community – Page 9 – Southwest Conference Blog

To the Rescue

In 2008, cancer crept into our family when no one was looking. Our family was thrown into a bit of a turmoil until we could find a way out of a very dark place. After some treatment and some healing, our youngest son (only age 10 at the time) wanted to raise money to help find a “cure” for lymphoma (and other blood cancers). The Scenic Shore 150 is one of Wisconsin’s most popular bike rides and is the largest locally organized and supported event for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. The sandy shoreline of Lake Michigan is the gorgeous setting for a weekend of riding in support of a cure for blood cancer.

I was serving on the pastoral team of a congregation in Valparaiso, IN, and we had enough interest in our congregation to build a bicycling team to help raise money to find a cure. Our team committed to ride bicycles in July, 2008, in the Scenic Shore 150, a two-day 150-mile cycling event.

Our church bicycling team was named the “Still Speaking Cycling Team,” as this was the moment in time when the national United Church of Christ had launched a re-branding and marketing campaign called, “God is Still Speaking.” Intensive training began for our team and we all set out to raise money for every mile that our team would ride in Wisconsin.

On Saturday: our team would pedal 75 miles north from Mequon to Manitowac and then spend the night in Manitowac. On Sunday: our team would pedal the final 75 miles toward Door Country, ending in Sturgeon Bay. My job in Wisconsin was to drive our van the 150 miles to pick up tired, overheated, or sick bicyclists who could no longer “Still Cycle” along the route. I became lost driving the van.

July 19-20, 2008, was probably the most humid and the steamiest Wisconsin summer of the century. When one of our bicyclists called me on my cell phone and asked me to come back and pick up one tired, tuckered out bicyclist on our team, I asked “Where are you?” I was given a location. This was in 2008, before G.P.S. was commonplace. I was given an address – an intersection of two streets in some small town on the shore of Lake Michigan. All I had was an intersection and a hand-drawn map of the bicycle route.

“Okay. Stay there. I shall turn this van around and come to the rescue!” I tried to re-trace the miles that I had driven. Going by memory, I tried to back-track to find our cyclist (sporting the distinctive black and red jersey with the “Still Speaking” comma logo on the front of it) at some random intersection of two streets in some town in Wisconsin.

But I became hopelessly lost somewhere out in the cornfields. It dawned on me that these lush, green cornfields seemed quite far away from the “scenic shore” of the blue water of Lake Michigan. I had directions and a map. Why was it that I could not find our tuckered-out team?

I did not save the day that day. Some other support vehicle, authorized by the Scenic Shore 150 event, picked up our disabled bicyclist and transported him to safety. It was not until that evening as we were recovering with other bicyclists that we came to understand what had happened. All of this occurred on DAY ONE of our journey and I was looking at the map for DAY TWO. There is no way that I could ever find our disabled bicyclist because I was using the wrong map.

During this Covid-19 pandemic, we may very well feel lost. Beyond FEELING lost, perhaps some of us really ARE lost. Where are we? Where are we going? Can we ever find our way through this darkness? Who will come to rescue us? Do we have a team support vehicle? What if our support vehicle cannot find us in this strange and foreign place?

The comfort of the Christian tradition is that God always knows where we are. God never needs a map to find us. God is always on the right page. There is one who is coming to save us, pick us up, and bring us home.

Living in An Age of American Anxiety

by Ryan Gear

If you have a hunch you might be feeling more anxiety than usual, you’re probably right. With COVID-19, our political situation, the stubborn continuance of racial injustice, and the recent economic downturn added to the normal stress of life, Americans are suffering with astronomical anxiety levels.

According to the Census Bureau, as of mid-July, 35% of Americans are experiencing what could be classified as Generalized Anxiety Disorder. This is almost double the percentage in 2014 and is up by almost five percentage points since January. Arizona is on the higher end, nationally.

There is also a clear correlation of stress experienced according to age group, with almost half of 18-29 year olds experiencing diagnosable anxiety. Ethnic minorities and those with lower educational attainment clearly feel more stress than whites and those with higher levels of education.

It’s not just Americans who are feeling stressed out. British historian Richard Overy states that, like the 1920s, with political change, the increasing strength of nationalism, and fear of future wars, the 2020s in the UK will be an “age of anxiety.”

The same is true closer to home. While Trump may currently be headed for defeat in November, “Trumpism,” a form of nationalism motivated by the dwindling percentage of white Christians in America, will likely live on into the foreseeable future. It is conceivable that every four years for the next couple of decades, American voters may face the choice between leaning into the ideals enshrined in Declaration of Independence or falling toward fascism.

The economic downturn caused by COVID-19 is weighing on American families who have already suffered growing economic inequality since the 1980s. Pew Research found that income inequality in the U.S. is the highest of all G7 nations, and the wealth gap between America’s richest and poorest families more than doubled between 1989 and 2016. Middle class incomes in America have grown at a slower rate than upper-tier incomes since 1970.

In August, I’m giving a sermon series at the church I pastor called Distressed: Living in An Age of American Anxiety. My central point of the series is that, as people of faith, we have two things to offer to stressed out Americans, including ourselves:

Our faith offers us resources to cope with anxiety, and
Our faith addresses the root causes of American anxiety.

At the center of the Jesus Way is the belief that God cares for all of us and is especially predisposed toward people who are struggling. 1 Peter 5:6-7, encourages people who feel beaten down:

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

We have the comforting words of Jesus from Matthew chapter 6:

“‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?… For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them… But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.’”

