June 2001

• Sermon: "Cliffside: Meditations on Perfectionism and Failure," by Jill Job Saxby
• Correction
• Can You Come to Cleveland in June?
• Sermon: "What To Tell Auntie," by Edward A. Frost
• From Your Minister, by Rev. Jane Rzepka
• REsources for Living, by Laura Cavicchio
• Readings, by Rev. David O. Rankin

Cliffside: Meditations on Perfectionism and Failure
by Jill Job Saxby, associate minister, the First Parish in Portland, Maine, Unitarian Universalist

For the past six years, my family and I have gone on an annual four-day camping trip to Baxter State Park in Maine, with the same group of friends. This summer there were 15 of us, with kids outnumbering adults for the first time.

Most years, at least some of us make the rigorous hike to the top of Mount Katahdin, at 5,267 feet, the highest mountain in Maine and the end point of the Appalachian Trail. Although I love to hike, I don't particularly like to climb mountains. For the first few years, I was content to stay below, closer to sea level, while the others spent eight to ten hours, sweating and out of breath, scraping shins and knees to get to the summit. When they encouraged me to go and see the magnificent views for myself, I usually responded with something like, "Why should I climb to the top when I can look at your pictures of it next week?"

Sometimes, I would beg off with a little homily: "Well, I'm not really into conquering nature like you guys. I'm content to let the mountain be and to stay here in the valley admiring it." I hoped I sounded very spiritual whenever I said things like that.

But over the years, a creeping sense of time going by combined itself with my inner suspicion that I was really just afraid that if I tried, I would fail. Finally, I gave in and realized that I needed to make the attempt. So, for each of the last three summers, I tried. The first year, I barely made it one-quarter of the way up the Abol Trail (one of several possible paths to the summit). I hated every rock along the way. I wheezed my way up and ached my way down. The next year, I tried a different trail, less steep and rocky, and made it all the way to Chimney Pond, about two-thirds of the way up. There was a stunning level area with a glacial pond reflecting all the surrounding peaks. But I stayed behind when the rest of them decided to do the last, hardest, rock-scrambling part to the top.

This year, I was determined to make it. I really got into it. I had taken up jogging a year ago and had been hiking all summer. This was my year! I was mentally and physically ready! Somehow, climbing Mt. Katahdin got connected in my mind with turning 40. Something to do with defying time and age. Something to do with proving I was in control of my life. Maybe this new determination of mine was also an attempt to complete a nice, neat mid-life crisis efficiently and get it all over with before the start of the new church year.

So, against everything in my nature, I got up at dawn, forced myself to eat breakfast, loaded my pack, and drove to the trailhead with my friends. It would be about 12 miles to the summit and back.

We started off full of gusto in the early morning coolness after dawn. The first few miles were easy hiking through gradually rising woodlands. My friend Maureen and an 11-year-old named Charles fell naturally into step with me. After a while, the grade increased and it got tougher. The others were far ahead, but Maureen, Charles, and I stuck together. It was a perfect day for hiking, not too warm, a light breeze, not a cloud in the sky. "I'm going to make it this year," I thought. The three of us were having a wonderful time together, talking, laughing, and joking constantly, stopping often to take pictures and drink water. By the time we came out above the tree line and started having to climb up iron rungs fastened into some serious boulders, we had developed a real esprit de corps.

Finally, after almost six hours of hiking, the three of us made it to the four-mile marker. Only two miles to go to the top! But, we were getting low on water, and even lower on energy. Despite all my preparation, the muscles in my legs and arms seemed to be organizing a labor union and getting ready to go out on strike against their cruel and crazy boss, my brain.

We sat down on a boulder in a relatively flat place with a stunning view that seemed to stretch halfway around the world. We reviewed our situation. We knew we had to leave enough time to get back down to the trailhead in daylight. We took a vote and it was two to one for turning around, with me in the minority. I didn't argue, but they saw me looking longingly up the next mile of trail, straight up a boulder-strewn scree, just below what had to be the summit.

