What Some Call Coincidence

First, I read this article about Stephen Colbert and was awed by how deep the conversation was and how much I needed to hear it.

Then, I opened David Whyte’s River Flow collection and read this:

Yorkshire

I love the dead
and their quiet living
underground
and I love the rain on my face.

And in childhood,
I loved the wind
on the moors
that carried the rain
and that carried the ashes
of the dead
like a spring sowing
of memory,
stored through all
the winters past.

In the dark November
onset of the winter
in which I was born,
I was set down in the
folds of the land
as if I belonged there,
and in that first night
under the evening shadow
of the moors and most likely
with the wind in the west,
as it would be for most
of my growing life,

I was breathing in the tang
and troubles of that immense
and shadowing sky
as I was breathing the shadows
of my mother’s body,
learning who and what was close
and how I could belong.

What great and
abstract power
lent me to those
particularities
I cannot know
but body
and soul were made
for that belonging.

Yorkshire is as hard
as a spade-edge
but the underpinnings
of the people and the land
in which we lived,
flowed and turned like the
river I knew in my valley.
The blunt solidarity of my elders
floated like mountains
on the slow but fluid lava
of their history.

But on this solid yet floating
land I must have been
as Irish as my mother
and amid the straight certainties
of my father’s Yorkshire,
I felt beneath the damp moor’s
horizon the curved invisible
lines that drew everything
together, the underground stream
of experience that could not
be quarried or brought to the surface,
but only dowsed, felt, followed
or intuited from above.

Poetry then became the key, my way
underground into what was hidden
by the inept but daily coverings
of grown-up surface speech.
Something sacred in the land
was left unsaid in people’s moths
but was written into our inheritance
and that small volume of Thom Gunn’s
youthful poetry from
the library’s high tiptoe shelf
was the angel’s gift to me.
Opened and read in my
young boy’s hands,
it revealed the first code
I sought and needed to begin
speaking what I felt
had been forgotten.

Full stretch I reached again
along the spines and touched
another, other life, pulling
down into my hands
The Hawk in the Rain
Ted Hughes’ dark book full of northern omens
hovering above my
own child’s shadow on the ground,
my heart and mind
caught in those written claws
and whisked into the sky.
The first rush of poetry’s
extended arms a complete
abduction of my person.

That was the beginning,
The first line on the open page
of my new life, the rest
would be more difficult
but that was the soil in which
I would grow, and that was the
life into which I would grow,
blessed and badgered by the northern
sweeps of light and dark
and the old entanglements
to which I was born. Always
on the wuthering moors
the gifts and stories and poetry
of the unknown and unvisited dead
who brought their history
to the world in which I grew.

Orphaned by poetry
from my first home,
to find a greater home
out in the world,
I wandered from that land
and began to write
youthfully and insubstantially,
slowly making myself
real and seeable by writing
myself into an original world
which had borne and
grown me so generously.

Belonging to one old land
so much by birth,
I learn each day now
what it means to
be born into a new land
and new people. The open
moor of the American
mind, gusted and shaken
by imagined new worlds
and imagined new clouds
and the fears and griefs of
the peopled and unknowable distances
of a vast land, and still amidst
everything, an innocence
which survives hear untouched
amidst a difficult inheritance.

Let my history then
be a gate unfastened
to a new life
and not a barrier
to my becoming.
Let me find the ghosts
and histories and barely
imagined future
of this world,
and let me now have
the innocence to grow
just as well in shadow or light
by what is gifted
in this land
as the one to which I was born.

On Having Heroes Who Are Human

These thoughts were inspired by and are a sort of response to this post.

I get quite a bit of pushback for being a fan of Amanda Palmer. I get long, impassioned comments from people who are concerned that I don’t understand how problematic she is. The nice ones assume I am simply uninformed, and spend thousands of words filling me in on all of her offenses. The list is long and to these people, unequivocal proof that Palmer is unworthy of anything but insult, derision, and dismissal.

Those are the nice ones. There’s another level of hatred that shows up in my comments or inbox when the person knows I’ m aware of the controversies but have refused to banish Palmer from my playlists, my Twitter feed, and my esteem. I imagine their eyes bulging with rage as they type out their accusations that I am a hypocrite, a shill, or that I must also be a __________________.  (Where the blank is filled with whatever label they use to dismiss her utterly; most often: racist, ableist, misogynist, narcissist.)

