Dealing  With Losses

 

I went back over my past month’s blogs, and realize that it is been just over a month since I spoke of my friends who were ill.  It has been a hard month.  A very hard month.

 

My friend with brain cancer succumbed.  My friend with leukemia succumbed.  A friend that I knew had liver problems but thought was hanging in there succumbed.  Three incredibly beautiful and important human lives are gone.  Marc a deeply passionate man who not only cared about justice in the world but spent his life working for it.  Faye a born rebel and magnificent harpist, whose embrace of all that is life was hugely contagious.  Vicki a dedicated teacher as well as confidant, who shared unselfishly of her love of words and theatre with any fortunate enough to encounter her.  And all three shared a wickedly irreverent, though never malicious, sense of humor.

 

My friend with leukemia I’d known for nearly fifty years.  My friend with the liver ailment I’d known for thirty-nine years.  My friend with brain cancer I’d known a “mere” twelve. 

 

My friend with Alzheimer’s remains, as does the friend with heart problems. 

 

I try to reach out to the families and friends.  But I have been hurting so deeply inside that I don’t know how much if any help I can be…or have been.

 

I was fortunate in that two good friends, happily healthy, came up for my annual Christmas Sing, a party I have been giving (with a few missed years) for the last thirty years.  We get together the Saturday before Christmas and sing Christmas music from the Middle Ages through the twentieth century, plus a slew of carols.  It was a wonderful five days with my friends.  But they’ve gone home and the hurt returns.

 

How do we deal with loss?  How can we possibly deal with loss, particularly when the losses come one after another, particularly when it involves people who are not only close to us, but have been so longer than much of humanity has been alive?

 

I’m finding out.

 

One thing is to talk about it.  I bless the few friends who have had the presence of mind to say nothing and just listen.  It teaches me.  It’s so engrained in us to try to fix a hurt.  Yet how important it is “just” to listen to the one who is hurting.

 

As I examine my own self, I think the truth of it is that we want our hurts acknowledged more than we want them healed.  Important to know.

 

In a sense the hurt is a reminder of the importance of the person lost.  To lose the pain too quickly is perhaps to lose the memory of the person too quickly – at least for me.  But I wonder if we want the hurt acknowledged, in part because we feel, or at least I feel, the acknowledgement validates the importance of the person lost.

 

I hear Faye’s laughter, Marc’s laughter, Vicki’s laughter, and I hurt, but I also smile … and remember.

 

My learning?  In part it is that if you lose someone close to you, talk about it!  And if a friend has lost someone close to him or her, listen.  Don’t try to fix it.  Listen.  Validate the hurt.  Acknowledge its importance.  And if a friend who is hurting won’t talk about it, gently encourage that friend to talk … make a space that is safe for that friend to talk.

 

Though how much of this is “true” and how much merely “true for me” is something only time will tell.

 

In the meantime, much to contemplate as the year draws to a close.

(minor corrections 31 December)

Honoring Christmas

 

This Sunday will be a true joy for me.  The service embodies the reason I became a minister.  We will be honoring Christmas.  A friend from my seminary days, Tamara Roberts, who is awaiting call as a United Church of Christ minister, will speak to “Jesus as Christ.”  A friend I met after seminary, Dilara Hafiz, who along with her two teenage children wrote “The American Muslim Teenager’s Handbook,” will speak to Jesus and Mary as they are seen in the Qur’an – beloved messengers of God.  And I will speak to the universal aspiration of “Peace on Earth, Good Will to All.” 

 

What is so meaningful for me, and I hope for the congregation, is that we won’t be “competing” with each other.  We won’t be arguing about whose belief is “right.”  Instead, we’ll be celebrating three different ways to honor, truly honor Christmas.  This is what living an Interfaith life is all about.  This is what the Living Interfaith Church is founded on: respect and honoring our differing traditions.

 

If you see this before Sunday, and you happen to live in the “greater” Seattle area, I hope you’ll come.  Click here for more information and the address of the Interfaith Community Church in Ballard, where the service will be held.

 

There is a difference between tolerating our religious differences and respecting them.  I believe with the entirety of my heart that if we can’t learn to honor and truly respect each other’s spiritual paths we are not going to make it.

 

We divide ourselves over and over again.  Races.  Nations.  Religions.  It has to stop.  It has to stop now.  And the cold hard truth is that if we don’t stop it, no one else is going to step up to the plate.

 

This past August, I had the privilege of leading an “Honoring Ramadan” service.  In September I led an “Honoring the High Holy Days” service.  On Sunday, we will observe “Honoring Christmas.” 