They either took pity on me, or they decided not to cross someone with such a crazy look in her eye. I don't know. But they proposed, very generously, to wait for me right there while I made the attempt to get to the top. My brain agreed-by now, my muscles were busy making picket signs and singing old protest songs from the 1930s. We agreed I would go as far as I could in an hour, then turn around. They would be able to follow my progress up the boulders through the binoculars. I didn't say so, but I was thinking, "I have to do this. I'm not going to go up all those boulders and not go touch the sign at the summit. I'll run the last bit if I have to."

I got rid of most of what was in my pack, except water, and started up. Along the way, there were several painful and, to me, frightening spots. But there was also the thrill of looking down at a bald eagle that was circling in the sun and riding the thermals up the side of the mountain.

And there were other hikers, most of them coming down the trail because it was now seriously late in the day. Every single one of them said the same thing, "Oh, you have to keep going. You can't go this far and not go all the way to the top!" When I looked back, I saw Maureen and Charles far below, tiny specks at the edge of a huge drop down to a magnificent green and blue landscape.

Finally, I could see I was only about 150 feet below the lip of the tablelands, where the trail would virtually flatten out. The only trouble was this last bit was just about straight up, over the biggest boulders I'd seen yet. Off to the sides, there was now nothing but blue sky and a sheer drop down to a field of boulders that didn't look very soft. And, now, there didn't seem to be any other hikers around either. I found a little ledge to dig my toes into and began trying to pull myself up the face of the next huge rock. Over and over again, I would get part way up and then my arms would give out and I'd slide back down to my little ledge. The first tinges of panic and frustration began to set in.

I looked down, looked up, and the full force of my situation hit me. I knew that I was truly, unremittingly alone-and more than alone, I was truly and completely stuck. Unable to go forward, unwilling to go back, I just hung there and did the only thing I could think of to do. I cried. And then I prayed.

Well, let's just leave me hanging there for a moment, on the side of the mountain. This seems only just, because in everyday life, these experiences of feeling alone and stuck seem to last a long time, and there's a lot at stake. Many of us have been there-alone and stuck between the rock of reality and the hard place of our own expectations of how our lives would turn out. Perhaps you've been in enough of these situations yourself to have already formed in your mind the ending you would prefer for this story of mine.

As I was hanging there on the side of my cliff, I had occasion to notice two pests that seem to follow me around a lot, wherever I happen to be hanging out. Their names are perfectionism and failure (although they sometimes go by the names ambition and fear). Perhaps you've met them.

The one called perfectionism is especially devious. We are all taught from our earliest days to try for the best, to do our best, to set goals and get our lives organized to accomplish them. Somewhere along the way, we get the message that ambition is a very good and necessary thing. It may be, but it' s also easy to leap to the conclusion that ambition, especially the ambition to do or be something perfectly, has something to do with the meaning of life.

In a column in Newsweek, Robert J. Samuelson wrote about the ambiguous character of this "ambition" that seems to drive so much of American society. "What people disdain as ambition," he wrote, "they also venerate as opportunity. As de Tocqueville long ago noted, America was built on the notion that. . . people could write their own life stories.... Ambition and its creative powers permeate the arts, the professions, academia, and science. Because everyone can be someone, the competition to rise above the crowd is unrelenting and often ruthless. Few of us escape ambition's wounds."

In her funny and wise book, Operating Instructions, Anne Lamott says she doesn't understand why God has to be so "weird about revealing the cosmic plan for our lives." She says she would "prefer God to be more like Jeeves (the English butler) streaming into rooms like sunlight with all that I need to feel comfortable-God as cosmic butler. This other way is so hard. It reminds me of the man who has fallen off a cliff but managed to grab onto a weak vine.... He looks up and cries out for help. Suddenly, a deep, booming voice from the sky says gently to him. 'It is alright, my son. I am here and will never let harm befall you. Just let go of the vine, and fall into my arms. I will catch you.' The surprised man thinks about this for a moment, looks down at the ground thousands of feet below, then up to the ledge above him, clears his throat, and asks, 'Um . . .is there anybody else up there?'"