A few of her detractors are extremely committed: responding every time I mention her name, just to be sure I haven’t forgotten that she is problematic, persona non grata, enemy of justice, evil incarnate. They point out every possible thing I should be outraged by, every way my admiration for Palmer is complicit with her horribleness and contrary to their understanding of my values, especially my feminism, anti-racism, and anti-oppression commitments.

Not everything they say is wrong. There are times that Amanda Palmer makes me cringe. She’s done things that I wish she hadn’t. She’s said things that I strongly disagree with. She’s made mistakes. There have been times when I’ve been frustrated or disappointed with her comments or behavior. I’ve argued with her publicly about some of these things. And every disagreement has included the same word: (sometimes from her, sometimes from me) “Love.” And that’s why I’m still here, still a fan, still insisting that Palmer’s presence in my life, on the stage, and in the world is welcome.

This week, the controversy revolved around Jian Ghomeshi, the Canadian musician and broadcaster, who lost his job after allegations of sexual assault and abuse became public. Or rather, who released a statement saying he was unfairly fired because his sexual proclivities included what he called BDSM or “kink” practices. Over the course of several days, more and more women came forward (a total of nine, at last count) to corroborate the original charges: Ghomeshi had not sought consent and they had not given it, but had physically and sexually assaulted them.

What does this have to do with Amanda Palmer? Ghomeshi was one of the people Palmer had invited to participate in the book tour that begins next week.  In nearly every city where she will be reading and performing, she invited a guest to share the stage and add to the conversation. Ghomeshi had agreed to join her onstage in Toronto, the final night of the tour.

As soon as the story about Ghomeshi broke, people—fans, not detractors—began to ask Palmer to rescind the invitation.  Because it was so early, there was little more than the information that two women had come forward with accusations and Ghomeshi’s post explaining that his sexual practices were being purposely misconstrued and that he had lost his job as a result.  Palmer posted Ghomeshi’s explanation and, sticking to her oft-spoken commitment not to avoid controversy, tweeted that Ghomeshi would still be guesting.

All hell broke loose then, as fans, haters, commenters, and the media all jumped into the fray. People were hurt, people were angry, and some people were supportive—all in the midst of a rapidly changing situation.  By the time most people learned that of Palmer’s post, there were more and more women coming forward, corroborating the stories of abuse and providing disturbing details. The online media, always eager for a fight (and always happy to discredit a woman, especially a feminist) went live with stories in the tone of outrage and reproach.

I’ve been around long enough to see how the media portrays Palmer and these articles included all the same tropes. Palmer was narcissistic, out of touch, and happy to defend the powerful at the cost of her fans.  They quote essays and blog posts that “point out that Palmer seemed to be leaning toward believing Ghomeshi…” without mentioning that those conclusions were drawn from one comment made before the details of the allegations were known. The articles are mocking in tone, faulting Palmer for asking for time to review the facts, to read the comments from her fans, and consider her decision.

It always amazes me how the media insist on the using and reusing the same three ideas to dismiss Palmer.  In every article, she is out of touch with her fans, self-absorbed, and shallow.  Even when all the evidence is to the contrary, they trot out these same judgments. It doesn’t matter that Palmer was deeply invested in the conversation with her fans, reading and responding to comments online—she’s still out of touch because she didn’t reply enough.  It doesn’t matter that Palmer requested time to make a carefully considered decision—she’s shallow.  It doesn’t matter that she’s sharing the stage as often as possible on this book tour—she’s self-absorbed and narcissistic.

Had Palmer decided to go on with the show and keep Ghomeshi as a guest, I would have been disappointed and even angry. I would have seen it as a way that even Amanda Fucking Palmer sometimes gets it wrong and believes men more than women. I would have taken that as evidence of how insidious sexism is, how deeply the messages of rape culture and misogyny can be internalized. I would have asked her to reconsider.  And had she refused, I would have let my tickets to her shows go unused.

I respect Palmer’s decision, but there are many who are still angry. Mostly, they seem to be angry that she didn’t make the decision quickly enough. She did take some time—96 hours—to make her decision.  Some are even angrier that she mentioned her current project—a musical theater performance  at Bard College called The Bed Show—in her announcement. “Self-promotion!” they cry. Never mind that the show is relevant to both the topic and the timing of her decision.  Palmer has been in 12-hour tech rehearsals in preparation for The Bed Show to open this Wednesday. The show, according to Palmer, also delves into issues of abuse and rape culture.

