Mind Body Mama: Never Give Up

I'm needing some solace after the defeat in Maine, so I turned to the Bible verse Small read to light the chalice before the worship service I lead in June:

"Love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or conceited or proud; love is not ill-mannered or selfish or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs; love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth. Love never gives up; and its faith, hope and patience never fail."

I Corinthians 13:4-7

What power do the opponents of gay marriage really wield? They cannot keep us from loving each other.

Hell, they cannot even keep us from loving them if we can stretch our breaking hearts that far.

If you missed the original sermon, you can read it here: Love Will Guide Us.

Soldier on.

Sermon: Love Will Guide Us

Sermon delivered Sunday, June 28, 2009 at Our House of Worship.

This morning, I want to talk about love: the love we choose, and the love that chooses us.

A few weeks ago, I found myself trying to explain the California court decision upholding Proposition 8—that was the ballot initiative that outlawed marriage between people of the same gender—to my six year old.

“In CA they decided that girl-girl and boy-boy marriages were OK, and then they changed the rule and decided that they weren’t OK,” I explained. Then I asked the question I’ve been waiting for someone to ask the Prop 8 proponants.

“Do you think that it stops two people from loving each other, just because they’re not allowed to get married?”

“Mama.” Alice has this way of calling my name when she’s about to say something really important. “Mama. No one can stop two people from loving each other but themselves.”

With more reflection she added, “It would probably make them sad. But it wouldn’t make them stop loving each other.”

It is not my usual response to laugh at those who hold an opposing political opinion to me. And yet: the proponants of Proposition 8 make me laugh. I think they are foolish. I think they are emperors with no clothes. I think they already defeated.

It is not that they don’t have, in the words of Adrienne Rich, “forces ranged against us.” It is not a small thing to deny people equal rights under the law. Couples who cannot marry lose security for their families. They lose access to one another under the most painful circumstances—one cannot be at her dying lover’s bedside; another faces deportation and forced separation from her American partner and children. These tragedies can and do occur.

But the most common penalty assessed to loving couples who cannot marry is an economic penalty. We pay more for health insurance when we can’t be covered by our lovers’ policies. We pay more in federal taxes. We are less secure in our retirements because we cannot access our partners’ social security benefits, and face inheritance tax on what would be considered jointly held property for straight couples.

Annoying, costly, inconvenient, disrespectful, undignified, dishonoring—not having equal marriage rights is all of those things. So why do my opponants make me laugh? Because that’s all they’ve got. They’ve got economic discrimination on their side, and on our side? We’ve got LOVE.

I know that many Prop 8 folks have deep religious beliefs that tell them that homosexuality is a sinful abomination. I feel so lucky not to have this belief—not to ever have had this belief. And I feel lucky to live in a country where we have a diversity of beliefs on this and other subjects. But what strikes me so strange about the opponants of gay marriage is that they don’t work harder for my salvation. I don’t experience them trying to convince me of my sin or bring me closer to their idea of God. Instead, they are tirelessly working to institutionalize discrimination against me.

There’s something so fundamentally un-American about this strategy: if you can’t beat them, make them pay more taxes. It’s as if somewhere they know what Alice knows—“No one can stop two people from loving each other but themselves.” They’ve given up on trying to win us over to their belief system, and are settling for costing us a lot of cash, anxiety and irritation.

As if love weren’t worth a little money and effort. As if love could “subordinate itself to cause or consequence.”

Did you see the video put out by those who are working to repeal Proposition 8? It features the Tom Petty song “Won’t Back Down,” which Leah so beautifully rendered for us as our prelude. The video not seem to portray the losing side of anything. The clip shows people from all over the country holding signs that represent their state and their support for equal marriage rights: “Standing with you in Alaska.” “Nevada’s on your side.” “Massachusetts won’t back down.” Nearly everyone is smiling in a way that just beams love and hope and compassion and faith— faith that we can hold one another through this struggle. The love in these faces is so tangible, it feels physically nourishing and sustaining to me. It says to me, “We are down, but we’re not out. We’re not even that far down, because we love each other, and we are not alone.”

My faith tradition honors my marriage, independent of law. The novelist Marilynne Robinson put these words into the voice of her character the Reverend John Ames,

"I might seem to be comparing something great and holy with a minor and ordinary thing, that is, love of God with mortal love. But I just don’t see them as separate things at all. If we can be divinely fed with a morsel and divinely blessed with a touch, then the terrible pleasure we find in a particular face can certainly instruct us in the nature of the very grandest love."

I am not a Deist, but I am incredibly moved by this vision. I think it holds inspiration whether one believes in a literal or metaphorical divine love. It is powerful—empowering, in fact—to consider that the love of our lives is larger than our own experience, that what we feel for one another is but a small reflection of the greater love which is available to us all.

I want to turn now to the love that we choose. It might seem risky, as a lesbian, to talk about choosing love. It is, after all, one of the arguments used by the forces that “range against us” –that we choose a sinful lifestyle and should not receive sanction in it. But I am not talking about who we choose to love. As Adrienne Rich says, “The accidents happen…they happen in our lives like car crashes, books that change us, neighborhoods we move into and come to love.”

I’m talking instead about how we love who we love. A few years ago I picked up a book that shook my world. It was not the kind of book I would ordinarily pick up and I’m embarrased now to tell you the title: Why Talking Is Not Enough: Eight Loving Actions that Will Transform Your Marriage. It was hot pink. You almost want to hide your face walking out of the library with a book like that.