We believe that God cares about stressed out Americans and that God provides. At the same time, we also know how God expresses care and exactly how God provides… God cares and provides through God’s people who partner with God and allow God to care and provide for society through them.

God cares for us, and God cares through us. As people of faith, we have the invitation to partner with God to address the root causes of our nation’s anxiety. In a previous time of heightened inequality and anxiety, Walter Rauschenbusch woke up the American church with the book that birthed the era of the Social Gospel, Christianity and the Social Crisis. The Social Gospel movement was fueled by the words of the Hebrew prophets like Micah:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).

The champions of the Social Gospel were optimistic in their belief that human hearts could be quickly bent toward justice and usher in the millennial reign of Christ in the 20th century. The quagmire of WWI, however, along with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, and the doldrums of the Great Depression, exposed a degree of naiveté in the movement.

Reinhold Niebuhr, while agreeing that the premise of the Social Gospel was rooted in the biblical concept of justice, suggested that a new kind of “Christian Realism” was needed. Niebuhr wrote in the 1932 Moral Man & Immoral Society that people who desire social justice must force it to happen politically. He points out the reality, for example, that a few exorbitantly wealthy people will pay more taxes out of the goodness of their hearts, but most will not; tax laws must be changed. There are individuals who love justice, but society as a whole does not. Therefore, the political will must be influenced by those individuals who do, and laws must be passed that force the rest to comply within a more just system.

In an era when, like ours, racism and economic injustice played the central role in American politics, Niebuhr presented a strategy that we can also utilize today to address the root causes of American anxiety. In Moral Man & Immoral Society, Niebuhr holds up the example of Ghandi who, while known primarily for using the method of non-violence, also wisely employed another strategy to influence the political will of the British Empire to act more justly toward India.

Niebuhr writes that even though there is actually no ethical distinction, in a strategic decision “Mr. Ghandi never tires of making a distinction between individual Englishmen and the system of imperialism which they maintain” (p. 249). Ghandi acknowledged the perceived difference between the decent and law-abiding individual Englishman at home and the horrible injustices the English collectively perpetuated in India. By doing so, he slipped past the defense mechanisms of the individuals who maintained the system and ultimately changed the political will. Quoting Ghandi from C.F. Andrews’ Mahatma Ghandi’s Ideas, p. 238:

“An Englishman in office is different from an Englishman outside. Similarly an Englishman in India is different from an Englishman in England. Here in India, you belong to a system that is vile beyond description. It is possible, therefore, for me to condemn the system in the strongest terms, without considering you to be bad and without imputing bad motives to every Englishman.”

As anxiety-producing inequalities are worsening, and political divisions are widening, Ghandi’s graceful strategy of inviting willing individuals to change the system may both counter the politics of division and be the most effective approach to addressing the root causes of our national anxiety. We have an opportunity to reduce our own anxiety and be the change we want to see.

Ryan Gear is the Lead Pastor of The Well in Chandler, AZ. During the COVID-19 shutdown, The Well meets online Sundays at 10am AZ/1pm EST.

Grandmothering God…Help us.

guest post from a pastoral letter by Rev. Seth Wispelwey, Interim Pastor at Rincon Congregational UCC in Tucson

“Nana, ayudame.”

Grandmother, help me.

These were the last words of Carlos “Adrian” Ingram Lopez, the Latino man who was killed by Tucson police while in their custody. Our police department, which recently tried to claim “we’re not Minneapolis,” hid his death for two months from Tucson officials (including our mayor) and the general public.  The horrific 12-minute video of his final moments Earth-side has now been released.

Beloved, the great global reckoning we are living through and acting in is now profoundly, specifically, alarmingly here. This is our city. These are our tax dollars. Carlos was our neighbor. Carlos’ family are our neighbors.

Beloved, I know so much is overwhelming and stressful and hard right now. This pandemic and its disconnections from full life and presence with one another. The stresses of managing home, work, parenting, and more amidst so much uncertainty. The fires blazing across our Catalina mountains. The would-be fascist regime operating out of the White House. The righteous uprising compelling so many of us to interrogate and deconstruct the poisonous DNA of white supremacy & patriarchy in ourselves and our communities.

And now this.

Walking is where we find hope and resist defeat. We make the road by walking. Together. Linked in Spirit and the beloved spirits you each possess that our still-speaking God imbues with strength to envision and embody a new Way.  Strength and vision we can only arrive at together.  Remember our scripture this past week?  In-between spitting a lot of righteous fire, Jesus encourages the disciples three times to “have no fear,” to “not be afraid,” and to “fear not.”

It’s ok if you’re afraid of the reckoning on our doorstep. That is a natural reaction. The body of togetherness that we call “church” is a hospital for fear. A medical ward for reaffirming hope. A rehab facility for building up the muscles to respond to others’ fear with the power and actions of love.

We are called for such a moment as this. We are called to be the church we emblazon on our banners.

Beloved, I am here for it. Like each of you, I cannot do it alone. Let us grieve, let us rage, let us pray, let us talk, let us walk.

And Carlos “Adrian” Ingram Lopez.  Say his name.  Share his story. Speak up. Act out. His family has asked that in any online sharing you also include #NanaAyudame.

Like George Floyd, Carlos couldn’t breathe. He let them know. He cried out for his parent figures while the police let him suffocate.  Just like Jesus on the cross.

