What Will You Create?
How are you doing in this moment? Check in with your body, go ahead. This column can wait.
What emotions are present? Where do you feel each one in your body? How is your heart feeling today? What do you need? Listen to the wisdom in your body.
We’ve entered unprecedented times, my friends. It is now time to do some radical resting. I’ve been pretty disappointed in my own resiliency skills lately, and my response to the Covid19 Pandemic has me feeling pretty surprised at myself. I’m very uncomfortable and I really don’t like it.
And yet, sitting in our discomfort, acknowledging that feeling, and being able to name it is a really important spiritual practice, one that keeps us aware of our own comfort levels and the comfort afforded to (or not) the folx around us.
Broken institutions and systems are on full display right now, and social media is full of lamentation as our culture is laid bare by illness that does not care about the plans that you’ve made and the accomplishments you’ve collected.
Parents, in particular, are feeling the squeeze of the unrealistic expectations that exist in a culture that values progress, quantity over quality, perfectionism, and efficiency. Our children can feel those influences as well, and so, I wonder how we might re-imagine and release some of those expectations, and replace them with ones that better lift up our collective humanity, rather than our perceived individualism.
Unitarian Universalists, I am asking us to consider embracing the discomfort. Notice the ways your body responds when a limitation blocks you from accessing something you want or need. Listen to the wisdom of your body. Embrace complexity. Notice the tugs of opposition between your head, your heart, and the overwhelming amount of information that is available to each of us. Expect mistakes, embrace conflict of all sizes so that we might practice collaboration even as we are distanced physically from one another. Let us value quality over quantity, effective leaders over efficient ones. Let’s include moral and faithful outcomes in our cost/benefit analysis process, rather than just the monetary impacts. Let us ask for help, and radically abandon the myth of self-sufficiency. Let’s do some honest practice to tear down cultural expectations that don’t serve everyone.
We will get through this difficult time. I wonder what we will create together on the other side of this global tragedy. I hope it is something that serves all of our children, all of the survivors of a broken system that needs rebuilding. What will you do differently, when given the chance?
When we can see one another again, safely in our congregational home, let us dance and sing and eat together, treasuring this opportunity to work for justice in the presence of beloved community. It’s going to be time for another all ages dance party! I look forward to celebrating with you soon.