But it was a classic case of “do not judge a book by its cover.” Because in this book author Susan Page, a Protestant minister—lays out her vision and advice for Spiritual Partnership and Loving Action within couples.

Page’s work is complex and I recommend that you take a look at it. At the risk of grossly oversimplifying her paradigm, I’m going to share my take-away—an insight that for me was as simple as it was profound. When I have conflict with my partner, I have a choice: I can stand up for myself—and I must—if the conflict violates some make-or-break principle of mine. But short of this, I have a second choice: I can act as if loving my partner is more important than the outcome of the conflict.

Page suggests Loving Actions—eight of them!—to support this challenge. I wish I could tell you that I’ve committed all eight to memory and employ them regularly to great success, and we are now living happily ever after. But Liz would rat me out in a minute. I do not employ Loving Actions successfully in even fifty percent of our conflicts; I’d be surprised if I remember as much as ten percent of the time.

But each time I do remember to take a breath and think—“What would this be like if I acted like I love her?”—I get to experience a moment of conflict transformed into a moment of love. It almost doesn’t matter if Liz notices a difference—maybe we fight less, maybe she wins more, maybe I seem like a cream-puff. But instead of a mundane argument, I get to touch what Robinson’s John Ames calls “a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality.” If that’s not dross into gold, I don’t know what is.

HYMN: There is More Love Somewhere


Now I want to tell you about some girls I know. And choose to love.

I wish that you could meet these girls, but you will have to take my word that they are beautiful—as beautiful as their names: Mercedes, Sujeil, Leslie, LaQuanda, LaTigre, Diana, Karacelys, MaryLinda, Rashe, Chiara, Anushka, Ashley, Maracelys, Eveline, Christina, Betsy, Wanda, Shayla.

Can you see them? Can you see a room full of gorgeous young women, tossing their hair, laughing, teasing each other, checking themselves in a wall full of mirrors?

I have to stop before the picture becomes too romantic, wipe the vaseline off the lens. Because these are the worst kind of teenager there is: these are teenagers being forced to do something they don’t want to do.

Let me back up a moment. For seven years, I have had the honor of teaching self defense to young mothers enrolled at The CARE Center, a GED program in Holyoke. For most of the girls—at least at first—participation in my class is not entirely of their own free will. And they are not shy to express their reluctance to be there.

The preacher John Ames was told by his father:

"When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person. He would probably laugh at the thought that the Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his), but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it."

There is a wisdom conventional to the martial arts that mirrors this story, that tells us that each student teaches the teacher. So I try to see the challenge of teaching resistant teenagers— frequently offering insulting or antagonizing behavior—as an opportunity to rise to my best self. I do not believe in “the Lord” or “saving grace,” but I do believe that I am “free to act by [my] own lights,” that I can choose my response to what my students offer me.

A few weeks ago I got an especially rough group. Four greeted me and entered our training space; the rest hung back in the vestibule, cutting their flat eyes at me. I know the room is odd to them, with its bare wood floor and prohibition against street shoes, its broken down sofa, Chinese gong and double altar. I can’t imagine how much courage it takes for them to trust a strange, short-haired, blunt-spoken, middle-aged white woman and enter a weird and unfamiliar place. I know that much of their experience—much of their safety—is dependent upon saving face, not ever showing fear or ignorance or inability.

But how do you learn something new if you have to act tough all the time? How can you be open to learning things if you have to act like you have it all together every second? I know these things, but I still lose patience when ten girls decide to sit in the dark, in the coat closet, losing credit for the afternoon’s school attendance, instead of coming into my class. So I take a deep breath and turn to the students who will participate.

On the day in question, these four girls dug deep to follow my lesson. Through it all, the rumble of negativity carried from the hall into our sacred training space. I moved our circle further from the door and called group huddles to give feedback. I noticed a few bright eyes that strayed from the closet floor to peek around the door frame and see what we were up to, but I didn’t pay them any mind. We practiced strikes and blocks, wrist grabs and releases. The four girls practiced, asked questions, and learned. They resisted the siren song of malaise and defeat and refusal rising up from the antechamber. And with twenty minutes before the end of class, I made a choice.

I taught one final technique—hammer fist—and we worked it over and over to striking pads until I felt confident in each woman’s power and technique. Then I settled my four students against the bank of windows. I cleared the brochures and flyers from the card table and placed it square in the middle of the floor. And I brusquely climbed over the bodies in the closet to pull out my last four breaking boards from the supply shelf.

Both rooms got quiet when I set up the first board on the sturdy wooden supports. There was wild disbelief—“We’re gonna break those?” and surging confidence—“We’re gonna break those!”

As I approached the group to give my final instructions, I heard the one girl I knew telling the others, “She’s OK, I don’t know why they don’t just try it—if you do the class, she treats you right.” I turned to bow to her, one of the most heartfelt bows of my twenty-one years of practice.

I get so much wrong in this class, and fall short so often of what I want to offer. But I honor these women, I try to give my best possible teaching and when everything else fails, I just try to love them. Here in my favorite, most sacred space with these poor, scared, angry, victimized, violent, brave, belligerent, smart, silly, vilified young women—Puerto Rican teen moms, high school drop-outs, welfare recipients—I see the brokenness of the world. I see how small I am against it, and how hard it is to correct injustice or even just reach out across our differences. How hard it is to trust and know one another. I offer the teaching that I know best, in the hopes that the next time a man puts his hand around one of these girl’s throats, she’ll know how to kick his knees and break the choke hold. In hopes that the next time a girl with a razor in her hair starts talking trash to one of these young women, my student will have the presence of mind to walk away instead of stirring it up and getting slashed.

