anger, to cling to fear and anger is a lose-lose situation. At this threshold I am choosing love and compassion again and again and again.
With the excesses of life stripped down and less opportunity to escape from the hard truths that are laid out in front of me, I have had the ability to slow down enough to contemplate Frankl’s space between stimulus and response. I realize as Alexander Pope said that, “to err is to be human…” and that I won’t get it perfectly every time; but lately in this space, at this threshold, I have been asking myself a question when I feel squeezed. In tense, anxiety driven moments, instead of spiraling out of control, I am learning to stop, to breathe, to pause and to ask, “what am I doing to manifest the divine?” When I practice this basic and easily accessible exercise, I am reminded that small changes have the potential to create large shifts. First, I want to explore from an individual perspective, what it is like for me standing at this current threshold.
Even in the midst of this pandemic, I’m experiencing growth and transformation. An important threshold I have crossed over during this pandemic is one from perceived scarcity to realized abundance. Pre-pandemic, I worried myself with thoughts that I wasn’t enough. That I wasn’t a good enough human, daughter, teacher, mother. That my modest teacher salary would not provide for all that my daughter might need and desire in life. When I would get into these worrying fits, the worry that rose to the surface was the worry that my daughter would somehow lack in life because she is being raised by a single parent who is stretched beyond belief. These worries might always be there under the surface, but like I said, I am growing. I am transforming. On a recent May morning, gray and overcast, drizzling rain and then snow and then rain again, Penelope and I were eating our oatmeal while wrapped in blankets. We were discussing the daily plans, which included: tidying up the kitchen, taking our dog, Charlene, for a walk, and completing Penelope’s long list of school work tasks. At the mention of school work, Penelope erupted into tears and fell into a heap on the floor. Giant tears bloomed in her eyes, tears which the dog quickly licked away. And at this moment, I had a brainwave and told Penelope to pick herself up and get dressed for the park.
When we pulled into the Lily Pond parking lot, we celebrated that we were the only car. This is a rarity at such a hot spot in Mill Creek Park. Never, have I ever been the only car in the lot at the Lily Pond. When we got out of the car, and began walking; I quickly discovered why. It was freezing!! We walked over to the tiny frog pond, where Penelope was hoping to hear a chorus of frogs or at least to see some tadpoles and we were met by frosty silence. I was shivering a bit, but chalked it up to the fact that I am ALWAYS cold. Penelope, who even as a baby, kicked off her swaddling during the polar vortex, looked up at me and said, “I’m cold, Mommy.” Determined to continue our celebration of being the sole visitors at the Lily Pond; I grabbed a stadium blanket from my car and wrapped it tightly around Penelope. We made sure she could walk without tripping and then she looked up at me, and said, “I’m ready for a long hike, Mom. I can hike forever.” And we did hike forever. Circling the pond twice, Penelope wanted to head up to the Old Tree Trail and continue to walk to Lake Glacier. She wanted to stop for every may apple and bluet and spring beauty to capture a picture. By the time we made it back to the pond, I was exhausted from keeping Charlene away from the voles’’ homes and chirping chipmunks and scurrying squirrels and Penelope asked for one more turn around the pond. Cold and tired and anxious to get back to all the awaiting tasks, I hesitantly agreed. Walking across the floating bridge, Penelope paused for quite some time. I kept walking with the dog and shouted for Penelope to “Come on, already!” She stayed positioned in a squat staring out at the water. “Mom,” she said. It’s like we switched places. I’m like you at the art museum. When I want to rush by all the paintings and you just sit and stare at every artwork. Mom, I think I figured out that the Lily Pond is my museum.” I finally paused. What the heck was I rushing for anyways? I stopped. The dog sat. Moments after, a half dozen koi and goldfish came swimming right by the shore. Penelope jumped up and grabbed my hand and gave me a look of unbridled joy. “I told you not to rush, Mom.” In this moment, that I slowed down and savored, I realized the abundance of gifts, gifts of the inner life, that I possess and have shared with my daughter over the past six years. I realized that in all of these ordinary moments of our lives, the divine is within, ready to be called forth and experienced. Especially during uncertain times. Absolutely when we pause in that space between stimulus and response.