Is Amanda Palmer perfect? No. And I am happy that she is not. While some want their role models to be perfect, I like mine to be human.  Part of what keeps me engaged with Palmer and her art and music is that she is transparent about her mistakes. Like any of us, she tries and fails and tries again to live up to her own ideals. Oh, and that’s another reason people are angry with her. She doesn’t just hold herself to high standards. She has, again and again, over the course of years, asked for people to be compassionate, civil, and refuse to be hateful. Some have confused this with tone policing.

Tone policing is a strategy used by the powerful to excuse and propagate oppression. When an oppressed person gets angry or is not grateful enough or kind enough to the oppressor, this “deficiency” is used as a reason to continue controlling them.  This excuses the abuses of the oppressed and is the key way that oppression is internalized. In its crudest form, it can be as simple as a woman coming to believe she deserves to be beaten because she was not nice enough to her abuser. In more complex situations, it is used to silence the naming of oppression by redirecting attention from what is being named (the abuse or oppression) to how it is being named. (with anger, rage, vitriol.)  Asking an oppressed person to “act nice” in response to their oppression or “be grateful” for what they do have is a strategy of shame and silence. It is real and it is wrong.

But Amanda Palmer’s request that discussion on her Twitter feed, blog, and Facebook page remain civil and not become hateful is NOT tone policing. The relationship Palmer has with her fans is not the relationship of oppressor to the oppressed, nor does she have the power to silence them.  (I suppose she could delete comments, but I’ve never known her to do so.) In addition, she didn’t ask anyone to refrain from expressing anger. In fact, she doesn’t demand anything. She simply states, “ i am *not* happy to see people flinging insults, using violent language and wishing harm on others.” She later writes, “may we all hold the space – in the physical world and on the internet – to take care of each other. we’re in this one together, friends. please don’t forget that.”

This isn’t an effort to silence anyone, but to embody what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. taught when he wrote, “Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” I believe it’s possible—even necessary—for people to express anger, to disagree and debate, expressing their ideas and experiences powerfully without resorting to hate. In fact, I believe we need more debate, more public discussions—even arguments that fight the –isms that infect us all.  I’m all for impassioned discourse about ethics, values, and how to make the world a better place. Amanda Palmer has shown herself willing to have those hard discussions. She’s shown herself willing to change her mind. She just asks that we do without hate, and I can’t fault her for that.

REPOST–Cabaret Church: Why Compassion?

The second commitment of Cabaret Church is compassion—for all beings and without limit:

•  Compassion for self
• Compassion for our communities
• Compassion for the stranger
• Compassion for our enemies
• Compassion for all

If you have been paying attention, you may have noticed that the wording of this commitment has changed over the months. It began as “community,” became “connection” and grew into compassion. Each time the word changed, the commitment became larger and more challenging.

Cabaret Church is a community of people who believe that compassion is powerful and necessary. We are well aware that we are human and that means we make mistakes. We fuck up. We hurt people. In our commitment to art and resistance, we push boundaries and break rules. Sometimes we struggle to live up to our commitments and instead stay silent when we should have spoken up. We need compassion.

We know that in order to live in a compassionate world, we have to practice compassion. We understand that our heroes, our friends, and even our enemies are human. While that doesn’t keep us from feeling angry and calling out mistakes and demanding change, we try to do so without adding more insult and hatred to the world. And when we are the ones who screwed up, we not only respond to whomever we hurt with compassion, we extend that compassion to ourselves as well.

Compassion is, in a very real way, the thing that makes both art and resistance possible. We can explore art freely, express ideas and feelings, experiment with form and content, confront injustice and engage deeply with each other when we trust that we will be met with compassion. We can build the compassionate community that we long for and that inspires us. We can be Cabaret Church.

REPOST–Cabaret Church: Could this be Cabaret Church?

(The Amanda Palmer House Party Experience)

by T Palmer

People often ask me how I ended up being a minister— which is a long story, but always begins the same way–I was fascinated by the whole idea of church. I loved that there was a place we went to be inspired to become better people. I was intrigued by the sense that being human is a kind of project that we can work on together. This started when I was very young, maybe four or five years old, yet last night at the splendid Chicago house party, when it was Amanda Palmer asking the question, that fascination is still where my answer began.