I asked my four students to love each other that day. I didn’t say that out loud; there is no way I’d get away with sappy nonsense like that. Whatever else their lives have handed them, they are teenagers first and foremost—caustic, mocking, irreverent. But I asked them to support each other as they stood before the group to break their boards and they did it. They stood up for one another.

“You can do it!” someone called. “Just picture your baby-daddy!”

And they did.

There are times when I wonder, what if it’s my student with the razor? Or, will she ever stop going back to the man who chokes her? Will she ever expect more of this world than violence against her or at her own hand? There are times when they are so angry, or so scared, or so tired of being powerless in their own lives, that their behavior soars past antagonistic and insulting, and it boils my blood.

So I take another deep breath. And in that breath, I just try to love them, these beautiful girl moms with the odds stacked against them. I think: what would this be like if I loved them? It feels radical sometimes—I’m not supposed to love these girls—I’m not supposed to even know girls like this, I’m supposed to stay on the white, middle class side of the line and let them live out their circumstances on the other side of the mountain, down in the ‘hood, out of sight. And other times it doesn’t feel radical at all—it just feels horribly inadequate, a finger in the dyke against an ocean of racism and sexism and classism, imperialism and injustice and oppression.

I did not know that I would love these girls when I took the call seven years ago asking if I wanted to teach self defense to teen moms who were “high school drop outs,” “drug- and gang-affiliated.” I did not know that I would love them as I discovered that those descriptors didn’t really mean anything, that my students are girls I will get to know one by one by one. I didn’t know that love would serve me as I struggled with my useless, stupid English in a room full of solely Spanish-speaking students. I did not know that I would love them the first time a student gave me the finger in class, or walked away to check her makeup in the middle of an exercise, loudly dismissed me as ignorant and irrelevent, or chose to sit on the sofa in liui of class, reading letters from her man in jail.

I knew that I would hear heartbreaking stories of violence against them—I hear these stories every time I teach self defense—but I did not know that it would be my heart breaking open to them. I knew that two decades of training would give me a lot to offer towards reducing their risk of violence, and I knew that it would it would not be enough. But I did not know that love would be my most important teaching strategy.

Because if I keep loving them, then I’ll keep trying.

Worship: Inbetween Times: Who We Are For Each Other

On May 31 I had the privilege of sharing the pulpit at our Unitarian Society with SpecK and the War Ship to deliver a service on the topic of Inbetween Times: Who We Are For Each Other. I encourage you to check out SpecK's homily and the readings from the service.

I contributed these Reflections:

These reflections began as a personal thank you note to our Ministerial Search Committee. Not for the obvious thing—the application of their gifts of intellect and empathy to the task of selecting our next settled minister. Not for the domestic tasks that went neglected in their several households as they sat in endless meetings; nor the days they went to their jobs tired from working late into the night; nor the recreation they missed with their spouses and children. Not even a thank you for the incredible result of their work: a minister whose selection brings excitement and hope to an overwhelming number of our congregation, from our children to our elders.

No, I found myself driving to meet Karen Johnston to discuss this service one morning and composing, in my head, a thank you note to the committee for allowing me the honor of cooking for them. As you may know, each of the three final candidates came to Northampton for a clandestine weekend of interviews. Clandestine because—as a personnel process—the anonymity of the candidates had to be preserved. During the Saturday night of each weekend a member of the Search Committee hosted a dinner for the candidate and the entire committee. Last summer, Cathy Lilly and Janet Spongberg asked me to head up the “hospitality” team to prepare these meals, in order to take a single, discrete task from the heavily burdened committee.

I had some awesome helpers from the congregation, but in the end, I did an enormous amount of cooking: the equivalent of preparing two or three holiday feasts in a short number of weeks. In truth, if they had been holiday feasts, and I had been feeding my extended family, I might have felt stressed out by the task. Cooking for these sacred, secret dinners felt different. It felt exciting and fun, and a little sneaky. But most of all, it felt like a privilege, like a gift.

Wherein lay the difference? How and why did this task feel so special to me, like an opportunity rather than an obligation?

The answer is complicated. I have been a long time lonely in this Great Hall; a long time inspired and moved by the elements of our collective worship yet longing for the deep and comfortable personal connections I see among other members. There were times when I wondered if I would ever have a friendly dailiness with any but a tiny few members; when I wondered if I would ever be known well by others in the pews.

Cooking these few dinners brought me into intimacy with people I didn’t know very well. I talked to them on the telephone; I entered their homes. As I pondered menus and recipes, I found myself wondering which meals would be most nurturing, most sustaining, as they shouldered their task. I found myself opening my heart to the job of caring for these folks, whether or not I knew them well. And then a funny thing happened—something that often does when you open your heart: I became known to them. My loving action caused me to feel seen and loved. The gift of service became a gift received rather than one given.

