First Parish of Watertown

Magic. With Salt
May 25, 2008
The First Parish of Watertown
The Rev. Andrea Greenwood

Opening Words Lot’s Wife, Anna Akhmatova 1922

Lot, holy Lot, trailed God’s messenger,
an angel so vast and bright, it devoured the black hill,
but uneasiness shadowed his wife, whispered strong, filled her:
‘It’s not too late, there is time to look back, still
 
at the red towers of Sodom, the land where you were born,
at the square where you sang, the yard where you sat to spin,
the second story windows looking out from your cosy home,
the family bed, blessed when your children’s life entered in.

Her eyes were still turning when they were forever stitched shut
by a bolt of pain that seized her
and sent her legs like roots into the stony ground,
Her body flaked into tranparent salt.

Who mourns one woman in a holocaust?
Surely her death has no real significance
Yet in my heart she will never be lost
She who gave up her life to steal one glance


Story Orpheus and Eurydice

Be warned: this story is beautiful but tragic. It begins with Orpheus, the best musician that ever lived. One strum of his lyre, one note sung, and beasts would crawl to him, rocks would shift their moss to move to be closer, trees would tear their roots to be closer to him. He had more power than we regular people do, because he was the son of the Muse Calliope. But Orpheus was a mortal.

He lived his life simply and without a care until the day he met Eurydice. She was a Dryad; one of the nymphs that lived in the oak trees and helped to make the forest enchanted. They fell in love and it meant everything to them. They were so happy, simply caring for each other. But there were other men who also wanted Eurydice , and did not care how she felt. She ran from one in terror, without watching her step, and that is when a terrible thing happened. She stepped on a poisonous snake! The venom from its bite killed her at once and her spirit went to the Underworld. Orpheus was inconsolable. He cried and cried. His grief was bitter, but he did not let sadness slow him down. He decided to take action.

He descended from this world to the Underworld through a cave, and climbed down and down until he arrived to cross the River Styx. He passed through crowds of ghosts and presented himself before the throne of Hades and Persephone and he sang them a song about his sorrow. He promised that he was not spying on any secrets from the Underworld, and he knew that the three-headed dog with snaky hair that guards the entrance to the Underworld was stronger than him. He just begged the gods to let him have his wife back., saying that she had died sooner than she should have because of the snake.
 
“Eros has led me here,” Orpheus said, “Love is a god all powerful on the earth, and, from the stories I have heard, that is true here as well. I beg you who live in this silent place, unite again the thread of Eurydice’s life. It is our destiny to end here, sooner or later. One day Eurydice ill rightly be yours. But till then grant her to me, please! I beseech you. If you deny me, I cannot return alone; you shall triumph in the death of us both.”

Persphone's heart melted and a tear rolled down her cheek. Even Hades could not help weeping. They let Orpheus through to Eurydice, and she came from among the newly-arrived ghosts, limping with her wounded foot. Orpheus was permitted to take her away but he was warned very carefully: Eurydice would follow him into the light of the world and once she entered the sunlight she would be changed from a shade back to a woman. But if Orpheus doubted, if he looked back to see her, she would be lost to him forever. Under this condition they proceeded with Orpheus leading, and Eurydice following. They climbed through dark, steep passages in total silence, till they had nearly reached the outlet into the cheerful upper world, when Orpheus began to rejoice that his wife would be with him soon. He listened, thinking Eurydice would now begin to carry the sound of feet falling, and in a moment of forgetfulness, to assure himself that she was still following, cast a glance behind him, when instantly she became a shadow that was whisked away. Stretching out their arms to embrace each other, they grasped only the air! Dying now a second time, she said a last “farewell,” - and was hurried away, so fast that the sound hardly reached his ears.

Orpheus was torn apart -- by grief, by wild animals crying at his mournful singing, by Zeus, angry that Orpheus had seen the mysteries of the underworld; by his own prophecy that he could not live without Eurydice, by what had happened. Orpheus was torn apart, and cast to the winds, and if you listen, you can hear him sing in them still.