But before I get to that, I have to admit that the night did not begin as I hoped. If you know anything about me, you already know that means we were late. I hate being late. In spite of the fact that I woke up at 4 a.m. feeling like it was Christmas morning, and we fretted and timed everything  in order to arrive right on time and before Amanda, a number of things (including Chicago traffic) conspired to make us almost an hour late.

by T Palmer

by T Palmer

Even so, we were greeted by our gracious hosts and given directions about how things would work. People were already spray painting on a giant canvas and filling their plates from an enormous table, and I hurried through the crowd to add our food the the potluck.  I was frazzled and rushing; not at all how I wanted to be.

As I was trying to navigate the crowd, I saw Amanda and she looked up and broke into a big smile. I was unprepared  to be recognized. I had been carefully managing my expectations and practicing casually telling her my twitter handle and explaining who I was. To be suddenly face-to-face with her and to be known was a complete surprise. I managed to give her a startled look and a freaked-out smile and scurry away.

After getting my bearings and taking care of the required details, I worked my way back to  the food. As I stepped into the garage (where the feast was laid) there was Amanda. She smiled and said something like, “Hi! I want to sit my ass down next to you and talk.” I sputtered out, “Okay, that would be great,” and added, “Give me a couple of minutes to get through…this…” My words trailed off.  How does one name the profoundly strange combination of anxiety and joy that makes your entire vocabulary disappear? Luckily, she seemed to understand.

After we got our food, we found a place to sit in the grass and talk. I told her a little story about the last time we’d met and how I forgot to look at anything but my shoes. That led to a moment of intentional eye contact. And then, amazingly, it wasn’t awkward any more. That’s when she asked me how I became a minister. Or did she ask how I became me?

by T Palmer

by Carl Frederick

All I know is that I unwound the  strands of my story, laying them out in rows, trying not to leave too many  dangling or  tangled. Amanda listened and  I felt a genuine connection, not to Amanda-Palmer-the-rock-star, but to Amanda-Palmer-the-human-being.  For those few minutes not one person interrupted us–not with words or bodies or impatient eyes–and I felt like we were inside the fairy circle in The Ocean at the End of the Lane, protected by old magic. (Ocean is the most recent  book by Neil Gaiman, who is married to Amanda, and it is a book I already cherish. A post about that will happen when I can find the words.)

by T Palmer

When it was time to move on, I ended up with the task of keeping Amanda’s kimono from harm, which somehow felt important. (It was the very same kimono featured in her recent musical retort to the British tabloid The Daily Mail.) Later, when she needed the kimono for photos, she asked me to hold her phone and take some pictures. That led to me becoming the “official” cell phone photographer, trying to capture candid moments happening before, after, and around each person’s formal picture with Amanda. I had great fun balancing two, three, and sometimes four cell phones, trying to catch the sweet, poignant, and happy moments of connection between Amanda and her fans.

Watching those connections allowed me to notice and observe the spirit of the night, quietly and beautifully shaped and guided by Amanda: a transcendent mix of art, conversation, hugs, tears, and courage.  In a recent blog post Amanda wrote about the power of  the house parties and the atmosphere of pure connection that pervades them. Last night, fifty strangers chose trust over fear and created something real together. What we created was the very thing that fascinated me as a child and started me dreaming and writing, curating and creating Cabaret Church. 

Even now, long past childhood, I am fascinated by the possibilities of the human project I first saw in church. I still long for a community where people support and challenge each other to break free from a culture that wants us to exhaust and anesthetize ourselves with conformity and consumerism. I’m still determined to spend my life trying to create and support spaces where people can grow and become more authentic, courageous, and kind. I saw that happen last night, around and within me.

There’s a lot to be learned from these amazing gatherings that could help make church more relevant, meaningful, and fun. And there are and will always be things we can learn from old spiritual wisdom, tradition and practice.  As Amanda told me last night, “We suffer from the separation of church and art.” Maybe it’s time for a reunion.

Special thanks to Andy, Siouxi, Dave, Kate, Amanda and all the other wonderful people who made last night possible.

REPOST–Cabaret Church: Why Amanda Palmer Makes Me Think About Church

I am a minister. Maybe that is why people give me strange looks when I tell them I am a big fan of Amanda Palmer. I guess the word “minister” conjures an image of uptight, scowling old men with nostrils permanently flared from sniffing out the faintest scent of the carnal.  When confronted by someone as free-spirited as Amanda—who is prone to displays of public nudity; uses the word “fuck” with both ease and power (it is, after all, her middle name); writes, sings and screams songs like “Do it With a Rock Star” and “The Killing Type;” and uses social media to share much of (if not every corner of) her mind—I guess I am supposed to immediately condemn her or run away screaming.