To cite just one example of how this roll-your-sleeves up, practical task of making casseroles transformed my experience, I think of a committee member I knew only from a very formal distance: her beautiful voice gracing our choir, her thoughtful and reasoned comments at our annual meetings. Now I know that she delights in homemade soup; is charmed by my precocious daughter; and—I know this because Alice charmed her into a self-guided house tour when we were delivering one of those dinners—I know that someone in her household collects DVDs of my all time favorite television show. (OK, I’ll tell you: it’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)

This experience softened me. It reminded me that I have cares in common with people throughout this congregation, whether or not I know it. It opened my heart and my eyes to the quiet ways we minister to one another all the time, the ways that we extend ourselves to one another to create a loving community.

Over coffee that morning, Karen and I talked about the many small ways we experience our common ministry. We thought of the ways parents and non-parents both take responsibility to teach in the Religious Education program, and also of other ways that adults commit to our youth. Like remembering their names. This makes it possible to greet a young person in passing—or to share the joke when they trade name tags with their friends and siblings before the community greeting. We thought of OWL teachers who offer to be a safe place for young people, not just on those eight Sundays when they teach, but for always, whenever they are needed. And of a grownup who offered a dignified, heart-felt apology—handwritten and delivered during the service—when a well intentioned Great Hall greeting inexplicably hurt a small child’s feelings.

We thought of the generosity of Gail and John Gaustad, who agreed to babysit so I could attend a Worship Committee meeting. It wasn’t simply the logistical support often necessary for the parent of a young child to be able to be of service, when being of service means attending a meeting late into a weekday evening. It was also the abundant relief that my partner Liz and I felt knowing we could aim Alice’s persistent cosmic inquiries—“How big is the Universe? What’s outside the end of the Universe? Where did the Universe come from?”—at John—a real live astronomer!—at least for one night. The answers we’d been giving all began, “Science says…” and “Some people believe….” We heard a different gravitas in John’s academic voice when he started to address the topic as we slipped out the back door. We hoped it would give Alice a lesson in action of how our Society holds many different types of wisdom and belief to speak to someone so certain, so informed, so knowledgeable. Or maybe it would just give us a night off.

When I was lonely, having trouble finding my place here, I did not know the moments of ministry were not just the warm embraces I saw between old friends. They are also present in the quiet of the pews, as when two seated near each other are inspired by the same sermon to start some private scribbling. One writes in the margins of a Thomas Hobbes paperback, the other in a precious poetry notebook. Though one identifies as an “anti-supernaturalist who cannot get past all the if’s” and the other “a spiritualist who suspends disbelief in order to engage the power of as many of those ‘ifs’ as she can handle,” in this place they can share a common delight, a sacred moment.

I did not know that I was already being ministered to in those days when the older woman who sat alone in the pew in front of us began greeting me and Liz on Sunday mornings – began noticing if we were absent a week – and, when I became visibly pregnant, began chiding Liz to make me a hot cooked breakfast before service. She recommended scrambled eggs. Over time we learned that her name was Ruth, but it was not until the very end of her life that we found out that she was the mother of a dear friend we knew outside of this place – and we learned that almost by accident. Ruth did not reach out to us in the pews because we were known to her; she reached out because we were connected by the moments we shared in this sacred space.

I think of a similar moment a few years ago, when I was really wavering in my faith that this was the right congregational home for me. I knew I was being ministered to one morning when a lay-led sermon spoke directly to my heart and resonated with the spiritual practices that I choose. But it was the moment of ministry that followed that sermon, as I sat weeping in a rear pew, wondering how I would know to stay or to go from this place, that held me here. Someone I knew really only because we had disagreed at recent meetings came to me and said—in what exact words, I can’t ever remember—I care for you. I see that you are hurting. I hope that things get better. That was when I knew that I was home.

It is my hope for myself, and for all of us that these moments become even more abundant in the coming year. I hope that there are two people in the hall today who will find a new connection—whether through practical assistance, kindness, a brief shared moment, or some common laughter. I hope that you come to a summer services and hear a lay preacher speak to your most cherished beliefs. And I hope you come to another service where your most cherished beliefs are challenged, or expanded, or enriched by contrasting experience. I hope that we remember as we start to walk with our new minister that she is joining us on the path, that we are already walking together.

Sermon: Fear and Grace: Lessons from the Martial Arts

Sermon delivered at the Our House of Worship, July 13, 2008.

“The first principle of a warrior is not being afraid of who you are.”

Several months ago this congregation had a meeting to discuss the Society’s budget, as we often do. A proposal had been put forth about which I knew I had very strong feelings. My partner and I talked about the proposal at great and dramatic length (the word “ranting” comes to mind); I fell asleep or woke up more than once thinking about the issue; I sometimes talked to myself about it when I was driving alone in my car. But I didn’t really know how strong my feelings were until I got up to speak at the meeting. When I started to talk, I discovered that I was terrified. And adding to the simple challenge of speaking clearly to a complex issue, I was also crying. I honestly can’t recall any words going through my mind as I realized that I was going to weep through my entire turn at the microphone, but I can sum up the familiar feeling of tenacious surrender with this phrase: “Oh well, here we go again.”

This summer I will celebrate my twentieth anniversary as a student of Okinawan martial arts, and a month later, my 40th birthday. My martial arts practice is, in a very real sense, the story of my adult life. It is the place where—among many, many lessons— I learned to accept Fear as the great teacher that it is. And it is where I experience, again and again, the incredible Grace that comes of being present to Fear, of walking “into those roiling waters,” and coming out whole.