This hurts, beloved. Let us hold it and walk it together. Let justice come. Resurrection is the insurrection they thought they crucified.

Resurrection is tearing down the idols.

Resurrection is liberating the captives.

Resurrection is abolishing ICE.

Resurrection is defunding and dismantling the police.

Resurrection is living the truth that Black Lives Matter, that women’s bodies and choices belong to them, that queer folx are fiercely beloved & affirmed by God, that border walls be demolished, that properties become “re-wilded,” and more.

Resurrection lives in you.

Bring forth reparations, for the kin-dom of God is at hand.

Grandmothering God…Help us.

Onward,
Rev. Seth

What Will the Church DO About the Lynchings?

“You can lynch a people by more than just hanging them on a tree. How long will this terror last?!” Dr. James Cone, 2013, Vanderbilt University

Dear white Christians,

Every Black life matters. That is not a cliché, hashtag, or a movement moniker. That is a Divinely pronounced, immutable, moral truth. Despite this Truth, three black people – Ahmad Aubrey in Georgia, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky, George Floyd in Minnesota – three children of God, three of our human siblings, three of our neighbors, three beloved family members – were lynched in America in as many months. Each of their lives mattered. And God is inviting us to remember the Divine Words in Genesis. “What have you done?! Listen! your brothers’ and sister’s blood cries out to me from the land.” (Gen. 4:10)

To say that the murders of Ahmad Aubrey, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, happened because they were Black is to blame the victims. Mr. Aubrey, Ms. Taylor, and Mr. Floyd were lynched because their killers were racists. The initial non-response to Mr. Aubrey’s murder happened because the prosecutors’ decisions were rooted in racism. Bystanders realized the police were killing Mr. Floyd and begged the officers to stop using lethal force; officers refused because they were racists. When I ask prayerfully, “Would what happened to Ahmad Aubrey, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd have been different if these beloved children of God had been white?” the answer is, “Yes!” But their Blackness was not to blame. Their deaths are the fruit of white privilege left unchallenged, racism gone viral, and white supremacy running rampant and glorified on our airwaves and in our streets. Racist white people are to blame. Racist white people lynched them! “What have you done?! Listen! your brothers’ and sisters’ blood cries out to me from the land.”

The assault against Black bodies on our streets is personal. It was personal for Ahmad Aubrey and his family. It was personal for Breonna Taylor and her family. It was personal for George Floyd and his family. What has happened to them and to their families is personal for everyone in America who is not white. I want to say something to the Church without becoming too personal for me or for you. But that is not possible.

Dismantling racism is personal work. Racism will only be dismantled when each of us personally dismantles our own racism. An honest moral inventory of myself specifically and of white people generally tells me that white people do not interact with Black people the same way they interact with white people. White people feel a different set of feelings when we interact with Black people than we feel when we interact with white people. White culture believes and perpetuates stereotypes and untruths about Black culture in order to sustain our white privilege. That is why just this week a Central Park dog-walker, Amy Cooper, who is white, called the police and reported her life was being threatened when a birdwatcher, Christian Cooper, who is Black, asked her to comply with posted rules and put her dog on a leash. Sometimes we don’t realize what we are doing and that is the crux of the problem. Sometimes we do.

My integrity compels me to admit that I am a racist. I was taught racial biases, not always tacitly. I have willingly learned and practiced these patterns of behavior because that is what white people expect of other white people, and because ‘our systems’ reward racism. My whiteness has become unmanageable in that I am addicted to my privilege. I do not want to be a racist. Yet, I commit racism every time I interact with or feel or believe differently about someone who is not white, or when I act to preserve my privilege. While I am working to be more aware of and to overcome my privilege and my racism, that does not mean I am not racist. That means when I succeed, I am a racist in recovery. Until white people confess and change what is happening inside of ourselves, Black people will continue to bear our sins in their bodies. “What have you done?! Listen! your brothers’ and sisters’ blood cries out to me from the land.”

Let us agree to make no more assumptions that because we are progressive Christians, we are not racists. Let us put as much work into dismantling our own individual racism as we have put into our collective statements of solidarity with communities of color, protests, expressions of outrage, and social media posts. Let us agree as clergy and lay leaders, members together of the Southwest Conference of the United Church of Christ, we will intentionally and overtly act to dismantle racism in all of our ministry settings and in the systems in which we live socially, economically, legally, and politically. Let us agree to educate ourselves about Black history, read books by Black authors, quote Black teachers and theologians, and elect Black leaders. Let us agree to call out racism from our pulpits and in our pulpits, from our seats and in our seats at board and committee meetings, our private conversations, our decision making, our interpretation of Scripture, our classes and workshops. Let us agree to give one another permission to hold each other accountable when we miss the opportunity to hold ourselves accountable for racist and privileged behavior.

The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? ⁷ If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.” (Genesis 4:6-7) What world becomes possible when we, white Christians, live into that kind of covenant with one another? I hope a world without lynchings, where no person dies because of the color of their skin, a world from which “the blood of our neighbors” no longer cries out against us, a just world for all.

Rev. Dr. William M. Lyons, Conference Minister
Southwest Conference of the United Church of Christ

How Long Oh Lord, How Long?

guest post by Rev. Dr. Edward Smith Davis, MBA, Conference Minister, Southern Conference UCC

And they cried with a loud voice, saying “How long Oh Lord, Holy and true dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth. (Rev. 6:10 KJV)

After seeing the videos of incidences surrounding Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, and George Floyd in Minnesota, and equally likewise the incident surrounding the death of Breonna Taylor, I had a visceral reaction that made my spirit cry out, “How long Oh Lord, how long? How long must innocent victims be put to death needlessly because of the color of their skin?