I may be expected to condemn, but instead I find myself drawn to Amanda Palmer’s work and her world. Her songs, her TED talk, her blog, her insistence on connection with her fans and even with her haters have all reinvigorated—resurrected, really—my passion for ministry and my vision of what liberal religious community can be.

Truth be told, I love all of it: the uninhibited self-expression; the nakedness of body, mind, and soul; the unabashed insistence that the power of art can change us and therefore change the world. “We are the Media!” Amanda Palmer sings.  I want to add: “And we are the Church!” Or maybe: “We are the Sacred! We are the Holy! We are Everything That Matters and everything beautiful and ordinary and amazing…

Amanda Palmer makes me think about church.  Yeah, church: the place where, for centuries, power and greed and transcendence and sin and art and ritual and life and death have been playing their parts in a grand mythic drama. Church: the place where people try to work out what it means to be human and how to make life more graceful and meaningful.  Church: the one thing that has both  saved my life and broken my heart so completely that I ran away screaming in pain and fury. And yes, church. The community that always draws me back and helps me recognize and serve something larger than my own ego, something like Hope.  Even though I am often frustrated at the forms the institutional church takes, I can’t shake my conviction that if we don’t despair, we can return the church to being a catalyst for empowerment, inspiration, justice, and liberty in our own hearts and in the world.

Alfred North Whitehead called God “the poet of the world.” The central story in every religious tradition is always the story of creation: God dividing light from darkness, the Goddess giving birth, or Turtle rising from the primordial ooze with the muddy earth on its back.  These primal stories are the centerpiece of religious myth not only because we humans are eternally curious about our origins, but because the ability to create is and has always been considered sacred.  For centuries, if you were looking for art you went to church, where poets, painters, sculptors, musicians and composers were lauded for their ability to make a way for the sacred to enter the ordinary world. Beauty and creativity were portals to the holy.

Amanda Palmer’s work is a torrid, sweaty, sex-in-public affair with creativity.  In the Punk Cabaret story of creation, creatrix and creature refuse to be separated by theological hierarchies, and are instead consenting partners in an ecstatic and slightly dangerous bump and grind. Bodies are celebrated, even flaunted, without embarrassment.  After all, if it weren’t for our bodies, how would we create or experience all this beauty?

This, for me, is an awakening. For decades I have struggled with the ugly dichotomy that separates body from spirit and declares the material, the physical, the carnal to be dirty and sinful.  I was moved to tears when I read Walt Whitman’s declaration, “If anything is sacred, the human body is!”  That sacredness is too easy to forget, yet listening to Amanda Palmer’s music I feel the urge to move rise up in me and am reminded that my earliest spiritual or religious memories are of dancing.  In dance class or at home alone with my record player, I experienced my whole heart and body absorbed in one transcendent “Yes!” I knew, as a child, that both the dance and the dancer were holy. I knew that I was inseparable from The Sacred.

I know, of course, that religion—especially Western Christianity—is responsible for much of this denigration of the body. I know that the unholy desire for power and empire led to the creation of systems and theologies that dismiss some bodies—brown bodies, female bodies, queer bodies, disabled bodies—as worthless and only to be controlled. I see the results of this thinking in policies that demean and punish those who wear these bodies. I see this and I know that many will be unable to believe that religion, complicit in so much evil, is worthy of anything but disdain. I know. I see. I tremble.

And yet I cannot just walk away. I keep being drawn back. Or, to use an older term: I keep being called back.

You see, I didn’t go into ministry because I wanted to reenact dusty rituals, all the while keeping my hair neat and my overcoat buttoned.  I didn’t go into ministry to write twenty-minute essays more conducive to checking one’s watch than to checking in with the state of one’s soul.  I didn’t go into ministry to be considered an employee with a three word job description: keep people happy.

I went into ministry because I long for transformation. I long for revolution. I am called to make this world better and to heal what brokenness I can.  I am called to help create communities that empower all of us to encounter and respond to the All that is bigger than any of us, bigger than all of us, and bigger even than anything we can imagine. I am called to look for and help create communities that are engaged in the work of the spirit together. Communities that are a lot like the crowds at  Amanda Palmer concerts or the people telling their truths and tweeting love and support for one another on a Friday night, tagging Amanda in every post.