It might be reasonable to presume that the scariest thing about being a martial artist is the fighting part—the “getting hit” part, and maybe also the “hitting other people” part. The recent growth of the extremely violent spectacle that calls itself “mixed martial arts”—which I hesitate to even call a sport—enhances the perception that martial arts practice is about the exchange of body-damaging blows. My practice could not be more unlike this brutal combat activity. In practical terms, the two karate schools at which I have studied practice ju kumite or “soft sparring.” Light contact and control of one’s own body are respected skills which students work hard to master. Sparring practice is playful, joyous and often full of laughter. What then, is there to be afraid of? In a word—everything.

Karate practice asks us to be present—in the stillness of the meditations which begin and end classes, in the learning, mastery and repetition of movements which are simple but rarely easy, and in the partner work where we witness one another’s human, physical vulnerabilities. Karate practice requires that we inhabit our own bodies more fully than mainstream culture ever allows, in ways that few adults remember how to enjoy. And karate practice can be very, very quiet—the rituals of bowing and standing and following instructions leave lots of space for what the author and life coach Martha Beck calls “squirrel brain”—that relentlessly nattering self talk so richly fueled by Fear—to get completely out of control.

For the very confused and sad 19-year-old that I was when I began my karate training at a feminist dojo (the Japanese word for “training hall”) in Brooklyn, NY, this call to be present was nearly unbearable. I couldn’t have told you then, but I understand now, that the dominant fact of my life at that time was Fear. My life terrified me. I was trying to come to grips with being a lesbian, I was trying to go to college—the first in my family to do so—I was trying to grow up, find my way out of a painful and lonely adolescence. On the street, the roar of my own Fear was drowned by the New York City din; the racing of my pulse and my squirrelly thoughts were matched by the City’s relentless pace. But when I entered the quietude of the dojo, I was alone with my internal brew. And I—a classic overachiever, a stereotypical Virgo who loves order and ritual and rules—could not handle the simple routines of a beginner karate class. The first year I studied, I cried in every single class. I rarely lasted for an entire session and I always left abruptly, failing to bow to partners or teachers as I tore out of the building. This didn’t lead to me feeling terribly successful about myself as a karate-ka, a practitioner of the art. Despite the admonition that “each of us is on our own path,” I constantly compared myself to the other students. I realize now that most of them were only in their middle twenties, but they seemed so old and poised and sure of themselves at the time. They asked questions, they never cried, they practiced karate at home. I just came to class and wept. But: I kept coming back.

I have been a karate teacher for a long, long time now and I am still in awe of my first teachers’ incredible depth of compassion and acceptance for the girl who couldn’t last a single hour without tears. Beginners are hard enough to teach. I appreciate now the comedy of knowing with certainty that one of your students is going to flee— but getting to be surprised each time by the exact moment that she does. My teachers, and through their example, my sister students, held a space for me where I could be present with my Fear. Some exercises puffed Fear up and made it seem even bigger and more powerful—the “hitting each other” parts were tough for me, despite our focus on control and contact, as were the “falling onto the ground” parts. But as I found power and skill and happiness in my own body, much of my practice helped Fear to quiet and move away. Kicking has always felt to me as close as the human body can come to flying—it is purely joyful. Although I think this word is overused, it is true in the most profound way to say that I was empowered by the brand of self-defense training I received—which is rooted in an anti-violent, anti-racist, anti-homophobic, socialist feminist polemic of great practicality and deep moral purpose. The moving meditation of simple karate strikes, blocks and kicks taught me to access reserves of calm from within myself— reserves that then became available to me as I moved through the challenge of “getting a life.”

It was a great relief to outgrow the screaming terror of my late teens and early karate training, and settle down as an adult growing into greater happiness and serenity. This process was incredibly gradual and of course, totally incomplete—“squirrel-brain” never really goes away, and Fear is always lurking just around the next life change, big or small. After twelve years in New York City and ten years at the dojo, the time came to move on. When my partner Liz and I decided to move to the Valley we knew two important things: there was vibrant Unitarian congregation, and a well known women’s dojo. It was clearly a reasonable place to live.

Now, I want to stop a moment and tell you what we mean when we talk about “styles” of martial arts. One of the summer reality shows I enjoy watching recruits dancers, most of who are trained in a specific style of dance such as hip-hop, ballroom or tap, and challenges them to compete in dances completely different from the ones that they know. I love this show; I really can’t get enough of it. As a viewer, you know that the hip-hop dancer who’s trying to do Latin dance is much, much, much better than you would ever be. Their training in form and rhythm and choreography is immediately useful as they learn the new dance. And yet, to the Latin dancer on the judging panel—it’s just not quite right.

This is how it is with martial arts. My New York school and my Valley school teach two different styles. Both come from Okinawa, and share influences of both Chinese and Japanese martial arts history. We like to say the styles are “cousins” and that two schools are “sister schools.” But like the hip-hop dancer trying to do a perfect Rumba, the student who switches styles is going to be “not quite right” a good amount of the time.

This is the challenge I faced when I arrived here in 1998. When we first moved I thought I would take some time off from karate, explore other types of moment and recreation, or just eat dinner at 6:00 like normal people instead of being at the dojo until 8 or later. But only two weeks after moving here I showed up at the dojo for a visit, and felt so immediately at home that my commitment to training there was inevitable. After a few months of being a welcome guest, I tied on a white belt and began the process of training through the ranks of a new style.