This brought back memories of growing up in Chicago, as a twelve-year old boy, of how many times the police forced me and others to lay on the ground in, sometimes zero-degree weather, searching our pockets for weapons or drugs. After searching our pockets and realizing there was no paraphernalia that could link us to any crime, we were still forced to lay on a frozen ground for often, twenty to thirty minutes of what felt like an eternity. It was during those times I realized how quickly things could go severely wrong.

I called to remembrance the times when I would sit down with my two young sons and talk with them, not so much about gang violence, but being more concerned with the violence that could be perpetrated upon them by the police out of racism and hatred. Let me say, I have no ill will toward the police. My wife served as police officer for thirty-one years and we both served as St. Jude Chaplains for the entire police department. We understand their call to faithful service.

In this society I ask the question, how long oh Lord? How long must Black men and women be devalued to the point of death? How long, oh Lord! How long and when will the bodies of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddy Gray, and others compel us to use our voices to cry out over the injustices and the disregard for human life. Black lives matter! How long, oh Lord? How long do we have to witness the videos of Black lives being taken away? How long oh Lord? How long must the shooting of innocent men and women continue to play out in our society. How long oh Lord? How long will we as a people declare, that in your Holy site, these behaviors are wrong?

Yes! We must protest! Yes! We must cry out! Yes! we must advocate! And, yes, we must all use our collective voices to proclaim this message loud and clear.

At General Synod, 2017 I was the keynote speaker at the Open and Affirming, (O&A), banquet I asked the questioned to the gathered, “why do we wait for our particular justice issue to come along before we get involved?” I shared then that any injustice must be addressed by those of us who are called to be advocates for justice. When I was on the Board of the United Church of Christ, I declared, “if we were going to be authentic to who we say we are, we are going to have to value all voices. And, if we are going to be people, of spiritual integrity and moral compass, it must compel us to value all lives.”

As Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer states, “not to speak is to speak! And not to act, is to act!” For we cannot close our eyes and pretend not to see and shut our ears and pretend not to hear the cries from the lips and lives of the families who are left behind. Oh Lord, how long? In our frustration we do cry out to God asking how long. But, in this faith, we must remember the God who sees, hears, and knows is forever present with us to provide us hope and the determination to continue to pray, speak and act to these injustices.

We, as a faith community, must never lose hope that our world can be a safe and healthy place for everyone to live. And, we must do our part to ensure the manifestation of this occurring. In the midst of the crisis we must share this hope with those who have lost their hope. And, we must share it in tangible ways. I am reminded of the scripture found in Romans 8:22, (NIV), We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. When we see the pains of God’s people as our collective pain, we will be challenged and called to pray as well as act. How long oh Lord? Not Long!

A Cat’s Lessons on Loving Your Neighbor

by Abigail Conley

The cat is driving me crazy. She’s a little annoyed by us working from home more, having been accustomed to her days alone and uninterrupted sleep. Near the beginning of Arizona’s shutdown, I handed her through the car window to a veterinary tech; as a result of that visit, she’s been on steroids for about a month. She’s almost seventeen, so this is the best way to treat current health problems that we’re not worried about curing.

However, a cat on steroids is just as bad as a human on steroids. About a week in, her appetite doubled, maybe tripled. She is now known as the hobbit, hopeful for second anything. Any time we walk near her food bowl, she’s hopeful for more food. She has dry food all the time; she’d just rather have the (expensive) canned rabbit. She’s gotten second dinner a few times. It doesn’t seem to have sated her hunger.

Her thirst has increased with her hunger, and we are regularly scolding her for sticking her head in one of our drinks. It is not uncommon for every glass to end up in the dishwasher as a result. I should note that not only does she have a water bowl that is full, it is actually a water fountain so that the water doesn’t get stale and unappealing. It was a recent Christmas present and we can talk about me becoming that person another day.

Oh—I missed all the extra energy from steroids in my summary of complaints about the cat. Luckily, she cannot share her complaints about me.

But I am also remembering how I got the cat, more than seven years ago now. One of my college professors lost her husband in a plane crash; her childhood sweetheart had lost his wife to cancer. They got married. She was not a cat person, but he had three cats from his first marriage. They went to work on rehoming the cats after a few months of marriage. His daughter ended up with two of the cats. I got my cat, transported from Virginia to Kansas City by my professor and her new husband. They arrived just in time for Thanksgiving dinner with me.

The cat’s original owner has since died of cancer, too. It was a shockingly aggressive cancer caused by Agent Orange from his service in Vietnam. My partner and I went to his funeral in Nashville, somehow more connected by the cat he was so glad we loved. The primary way we could care for him during his illness was to send cat pictures.

Somehow, the cat remains a symbol of connection stretching across the years. I even talk to her previous owners more often because she is in my care. As we sit in this pandemic that both isolates and connects us at the same time, I think most of us will come away with neighbor stories. Some of them are good stories of comfort and friendship; others are stories of neighbors like mine who start drinking at 10 a.m.

But at the end of the day, the command to love your neighbor is about remembering the ways we are connected and honoring them. In my case, an uncharacteristically annoying cat still turns me to my neighbor. Maybe even more importantly, those connections remind me that I have neighbors who love me, too. And we’ll probably have some good stories to tell along the way.