Reading: Looking Back at Lot’s Wife Rebecca Goldstein

It was one of the stories from Genesis that most frightened me as a child: the story of Lot’s wife. She was told not to look, and she looked; and her punishment came swift and horrible. Frozen in the moment of her transgression. exposed to the eyes of all in her act of rebellion, she was transformed into a spectacle of salt, reduced to an element vaguely ridiculous, as if to turn back any notion of pity in us. And for what? She was told not to look, and she looked.

Why did she look? I asked the second grade Hebrew school teacher, who was telling the story.
It doesn’t mater why she looked, my teacher answered. God told her not to and she did. She thought she could get away with it, but of course she couldn’t. Nobody can get away with anything. God sees all.

That God sees all was a lesson my teacher was anxious to impress upon us at any opportunity, and it was a lesson that I as a child accepted without question. It was clear that God’s seeing all was a consequence of God’s being God. My teacher’s response therefore seemed irreproachable so far as its theology went. It was on the level of human psychology that I felt it falling short.

Specifically, I didn’t believe that Lot’s wife had thought she could get away with it. I wouldn’t have thought so, and I was a mere child, living in pallid, nonBiblical days. In vivid contrast was the picture of Lot’s wife: fleeing the accursed city, the shrieks of the damned in her ears, and in her nostrils the sickening stink as heaven’s fire and brimstone came raining down behind her. God had warned her that he would come, and he had come: in the version embellished by rabbinical tradition told to us by my teacher, his very Presence had descended, along with a host of 12,000 angels of destruction. It wasn’t the moment to think one could get away with very much of anything.

I wasn’t about to press the issue any farther with my teacher, but I was fairly certain that whatever it was that had made Lot’s wife look back in her flight was in the nature of an overwhelming compulsion ( a concept with which children tend to be well acquainted): the sort of irresistable urge that makes the whole question of whether or not one is going to get away with it pretty much beside the point.

What therefore seemed to me very much to the point was the question I put to my teacher: what forced Lot’s wife to look back, and -- even more to the point -- would I have felt driven to do exactly the same?

You begin to see why the story frightened me. Up to now in Genesis the villains had been recognizably villainous -- a brother who killed a brother, egomaniacs who brazenly questioned God’s authority and erected claims to their own imagined supremacy.

But looking where one is told not to look?

Had Lot’s wife, I wondered, looked back simply because she had been told not to, as I unfailingly sneaked a peek while standing between my mother and sisters in our pew in the synagogue during the recitation of the priestly blessing that was said on the holidays? I had been warned by mother to avert my eyes from the bimah, where the priests were chanting their spooky melody, lest I be blinded by the Presence descending upon their upraised hands. Beneath my lowered lids I could see my two sisters dutifully turned away, facing the back of the synagogue, as all the congregation was turned away.... Did Lot’s wife and I share the same perversity of nature that compelled us to take stupid risks for no very good reason at all? And was it for this that her punishment had come swift and horrible?

Or was it rather for the whisper of a doubt, soft but irrepressisble, that is perhaps always spoken in such actions as looking where one is told not to look? Were there moments in history during which God simply would not tolerate the existence of a skeptic?

The symbolic significance of the gesture of looking back was not lost on me. A child’s knowledge of nostalgia is one of the mysteries of childhood. Perhaps it wasn’t so much that there were moments of forbidden doubt as that there were places that merited no sense of attachment. Was it the regret and longing she had directed back to her home in Sodom that had drawn God’s wrath down on her?


Sermon: Magic, With Salt

Perhaps it is because I trained as a historian, but one of the first reactions I have to these transformative stories about the dangers of looking behind -- Orpheus and Eurydice; Lot and his wife -- is puzzlement. What is wrong with examining what is past? Why are the architects of these tales; the ancient Greeks or the Hebrew writers so determined to teach us to blindly obey; to look ahead the way horses do, with the patches on the sides of their heads ensuring that nothing in the periphery; nothing which is not directly in front of us commands our attention? It is true that there are times when the past can be dangerous. Dwelling on what has been can swallow us whole; ruin us for the lives that are ahead. But these stories do not dwell at all; there is one simple glance, and instant destruction.