The Christian religious tradition has something to say about this predicament. According to the biblical scholar, Marcus Borg, Jesus deliberately attacked the prevailing cultural and religious ideas of his time, especially on this idea of perfectionism. Where people had been told, "be holy as your God is holy" or "be perfect in your adherence to the laws of purity," Jesus put a radical new twist on the idea. He seemed to think "perfect" meant "whole," "healed," and "healthy." And he claimed that God isn't interested in our achievements, accomplishments, or successes. God isn 't even all that interested in how holy and pure we can become.

Jesus claimed that God is the Spirit of love and compassion, and what God is really interested in is how loving and compassionate we are becoming, at every stage of life, in every experience we have.

According to this view, perfectionism and ambition are nothing more than distractions, keeping us apart from the realm of God within, the place where we are most whole and compassionate. Maybe realizing that is the only saving we're going to get. Maybe it's all the saving we need.

As the Indian Elder Oriah Mountain Dreamer put it: "It doesn't interest me to know what you do for a living or where you live or how much money you have, or with whom you have studied... I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair... and do what needs to be done… I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes!'" Which brings us to the other pest chewing away at our lifeline: the one whose name is failure, but who also answers to the name of fear. Failure, and its attendant fears, is perfectionism's less-subtle brother. And like perfectionism and ambition, it is an ambiguous creature. Anyone who has been around the block a few times and lived to tell the tale knows we would be nowhere without our failures. We know-at least in our heads, if not in our hearts-that failure is how we human beings sometimes learn. Failure is a big part of how evolution works, for individuals and for the species. The sort of failure I'm talking about is the kind we never learn from, because we never truly forgive ourselves for it. If we forgave ourselves, even relinquished our feelings of unworthiness and failure, we'd be left wide open to every experience as an opportunity for real creativity and growth.

So maybe the way we put an end to the gnawing effect of fear and failure is that instead of bravely ignoring, or pushing past them, we find, in the depths of these experiences, the heart of mercy and compassion we can share with all life. It's the same heart of mercy and compassion that some great spiritual leaders have called the divine essence. At the end of the day, that essence is not interested in whether you "made it," but what you became and what became of you along the way.

Well, when last heard from, our so-called heroine was dangling from a boulder on the face of a steep mountain, crying in frustration and praying for an answer. Obviously, I survived that particular moment and lived to tell the tale. And the answer did come. It's the same answer that always comes to my prayers: "Choose life." The interpretation of the answer is always left up to me, and, of course, that's the tricky part!

In this case, I realized that several hundred rocks and a half a mile below me, I had lost my two most important pieces of equipment: my ability to be present in the moment and my companions. Ambition and perfectionism, unforgiven failures, and fear had driven me up the last half-mile of rocks-not the encouragement of friends, not the appreciation of the wider view. Against all this, I weighed the very real fact that if I failed to scale this particular boulder that I was clinging to and fell in any one of a hundred possible ways, I might actually die, which, at least from my own personal point of view, would be a shame.

And so, I chose life. I started backing down the treacherous slope. Now, you could say that I failed. And I did-I failed to reach the top of Mt. Katahdin. The universe will somehow have to carry on without my having achieved this particular personal life goal.

But I did reach my friends, and when I got back to them, they stood up and cheered and clapped and took my picture and hugged me. Maureen said, "That was wonderful! We watched you all the way and you almost made it! Congratulations!" This, among many other things, is why I love her.

She offered me compassion and companionship. That's something worth striving for, and striving to be for one another, especially in those moments when we feel stuck and alone. We can pray for it, too, along with the Hindu poet Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote: "Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone. But let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure."

Quest June 2001 Contents

Correction

In the April issue of Quest, we published a short piece by the Rev. John Alexie Crane who is Emeritus Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Yakima, Washington and who now resides in Santa Barbara, California. We had the Rev. Crane incorrectly located at the UU church of Sangerville & Dover-Foxcroft, Sangerville, Maine. We apologize to the Rev. Crane and also to the Rev. Alexander L. Craig, who is the current minister in Sangerville, Maine.

Quest June 2001 Contents

Can You Come to Cleveland in June?

We want you with us at General Assembly this year-whether you can travel or not! Here's how it can work. Just send us a picture postcard of your hometown, or a photograph of yourself or your family, to help us create a member wall for our CLF booth at General Assembly in Cleveland. After we display your photos and postcards at GA, we'll attempt to create a collage that can be photographed and put up on the web or published in Quest for everyone to see. So look around-we want you with us at GA! Please send your postcards or photos to Lorraine at the CLF Office at 25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108.