Call And… Response?

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
– Viktor E. Frankl

If I could pinpoint the moment that I understood I had choice over my responses in life, it would be the day I read and re-read (and re-read again) Viktor Frankls “Man’s Search For Meaning” and came across the quote above. I was 24 years old and reeling emotionally every single day. I didn’t realize I was reeling emotionally every single day because I had been reeling emotionally every single day for 24 years. You don’t realize there is a different way of being than the way you have always been until something pierces the pain in a new way. This book, that quote, pierced the pain and I was never the same.

I was in pain from a childhood that had lots of loss and trauma. I had found a lot of love along the way and it kept me going. It patched me up for just a bit until I got to the next stop and needed another fix. We do this (whatever our own “this” is) and we don’t know we do this until doing this stops working. It’s life and it gets lived in a way that makes the most sense at the time with the choices we have. Our development throughout life is about capacity to hold, to understand, to respond. We have some sort of event occur, small or large, and we respond. It’s living and we’re all doing it.

Some of us have more of what we need from the start and some of us have less. Some of us have circumstances that come alongside of us, that build us and shape us into having greater capacity within to hold hard feelings and emotions, to make decisions that match our inner desire to be safe and loved. Some of us operate from a place of surviving and overcoming because that is what had to happen at every turn. And many of us are a mixture of all of that. I see my life as a mixture of incredible love, earth-shattering loss, amazing joy, immense grief, reliable protection, harmful neglect, and a commitment (sometimes half-hearted) to try again.

Community helps and hinders. We are herd mammals and we need each other. If the herd is brutal, then need is neglected and treated as shameful. If the herd is protective, then needs are met and vulnerability is protected.

What happens, then, when the herd goes away? What happens when we look about and realize we are suddenly alone?

I attend recovery support meetings over video conferencing services quite a bit these days. They are constantly available. I have not been able to go in person to any of these meetings for years because I have been on medical restrictions long before the rest of the world joined me. Because everyone has been in quarantine, these resources have massively amped up and I am so very grateful for this.

The first few weeks that I attended, it was full of fumbling and bumbling. There was constant feedback, dropped meetings, messiness. It was lovely actually, seeing us all grapple and try. I love it when I can be aware of effort when the outcome is not what I expected. One of the things that was gradually realized is that everyone had to mute their mics unless they are speaking. It works. It also is so quiet.

When we talk to one another, we look for cues and responses. We look for engagement that we are being heard. We like to hear the “uh, huh.” We like to hear the laughter when we make the joke. We like to hear the clapping when we are being celebrated. We want the feedback. We want to know that our voices are traveling and landing into the hearts of the people around us. It is sustaining.

These meetings have been crucial and important to me. They have also been very, very quiet at times. I have heard people struggle with the change. I have struggled with it myself.

When we call, we need the response. We want it quickly and we want it in the way we are accustomed to receiving it. We don’t want our voices to echo back to us, we want it to land on the heart of someone else, have them take it in and emote it back to us.

The call. The response. The call…. The response. The call……………………… The response.

Between the call and the response, we have space. The space has gotten wider and in that space is the echo.

We often dislike the sound of our own voice because it is disjointed from what we think we sound like through the thunderous vibrations of our own vocal chords interacting with our own ears. It’s the same, I think, for the words we say. We want our words to land somewhere else, but now they sit outside of us and they bounce back to us in this space we now have. It sounds far different than when it landed somewhere else. We want these thoughts and these wishes and these ways of being to be swept up and taken. We want the response to be swift.

My loves… the space is a gift.

We will regret how we use this time if we do not use this time to become more comfortable with our own echo.

The thoughts we are having we were having before, we just got to distract ourselves more with the business of life.

The fears we are having we were having before, it is simply that our own awareness of our fragility and vulnerability is making it harder to hide from these things.

The pain we are having we were having before, we just can’t ignore it in the same way that we used to be able to.

The other side of this is equally true.

The love that we have is what we had before, we just didn’t know how crucial it was to live in because this loneliness is so hard.

The joy that we have is what we had before, we just didn’t realize how much the presence of one another amplified it so that it was harder to ignore.

The life we have is what we had before, we just didn’t realize that it was about being more than it was about doing.

Between stimulus and response there is space. We have stepped into the space that is offering each of us the power to choose our response. Craft that response intentionally, lovingly and fully, my friends. It is where we will find our greatest growth and our truest freedom.

My Life Since Coronavirus

guest post by Laura Bever

The Coronavirus has left no one unchanged. Its grip extends to every part of our lives. This is true no matter our individual circumstances. We all could tell our story and each of us would have a unique and reprehensible way it has changed us. My life since the coronavirus is no different. We have lost work like so many, and while we worked/attended college online/homeschooled from home already, just like so many parents are finding, it’s very tiring, incredibly taxing, and often completely overwhelming balancing it all at once.

There is however an element of my family’s life that makes this situation incredibly difficult. We live a good amount below the poverty line. This isn’t a unique situation. Many families do. In fact, in America at a minimum, 39 million Americans live in poverty. It is, however, incredibly important. Living in poverty is hard, really hard. It’s often challenging to explain the intricacies that make this so. However, this pandemic has brought us all to the same basic level. We are all struggling to find supplies and struggling to find resources and in need of health care, which are struggles that people living in poverty experience on a day to day basis. For my family, these struggles have only been exacerbated.

