The Wonderment

Arrogance, Humility and Spiritual Growth

Parashat Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35) offers us more attentiveness to worship and other spiritual practices. But in the middle of this passage, we find the story of the Golden Calf, and the condemnation of being “stiff-necked” or arrogant. Arrogance, in this passage, is worse than idolatry. Why?

 

Arrogance is both belief and practice that one is themselves right above others or superior to others. When we’re arrogant, we cannot believe that when someone tells us we’re wrong or out of line that either is true. After all, we know best. We are the best. We’re right-thinking and right-practicing and right-believing. When we’re arrogant, we’re not likely to be attending to the wisdom or gifts others bring or valuing them.  Arrogance sets ourselves up as the only ones who know and the ones who know best for everyone else. Arrogance keeps us from learning from others and keeps us from finding ways to work with others where everyone benefits and without exercising power over others. Arrogance is part of white supremacy, where whiteness is named the best, the normative, and everyone else is other and less than. Arrogance is part of oppressive beliefs and practices because, ultimately, arrogance is about seizing and using power over others, lest we become one of the powerless. Behind arrogance is fear. 

 

Because the root of arrogance is extreme fearfulness, arrogance frequently mistakes being powerful for having power over others. In Parashat Ki Tisa we have the people, learning how to be free. In any of our lives and any learning, we’re going to make mistakes, which is why there is an opportunity for forgiveness and reconciliation. Yet the people emulate Pharaoh in being stiff-necked and not embracing the challenge for change and healing. It is a more drastic and detrimental version of asking “are we there yet?” Ok, now are we free? Now are we free? Now, what about now? If we seize power over everyone else, are we truly free? If we assert we know best, are we truly free? If we turn away from our connectedness to all of being, are we truly free?

 

Here the mistaken belief is that freedom doesn’t have discomfort, or require all that much of us. That suggests something to us about the fears that promote arrogance: we have been threatened with being hurt by others to such a degree that we will do anything to prevent that again, and the most expedient thing seems to be to command and control others. When we’ve been badly hurt, we can lose our tolerance for any discomfort, as discomfort becomes an indicator that we are losing control and in danger again. It takes time, intention, and supportive people and communities to help us learn that any discomfort does not automatically mean we are risk of exploitation again. 

 

Setting the story of the Golden Calf among the spiritual disciplines of how to worship and how to have reverence is a reminder: when we’re arrogant, we lose our ability for reverence of anything but power over others. Why? reverence demands humility, an awareness that we are part of this blessed complicated whole, with gifts to offer and with even more to learn.  The disciplines I wrote about last week are part of creating the container within which we learn and grow. Growth mostly doesn’t happen in the comfortable spaces but as we stretch into discomfort and face both what’s internal and external needing change. Sometimes what most needs changing is our awareness that we’re neither the least nor most important, but part of this amazing whole that can be made better or worse by what we choose and don’t choose to do.

 

Are we free yet? Nope, because we have a whole lot of power over others to undo, internally and externally. That may be most present to you as racism, or sexism, or ableism, or homophobia, or transphobia, or classism, or colonialism, or religious repression, or another form of oppression and victimizing others so someone feels superior. And that one feeling superior can very much be ourselves, even people who mean well and try to address oppression outside themselves can still have stuff to deal with inside themselves, maybe even hidden there. Arrogance is to assert in this aching world that there are no dominating cultures and how those inflict harm on those trying to fit in and those who are set apart as never going to be fully as good as what the dominating culture puts forth as superior.

 

Arrogance twists humility into humiliation. True humility is knowing ourselves and our community, faults and foibles, strengths and gifts. We know we have work to do and we’re doing it, individually, as families, in community, and in our larger world. There is no need to humiliate someone to reach the work of healing, of hope, and of drawing this world more fully toward freedom, love, equity, and justice. By practicing the spiritual disciplines that call us back to our belonging to the web of being, by learning to stay present and open-hearted in the uncomfortable places, by continuing to learn and accept life’s challenges to grow more whole-heartedly and justly, we practice humility and let arrogance go. We ease up the stiff necks and discover how to dance with one another and with all of life for hope, for love, for freedom, and for joy.

 

Stretching the Heart

Spiritual practices do many things, like orient us towards the Holy, or strengthen our connection to all of being. Some practices strengthen our breathing and others strengthen our body and yet others strengthen our reasoning and our feeling. 

