The Wonderment

Welcome to the Life Olympics!

As a Unitarian Universalist, one of the things I promise is to affirm and promote the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations. This is a good thing: most of the people I know want to be accepted and encouraged, and I am not any different.

I especially desire acceptance on the days the rake has fallen off the wall and I step on it as I enter the garage, whacking myself with the pole that is the rake handle. Hilarious when played out in a comedic movie; ouchie in real life.

Comedy, according to the Laws of Slap-stick, occurs when we inadvertently injure ourselves. Resilience is found through laughter and reconnection to feeling loved and loveable, so we can pick ourselves back up, ice the owie, and get back to the real business of existence: whirling in the wonder and magnifying love.

But sometimes I have no idea how to get back to that state. I know I am not alone -- it is among the more common laments of meeting check-ins and phone calls -- all of which are attempts to reconnect to feeling loved and loveable, so we can return to this bigger, much more fun business of life.

This is why my partner, Thandeka, and I created the Life (Crud!) Olympics. If you know your Greek mythology, the goddesses, gods, and demigods were always engaging in Life according to the Laws of Slap-stick Comedy as well as Tragedy. Beloved Readers who want confirmation by experts, the experts have spoken: absolutely no research has confirmed the historical existence of the Life (Crud!) Olympics, and for everyone's sake, it is just better that way. But here they are now, and you, too, can play!

How to play Life (Crud!) Olympics:
1. At the end of day that has felt extremely tedious or been full of owies or had more than its fair share of rake handles in face experiences, announce to a friend it is time to play the Life Olympics!
2. Your friend agrees, because your friend spent the day picking cat waste out of their car that someone generously tossed in there the night before.
3. Toss a coin to see who goes first. Whoever loses the toss goes first to fulfill those words of Scripture: the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
4. The first contestant then must convey the challenges of the day as an Olympic event.
5. The listener must then replay that day as an Olympic event as your favorite sports announcer, ending with "And your name here crosses the finish line, breaking the tape, and the crowd goes wild!"
6. Then the two of you pretend to be the crowd, going wild, roaring with delight.
7. Repeat steps 4-6.
8. Now for the solemn awards ceremony. Note, there should be one medal for every participant, because, we promised to affirm and promote the acceptance of one another and the encouragement to spiritual growth -- no exceptions! At my house, these medals consist of chocolate coins attached to ribbons. The chocolate is not very good, but it is often helpful to have an edible medal.
a. At the awards ceremony, there is always the awardee's national anthem. At my house, we have changed this to the permanent Life Olympics anthems,  Gloria Gaynor singing "I Will Survive" or the BeeGees' singing "Stayin' Alive". You choose suitable over-the-top can't-help-but-smile themes for you.
b. each participant places the medal around the other participant's neck, you kiss the medal and hold it out from your chest and beam wildly, often with tears streaming down the face.

Then you have the Olympiad's dinner and rest that is due for someone who won such a grueling competition.

Gentle Readers, you may doubt the effectiveness of the Life Olympics. All I can say is that you will just have to be good scientific experimenters and try this at home!

Remember: just by being born, you are loved; you are inherently loveable; now let us return to our regularly scheduled program of loving this world into justice, hope, equality, and wonder!

Today Can Be A More Joyful Day!

Listening, watching, or reading the news can be a frightening and demoralizing force. I think it is important to know what's going on in the world, and I pray through the news (read a story, pause, hold the people involved in prayer, go on) daily. Too often, the headlines are not good news. Too often, the headlines spawn more anxiety and suffering. Psychology tells us that there is a phenomenon called secondary trauma: where hearing a traumatic story can in turn traumatize the listener who wasn't the original person involved.

How do we mindfully pay attention to the suffering that is going on in our world, and not become overwhelmed?

Part of living into more hope, more love, and more joy -- the mission of the congregation with which I am called by life into ministry together -- is employing practices for staying mindfully aware and resilient in the constant flow of traumatic news and suffering. What is resilience? It is that capacity to bear the wind but not break, like the long green and blue grasses, held together by their networks of interlaced roots. Resilience means a suppleness of spirit that comes from practice. When we do not stretch ourselves physically, we begin to conform to our environment, as when people wearing shoes of a particular heel height every day eventually shorten their tendons. The same is true for the feelings of hope, love, and joy.