I imagine a church where every sweaty, glitter-drenched, dancing body is welcome. I imagine a church that can be loud and bold and angry when necessary. I imagine a church where we notice the many who say, “No one sees me,” and take time to stop, look them in the eye and say, “We see you.”  I imagine a church where everyone is invited to not only attend the show, but to be part of it—to engage soul-deep in the art of living an authentic, embodied, meaningful life.

That’s the church I imagine, thanks to Amanda Palmer. That’s Cabaret Church.

Looking for the Love‬

Today is the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday and the second day of the “Thirty Days of Love” sponsored by our Association. I’ve waited until today to address something that happened just about a month ago.  I waited to make sure I wasn’t over-reacting. I waited, thinking maybe I’d feel better as time passed. I waited to give us all some time to calm down.  Just under a month ago,  the Unitarian Universalist Association posted a holiday greeting on Facebook that led to a long painful discussion.

At least, it was painful for me. So painful that I had to consider whether Unitarian Universalism is a place where I can or should continue to pour my energies, ideas, and hard work.  That sounds like hyperbole, but it’s not.

The words and image chosen for the greeting are not the primary issue for me. Yes, I understand the intention was to remind Unitarian Universalists that the most important thing about the holidays is not the gifts and materialism. But I also understand that those words and the accompanying image left some feeling painfully excluded.

Yes, Unitarian Universalists are, in general, well-educated and economically privileged. But there are those among us who do not have what they need. There are also people like the woman I sat with in my office on December 23 who wept because she could not find a way to give her children the Christmas she felt they deserved: no tree, no big dinner, and most painfully for her, not a single gift. She chose to pay the rent and keep the heat on, but doing so made her feel like a failure and she knew her children would be disappointed.

The greeting also uses language that assumes that all of us can see, hear, and embrace with arms of love.  Some say the language is simply metaphor, and it may be. But in a world where barriers to inclusion and microagressions are an everyday thing for folks with disabilities, exclusive metaphors still sting.

When they are coming from your faith community–a community that says it is working to be inclusive and counter-oppressive–the sting becomes a burn. (This is something I’ve learned from my experience as a trans* person and by listening to others in my beloved community who struggle to be included–let alone, celebrated–in their fullness as human beings with abilities and disabilities.)

But it was not the greeting that broke my heart.

After the greeting was posted, a few brave souls pointed out that it may have been hurtful and/or excluded some folks in our beloved community. They did so gently and carefully, being clear that they knew that whoever had posted the greeting did not intend to exclude or hurt anyone.

And then all hell broke loose. And my heart broke.

First, Peter Morales, the President of our Association of Congregations replied:

I am sorry you were offended by the UUA’s Facebook page posting… However, I believe you misread both the intent and the content of the posting and that your criticisms are misdirected and counterproductive.

(I’ve deleted a story from President Morales’ childhood about being poor and information about how the new UUA headquarters will be accessible to people with disabilities.)

…What troubles me about your letter is that it falls into a pattern of what I have called UU’s who arrive “pre-offended.” The result is a kind of bullying that ends up having people become so cautious that our discourse is trivialized. To say that we need vision is not to demean those who are blind. To say that we should stand on the side of love does not disrespect those who cannot stand. To say that we should listen deeply does not marginalize those with hearing disabilities. Are we to avoid singing “Guide My Feet” in fear that someone without feet might be offended?

I do not believe we should ever give offense deliberately. And, yes, we should be thoughtful and sensitive. However—and this is critical—we should not take offense when none was intended. I rarely go to a major meeting of UU’s when someone does not come to me in righteous anger about some imagined offense. It is counter productive. Frankly, it is silly.
There are real issues we must confront together. I am convinced that economic inequality does enormous emotional damage and threatens our democracy. We need to work together to make our congregations and our society more open and accessible.

I look forward to working with you and others to confront real issues of injustice and marginalization that affect thousands. I suggest we spend more energy taking action and less taking offense.

The scolding, paternalistic tone of President Morales’ words was the first (and deepest) wound. Calling people “pre-offended” is to say that no offense was given and the critique  offered is a figment of the imaginations of those who are “too sensitive”–an age-old way of silencing people who dare to speak up and name oppression.

President Morales continues to  dismiss his critics (or critics of the greeting since the response to the greeting was never aimed at Morales personally) calling their critique a “complaint” that is misdirected, counter-productive, and a form of bullying. He admits that people approach him all the time in “righteous anger at some imagined offense.” Then he tells us what he really thinks: “Frankly, it’s silly.”