One of my new training sisters, a newly minted black belt at that time, said to me then, “I don’t think I could do what you’re doing.” I think she meant the re-learning, the willingness to be “not quite right” so much of the time, after ten years of dutiful study, of having been a teacher myself and having earned a black belt rank. And my friend expanded the compliment by saying, “And you do it with so much grace.”

I recall thinking at the time: “Is this woman nuts?” Because just like my first first year of karate training, I felt anything but graceful. Grace, I thought, meant cool self assurance, poise, reserve. All those things I thought I had seen in the older, wiser, twenty-something beginners of my first go-round. Grace must be the Virgo part of me, the part who could smile serenely, arrive on time, and follow instructions. I didn’t run out of quite as many classes the second time around, but I did sit in the car and weep instead of going into the dojo to practice when the enormity of loss and change was unbearable. And I was crabby a good bit of the time, with dashes of bitter and sullen thrown in for good measure, and my squirrel-brain was having a field day.

But what if doing something “with grace” doesn’t necessarily mean doing it “gracefully”? When I looked up definitions of grace I found words like “acceptance” and “approval” or (this one I especially like): “unmerited divine assistance.” Unmerited: which is to say, unconditional—like the compassion extended to me by my teachers and sisters at both dojos. There’s certainly room in unconditional for crying, and for squirrel-brain; for Fear, for clumsiness, for self doubt. Or how about Anne Lamott’s definition of grace as “the force that infuses our lives and keeps letting us off the hook. It is unearned love—the love that goes before, that greets us on the way.” The martial arts come to us from cultures which honor ancestors, and we call our teachers, “those who have come before.” It has been my great good fortune to practice in schools where the teachers who come before us offer great love to their students, unearned, that we might learn to extend the same kindness to ourselves and our students in turn. To rise to a challenge with this kind of grace is just to show up.

And this is the secret core of my karate practice: there is no secret, I just show up. I am tenacious in the work of karate, and not just in the hard sweaty practice of it, which I also really love. From the beginning I somehow knew that karate required surrender—not to Fear itself, but to the presence of Fear. Any time I’m at the dojo, there is a possibility that I’ll leave in tears— but I have every tomorrow to try showing up again. What I knew from the beginning is still true: to do karate, all you have to do is do karate. I just keep putting myself in it, and some days it will flow like poetry, and other days it will stick like mud, but it will always be the same path.

I keep hoping that Fear will leave me alone, and Fear keeps coming around. A few years back, when I was in the home stretch toward earning my second black belt, I wished for a smooth and graceful path, but it kept getting interrupted by physical illness, insomnia, and moments of irrational, ungrounded terror. Trying to pull myself together, I recalled the night before I went into labor with my daughter Alice, when I got lost in the maze of Holyoke Hospital and sank right down against a wall and cried. When grace, in the guise of caring professionals, brought my partner and my midwife to me, the midwife—a member of this congregation—said, “If you weren’t freaking out right now, I’d be worried. You’ve got to freak out if you’re going to do this thing.” This is awfully close to what another member of this congregation said to me when I told her how scared I was to be delivering this sermon (this is the clean version): “It would be screwed up if you weren’t scared.”

I really needed to deliver exactly this sermon, exactly this weekend. Because staring down my fortieth birthday has stirred up a whole new bout of squirrel-brain, and new irrational terror about the next chapter of my life. Once again, I find myself pretty scared, pretty much most of the time. But this time I know Fear for what it is: a travelling companion, a some-time opponent, a teacher, a party to the human journey. I can respect it, I can even listen to it—but if I don’t do what it says, I’ll be fine. And I know who my people are, the community who will help me find my next chapter—they’re the friends who say to me in word and deed, “It would be screwed up if you weren’t scared.”

For years I longed for a stronger connection to this congregation, a sense of undeniable belonging. And wouldn’t you know that crying in front of a room full of Society members at that budget meeting did more to create that connection than anything I had tried before. Committee meetings, small group ministry, making coffee—too easy. I had to love this place, and its members, and my family’s home here so deeply that it frightened me, and then I had to step into the roiling waters of that Fear and tell you all about it.

When I birthed my baby, tenacious surrender in the face of Fear turned out to be my greatest strength. I didn’t fight what my body was trying to do, and only because I had wept and raged the night before. Maybe grace requires that acting out, maybe grace can’t be achieved gracefully. I wish the spiritual path, the martial path, the path to greater connection with this community, the path to my brilliant mid-life transformation, could be walked with decorum and order, maybe with a little light piano music in the background and without ever falling down or crying. But, like childbirth or earning a black belt, the path toward grace is often scary and messy, with long stretches of hard, hard work and a pile of dirty laundry afterward. Fear’s not going anywhere soon, and I’m resigned to its squirrelly incarnations. My path, in the dojo and outside, has shown me that grace abides on the far side of Fear, if not as gracefully as we hope, as abundantly as we ever need.

Sermon: Lessons from a Hamster: Teaching and Learning About Grief and Loss

Sermon delivered at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence, January 11, 2009

When we received the email concerning the death of Blossom the Hamster, we snickered. The person who sent us this email is the nicest person I know. She was my daughter’s first baby-sitter and first pre-school teacher. She’s cared for my kid, she’s cared for my friends’ kids, she’s cared for most of your kids. She’s a gifted educator and a great parent, but above all, she’s nice. So when Blossom bit the dust, she sent a death announcement to all the pre-school parents encouraging us to talk with our children about their special Blossom memories. It was a very nice email.