 

You don’t have do be a Christian to honor Christmas.  Just as you don’t have to be a Muslim to honor Ramadan or a Jew to honor the High Holy Days.  But you do have to be a compassionate human being.  That’s it.  That’s the only requirement. 

 

I look at how difficult it has been to move even a little towards the health care reform this country needs: how viciously acrimonious what has passed for “debate” has been.  I look at how difficult it has been to inch even slightly towards controlling the climate-changing emissions we humans continue to create: how acrimonious that has been as well. 

 

I was once deeply and totally involved in politics.  It was my life for ten full years.  I left politics when I realized our problems truly were not political.  Our problems are spiritual.  We have gotten to the point where our divisions are more important than our common humanity.  Think on that.  Please, ponder it for a moment.  Our divisions have become  more important to us than our common humanity.  On that road lies extinction.

 

As we celebrate this wonderful holiday season, let us remember that “Peace on earth, good will to all” takes commitment.  It takes work.  Most of all, I think, it takes honoring and respecting our common humanity, even when we disagree … especially when we disagree.

Spiritual Consumerism

 

You may have noticed that I’ve been on a bit of a consumer kick recently.  There’s a reason.  The truth of it is, our consumer choices have spiritual ramifications.  And our spiritual choices have ramification on not only what, but how we consume.

 

Many of us have made choices like this already.  For some, eating organic whenever possible is a health choice.  They believe it’s healthier to eat organic foods.  For others, eating organic can be a spiritual choice.  Organic farming tends to be gentler on our planet. 

 

A similar split comes with people who are vegetarian (of whatever flavor – we won’t try to split those hairs today!).  Some eat less or no meat for health reasons.  For others, myself included, for more of a spiritual reason.  Why kill if you don’t have to?

 

But what I’d like to look at this week is something that few, if any of us tend to think about.  And that is, choosing where we shop as a spiritual choice.

 

To be sure, there are some people who boycott a particular store because of it’s predatory policies.  But what I’d like to ask, and I’ve been asking myself this question, “What about shopping in general?”

 

In a sense, we vote with our dollars.  In difficult times, our vote can determine who stays in business and who doesn’t.  Last Sunday, I opened the paper to a ground assault of ads.  “We’re cheaper!”  “No, WE’RE cheaper!”  “We guarantee the lowest price!”

 

As I looked, I realized that a store I really like, where the people who work there are friendly, and where the store actually takes care of its employees with decent medical coverage (I know this because I had had a conversation with an employee) didn’t have the lowest price.  I decided to buy at the store I like.

 

A small story.  Meaningless unless we are somehow able to take it to the next level.  What I would LOVE to see in the ads, as stores “compete” for my dollar, are things like “Buy here: we take care of our employees!”  “Buy here! We refuse to carry products that come from sweatshops!”

 

Stores will do that, if that’s what we want.  Stores will compete with each other over such things if we demand it. 

 

They will do what sells.  If taking care of their employees gives them a competitive edge, believe me, they’ll do it.  And you know what?  The store across the street that doesn’t take care of it’s employees, and stocks its shelves with goods fashioned with child-labor will stop.  They’ll stop because they’re losing business.

 

So this year, as we shop for the holidays, and then as we make resolutions for what we’ll do in the new year, I hope we’ll at least consider “spiritual consumerism.” 

 

As a practitioner of Interfaith, I would like to conclude by saying a store stating that it’s “Christian” or “Jewish” or “Muslim” or “Buddhist” does NOT mean that store is spiritually inclined.  I’ve lived over sixty years now.  I’ve known truly kind, giving and generous people; and I’ve know truly mean, self-centered, stingy people.  “Spiritual Consumerism” does not mean patronizing a particular faith.  There are Scrooges in every faith.  There are saints in every faith as well.  “Spiritual Consumerism” means taking into account where we buy something, and the conditions of the people who made it, rather than simply what’s cheapest.

 

And by the way, a personal pet peeve.  If you happen to subscribe to Consumer Reports (I did for thirty years before “seeing the light” and stopping about ten years ago), I would urge you to consider writing to them to say that telling you which product gives you the biggest “bang for the buck” isn’t the only consideration for you.  You want to know which products are made by companies that treat their employees well, and treat the earth well.  Just a thought.  Like any other business, if enough people demand it, Consumer Reports will deliver.

 

However you may celebrate this month and whatever you may celebrate this month, may it be in good health and good cheer.

 

181 days since the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan on the streets of Tehran. 

Please hold in your hearts and prayers not only the people of Iran, but all who suffer the lash of oppression.

We the People Have Responsibilities

 

I was listening to the news tonight, and wondering how it can be delivered with a straight face.  First the talk is the economy.  So many still looking for work, others still under-employed. 