One of our struggles is the home we rent. While affordable for a family living in poverty, it hasn’t been well taken care of. We’ve had many problems, from sewage backing up consistently in our house, the shower wall falling in, to many leaks in our roof every time it rains. Our most recent problem is in one of the bedrooms. The roof has been caving in since we moved in and could no longer wait to be replaced. We’ve had to maneuver having little access to our house as the roof was taken apart and is still being fixed, all while being under the stay at home order. It has made our day to day outrageously tough to navigate with the seven people that live here.

Another area that has been made difficult is finding and getting groceries. At first, this was because there wasn’t anything available in the stores and now it’s because new rules have been put in place to stop the hoarding. These rules limit the amount that can be purchased. For my family and most large families, this means going to the store every other day, something which is very difficult to budget. Things like milk and cheese only last so long with five children. It also means consistent exposure as we are making more trips out in public and though groceries can be ordered online, things like WIC are not options that can be used. So there isn’t really a choice but to go out often. And because we use WIC we often find that the things we can purchase aren’t in any stores anyways.

Beyond this, Joe has lost a work contract, my volunteer job as a sexual assault advocate is nearly impossible at the moment with emergency rooms being off-limits, school for myself has been put somewhere almost mentally out of reach, and we both worry what we will do with five kids if or when we do get sick. It is often said that living in poverty is like living with chronic trauma, the jumping and maneuvering to keep up seems very real, especially during a pandemic.

While we are all lamenting the extraordinary loss all around us, there is also something else important and worth acknowledging about how my life has changed since the coronavirus. Just as the rapid pace of this virus has penetrated our lives, so too have other changes quickly happened. Acquaintances have become good friends, family I haven’t heard from in some time I’ve had the opportunity to connect with, I’ve been able to witness incredible acts of kindness, and have been the recipient of amazing gentleness. I’ve been able to talk with, laugh with, and cry with so many I love. I have had the honor of bearing witness to other’s incredible pain, and feel oddly connected to those in my life. It doesn’t make any of this okay. It doesn’t make any of it better. It does, however, mean goodness is persistent, that vulnerability is brave, that caring for your neighbor is a determined act of ingenuity and cleverness, that loving others when we are so uncertain and scared is indeed heroic, and that sharing toilet paper can be a holy act in a time of scarcity. I’m anxious for what is to come and defiantly hopeful.

All Together. Separate.

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

Here we are. All together… separate.

What a weird time.

I have been doing this a while, this thing that we are doing now where we each take to our own homes and live a sealed life, trading handshakes and hugs for emojis and typed words. Instead of reaching for each other, we are reaching for computers, phones, devices. The phone becomes a portal to a world rather than a device to accompany the world. Our lives getting lived out on a small screen as the natural world around us does what the natural world around us does naturally without us.

The world is healing as we are retreating. We are getting an object lesson that we didn’t realize we had been needing.

I don’t desire to make light of it because people are dying. Alone. People are not able to mourn together because doing so will increase the reasons to mourn. We must wait to even begin the task of grasping that which is lost. So much loss. So much change. And here we sit. Wondering and waiting.

I have been doing this awhile. And yet… this is oh so different because you are doing it too. That matters somehow, doesn’t it? It matters to know that it’s not just you… Even when it feels like it is just you, it never is. Whatever it is you feel, that feeling has been felt by nearly every person on this planet. That’s true pre-pandemic and is mightily true now. Whatever intensity you feel, that intensity has rested heavily on someone else’s shoulders. It rests there now. You are not alone in this even as you are literally alone in this.

I have some isolation tricks to share, but before we get tricky, let’s get honest.

Some of us are loving the opportunity to finally slow down and rest. That feels a bit bad for some because they don’t want to be the one finding solace and slumber when others are exhausted and in a nightmare. Some of us are really loving the break, though. That makes sense.

Some of us are hating every single moment of this isolation. It’s the opposite of anything they would have chosen for themselves. They need people and it feels like they are slowly losing their grounding force as people go away. Some of us are really hating this time. That makes sense.
The disease spreading has impacted us each in different ways even if we have not been sick or known someone directly who has gotten sick. It’s starting to get closer and closer, though.A friend of a friend of a friend had it. Now a friend of a friend had it.Now a friend has it. Closer.

Allergies seem like cruel April Fools pranks coming early. A sneeze turns into a warning where it used to be an annoyance. Scary, scary stuff.
We are feeling things, all kinds of things.It all makes sense in the midst of something we don’t understand. That’s an understatement. I’ll try again. It all makes sense in the midst of something we haven’t ever imagined before. That’s a bit closer. Not there yet, though.

It all makes sense in the midst of something we can’t fathom because we have not had anything like this ever, ever, ever. We are very aware of what is happening globally in a way we never have before and we just can’t begin to wrap our single human mind around it.

There is a lot of stuttering and trailing off of sentences as we try to piece it all together. When the words fail us, we turn our attention to graphs and numbers to quantify the unquantifiable nature of this loss. High school math teachers everywhere are whispering, “I told you that you would need this!” Fine. Mr. Clever was right.

That’s the thing, though. This time is drawing on all the resources within us and outside of us. We are reaching into the recesses just to make sense of what the heck is happening. My goodness, that builds pressure within us and we are looking for a release valve. Some of us might be reaching for the things that have worked in the past and we may find that those things just aren’t working anymore, but we are alone and it feels too late to figure out how to manage this anxiety. I get that on a cellular level. Truly I do.