Let's begin with the stretches for joy, because these are a lot of fun, and when we're having fun, we usually want to return to it. Think about the people you know: the ones who enjoy playing sports when they were children probably still do so; the ones who suffered through compulsory physical education probably avoid sports and exercises as the plague they were for them once. So what are some of the practices for joy?

3 Beginning Stretches:
1. Find a joke today (challenge: funny but at no one's expense and for all ages), learn it, and tell it to 5 people. Here's one I happen to love, "Q: What do you get when you cross a pirate with a zucchini? A: A squashbuckler!" This is a good introductory joke in part because you will hear a lot of pirate jokes and puns in return.
2. When you're waiting in line at the grocery or the library in the next few days, take the time to begin a conversation with someone next to you in line. I like to begin with a compliment combined with a question, as in "Wow! Those are beautiful flowers? Who are they for?" or "What an interesting looking book! What is it about?" By combining the compliment with the question you're inviting the other person into a safe zone of connection, even though you do not know each other.
3. How many people can you help directly today without their knowing you're opening their way? I play this game a lot when I'm driving in heavy traffic: how many people can I let into traffic or allow to change lanes so they can exit in a smooth and relaxing manner? When I'm out and about, how can I ease the struggles of a fussing child and exhausted parent, a weary student, a frightened bus rider? You might even find yourself engaging stretches 1 & 2 in combination with this joyful stretch #3!

Today can be a more joyful day -- because of your personal insistence on seizing the moment and injecting humanity, compassion, love, hope, and joyfulness into it. Together, we make a difference.

The Joy Of Birthdays

On the eighty-third day, the Beloved looked around and said, "Wow! We need a party! This creation is great!" And so the party hat and the balloon and the birthday cake were made and all came and celebrated and said, "this isn't just good, this is wonderful!"

American culture has an obsession with being young and looking young if you can no longer legitimately call yourself that. Here's an experiment: go to a well-stocked greeting card store and find five excellent birthday cards for adults that have a sense of humor, are acceptable topics for all ages, and are not expressions of a particular world religion. This is why I increasingly find my birthday cards in three formats: electronic, homemade (or purchased from an artist), or supporting a charitable organization.

Birthdays are wonderful events, when we are suddenly able to wish and to wonder about our lives. Few days feel as full of authorial control and possibility to me than birthdays. But I do not take birthdays for granted. I can't do that, because there are too many people whose birthdays I can no longer celebrate with them.

In order to reenter the awe and wonder of birthdays and really celebrate them as adults, a little cultural reprogramming is required. Repeat after me: Every birthday is a victory. Whenever you find yourself feeling down about your age, or worried about the approaching date, remember: every birthday is a victory. Now comes the fun of living into that statement.

My youngest brother celebrated his birthday yesterday, and I had another opportunity to briefly glimpse what an amazing person he has become. He's a gardener who lives a lot further north from me, and so we could talk about the hope and magic of gardening and what to try putting into his kitchen garden, and, beloveds, that conversation was part of the beautiful mystery of life: of how we each grow and change, discover and pursue new interests, and make our place in the world. None of that can be taken for granted. If there is anything that this worldwide economic crisis might be able to do of a spiritual nature, it may be that we not take for granted the efforts, the mystery, and the magic of making our place in the world.

The congregation I minister with in far south Florida is celebrating its tenth birthday today, ten years from when the founding members signed a covenant and a charter of incorporation, ten years of dreams and sweat and singing and tears and weekly worship and hurricane recovery and a gathered and changing group of people growing and changing, discovering and pursuing interests different from ten years ago, and making our place in the world. Every second of that has not felt or been beautiful, and I'm only the latest minister to serve with them. But this is true of all of our lives and the essence of the spiritual journey: there is a gap between our highest values and who we are now and our living today is the chance to bridge that. That persistence, commitment, endurance, hopefulness, love, sacrifice, forgiveness, and embrace of what life has to offer is cause to celebrate!

Every birthday is a victory. Taste something sweet in celebration and recognition of the sweetness of life. Take a moment to find one thing you want to do to become even more of the kind of friend to the world you like to have. And go wondering, opening and closing the magic of the hand or dipping toes into water, or watching birds take wing and cats groom each other. The world is full of magic and mystery and blessing: we can increase that, but only if we acknowledge and celebrate and shout out in awe and joy, "wow! this is wonderful!"