TVUUC We are a Gentle Angry People

"We are a gentle angry people and we are singing, singing for our lives."

I never thought we would really be singing for our lives. That song was sung yesterday when the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalists met in the afternoon after a David Adkisson shoot 8 people, killing 2, during our church service, in our sanctuary, on Sunday July 28. (I was not present. I was taking my son to summer camp near Asheville because his father had an oil leak in his car.)

How many friends, acquaintances and strangers have I told, "I love my church. Come visit us. You would be welcome." And they would. All are welcome. We welcome strangers. There have been times I have been challenged in myself to indeed welcome strangers who are stranger than most, but I did, and we do. We do not ask them to become any different. Only to believe our principles, or at least to live within the outward action of those principles while among us.

One day not long after I had been attending with my former partner, a woman of few words, she said "I like that church; I can sleep there." And sometimes she did. It is not a measure of boredom, but a measure of safety. She is a woman who is guarded at nearly all times. Like most people of ambiguous gender she has been a target so long, that the feeling of inclusion and safety in a public place is totally unique. But we enjoyed it there, in our sanctuary.

A sanctuary now blood stained. In that sanctuary I have stood with our choir singing the some of the most beautiful music in world, my voice huge, my tears streaming down in joy. I have had the privilege of preaching my radical poetry from the pulpit to standing ovation from my community. I have cried for lost brothers and sisters. I have sat at peace in arms of my lesbian partner. I have found friends and comfort there. I have been heard. It is my home. It has been violated. Evil walks among us.

Greg McKennedy stepped up into the line of fire, protected others, and died, a hero, a martyr. The madman was taken down by the brave men of our church. He will stand justice.

I believe that we are called upon, not to prepare ourselves for the heavenly kingdom, but to build it here and now, out of the stones of neighbors, within the structures of our lives. We are called upon to make heaven here, in moments, in flashes, in the sanctuaries of our bodies, our homes, our communities. We must roll the hard bits of ourselves in prayer, like the making of pearls. We must use prayer, that iridescent energy, to spins tiny spheres of heaven, pearls of that other world. Then we string these delicate moments together on the hard cord of our days, knot them down with purpose and discipline. We will string together our tiny pearls of heaven to build a net and gather in the lonely, who are all of us, as fishers of men. And this great pearly net will be our gateway to walk so gingerly into heaven.

Evil walks among us. And out of that we will still build the kingdom; for nothing, nothing can withstand the power of love.

"We are gentle angry people and we are singing, singing for our lives."

Unitarian Universalist Principles:

WE BELIEVE in the freedom of religious expression. All individuals should be encouraged to develop their own personal theologies, and to present openly their religious opinions without fear of censure or reprisal.
WE BELIEVE in the tolerance of religious ideas. All religions, in every age and culture, possess not only intrinsic merit, but also potential value for those who have learned the art of listening.
WE BELIEVE in the authority of reason and conscience. The ultimate arbiter in religion is not a church, nor a document, nor an official, but the personal choice and decision of the individual.
WE BELIEVE in the never-ending search for Truth. If the mind and heart are truly free and open, the revelations that appear to the human spirit are infinitely numerous, eternally fruitful, and wondrously exciting.
WE BELIEVE in the unity of experience. There is no fundamental conflict between faith and knowledge, religion and the world, the sacred and the secular, since they all have their source in the same reality.
WE BELIEVE in the worth and dignity of each human being. All people on earth have an equal claim to life, liberty, and justice-and no idea, ideal, or philosophy is superior to a single human life.
WE BELIEVE in the ethical application of religion. Good works are the natural product of a good faith, the evidence of an inner grace that finds completion in social and community involvement.

Inner Weather

There are signs at all times to guide through the inner world, in the sky, the clouds, the passing of day and night, seasons. I believe in inner weather.