I don’t have answers. I do have experience in being alone and scared due to illness. I’ll offer that. In that offering, please know, I am scared too. I have the same moments you have still. My illness has not built up an immunity to being afraid of death. I just have a lot of experience of feeling that fear, thinking those thoughts, and having it lift.

My offering is to remind your precious self that you are definitely not alone and isolation breeds all kinds of things that you actually do have some ability to impact. I was surprised to find that out. I still am surprised when intensity lifts and reveals itself as just a part of living rather than the harbinger of demise.

First and foremost, your thoughts are just thoughts. I know they are really, really loud thoughts, but they are just thoughts. You constructed them and shaped them. You made them. We forget that. These thoughts are sometimes helpful, they are often not. There’s more noise and fuzz when there is stress and it gets hard to distinguish what is real and what is not. One of the ways we combat this is by taking in new information. We listen and we add the information to the flow. This may not help because it’s still the same thoughts sifting and sorting the information.

Can we agree that our thoughts sometimes may not be the best, most accurate thing and that news, in its effort to be the most newsiest news, is often riddled with errors? If we can agree with that, can we agree that solely thinking those thoughts and watching that news will only feed the cycle within that feels so bad? We need to break it up. We have to otherwise it will continue to hurt us.

An informed mind is not a panicked mind. Those are very different things. Your feeling of panic will not subside by exposing it to more panic. It will subside by stepping away from that panic because Panic is always inaccurate. We are not doing ourselves any favors by turning our attention to more of it when we are consumed by it. It will make us lose all sense of reality in our attempts to grasp reality.

We can’t be haphazard by the sources of information or our use of this time. If you went from having 60 hour work weeks to now having endless free time it leaves a void. What is filling the void?

The thing that will get us through is intention. Thinking about your day when you have endless time is crucial. I am not someone who adheres to a tight schedule and am not suggesting that you become rigid with your time, but the time will slip away and you will find yourself wondering what you did all day and why you are so tired. You are so tired because your brain was trying to gain purchase somewhere at some point and couldn’t because the autopilot mode feels far too slippery and you can’t seem to find solid ground. Time is a relative thing and if you did not know that before, you are about to know it in a very real way. The minutes can drag and the days can fly by. It’s odd. It’s very, very odd.
Structuring time to some degree is a necessity. Set-up a structure that is loose but something you can bounce around in and keep.

Next up: entertainment. Many of us have endless options to the point of being bored. Excess is overwhelming.

It helps to simplify it. Try to do it in parts and separate the binging of entertainment with something in the real world. Break it up with projects, conversations, connections. The entertainment will be far more enjoyable that way.

Relationships: if you are unhappy and resentful of the people you are quarantined with, it may be time to try and work on that. That’s doable. Truly it is.

If you are experiencing harm from them, that is something else entirely and please reach out to someone for help if it is abusive. If you can’t stand them because they slurp soup, that’s something we can work on.
It will all be amplified which means it is inaccurate. Amplified = inaccurate.

They don’t always slurp, they just are slurping now. This closed down world is mighty claustrophobic (I almost made a pun of cloister-phobic, but didn’t so I should get some points for that). The reason you feel locked in is because you are locked in. They slurped their soup before, your ears were just pointed somewhere else. Zoom out.

Make gratitude lists. Don’t just think about things you are grateful for, make an actual list and do it anytime you feel scared, annoyed, lost. It changes your perspective. Perspective is liberating.

Own your internal world. Your thoughts and feelings are your internal world and you are the only one who gets to construct it. There are endless thoughts we could be having so the thought that we happen to be on is just one of many thoughts you have access to. Pay attention to what gives you clarity and what brings in the noise. That’s yours to shape and yours alone. No one else gets to come in there without an invitation and that includes information and panic.

Lastly… we may find ourselves wanting to use the things that make us forget, the things that separate us from our living momentarily, but ruin us if used regularly. These things are usually addicting. They rewire the brain to search for ease instead of enduring whatever is going on. They overuse the good feeling chemicals in our brain that are finite. They become depleted and need time to regenerate.

The more we use these shortcuts, the less our brain has time to reproduce the neuro-chemicals we need to feel things like ease, comfort, happiness, etc. That’s why we feel so lousy after we use these things in excess. I can tell you that this is very slippery ground in isolation.
Our minds are already a tornado at times right now and if we add in more pressure from increasing drinking, drugs, overeating, porn, binging entertainment to the point of ignoring life, we will feel worse. If you feel like you have some choice over some of these behaviors, consider stepping them down a bit rather than ratcheting them up a bit. If you feel like you don’t have choice over it, reach out for some help because it will make it worse.

Be gentle with your lovely selves. Your life on pause is still life you are living and choices you are making matters.

Even when you think you are the loneliest of the lonely, you are not alone. Not ever.

Of Course We Bought All The Toilet Paper

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

Back in the day I used to go to see funny movies in theaters.
I say back in the day because we can’t go to theaters right now due to the mandatory quarantine happening in places all over where heartbeats exist and life flows. We are not alone in this. It is happening everywhere. That feels important to remember.

I also say back in the day because I have been living a life of isolation due to illness for several years now so I have been unable to go to a movie theater in a long while, even when they were open.

I used to love going to movie theaters, though. I loved watching really funny comedies in a room full of other people laughing. It magnified joy in a lovely way and I would feel connected, alive, happy. How amazing is it that we can be that impacted by each other? It’s lovely when it’s good.