 

Many spiritual practices also stretch our hearts. They invite us more fully into compassion, love, forgiveness, thanksgiving, generosity, and wonder. These spiritual practices help us live and stay present when life is uncomfortable and even when life is downright dangerous or deeply painful. They help us stay present when bad things happen and when illness, hatred, or fear threaten. 

 

Much can be accomplished with individual spiritual practice. But corporate spiritual practice offers many benefits. Corporate spiritual practice (such as communal worship, study, singing, prayer, meditation, and faithful social action) stretches our hearts in community. The more we do those practices we people we don’t know yet or well, the more we are stretched in living open-heartedly with strangers. The more we pursue those practices together, the more we develop a different relationship to our neighbors, friends, and family. 

 

Spiritual practice really gets rolling when we meet the edges of our comfort and head out into where we’re uncomfortable. We might, for example, feel very comfortable with the same small group of people around us, but add two new folks and all the relationships shift, frequently causing a little discomfort while everyone explores new ways of relating together. In Unitarian Universalism, there is often discomfort around rules of worship. These are very cultural and mostly unstated until someone challenges them (“we always sing XYZ here” “we never do it like that” “the spiritual leaders will robe/not robe”). The specific practices are part of what create worshipful culture and community. 

 

In Parashat Tetzavah (Exodus 27:20-30:10) the people are learning how to worship together, how to welcome and feel connected to the Holy wherever they go. In this section, the Holy, which is everywhere, also can contract and be right there in the new place prepared. In creating a set-apart special space, a special container, we have a chance to know and trust that right there we can connect to the Holy, no matter how difficult it may be in day-to-day life. In naming these specifics involved in creating an extra-special place of connecting with the Holy, Exodus is teaching the people (and us, the subsequent generations) what creates worshipful space and experience. 

 

Spiritual practices are like a special container that allows us to know and trust that right there and through this special container we can connect to the Holy or the sense of all of life, no matter how difficult that is in our day-to-day lives. 

 

Spiritual practices from and forming traditions passed down over millennia often have much to teach us in what is uncomfortable. Discerning which discomforts to embrace and work through and which to adapt is a process and not something immediately evident much of the time. I use a wheelchair, so I practice yoga with the wheelchair as part of the necessary tools to help me stretch into the asanas. That’s an easily discernible adaption, even if how to move with the specific postures isn’t always so easy to discover. But I’m much less like to adapt something that might make me uncomfortable because of inconvenience, like the number of times I stop to pray each day (five). Life is frequently inconvenient, and I never want to allow my sense of gratitude or connection to all of life itself to be further diminished because I found I didn’t have the time for a few minutes of prayer. When I’m singing words that challenge me, my first question isn’t “what can I do to change the words to my comfortable theology?” it is instead, “how is this meaningful and can I find meaning in it?” I’ll take the time to sing until I find understanding, stretching my heart. And, depending on the musical tradition, the age of the song, and the permission of the composer (if the composer may be consulted), I may decide it is ok to adapt the lyrics, or not. 

 

Spiritual practice without discipline (regular, steady, and willing to be with discomfort) is not much of a practice. The discipline is what draws us into greater open-heartedness, into greater wisdom, into greater abilities to be steadfast, generous, loving, forgiving, thankful and reverent. Discipline is not about punishment in this context. And discomfort is not the same as pain. Discomfort is what happens when you work your muscles hard one day and as they heal, they’re sore. But that isn’t pain. Similarly, discipline is about limits and undertaking what may be challenging or difficult. Spiritual practices should challenge us to change for the better. To do that, we can’t always be comfortable. We all need and benefit from some comfort. And our hearts also need the work within these beautiful containers of spiritual practices. That way, when we’re not engaged in the practices and meet a difficult, painful, or horrid part of life, we’re more able to be lovingly present and persistent.

 

Whatever our spiritual practices, individual and communal, may we engage them attentively, regularly, steadily, in the joyful and easy parts and in the uncomfortable bits. In so doing may we find our hearts stretching for the better, and our lives more full of love, wonder, generosity, compassion, forgiveness, thanksgiving, reverence, and joy.