And it is odd, too, that the way the stories play out we almost forget the context each is set in, which is complete devastation. EVERYONE is dead; yet these women are singled out as dying; with some human culpability. What does it mean to be described as dying when the setting is the underworld, or a city which has been set on fire by God, where the norm is to be dead? Even though the city burns all around, the death of Lot’s wife’s death stands out, because she could have lived. All she had to do was keep focused on the future. Same with Orpheus. His wife could have lived if he had just had enough faith to look ahead instead of checking behind. So, are these stories about a lost future -- Eurydice dying now a second time -- or about a longed for past?

Somehow, it makes me think of baseball games, when the coaches start yelling at the kids to just run; get to the base; don’t look to see where the ball went. Perhaps there is something in us that cannot quite get oriented without knowing where everything is; how that ball is going to come back at us. Sure, we could be safe if we just ran blindly ahead. We would have a better chance of winning. But some of us need to see things ourselves; feel compelled to look even when we would be better off not doing so. Maybe it has to do with differing ideas of what it means to be “better off.” What good does it do to get safely home if it isn’t your old familiar comfortable home; the place of love that orients you and lets you look out upon the world?

So I have been puzzling over this story of Lot’s wife. It is used as a punishment; as a deterrent for those who would question authority, and of course it goes on from using one woman as an example to condemning gay men and blaming this holocaust on them -- but I just can’t seem to read it that way. This story is part of a much larger one in the book of Genesis, in which Abraham brings his nephew Lot in search of a good land for their people, but sometimes in our Western, rational way, we see a roadmap, or principles to live by instead of a story arising from tugging on a dense, emotional knot in which family engagement and the good life are tied to each other in extricable ways. We tell a story and one part of the knot is untied, pulling us to confusing new places, where we are still connected, but are dislocated.

John Updike once said that a good story ends with an open door, and one of the gifts of Unitarian Universalism is that we can walk through that opening. Meaning is not circumscribed by tradition or doctrine for us. After the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, some parts of this story about Lot’s wife resurfaced -- the images of sinful cities bringing God’s wrath; the division of people into those who deserve to move into the future and those who do not; but also the fear that looking back might petrify us; the destructive nature of spectatorship. Lot’s wife seems to inspire both admiration, and a justification of punishment. Her glance backwards becomes the reason for her transformation. Looking at our losses might weaken us; looking at ourselves through a new lense might kill us. Being safe comes to mean being strong which comes to mean not changing or being changed.

But what if this is not a story of punishment? This unnamed woman who cares enough about where she has been and the lives she is responsible for is turned into salt, and that seems significant somehow -- salt is essential; and in a way, maybe this story is not about a woman who disobeyed a command, but is the story of what it means to be a parent who loses her children; who loses everything. Her daughters were left behind in this city that had been their home, and like Orpheus leaving Hades, she needed to look and see if they were following. They weren’t. She saw what became of them, and is transformed into a pillar -- not burned up into rubble like everyone and everything else, like all that she loved; but a pillar -- and that pillar is salt; a precious commodity that lets us float on the water; that gives food taste; that restores us. Perhaps it is not Lot’s wife who is being punished at all. Maybe this is a meditation on what attachment costs: that we can love our children so much that one glance at the grief of losing them pulls us backward; demands that we experience what they experience; to be one with them in every aspect of their suffering. As Rebecca Goldstein said in the reading, it is a compulsion. It is not about thinking you can get away with anything. And, in all seriousness, does it make any sense to view this story as showing only that God wants us to be righteous and follow his command to move forward; to never look back? Which parent would you rather have; the one who stopped and searched for you, or the one who has fled? Which God would you rather have: the one that wants to control our actions, or the one that tells stories to inspire a deeper compassion? Did God perform this magical transformation into salt because this woman’s desire to see her children was not forgivable, or because it was, in some sense, a beautiful need; one that summed up the purpose of life?

All too often, what we see is a product of what we believe, and not the other way around. We narrow our vision to fit what we know. The story of Lot is about a relative of Abraham who obeys God because that is how the chosen people survive. It is difficult to think beyond what we expect; to shift the frame of reference, and it is especially hard to do this because we think we are seeing clearly. I started thinking about this because I had a son who was obsessed with magic. He was possessed by a desire to perform magic tricks, yet was incapable of doing so because he believed in magic. How ironic: to be able to be a magician, you have to understand that it is all illusion; trickery; manipulation. You can’t believe in the wonder you are creating; but you produce spectacles that give hope to others, implying the possibility of real magic in the world. What my son wanted was to be a conduit for mystery and wonder; someone who could joyously show others the supernatural. But a magician has to understand that there is no supernatural in order to give the illusion that there is.