Needless to say, my partner Liz and I are something other than nice. I’d say we fall somewhere between snarky and truly evil, but maybe just a little more on the evil end of the scale. We lived in New York City for a long time and we could blame it on that, but I think it’s really just our nature. We’re dark. So when we got the email late at night after Alice had already toddled off to bed, we snickered, we mocked the solemnity of the notification, and then, because we are tired, multi-tasking modern parents, we promptly forgot about Blossom and her tragic demise.

This apparently was not the universal response of the pre-school parents. For example, another mom who is herself extremely nice— if not quite exactly as nice as the pre-school teacher— happens to work as a grief counselor with children. So she and her son sat down and discussed their Blossom memories and discovered they would be best memorialized in an art project/sympathy poster for the pre-school. Evan must have done the artistic scribbles and multi-media while his mom wrote a warm remembrance of Blossom in bold letters.

Generally speaking I think it’s really cool that Alice taught herself to read at four years old. Not because it makes her some kind of kid-genius, but because I have loved to read since I was a tiny person and it gives us something in common. It’s really quite amazing after the tedious toddler years to have an activity we both enjoy equally. “Let’s have a cuddle-read!” I’ll say enthusiastically, and she’ll dive into some volume of Little House on the Prairie while I devour a good murder mystery. She’s warm and she smells good and we can sit under an afghan for a whole afternoon. Nothing comes without a price, however, and I discovered just one of the pitfalls of early reading when we opened the door of the pre-school to be greeted by the memorial installation. With greater accusation than you would think a person under three feet tall could muster, Alice turned on me: “Blossom DIED?”

In the end, the death of Blossom was not a particularly devastating loss for Alice. Perhaps they didn’t have such wonderful memories after all; maybe Al just wasn’t at a place in her development to really process the event. Maybe Liz and I are not completely insensitive twits, maybe our parental radar told us that this was not a crucial moment. But the Blossom adventure did tip me off to the fact that, as with every other thing Alice has learned in her short little life, I would be called upon to hold the space wherein she could discover loss and grief.

Along this parenting journey there have been things Alice has taught herself, like the aforementioned reading and also charming the wits out of most adults. There are the things I continue to try to teach her, like using utensils for eating. And then there are the things we’re learning together, like how to honor and survive the loss of someone you have loved. We’ve gotten a lot of practice this year.

Our family lost two loved ones, one anticipated and one a sucker punch of the worst kind. When my grandma began her final decline last winter I really, truly believed I was ready. She had been careening towards—while steadfastly refusing— her death for ten years, ever since she looked into the casket at my grandfather’s funeral and wailed, “That was my whole life!” They met on the sidewalks of New York when she was 12 years old. Since his death, she endured a decade of physical and mental decline and surrender to the anger and depression that darkened her entire life. I had been missing my stylish, acerbic, energetic grandmother for a long time. Our visits dwindled to obligatory biennial bedside hours when she would noticeably brighten at Alice’s presence, and if we were lucky we might get a glimpse of her old sarcastic self with a well timed one liner. But she was not really living, and her pain and fear and illness were increasing steadily, and we all wanted to see her released from the physical suffering and confusion. So when the news came that she had passed, I thought I felt relief, I thought I felt sadness, I thought I was okay.

I didn’t forget to tell Alice that Grandma Dottie had died. She asked me if Grandma Dottie was in heaven now—all that Little House in the Prairie has given her a fairly complete Calvinist vocabulary. I told her that Bobbi—my mother—probably believed that Dottie had gone to heaven to be with God, and that that belief gave Bobbi comfort. I don’t know if that was developmentally appropriate—I didn’t have time to call Cindy and ask when we teach these things in R.E.. Unfortunately, I did forget to ask myself what I believed about where Grandma Dottie had gone, and worse, I forgot to ask myself what would give me comfort.

To give myself a break here, I could explain that no one in my family was talking about these things either. My mother sighed heavily and added “funeral planning” to her perpetual “To Do” list. She scheduled the burial on a day she felt would be most “convenient” for people, as if the ceremonies of grief were an imposition on our busy lives. There are reasons for this, and I’ve spent enough hours in therapy to recognize Denial when he stops by. But this was the context within which I forgot to leave a space for grieving.

So the real teaching and learning happened a couple of days later when I tried to undertake a simple gardening task—screening a bucket of compost—and came completely unhinged. There was crying, swearing and throwing things; there was broken lumber in the driveway and swathes of dirt in the garage. There was Liz leading my wide-eyed girl away from me and saying in a steady voice, “Mama is feeling really sad and angry about Grandma Dottie dying. Let’s give her a little space.” And a little while later I calmed down, and Alice gave me an extra big hug to help me feel better. So we all learned that day and in the days that followed that people feel really sad and angry when the people we love die, and that it’s good to give them space some of the time, and sometimes to give them extra hugs.

Several years ago, when my grandmother first moved to the nursing home, my mom and sister worked like dogs to clean up her house and, for a while, rented it out. But in the end the house was sold, and razed and something emblematic of our era of conspicuous consumption was erected in the place of my grandparents’ modesty and thrift. Theirs was the only family ever to live in that tiny, tidy 1940s ranch house. I have not visited the spot previously known as my grandparent’s house; I don’t know if I ever will. My mind knows, but my heart does not really understand, that my daughter will never wrap her small hand around the worn red knob on their clattering screen door— a knob placed a good foot below the standard level, so that a very small person might be able to let herself into the kitchen to get some Oreos, or a handful of Hershey’s kisses from her grandfather’s pocket.