Quest June 2001 Contents

What To Tell Auntie
by Edward A. Frost, senior minister, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, Georgia

There was very little conflict in my family about religion. Religion was simply never an issue. Organized religion was not part of our lives. I don't think my parents had ever gone to church services until I became a minister and they came to hear me preach-not the same as going to church. What early experience I had with organized religion was with the Salvation Army in England. That was not my parents' idea, by any means. The Salvation Army was where we kids hung out while our parents slept on Sunday mornings and it's where we went to scout meetings.

My father had a lot to say about just about everything, but I don't remember ever hearing him say anything about religion-not even anything as innocuous as President Eisenhower's statement that religion is a good thing. If anything, my father would probably have qualified as a nature worshipper. He believed in woodland elves and fairies and, like Dr. Doolittle, he talked to the animals. He was disappointed when I became a Unitarian Universalist, but only because he had his heart set on my becoming an Anglican bishop-more for the social standing of the thing than for any theological preference. As for my mother, to the best of my knowledge she has never had any interest in religion one way or the other except, as I say, when her son is preaching and that has more to do with maternal pride than with any religious interest.

How on earth did I get religion and become a minister? It certainly wasn't for the prestige. There's precious little of that left. When I tell people I'm a Unitarian Universalist minister, I might as well tell them I've just eaten a pint of sauerkraut-it's odd, but it's not particularly interesting. But there was my father's influence, his mysticism, naturalism, his intuition that there's more to reality than meets the eye. He would look behind the walls to see the gardens and he would look underneath the dead leaves to find the green shoots of the coming daffodils.

Mostly, however, there was my grandmother. She was the religious one. Was she ever religious. A spiritualist as a young woman, she was converted by the Jehovah's Witnesses and was still knocking on doors, handing out literature, and telling people about the coming end of the world a year before she died at the age of 96. She may have knocked on your door in some time and place. If she did, I hope you were kind to her. She simply wanted you to have eternal life. She wanted you to inherit the new heaven and beautiful new earth she believed with all her heart was in store for those who believed.

Ah, there's the rub. That new heaven and beautiful new earth-that salvation-was, for her and in her faith, only for those who believed. My grandmother's decades-long sadness, shadowing the bright glory she believed awaited her, was that none of her family would be with her. When my parents were both drafted into munitions work in England, gone from dawn to late night, my grandmother became my parent. For years afterward, until I married and moved away, I continued to visit and talk with her for hours, still listening to her stories of the new heaven and earth. My aunt told me that when my grandmother heard I was going away to become a minister, she cried for days.

Though I went with her to a number of meetings and even did the readings and lessons many times, I never became a Jehovah's Witness. As if that weren't heartache enough for my grandmother, my becoming a minister was almost more than she could bear. Her religion taught her that churches and ministers were agents of Satan. I would not be in the new world with her. She would lose me for all eternity. I'll say this for my grandmother's personal faith of exclusion: There was none of the anger and contempt in it we hear so much from the Christian Right these days. She felt a deep sadness, a tragic sense of loss.

One of my colleagues speaks of his sister-in-law who told the entire family how deeply sorry she was and how much she would miss everyone, because she was going to be sitting in heaven watching the rest of the family roast in hell. As the late religious educator, Sophia Fahs, wrote, "Some beliefs are divisive, separating the saved from the unsaved, friends from enemies." And, she might have added, separating children from their parents, brothers from sisters, family from family.

How is it that religion tears people from each other's love? It always has. While their faith may separate them from their own family, the true believers of whatever faith have the assurance that their loss is or will be replaced with the love of their own community of believers. The cult, in fact, successfully exercises control over its members to the extent that it can supplant the family bond with the bond of the community of shared belief.