It is both fascinating and somewhat common-sensical to me that magic, like Unitarianism, is a product of the Reformation. This is because the Reformation inserted the use of reason into religion; began turning to nature for explanations of mysteries that had previously been ascribed to witches. Understanding how things happen creates a world which is relatively predictable, and that means we can use nature’s effects ourselves. Inevitably the idea of magic tricks as entertainment followed. Magicians know that we interpret what we see through what we have experienced, and so they can trick us in very simple ways; which are yet moving; which do connect us to some sense of mystery.

So is magic about skepticism? I often think of stories told about those of us raised in Unitarian Universalist church schools. where we looked for naturalist answers to Biblical stories of miracles. I don’t think people were intentionally training us to be skeptics, but when stories of mystery, danger, excitment and thrill such as the Israelites escaping from the Egyptians across the Red Sea got explained by sand bars, you can see why people might have thought we missed the point. Last year Adam Gopnik had a long article in the New Yorker, and in it he writes about magic as an intellectual experiment in empathy that spurs growth. It is not about tricks; about putting one over on anyone else. And even though the magician has a different position than the spectators, it is a relational activity. There is no effect without an audience, and the audience cannot be passive. Even when we have an idea of how a trick works, we don’t have a full explanation of why it works -- we are moved by this odd, invisible presence of the magician, who lets us experience some of the more profound aspects of life simply because he or she knows how our minds work. We are outreasoned, and it sets us thinking. We know that nothing truly supernatural happened, but we cannot figure out quite what did occur. It stimulates us to try to think in new ways, and we can begin to see how limited our thinking has been. What a magician shows us is how routinized we are; how we have let ourselves become dead to new possibilities; how stuck in experience we are.

Whether the story about Lot’s wife being transformed into a pillar of salt is proof of a God who has magical powers, or is proof that religion is somewhat quaint and vaguely ridiculous depends upon what you already believe to be true about God and religion. As a story instead of a proof text, it is far richer -- and not as easy to dismiss. We are in a predicament: this is a trick of transformation which we cannot fully process. Did God really do this? Or are we responsible? Does it tell us that it is destructive to witness things, or does it affirm that losing our children kills us? Does it mean we should obey commandments that tear at our soul, or that it is worth the price to follow out hearts? And there is the salt, which stays with us, in our tears; in our blood, in everything we feel and in any life we pass on. The memory of this loss is in us. Maybe Lot tells us that survival is possible, but perhaps not what we would choose. It is an open door inviting us in to a world where all is not known.

In anything relational, the end of the story is not the point. How can it be? In magic, the finish to a trick is not the point of a trick; in life, we don’t really want to know how it ends. The beauty is in the unfolding; in the possibilities; the growth. This makes it sound like growth inevitably follows from new experience, but it doesn’t. Anything new creates stress, and mostly we respond to that by shutting down, by narrowing our focus, by not looking back, and not looking too far ahead. This lets us survive. But research in psychology shows us that what creates greatness in people is a different response. If we can let things be complicated; if we can manage to take a wider view and expand our awareness, there is the possibility of being lifted; of feeling ourselves rising to the demands of a world we have yet to truly see; of changing in ways that force us to lose all that was familiar, but let us be present in new ways.

This spring, there have been quite a few articles about the meaning of the photographs which came out of Abu Ghraib; partially inspired by a documentary about them, and partially because the military cases against the soldiers who took the photos have concluded. What those photos mean now seems markedly different from what they conveyed when they were first printed. Although the pictures remain the same -- grinning American soldiers with their thumbs up in front of captive, victimized prisoners or even corpses -- we now know a lot more about the people, and what they thought they were doing. It makes the whole idea of looking back at things complicated. We think that witnessing something will make us compassionate. But it doesn’t; not necessarily. Sabrina Harman, who is the smiling private in many of these pictures, wrote about having trouble getting the images of the tortured prisoners out of her head. She described one man handcuffed backwards and naked to a window, with underwear puled over his head, and said “He looked like Jesus Christ.” We hear that description -- and I think Harman genuinely felt this, too -- as a way of conveying our horror at torture; as a way of protesting. But it is a description that works against our own intentions; a description that puts these images into a story we already know, with a meaning that is determined. It is not the story the pictures really tell. It is like Lot’s wife. She is a refugee, fleeing her burning city; her children lost in the rubble. Her home is gone and she is destroyed, but we are not compassionate. We are judgemental.