It’s that “never-again”-ness that dealt the body blow when we lost our friend Janice in August. At 52 she moved from diagnosis of an aggressive form of ovarian cancer to death in the space of three weeks. This was not a friend in the ordinary sense of the word, someone with whom I might hang out or talk on the phone or share confidences. Instead, this was a member of my sangha, my martial arts community, which I spoke of at length in my summer sermon. This was a friend like a family member, a beloved one of a beloved whole.

Janice loved and kept chickens, and in the days leading up to and following her death, I saw our little sangha as a scratching brood of hens after the hawk has struck down one of their own. We pulled our chicken heads down into our necks and looked up at the dangerous sky, and around at our sisters, and knew that any one could be taken at any time. We felt very small. Grief blew a hole into each of us—you could almost see the doors of our hearts swinging on their hinges and opening to the the wide air beyond. We were crazy with unbelieving and each of us stumbled in turn. I heard the speech of the women I most admire broken with choking sobs. I saw my teacher kneeling and bending her body to place her forehead to the ground, literally bowed with grief. What we had to offer one another was so little in the face of so much pain: Breath. Presence. Compassion. Love. It felt inadequate to hold the enormity of our loss, but it did hold. We bowed, but we did not break.

One of the hardest things , for me, about being a parent, is the sense that the buck stops with me—that I am the safety net, the provider of stability, the grown up. Before I became a mom, I had occasion to look around during a medical emergency involving my spouse and wonder who was going to take care of her. It was an embarrassingly long few moments later that I realized it would be me. It wasn’t a lack of love but a lack of confidence, and an incredulity that this is what adulthood amounts to: acting as if you know what you’re doing, and then finding yourself in charge.

A hierarchical community such as a martial arts school provides people to look up to. It’s part of the system. Seeing my teachers bowed but not broken told me what Alice could see and learn from my grief—that the grown ups could be very deeply wounded but remain whole. That we could be sad and we would all still be safe. Alice danced into the charged room where I collected the email updates about Janice’s rapidly declining condition and read only the relevant words to Liz, not being able to read entire messages aloud: “Cancer.” “More serious than we thought.” “Hospice.” Alice was near when the early morning call came that Janice had died. Alice was alone with me when a joyous song of celebration came over the stereo speakers and I got knocked over by one of those memories that is carried by music—a visceral relocation to a moment I shared with Janice many years ago: hearing that song, being delighted to be together, and looking into her sparkly eyes.

When Janice died, we didn’t wait for a convenient time to grieve. We started right away. My sadness was dark and heavy and I trudged through ordinary life. A day after Janice’s death Alice asked, “Is anything fun going to happen today?” and I truly thought, “No, nothing fun will ever happen again.” But it wasn’t true. On the very day of Janice’s death, when we went to gather with friends and view her body as was her wish, we dropped Alice with a wonderful family from this UU community, who folded her into their multiple child household where she had, by all reports, tons of fun.

Alice was five. She had fun every day, even when when it was hard for her moms to keep up. At the supermarket a few days later Alice sighed and took a deep breath to get her thoughts organized. “I know that we’re all really sad because Janice died,” she said, working very hard to be clear. “But could we just pretend that that’s not what’s happening?” I saw my old friend Denial, and I understood him better than I ever had. He had a job to do, and that was to make sure we all kept having some fun.

In an email update, Janice’s partner told us, “We know that death is not the enemy.” Janice went to her death without regret. She loved her life and in her death she was celebrated by hundreds who loved her and learned from her. This lesson is incredible to me, and to say it is a gift seems too little. It is a precious treasure and in all my sadness, I feel so lucky to have walked a little while with this woman whose life and death radiated with presence. I had the same realization watching Janice’s partner and friends bear the horror of losing her that I did when I birthed Alice. The insight was this: as unbelievable as it seemed, we had the the tools to handle it. Our sangha practice is about being present, it’s about being kind to ourselves and one another. It’s why Janice had an incredibly wonderful life and a peaceful death. It’s how her friends came to bear the unbearable task of letting her go.

After twenty years in a Buddhist influenced art, it still surprises me that I have any skill at being present. I was raised by someone who schedules funerals to cause the least disruption to everyone’s calendar. And I am so imperfect as a parent. Sometimes this parenting gig feels like an endless round of forgiving myself for falling short of my best self. I want to give my girl every tool for having a wonderful life, and I believe that being present, living mindfully, is one of the great secrets. So when the sound of Miriam Mikaba singing knocked me over with sadness, I told Alice why. “I am thinking of Janice, and I am so sad that I will never see her face again.” And Alice said to me with all the bright kindness of her enormous heart, “Mama! Tell me what she looked like. I will draw you a picture.”

As I was writing the first draft of this sermon this fall, I received a death announcement for the Guinea Pig Broccoli Niblet. Broccoli Niblet was the adoptive pet of two successive families with whom my household is very close, so her death affected a number of children I love. I was relieved to learn that Broccoli had not suffered, that she had an easy death, and that she was put to rest in a bucolic spot near the swing set. When I told Alice the news she said, “There’s a lot of getting sick and dying going on around here.” Isn’t that the truth. We were glad to have it said plainly and to know our feelings on the matter. And I sat right down to write a condolence note.