Sadly, President Morales is not the only one. After he posted his response, hundreds of people chimed in. It was like a floodgate opened and instead of compassion and love for those who felt excluded and hurt, what came pouring out was defensiveness, dismissal, and anger. And that was when I began to wonder, “Am I on the wrong team?” Are we so invested in our own culture, structures, and self-importance that we can’t even listen when someone says, “Hey, that hurt.  Ouch.”?

The holiday greeting was a relatively small thing: a picture and some words. Yes, those words were written by a beloved UU leader. And the picture is pretty and represents something we’re proud of: a grassroots effort to create images for social media that carry our values and message into the world.   When people critique  a well-intentioned greeting, it’s painful. When they point out that our words (and images) may have effects that we did not intend, it can be frustrating. But isn’t this exactly the kind of thing we have to be willing to do if we are to  live out our commitments?

Our Association has adopted Global Ends, which is a fancy way of saying Big Goals that are supposed to guide all that we do. One of those Ends is:

• Congregations and communities engage in partnerships to counter systems of power, privilege and oppression.

I can’t help but wonder if we mean it.  Today, many of us are quoting Dr. King. But what about tomorrow? During the Thirty Days of Love, we’re studying up on multiculturalism, but is our beloved community truly welcoming to all? And if it is not, are we willing to change? Next time someone asks us to look at our words and consider that they might not be as loving as we thought, how will we respond? Will we accuse them of being the problem and dismiss them as silly? Will we tell them we’re too busy doing the real work of justice to be bothered?

Is that what we mean by Love?

The chance might be here already.  Today,  a Unitarian Universalist posted a lovely reflection called Love means it’s time to kill your darlings. How will we respond?

Exhausted With a Nagging Pain in the Heart

I woke up early this morning. I tried to go back to sleep for about an hour, but couldn’t manage it, though I am exhausted. All morning I’ve been yawning and my eyes feel like someone scrubbed them with hot desert sand, but I cannot sleep. I cannot find a way to unclench myself, to relax, to surrender.

Fear.

That’s not all. There is this nagging pain in my chest. Not the kind that makes you think, “heart attack!” but the kind that feels like there is a big soft lump wedged between my ribcage and my skin. It is a lump of tears that will not come, that I am afraid will come. Not the pretty trickle of a tear from the corner of an eye, but big, messy, ugly sobs with tears that run and puddle and soak the shirt and leave stains that don’t easily wash away.

Lamentation.

Fear and Lamentation have been my companions since yesterday morning when Chelsea Manning announced her new name and revealed her true self to the world. There was not even a full second to digest the news and wish her well before the first attack was unleashed. It was a relatively small one, just a slight pause and pointed emphasis on the word “her.” Just a pause and inflection that clearly  said, “I have to use this pronoun now, but I am only doing it because I’ve been told to.”

But now, twenty-four hours later, I am exhausted from carrying the sadness, physically worn from the way my body tightens and cringes as I read the increasingly ugly attacks. This morning, the lump of tears grew harder and more angry as I read that media outlet after media outlet is refusing to use feminine pronouns for Ms. Manning.

The New York Times has stated that they intend to change to feminine pronouns gradually because they don’t want to confuse their readers, even though it seems that making the change and being consistent from now on would be less confusing. NPR has announced it knows Ms. Manning’s gender better than she does herself. They have stated they won’t honor her identity until she is “physically female.” Ironic, since while she is imprisoned, she will not be given access to the medical care and treatment she needs to do that. Less reputable “news” sources will undoubtedly bring up her transgender identity for years–maybe forever–as “evidence” that Ms. Manning is “unstable” or “dishonest” or “lacks integrity.”

After sixteen years, I am just deeply tired of the dismissal and judgement and hatred. Even more, I am tired of watching my trans* siblings–especially my sisters of color–being dragged through hell in the media and on the streets. I am tired of watching us die, sometimes in brutal moments of extreme violence and sometimes the death-of-a-thousand-cuts of having our truth, our being, our bodies, and our lives devalued and ridiculed.

Today, I will do my best to carry on–to attend to my personal and professional responsibilities, meet deadlines, care for the people in my congregation–while bent under the weight of Fear and Lamentation, companions that I did not choose and only want to leave me–and all of us–alone.

Neil Gaiman’s Beautiful Lie

Neil Gaiman’s latest novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, is about many things. It is about childhood and magic and knowing and secrets and remembering. It is a story, but it is also about stories. It is these things—all set in the landscape of Gaiman’s childhood—and something more:  a strange but familiar dance between sweetness and sorrow, revelation and obfuscation, the need to remember and the fate that eventually, we all forget.