The prisoners who were tortured are Muslim. That is actually the reason they are being tortured, and tortured in ways to specifically offend their religious sensibilities. How can we call them Christ-like without compounding the injuries we have already inflicted? Somehow, by comparing these prisoners to Jesus on the cross, we put a story with a completely different context on these people, and in fact obliterate who they really are. We end up using the images to give meaning to the torturers rather than those who suffer, and we do it to help ourselves cope with what we are seeing. Comparing someone to Christ sounds like an empathic response, but it isn’t. It is a way of forcing something new into a familiar story; a story which exonerates us and makes it easier for us to move forward; easier to find a home in this land.

Later on in the essay I read from this morning, Rebecca Goldstein goes on to explore more of what she thought might be happening with Lot’s wife. ... “a meaner sort of motive behind her action suggested itself,” she writes. “one that would remove her to a safer distance from myself: a cold enchantment with the drama of death. The summer we had spent at the seashore I had seen for myself how the crowd had gathered around the boy who had been pulled unconscious from the ocean. and how the voice and face of this crowd had quickened with a strange excitement, as if it were almost glad for the event. Did Lot’s wife have such a strong taste for the theater provided by others’ tragedy that she could not keep herself from stealing a glimpse of the flaming spectacle? And was it for this that she had been turned, most appropriately, into the stuff of tragic spectacle?”

Voyeurism or skepticism, nostalgia or bravado: what moved her to look, and risk all? This question could be asked of those military staff in the photos, and probably of every single one of us who has suffered some assault on humanity so grave that we cannot quite think straight afterwards. We struggle to know which direction to look; to not resort to a script; to let this new pain in and change us. We do not want to transform suffering into something anything other than what it is, but it is hard to assimilate changes as devastating as the ones which incinerate our pasts; our ideals and the way we understand human nature. We need an imagination that is wider than our experiences; indeed, imagination can let us hold together things we experience as tearing us apart.

Alan Shapiro, a poet in North Carolina, wrote an essay called “My Tears See More than My Eyes”, a title he borrowed from his teen-aged son, who is the subject of the essay. The younger Shapiro is in a psychiatric hospital after a suicide attempt, and this essay begins as a narrative; telling the story of visiting, of families scurrying in to the corners of the room attempting to find some way towards privacy in an environment which communicates a distrust of anyone being alone. The visitors grapple for a physical assimilation of the extremely intimate knowledge of reality that has been forced upon them: someone they love has gone where it is forbidden to go; they have seen the secrets of the underworld and cannot return to the living; not quite. Where do we go, in this room kept watch by those who demand obedience; whose eyes only meet to communicate rational demands, not shared pain? Shapiro looks back. The narrative ends and becomes a searching memory, asking how did we get here; how can we get back to the days before we knew this place of suffering; and if I figure out what road led us here, can we get our old life back? It is Orpheus, having the snake’s venom removed from Eurydice’s foot so that she can limp past the gates of hell, with death just a bad dream. But the backward look ends when Shapiro’s son keeps asking “So, Dad, can I come home now? Please, Dad; can you take me home?” This is not something they are allowed to decide. Control belongs to something outside the family. They live in a new place.

Shapiro is a poet, and so for him this moment is where imagination has to step in; where he needs to stop looking backward and begin to envision a new future. He can’t simply keep going; nor can he just look back; but he needs to do both; to begin spanning the distance between both realities: we will go on, and part of us has died. My son is not just my son anymore. Grief has taken us through a gate where all the other shadows live, and though I may manage to pull him back through to this side, we will not ever see things the same way. His tears have seen more than our eyes can. Home can never mean what it once did; it doesn’t mean being completely safe. Loss transforms us in ways we could never have imagined. All of life will be flaovored with it, and yet we are not weak. We are pillars, even if those who move blindly forward cannot see the truth.