An old friend has moved back to town after living in Portland (and other places) for a few years. I got a call to join her and local dear friend at her apartment on Hill Avenue downtown. We sat on the back deck just beside the Henley Street bridge, watched the water and the ground hogs, the traffic and the sky, drank whiskey, and talked about lovers, and, of course, the weather. The weather is that common ground, or perhaps common sky, we all share experience with, we all are affected by. My old Friend talked about the nine months of gray drizzle in Portland, and also about the land, the sharp pointy mountains, so upright compared to our rounded ancient ones. She said the people there took on that uprightness, standing for something, having a point. Sounds a bit obnoxious to me, uppity. I like it here, the weather and the land, feeling a little shady, hanging out in low places, drinking whiskey and smoking Marlboros by the river, watching the kudzu grow. I digress.

What if fall come and you did not believe in spring? Everything has died, the sun has dimnished, the darkness is growing and growing, it is the end of the world. What if night fall came and you did not believe in dawn? You are blind, stumbling, cold, you cannot navigate, in utter darkness you cannot see that anyone is with you. What if you believed in those incapabilities? That is depression. Similarly what if lived in summer and did not believe in winter? You can sell your house, abandon clothing, sleep on the moss beds down by the river, swim all day and make love in bamboo groove, eat fruit that drops right into your hand from the trees, to hell with the working in the system! That is mania (yum...).

The weather and land shape the inner world. Perhaps through well documented avenue such as seasonal affective disorder or more subtle means. By adapting this model I have found a huge grace for myself regarding my moods. After spending ten years on heavy medication, anti-depressants and enough lithium to kill a horse, I stopped (nearly ten years ago now!). Now I give myself grace medicine. When it is dark inside, like nighttime, I remember that morning always comes. When it is winter inside I remember that spring always comes. I no longer succumb to the siren song that it really is the end of the world this time.

So the idea of weather in the soul has helped me. Now when my darkness comes, I sit with her, pray for dawn, and utterly believe it will come. And so it does. I let the tears flow. If you just let them keep flowing, they make a river to your heart, gathering in between and round in under your breasts. I have decided that if the eyes are the window to the soul then when the soul is working, sweating, that is what makes the tears that flow out from the eyes, soul sweat. She is working it out hard sometimes. That is a good thing.

Submit to Delusions of Grandeur

After years of denial and delay I have decided to submit to my delusions of grandeur and believe that I do indeed have something to say, words to be heard, ideas that may strike a chord, familiar and alien as the cicadas buzz. And so it is begun. I am jumping out onto the net hoping it will catch me.

It was a tentative leap starting in a ho hum classroom at the community college. I met with four other women, also middle aged or approaching, to learn how to set up a blog. Our teacher, Katie Granju, was charming, eager, and much to quick for me. When I could not even get my laptop to open a browser to try to get on the server, I was nearly in tears overwhelmed by my long standing technophobia. After the week I had had, the long and nearly sleepless nights with a new lover, the long and tedious workdays with a 150 mile round trip commute, it was all I could to hold back tears, wait for a break to pack up my errant laptop, and go home to drink and cry. But I prevailed. After a surprising caress from my friend across the aisle, she lifted up my laptop, navigated an unfamiliar framework, and set me upon my way, another angel well disguised.

My message is simple to share the notion of being an ordinary visionary. I am a gray haired suburban single mother of teenagers and I am visionary prophet heralding a new realm as it emerges out from the debris of our daily lives. I am an angry lesbian, sick and lonely, and I am a fabulously sexy woman, a poet powerful and free. A sceptical shaman. A conservative humanist. And so the paradox mounts, innerworlds and outer worlds reflecting and co-creating, shadow and light dancing back and forth.

I want to explore here and suggest meaning to so many ideas that trouble me. Why is apparently good food poisoning us? Why are we taking antidepressants that work less the 50% of the time and casue suicide in more than a few of us? Why do we ride around isolated in cars risking death at every turn? Why do require products made by industrial workers who submit to painful and sicknening conditions when simple options are available (to workers and to consumers)? Why are middleaged women castrated every day by the hundreds? Why do we think changing our light bulbs will refreeze the ice caps? Why does my son know how to blast aliens but not how to grow corn? Why does my diabetic daughter need to plan her whole future around the inavailability of health insurance? Where will the lowland poeple go when seas rise?

Most of all I want to make myself do something difficult enough to keep my brain alive for the ten thousand days I may have left remaining among us.