In closing, I want to leave you with the question “what will we manifest at this threshold collectively?” In contemplating this question, remember Frankl’s space between stimulus and response. Remember that both our individual choices and our involvement within our faith communities factor into the answer. Something that I have known, but that has become crystal clear on the threshold of this pandemic is that the role of our faith communities is essential in the crossing over. I am thankful to all of you that are part of the UUYO faith community as well as to Linda Scharf for creating and maintaining a sangha throughout this pandemic. These collectives are proof that love and compassion can and will prevail over the fear and anger that threatens to strangle our nation. Though I still consider myself a new member (I celebrate a year of membership this month); when I reflect back at how being part of this community has transformed my life, my heart is overwhelmed with gratitude. Being a part of this community has given me strength and fortitude in allowing me to reflect on the question “what am I doing to manifest the divine?”
Kelsey Myers
I want to talk for a moment about hope. Hope is not an empty thing. Hope is not a platitude. But it can be hard to conceive of it that way. Real hope – true hope – is different from the type of rhetoric that politicians peddle. Hope is a deep and spiritual practice. Not an emotion, not a revelation, not a moment, but a practice.
For the reading that went along with my sermon, I chose a quote from one of my favorite television dramas, a series that I consider to be as lasting, as evocative, and as meaningful as any great work of literature. Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men is, at times, flippant as it follows the lives of advertising executives through the tumultuous and changing 1960’s, and the character that delivers this quote is one of the most flippant of all. Roger Sterling is known for his one liners and quips, not his deep and reflective meditations on the nature of humanity.
This scene catches him in the middle of a therapy session, trying to make his therapist laugh. This episode is named for the doorway that Roger describes. Thresholds can seem new and exciting. The immediate association for me is a bride being carried over the threshold – or of standing at the threshold of a deep dark woods, where mystery waits beyond.
I want to talk for a moment about hope. Hope can be found in possibility, and to me, that’s what a threshold represents – the thrill of the unknown. You don’t know what’s on the other side, you won’t find out until you get there what’s waiting for you – and I believe it’s human nature to see the unknown and assume that something good is waiting on the other side.
We condition our own brains; we are creatures, not so much of hope, but of habit. The more we try to be hopeful, to engage with the world in a hopeful and optimistic way, the less we will fear the unknown and the more comfortable we will be engaging with things we have not engaged with before. When faced with a doorway, I think there is potential for a sense of wonder – the sense that something good is waiting for us.
But what Roger describes is not a sense of wonder. It’s not even a sense of dread, fearful to learn what the unknown holds for us. He makes the argument that there is no such thing as the unknown. Trying to pass off cynicism as humor, he argues that nothing ever changes and nothing ever will. The things we go through, according to Roger Sterling, do not change us; perhaps nothing ever does.
It brings to mind another quote from the same show: “change is neither good nor bad, it just is.” Change is inevitable, but what brings it about? Human nature is stubborn and reluctant to change; it seems that it takes catastrophic events to pressure us, to push us to the brink and force us to change. But are we changed, after these catastrophic events, or are we just variables upon variables, the same selves that we were before?
Experiences are nothing, Roger says – what once was wonder becomes cynicism as we grow. But isn’t that a change in and of itself? We are going through a catastrophic and cataclysmic event right now, and so many of us want things to just go back to normal. But what was normal? Essential workers not being paid a living wage? Employees hesitant to call in sick for fear of losing their jobs? A massive divide between the rich and the poor, and a callous suggestion that those without simply pick themselves up by their bootstraps?
I want to take this final moment to talk about hope. Hope can be angry. Hope and anger can be part of the same thing. They can come from the same place. If we are not defined by our experiences, the things that happen to us, then we must be defined by the way we choose to react to those experiences, the way we learn, grow, and, yes, change.
As I have talked about before, we are in the middle of great and seismic change – we are in the middle of a defining moment in history. It is up to us how we react to the catastrophe happening all around us. We must own our decisions and own our choices and not be helpless in the face of disaster. This is a moment that may define us for decades. I have hope that things will not go “back to normal,” but that we will emerge from this crisis with more empathy, more compassion, and more hope.