Long, long ago I either heard or imagined someone to say that prayer was a connection between memory and hope, and ever since I have seen prayer as a place. It is the door we live in, pulling the past and the future into a frame for us. On one side of us are memories -- a lattice work of time, woven together and full of imperfections. On the other side there are these vague but solid hopes for the future; foggy shadows of people we do not want to lose; suffering we do not wish to endure planted alongside an obelisk of sure strength; an unwillingness to let ourselves be defeated. Above us, bridging the two sides, are our prayers; the sacred canopy under which we live; the sun bleached and tattered streamers of our hopes and dreams, testimony to what we have witnessed; what we have loved; what holds us up, what we will pass on. Our whole lives are prayers. But they are not prayers for anything; they just are living prayers; and the beauty is in the unfolding, and our ability to take an ever wider view. There is no aim; we are just witnesses to all the unfolding.

Closing Words: Memorial Day for the War Dead  by Yehuda Amichai

Memorial day for the war dead. Add now
the grief of all your losses to their grief,
even of a woman that has left you. Mix
sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history,
which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning
on one day for easy, convenient memory.

Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread,
in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God.
"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."
No use to weep inside and to scream outside.
Behind all this perhaps some great happiness is hiding.

Memorial day. Bitter salt is dressed up
as a little girl with flowers.
The streets are cordoned off with ropes,
for the marching together of the living and the dead.
Children with a grief not their own march slowly,
like stepping over broken glass.

A flag loses contact with reality and flies off.
A shopwindow is decorated with
dresses of beautiful women, in blue and white.
And everything in three languages:
Hebrew, Arabic, and Death.

A great and royal animal is dying
all through the night under the jasmine
tree with a constant stare at the world.

A man whose son died in the war walks in the street
like a woman with a dead embryo in her womb.
"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."

“Fasting and Feasting” - Mark W. Harris

May 4, 2008 - First Parish of Watertown

Call to Worship - from John Wolf

Fast from criticism, and feast on praise;
Fast from self-pity, and feast on joy;
Fast from ill temper, and feast on peace;
Fast from resentment, and feast on contentment;
Fast from jealousy, and feast on love;
Fast from pride, and feast on humility;
Fast from selfishness, and feast on service;
Fast from fear, and feast on faith.

Reading - Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert


Sermon - “Fasting and Feasting” - Mark W. Harris

My colleague Christine Robinson recently reminded me of a Winnie-the-Pooh story in a sermon of hers. You may recall the tale. It seems Pooh went to visit his friend Rabbit, and managed to squeeze his round frame into the front door. Once he could see inside, he pilfered the honey rabbit had stored there, and more than ate his fill. In fact, he made a pig of himself. The result was that his already ample rotundity grew. As he tried to exit from the hole, he could only squeeze halfway through, and then he became stuck there. Christopher Robin was called to handle this emergency. The gang pulled and pushed on poor Pooh only to discover that he was indeed stuck there. Christopher Robin declares that it will take a week’s worth of fasting to cure this problem. Pooh is very upset by all this, but Christopher Robin assures him that he will read to him to help pass the time. In his anxiety, Pooh cries a bit and then says, “Would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would help and comfort a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?”

If you read my newsletter column, you know that I am feeling a bit like the wedged bear who has been gulping honey all winter. It is almost always true that I gain weight over the winter months, and then shed those pounds in the more active spring and summer months when I can swim and kayak and climb mountains. This was true during our recent week in Maine. We climbed a mountain, went on another hike where we flew kites, did some kayaking and bowling, raked and cleaned and generally prepared our cottage for warmer days to come. Yet this spring things have gotten more extreme than usual. The weight is effecting my breathing, and my bending. This is not a sermon on the whys and wherefores of overindulging my already big appetite. I do not plan on psychoanalyzing myself about lack of will or revealing why I eat to compensate for stress. I just know I am concerned about my physical condition and want to do something about it. Pooh’s solution, albeit forced, was fasting. Why not me?