 

Then, without a pause or a smile (or shake of the head) comes the news that those financial institutions that still have TARP money will be “forced” to limit top salaries to … wait for it, half a million dollars!  Those poor folk will be forced (as long as they have TARP money) to survive, somehow on half a million a year.

 

And already there is the cry, “No one can work for that!  These companies are going to lose all their best people!”

 

And what’s worse, to a large extent this may well be true.  Which is why I’m talking about it here.  This is a spiritual matter.  It’s a moral and spiritual matter and we need to address it head-on.

 

I would encourage anyone who has even the slightest smidge of interest first to send this blog to everyone they can think of, and then write a letter to the editor of your local paper.

 

People are struggling to eat!  People can’t pay their medical bills.  And a large percentage, if not the majority, of middle and upper level people on Wall Street and our major banks can’t get motivated to work if they can’t make more than half a million dollars?  What’s wrong with this picture??!!

 

What’s wrong with the picture may surprise you (unless you regularly read this blog) because the answer is us.  Not them.  Us.

 

CEOs who make millions while their workers can barely make ends meet (or are being “let go”) should be pariahs.  We should be holding them up for public scorn not praise or awe.  Their names should be published in the newspapers.  We should know who they are and be writing them letters.  Further, if we know who they are, we should be boycotting their products.

 

The commonality here is we.  Not “them.”  Us. 

 

We live in a culture that says the more toys the better.  The more money you make, the more successful you are.  That won’t change until we the people change it.  We ought to be looking down on folks who make obscene amounts of money, not up at them.  We need to be teaching our children how wrong such people are, not how they are models for success.  I would strongly suggest that we  should teach and be living that what makes you a successful human being is what you accomplish for others, not what you “take home” for yourself.

 

As long as we continue to look at this as “Wall Street’s problem,” we lose.  That is the big and fearsome secret.  This is our problem.  We have to own it before we can fix it.  We are the ones who have allowed this to happen.  We are the only ones who can change it.  But we will need to act together.

 

Are you up for it?

 

Giving Twice

 

It never fails to amaze and distress me that our economy is so dependant upon a buying binge in December.  Capitalism is set up to supply what the market demands.  But what does it say about who we are that what we have demanded are a multitude of businesses that can only survive if people buy, buy, BUY in December?

 

What does it say about how we have structured our society, that the only way out of an economic downturn is to consume, consume, CONSUME!!!???

 

I heard someone talking the other day about the “distressful” news that more people are saving – that people, well, at least more people, are actually trying to live within their means.  And this was bad news. 

 

While I do hope and pray that our Congress actually passes meaningful health care reform, as opposed to a watered down insurance company enrichment program that appears to be what we’ll be getting, I actually want to talk about something else today.

 

One of my favorite Christmas movies is “The Bishop’s Wife.”  At the end of the movie is one of the great Christmas sermons.  It asks, “Whose birthday are we celebrating.”  After all, we buy gifts for our friends, our family, our business associates.  But whose birthday are we celebrating?  And if it’s Jesus’ birthday that we are celebrating, maybe we ought to ponder a moment what he might want.  It probably isn’t a toaster.  I think he might appreciate health care for all.  I think he might appreciate an effort to house the homeless and to feed the hungry.

 

So, in a year when “hybrid” is definitely the new “in” thing, I’d like to suggest hybrid gifts – a gift that you indeed give to Aunt Susie, that benefits someone who really needs your help.  There are many such hybrid gift opportunities.  There is, just as one example, “Heifer International” which allows you to give a goat or cow to a family that needs the milk.

 

But the hybrid gift I’d like to “push” here is made possible by two amazing people I have come to know and treasure.  They are Judith and Dennis Sanderman.  Two people who, while on vacation in Africa, saw a need and then, rather than say “Tsk, tsk, such a shame” they decided to do something about it.  The something they do is called Project Ethiopia.  You should know that Dennis and Judy absorb all the administrative costs.  Every penny donated goes to help people who really need it.

 

And Project Ethiopia offers some wonderful hybrid gifts.  This year, I am giving to the children of some dear friends the gift of knowing that in their name a shelf of books will be donated to a new library.  I’m giving another friend the gift of knowing that in his name the shelf those books will go is being donated.  To other friends go the gift of  knowing that a table is being given in their name. 

 

Dennis and Judy provide beautiful cards that explain the gift, so you will indeed have something tangible to give to anyone on your “list” that you wish to bless with helping to make this world just a little better.  Click HERE for the website for Project Ethiopia.  A little navigation will take you the gift page.  Go to "how you can help" and then scroll down to "alternative gifts."

 

May whatever holiday you may be celebrating this month be filled with love and peace and hope.