When we wonder how family members can separate themselves over matters of belief, we must keep in mind two things: first, the over-riding power of faith to convince the believer that nothing is more important than the beliefs-in God, Allah, the guru, the community of fellow-believers. In the Christian scriptures, Jesus says, "For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother... and a man's foes will be among those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me." There's more than enough support for the believer to abandon her or his family to the regions of hell-sorrowfully or not. Second, it stands to reason that there isn't much point to being saved if everyone else is also saved. If you are going to hold a doctrine of the elect or the saved, it's important to believe that you yourself are one of them. Universalism-one wing of our Unitarian Universalist faith-has limited appeal. One of the ways some people are sure they're saved is by being sure that you're not.

In the light of all this, it is not surprising that some of our friends and families act as if we'd sprouted horns when they find out that we have joined something called a Unitarian Universalist congregation. They may be angry. They may be hurt-hurt that you could abandon the faith you were born into, the faith you followed together as a family, perhaps the faith in whose house of worship you were married. And friends and family may be sincerely and deeply afraid for you. If they believe that you are involved in some rank heresy-as perhaps their pastor or priest has told them-they may be afraid for your very soul.

What, then, shall we say to Auntie-or to our parents or our friends-about this faith we have embraced or are coming to embrace? What shall we say when they tearfully or angrily tell us we must return to the faith of our fathers or that we must be saved for the sake of our children?

First, I urge you not to respond to your family and friends on their own terms-that is, do not argue the merits of their religion and faith. You will get nowhere on that track. You are not going to be converted back to your family religion by argument, reasonable or otherwise, and your family is not going to be argued out of their faith. Furthermore, since it is true that your family really has no right to attempt to argue you from your religion, neither have you the right to argue them from theirs-even if you could. Second, I recommend that you respond to religious judgments or entreaties positively. "Bless those that persecute you," as Jesus said. Say to others, "I'm really happy for you that you have beliefs and a faith that make your life meaningful and that give you hope for the future." Then you can go on to speak positively, not defensively, about your own religion and your own beliefs.

The Purposes and Principles of Unitarian Universalism can serve as a guide to what it is that we stand for in our faith. And we do have a faith. Affirming and promoting the "Inherent worth and dignity of every person" is faith-it assumes that humankind is inherently good without regard to race, color, faith, or social position. Our faith begins with the bedrock positive commitment to the unprovable faith proposition that we are inherently blessed-not damned, blessed-yes, saved. Oh, we don't believe we are saved by Jesus' blood, Auntie, but our religious principles teach us that we have freedom-freedom of will, freedom to choose our own ends, the freedom to live by values, principles, and ideas.

Tell your family and friends that your religion encourages you to trust your personal experience, your conscience, and your reason beyond any authorities in religion. And you know that your personal experience, your conscience, and your reason do not lead you in the same direction or to the same conclusions as others.

If you want to share yourself with others without judging them, speak of where you do find truth, encouragement, and guidance. Talk about what being a Unitarian Universalist means to you. Talk about what being part of this congregation means to you. Talk about the ways in which your religion works in your life, your work, your family.

True believers, fervent believers-perhaps like some of your family and friends-experience their religion as being primary in their lives. They talk about their religion. Maybe they talk about it a lot-more than you like to hear. But, consider this: if you have nothing to say about your religion, if you are quiet about the values, principles, and convictions that constitute your faith, others can conclude that you don't have a religion to speak of. Concluding that, they feel perfectly free to try to give you something you apparently don't have.

Remember this, though. Others can talk so much about their beliefs because-whether we agree with them or not-they know what their beliefs are. They can proclaim their religion because they know what their religion is. You will not be convincing if you are trying to make something up as you go along. Calling yourself a Unitarian Universalist is not having a faith. Being a member of the Church of the Larger Fellowship is not having a faith. You have to do the work of learning about your religion and of setting yourself on a path of religious discovery.

If you do find yourself in a discussion about religion, begin by affirming the faith of the other and recognizing its value for the other. Then affirm your own faith, showing clearly that it, too, while different, is equally valuable and central in your life and possibly in the life of your family. Your sharing can demonstrate a life filled with faith where others might have previously assumed an emptiness.

When you share the differences of your religions in respect and understanding, rather than in judgment or self-righteousness, you can come to know others in important ways that are a foundation for love and friendship.