Yet this sudden interest in fasting is not merely personal with a goal of a trimmer me. It is also about feeling some frustration as to how to respond to a world where mayhem and killing and war seem commonplace even if I reject the use of violence, and the environment problems seem endless and potentially catastrophic even if I change all my light bulbs, and walk more often, something to help with both the weight and the environment. Of course, they are connected concerns, as our insatiable appetite for gasoline literally fuels our violent presence in Iraq. My earliest experience with fasting, as I noted in my column was when I used to attend meetings of the Yorkshire Unitarian clergy in Sheffield, England once a month. We would gather in an ancient meeting hall, pay 5 pounds for lunch and then sit down to a repast of a glass of water. The money was pooled each month and sent off to support OXFAM.

Over they years I have known other colleagues who fasted in response to social concerns, as a way to raise funds, but also as a way to not indulge our appetites in whatever it is we are consuming, but rather to discipline ourselves for a day once a week or once a month, or even for a period of time within a given year (such as Lent for Christians or Ramadan for Muslims) to reflect upon our lives and our place in the world. What intrigues me about fasting is that while Unitarian Universalists are often known for wanting to be active in making the world a better place, and our lives may even include civil actions such as letter writing or demonstrating. Fasting not only includes the possibility of collecting money for some worthy group in lieu of what we would otherwise be paying out, but it also means that we each stop and deeply reflect for whatever time period it is. We decide as a personal act of purification, and as a public action of freedom from our usual levels of consumption to fast. I will perform this religious act. I will not eat, but will reflect upon my longing for a healthier me. I will not shop, but will reflect on what I really need for consumable goods. I will not drive, for the sake of the environment, for my body. I will not watch television, for my mind, for the sake of kindling deeper relationships with others. I will not ______ the possibilities are endless. The spiritual discipline of fasting asks each of us to reflect upon what aspect of our lives feels like an endless treadmill, and the fasting means we take a break from the treadmill. In that reflective fast, we may have new insights as to how we might live our lives in ways that are more compassionate towards one another, and toward the world we inhabit.

At first this might seem antithetical to Unitarian Universalist traditions. Historically, we have not usually paid much attention to spiritual disciplines where we deprive the body of something it desires, or the person from making free choices of what they want or need. We are not like the medieval flagellants, a group who beat themselves with whips so that they would more deeply reflect on their sins. This is because we trust that individuals can make good, responsible choices. Yet I believe an action like fasting can bring greater reflection and action, and can have larger implications, especially if we are not alone in our fasting regimen. In fact, fasting played an important role in the development of faith in America, and was not just something for celibate Catholics or exotic Hindus to undertake. It is not about giving up food for so long that you cannot see straight, and expect to have some kind of otherworldly trance. There is a long history of using fasting as a protest against injustice, from those who go on hunger strikes in prison to show that they are being treated unjustly to larger movements like that of Gandhi to prove the validity of their political position, and force the hand of oppressive governments. I think it is a good thing to do in solidarity with others, because it is hard to drive a low mileage car when the culture affirms the giant SUVS, and it is hard to pay extra money for energy efficient and low water usage appliances when everyone else seems to buy the cheapest choice. These are not easy choices in such a conspicuously consumptive society. But we simply cannot go on living as we do. We are all stuck in the hole, and honey is not good for us. I even see my eating as symbolic of consumption out of control.

When the towns were first being settled in Massachusetts Bay, fast days were observed right from the start. While there were occasional weekday sermons in England, here they were given a special and legal status. The problem is they became a source of conflict between the controlling factions in the stand offs between church and state. While fast days were first called to celebrate events such as the building of a new church, and God’s blessing was invoked, as time went on, fast days were most usually declared when life’s events turned sour with terrible storms, wars, or outbreaks of disease. Leading clergy such as Increase Mather would ask, “What evils have provoked the Lord to bring his judgment upon us?” The decline of faith was seen as a cause of human disasters. So clergy would implore the people to renew their pledges to walk in the ways of the Lord, but they needed a legislative act from the Great and General Court to do so.