 

Building Sanctuaries for Climate Justice

Climate change has already displaced and will increasingly displace so many people, across and within national borders. One of the persistent fears during evacuations is that folks will not be permitted to return and will lose everything they value, from community to the structures that nurture their communities. This is not an irrational fear, because repeatedly, that’s what happens. What climate change intensified storms don’t strip away, local, state, and federal policies might and have. To attend to a particular story about that, check out Living on Earth January 25, 2019 episode, where Lewis Raven Wallace describes how a predominantly working-class and low income African American community in New Bern, North Carolina has been and continues to be displaced following a hurricane. 

 

Rebuilding is expensive. Rebuilding to climate adaptive standards is even more expensive in the short term, though when building for resiliency, gives you better chances in the longer run. Many of the folks displaced by rising seas, intensified storms, and intensified droughts cannot rebuild, and there is no effort governmentally to try and keep communities together. Nor is there a spate of affordable climate adaptive housing being planned by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department. Where rebuilding needs to be set further away, so we can have better coastal buffers recognizing the rising seas and intensified storms, we need affordable resilient housing, not just housing for wealthy people. 

 

This week in Parashat Terumah (Exodus 25:1-27:19) we read about the details required to create a space of awe and reverence, a sanctuary for the Holy. Before there is to be permanent housing and settlement for the people, they learn how to make a home for the Holy. In this home for the Holy, we welcome beauty, attention to detail, and the offerings each person and family can bring, the gifts we share as communities to create and care for such sacred spaces.

 

Following the flight into freedom, the people had to relearn how to be free, how to be a people, a community together. And that includes how to be a people of reverence and to create lives of dignity. Part of reorienting ourselves after displacement is to establish again those elements that craft us as a people, unite us, transform us, challenge us, welcome us, and give us dignity, meaning, and purpose. This is a need for displaced communities wherever we are in time. Today, we need to think about displaced communities, not only displaced individuals, and have policies and supportive programs and neighborly aid to hold communities together. Losing our community, we can lose very important parts of ourselves, our supportive networks, the people who know our stories and whose stories we know, to whom we belong and with whom we having dignity, purpose, and meaning. Displaced peoples also lose their sacred spaces, and part of keeping communities together and helping them resettle is to create again those sacred spaces, in different places and with inevitable differences, but still the community’s heart.

 

Individualism as an ideology ties into this ideology of meritocracy and both erase and ignore the truth of displacement. Can you imagine how different Exodus would read and we would be if the story wasn’t communal, but individual and everyone had to do for themselves rather than a community developing together? What we lose in displacement is more than individual loss; it is a loss of vital and vibrant community, history, and future together. When whole communities are displaced, whole communities need spaces to stay together. As the people in Exodus need to create such space, we all benefit from this part of home: a communal place of dignity and reverence, beauty, awe, and wonder. The community from New Bern, North Carolina, the communities displaced by five-year-drought in western Honduras, the communities displaced from Puerto Rico or the Florida Panhandle or Houston or New Orleans need communal reassembly spaces, places to become communities again and not be dispersed and assimilated and disappeared into losing so much of who they were before displacement.

 

Consider in your life where the places and spaces are that welcome you and yours to restful quiet, to joyful thanksgiving, to awe and wonder, and to needing and receiving your gifts gratefully? How do you feel without access to such spaces? Without a place where you and yours are met and loved and accepted as you are? Without a place where what you bring is needed and celebrated? 

 

As people of heart how may we respond to the increasing numbers of internally and internationally displaced people, people displaced in large part due to climate change?

 

• We make way and welcome, which allows communities to stay together, to reassemble, to create communal spaces that can house history, connection, heart, home, and spirit
• We change policies to build and adapt affordable housing for or changing world, and not cruelly disperse folks or expect them individually to relocate and find what’s already non-existent or in short supply in many places
• We tell, collect, and cultivate the stories of displacement and the diasporas that are part of our history and that are happening now and will be or future history
• We work to slow and adapt to climate change, to intensified storms and droughts and to rising seas, community by community, at the larger level because our ability to survive is not about individual choice but communal ones.
• We grant one another the spaces and places to create together sacred spaces of reverence, welcome, and celebration of our gifts.

 

May we steadfastly carry on to address climate change, to make welcome and space for one another, and to have a heart to create more justice in responding to displaced communities and peoples. May we unite to build sanctuaries for climate justice with our displaced communities.