It is possible, even so, that our best intentions may come to no good end. As Sophia Fahs wrote, it is the need of some faiths to build walled gardens. But if our intention in discussing religion with friends and family is to understand and affirm and to be affirmed and understood, it is in that attempt that we will have exemplified the principles of our own faith. That is all that our faith, conscience, and reason ask of us.

Quest June 2001 Contents

• God? No god? Something Else that you choose to call God?
  
• Life after death? Life here and now? An ongoing spirit?
  
• Evil? Bad luck? Cosmic lessons?
  
• Purpose in life? No purpose? We create our own?
  
• Prayer, meditation or spiritual practice? None of the above? Something Else?
  
• Indifferent universe? Cosmic benevolence? Entropy?
  
• Jesus? The Buddha? Somebody Else?
  
• The Bible? Other scripture? Something Else?
  
• Moral imperative? Be happy?
  
• Let reality unfold?
  

• If using the box method: for larger castings, a sturdy shirt box or corrugated box that holds a case of soft drink cans is ideal. For smaller castings: take a milk carton, pint- or gallon-size, and cut the sides down to about three inches.
  
• Moist sand, including coarse, beach sand, or sand purchased from a hardware store or pool supplier. You can make your casting directly on the beach, or put sand in a box that will hold your casting.
  
• Garden or beach shovels, knives, sturdy plastic cups, spoons, sticks, and other tools to draw and dig out your sand mold.
  
• Shells, rocks and pebbles, ceramic tiles, beads, jewelry cast-offs, mementos, and all manner of saved or collected objects.
  
• Plaster of Paris, from a hardware store.
  
• Paper clip or wire, if you want to hang your casting.
  
• Variety of brushes: toothbrush, household paintbrush, etc.
  

1. If using a box: fill it with moist sand up to the top of the box. Level it and pack it down well. If working on the beach: outline a square or rectangle of sand the size you want. Moisten the sand and pack it down well.
   
2. You are now going to make a mold. First, using a stick or a knife, draw an outline in the sand of the shape you want for your mold. For a sun, make an oval or circle; or, you might draw a fish, or an abstract or geometric shape that you like.
   
3. Now carefully dig out your mold with tools of your choice and sculpt your mold by adding textures and hollows. For instance, for a fish, you might make scales by pressing a spoon into the sand, and fins by incising the sand with a knife. To make a sun, incise curvilinear rays, and if you like, facial features. Remember, when you make a mold, every hollow place will be filled and every filled place will be hollow.
   
4. Incorporate collected objects into the mold. Place them so that they are partway in the sand and partway above its surface level.
   
5. Mix the plaster of Paris in a container, according to directions on the package. Usually, you want a consistency slightly heavier than heavy cream. Spoon the mixture into the mold, filling in delicate or textured areas first. Then layer in the rest of the plaster mixture to the top of your mold.
   
6. Watch as your mold begins to dry. It does not take long, especially if you are working in the sun. If you like, insert a paper clip or wire loop for hanging.
   
7. Let the plaster dry. If you used the box method, carefully turn your mold over. If you worked on the beach, carefully dig around your casting and turn it over.
   
8. Gently brush the sand away, using a toothbrush for the fine parts. Allow your sand-casting to dry thoroughly before you hang it.
   

Readings
by the Rev. David O. Rankin, Moscow, Idaho

The Rev. Rankin is the author of Dancing in the Empty Spaces, a book of meditations published by Skinner House in 2001and available at the UUA Bookstore. CLF members can purchase the manual at the 15% discount price of $6.80, plus the $3.00 shipping and handling cost ($9.80 total), until August 1, 2001. Use the Quest envelope mailed with this issue (hard copy) to send your check made out to CLF/UUA Bookstore, or provide your MC or VISA number and expiration date.

A Time to Be Silent

There must be a time when we cease speaking
to be fully present with ourselves.

There must be a time when we exclude clamor
by listening to nothing whatsoever.

There must be a time when we forgo our plans
as if we had no plans at all.

There must be a time when we abandon conceits
and tap into a deeper wisdom.

There must be a time when we stop striving
and find the peace within.

Amen.

Somewhere, in the deep recesses of the soul,
there is a bird singing.

Slow down, listen to the call, and hail the
advent of hope.

Last updated June 12, 2005