How awful is it that we can be that impacted by each other? It’s hard when it’s bad.

The impact is immense. Your life and my life are so intertwined. My very survival rests in my ability to watch you live, see what I see and respond accordingly. My world and your world are so impacted by each other that the reality of separateness gets called into question all the time. We are far more connected and far more similar than we are comfortable admitting. I have choice and you have choice, but we really do make choices based on the smallest things we have no idea or awareness influence it.

You choose a lot because of me. I choose a lot because of you. That impact changes and fluctuates, but it always exists. We are connected.
The COV19 Pandemic has been a baffling and scary situation to watch as I sit from my long-isolated perch.

It is a world-wide flash mob called “The Dance of Our Primal Fears” brought to you by: “Toilet paper: Need it. Buy It. Wait. That’s too much. You don’t need that much… Hold on…Stop buying it! It’s not the stomach flu!”

It’s a new tag line that is being workshopped by the toilet paper industry. They’re working on it. Needs some polishing. They didn’t see this coming either.

The fear is bringing out the neuroses to the nth degree in all of us. The neuroses we have been polishing and working on for a long time, but we were gonna wait to unleash them upon the world, maybe after the election. They have been a-building for some time now.

Under this new pressure, we are rolling those neuroses out early. Here they come on out like a mighty powerful parade as we buy all of the toilet paper in all of the stores in all of the lands.

We are buying the toilet paper for a reason. And it’s a pretty important reason. We aren’t thinking. We stopped. Of course we did.

Our thinking is distorted anytime we feel fear and anxiety because of the neurochemical response that is just there to keep us safe. That reality is coupled with the long-time building of intense pressure that increased exponentially in 2016. It’s been intense for a while. We couple the fear with the intensity and we react. We see it on display as we take far more than we need and are indifferent to the scarcity we create for others for our own momentary, unsettled, and fleeting sense of relief.

We are having fear. We are having impulses. We are making choices.
I think about the first person that bought more toilet paper. I think about the next person in line who was like, “Why is he buying so much toilet paper? Should I buy more toilet paper?” Then she went and bought more toilet paper. Then the next person walking in the store as she walked out wondered “Why are people buying more toilet paper? There must be a reason.” They bought some more just in case.

That is why we bought all the toilet paper. We do that. We are ridiculous.

We just want to be safe. We are all looking around, assessing, acting and then hoping we got it right.

We are all choosing actions from the same place of fear and some of those actions will hurt us and some will help us and that is completely up to us to determine bit by bit and moment by moment and act by act as we navigate this in isolation-togetherness.

This paradox has to hold the meaning of life. It just has to be in there somewhere.

We have a worldwide shared thought distortion that is damaging on so many levels and in so many ways. It’s a filter that comes from that desperate part of us that just wants to believe that controlling life is possible.

I can control the moment I die if I just stay vigilant. This thought, though, is an absolute and absolutes are flags for thought distortions. It is also a thinking error. We cannot control death.

When we operate in thought distortions, fear is present a lot of the time. We also are about to do some damage if the distortion is the guiding part of our behavior. This distortion takes me from the reality that so many things are needed for my survival and makes me focus on one small thing, what’s in front of me. What I end up losing when I do this is, well…mainly – you.

If I operate in this distortion fully I begin to think that I matter more and you matter less. I then become threatened if you act on something I don’t understand. I then begin to worry that you will get to survive a bit more and I will get to survive a bit less. That changes me and my behavior. It leads to me clinging and clawing and climbing this small part of the world that I can cling and claw and climb because at least I am still moving and at least I am still fighting.

Then I will act selfishly. Then I will act harshly. And then it will be easy for me to become brutal.

It is what happens again and again and again and again when we are afraid on such a massive scale. If you mix our fragility with global panic then people overreact. Of course they do. Of course.

My friends, life is an endless grocery store trip for toilet paper in which people are stopping their carts in our way.

We are huffing and side-eying our communication of anger until it becomes socially feasible and acceptable to yell our frustrations or escalate in a worse way.

We then adjust our path as we lock eyes on the toilet paper we came for.

We then block someone else’s path two seconds later as we get what we came for, not caring for a single moment that they are feeling what we felt two seconds before.

This is us. This is us figuring out how to live while everyone else is figuring out how to live. We have done this before. It’s always what we are doing. It just is bigger right now.

Take a breath, my Dear One. Take a breath. Take another. My friend, take another. And if you didn’t do that. Go back and do it.

Slow. Down. Breathe. That’s fear. It lifts.

Breathe. Breathe. Remember.We have other options.

One of my favorite things written down on paper for my eyes to peruse (as often as I wish) is a line from a poem by ee cummings called “i love you”. The line I love is about the forgetting and the remembering that we keep on doing.

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down
on it

I love this because it is the crux of living to me. We are always forgetting and we are always remembering.
We hold something that gives us an understanding of our aliveness and why it’s important.
We hold it for awhile. Then we put it away.
We live.
We exist.
Time passes.
We forget its presence.
We panic that we lost it.
We remember we didn’t.
We retrieve it.
Then we hold it again.

Let’s hold it again. Together.
We are scared and we’ve been acting like it.
We have other options.
We make other choices.
All we have is this moment and in this moment we can choose to do this together.
We are never really apart.
I need you and you need me even when we are healthiest apart. I still need you. You still need me. It just is.
We will survive better together and we forget that.
Now we can remember. We can choose differently.
Of course we can.
Of course.