When I first began to write I was told by a wise poet friend that it was okay and even necessary, to lie. “All storytellers lie,” he said, “We lie to tell the truth.”  I realized then, and again when reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane, that the most powerful truths must be wrapped carefully in lies or we would not survive knowing them.

Gaiman’s book is this kind of lie.

That is why, for only the second time in my life, I find myself unable to write a simple book review. I cannot parse the plot for you or analyze the prose or even tell you in any straightforward way about what The Ocean at the End of the Lane is about. Instead, I can only return a truth for a truth, a story for a story, a lie for a lie.

 Once upon a time there was a little girl who had whole worlds inside her. Though she knew many things, she was a child and for that reason alone was assumed to know nothing at all. Every moment of every day she was taught unimportant things. She was taught how to behave. She was taught what to think. She was taught what to believe. She was taught that the worlds inside her were make-believe and could never be true.

 She was given a name, a role, and a set of rules. She was told that the name, the role and the rules were the only thing that mattered, the only things that were true. She learned to hide what she knew, and as she did, she became sullen and sad as her heart dried out and crumbled, bit by bit.

 When her heart was still supple and whole, she could see that kind Mr. Shellabarger who lived next door was not just an old man who loved his garden. And his wife, Alice, was not just an old woman who stayed hidden in the house because a disease made her tremble, but was the very same Alice who once fell through the looking glass. The girl knew that the reason Mr. Shellabarger sprayed his apple trees with garlic rather than poison pesticides was that he did not want to hurt the March Hare or Cheshire Cat that occasionally sat in the big tree with the hole halfway between its roots and low branches.

 When the girl’s father would complain that Mr. Shellabarger was making the whole neighborhood smell like an Italian restaurant with his backward ways and overgrown garden, she tried to explain that only magic could make the little grapes taste exactly like beads of honey and sunlight, but her words only made her father’s anger change course, aimed at the little girl instead.  She smelled the bitterness in his breath as he screamed that she was stupid and read too many books and didn’t know the difference between stories and lies. As his anger coldly coalesced, he promised to throw away all her books and never, ever allow her see the inside of a library again.

 His anger and his promise lasted for two full weeks and by the time those two weeks had passed her heart was mud, cracked and parched from a terrible drought.  When she was allowed to return to books, she found that she had grown afraid of stories that helped her know true things, and instead read books about rocks and birds and girls who did not go down rabbit holes but wanted to wear pretty dresses and get properly married to please their fathers.

Her heart continued to crumble and it took many years of wishing to be someone else before she remembered that she could, indeed, become. Long after her father left and married the Red Queen (who was not the Queen of Hearts) she dared to begin to live her true life. And though she grew up to be a man whose heart was sometimes dry and dusty at the edges, he still reads books that remind him of being the little girl waiting to see a Cheshire smile in Mr. Shellabarger’s garden.

Psychopomp

for Amanda

at ease
dear Heart
at ease after
inviting anyone, everyone
to come in so that alone
would not mean
broken

at ease
dear Dreamer
at ease after
trying so very hard
to bind the wounds of
that broken-winged
bird

at ease
dear Child
at ease after
saying “yes” too loudly
so they would not hear
your quiet screaming
no

at ease
dear Mind
at ease after
clawing through thorns
and tangles for words
that finally tell the whole
truth

at ease
dear Soul
at ease after
pleasing and appeasing
so many false
and foreign
gods

rest at ease
rest at ease
rest at ease

now sleep

I am not sure if this blog is dead…

Somehow, I lost the inspiration to write here. I’m not sure why. Most of my online presence now is on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.  The thought of writing a post here feels like writing essays—-so many words–and that just seems dull. I’ve gotten used to the shorter formats and love the challenge of distilling my thoughts into 140 characters or an image. I save my long form thoughts for sermons in my beautiful congregation.

I also have a secret project. It’s secret because some might find it too edgy, even offensive. Mostly because it does not avoid “the F word.” In fact, it reclaims it with some joy and abandon. It is also an intentional effort to create a space that celebrates the intersections of art, spiritual community, and resistance.  And to bring the joy and pain and chaos and mess of those things together, hoping to find something beautiful and relevant there.

If you promise not to get angry about the language or the unapologetic interruption of oppression, or offended by  the celebration of all things embodied (including all kinds of bodies, tattoos, sex…) then come to The Cabaret.