The legislature, as politicians are wont to do, wondered how much of the blame they should take for essentially affirming that there might be some culpability on their part, especially if the issue was war or famine. So when Increase's famous son Cotton requested a fast day proclamation in 1690, they rejected his draft, since acknowledging it might make them look bad. Cotton then decided he would carry out a private fast instead, and had his church renew its covenant. Religious leaders always felt as though their pleas for repentance and reform should be part of a larger scheme, even if it was only their own congregation. They saw signs of unfaithfulness all over the world, and said so in fast day sermons. This was effective in 1674 when Increase Mather’s sermon said the day of trouble is near. History helped him out, when King Philip’s War broke out, and chaos ensued. The politicians began to panic and turned to fasting and then reforming in order to save themselves, I mean the Commonwealth. They proclaimed how humbled they were that they had not heard the Word of God enough. Soon enough the legislature voted stricter laws, including fewer tavern hours. But they had to weigh when they should call a fast day and what evils they should list. Then when war took a good turn, the court said we don’t need to fast any more. God seems to approve of us now. In fact, when things improved, and the clergy asked for a fast again, they said no, this should be a day of thanksgiving. Once again, the clergy would say, They won’t listen, but we will do a private fast. God’s word was brought to bear on all aspects of life.

Perhaps this sounds archaic to us, and perhaps theologically it is, but the religious motivation behind it should not be seen that way. When times got tough they asked what could they do to restore their special relationship with God. To them things had gone awry. They thought in terms of themes of personal salvation and corporate conditions. What do these events mean in terms of our personal and collective well being? In my case, I can feel more severe effects from weight gain than I ever have before. So I am asking myself in terms of my personal well being, and before you, that I want to change this situation. My fasting, which might also be better diet and more exercise, is a symbolic action of repentance. Like the Puritans, I am saying this needs to change. But I also undertake it with the hope that it will bring my deliverance. I will become healthier and more whole, and effect change for something that has been an issue for me since childhood. We could look at corporate conditions, too, like why are so many children in America overweight, but perhaps a more common response might center on the foods we eat, or the consumptive habits we have in general. Our life is going to suffer if we don’t balance the needs of the community. Fasting from food consumption may reflect, as one of my students said, that Sam’s Club is rationing rice, and its high price in the world means that some will starve, and thus fasting helps us realize fundamentally that our breadbasket mentality must change, for food is no longer limitless, and we are not entitled to more than a fair share in the context of the world community.

You may be saying that you do eat right and you try hard to exercise, and you even give
up the things you love indulging in. You may say, you are no fan of fasting. I am not the most likely candidate for this either. I love chips and ice cream. I have to force myself to exercise. And, yes, I have a Charlie card, but often find the bus inconvenient. Who wants to wait on Mt. Auburn Street in the middle of a storm, when you can stay warm and dry in the comfort of your own private car? I will fly a jet to General Assembly, but I don’t go as often as I used to. Don’t we try hard enough already? We used cloth diapers for years before all the diaper services seemed to go out of business, and then the resulting guilt from using all those paper diapers nearly consumed us. We recycle and walk. We turn down the heat. Do I have to do more? Can’t I just say I am trying to be good enough, while I try to convince others to be more like me? Sure we want others to feel the urgency of our afflictions - the tragedy of war, the fear of global catastrophe. But it must be more than fear or guilt.

Pooh says he really cannot be sustained in this period of fasting unless he hears a good book. A good part of the reason for our action on environmental issues is that we overindulged. And now we respond somewhat grudgingly. I have to do this. It does not seem like a good book to us. Yet it is. Fasting means we learn to enjoy the things that really sustain us. If we are watching all that TV, or eating all that food, or driving around all the time, it may mean we are neglecting those we love, or guarding ourselves against dealing with some issue, or not taking care of our bodies so that they feel and act more responsively to how our head would like them to move or be. But I want to undertake a regular day of fasting as a sign pointing toward my body feeling better. I want to undertake a regular day of fasting as a sign that I don’t need or want to spend my energy on what I need to have rather than focusing on what I need to do emotionally to build better relationships, or build a better world. If I eat less it means I acknowledge I am no longer focusing on filling my stress with food, but rather will fill it with talk about it with those I love, or walking it off, and globally will acknowledge that others deserve this food I consume, because they have as much right to the resources of this planet as I do. And perhaps I will donate my savings on food to some global effort. At the least I may lose some weight, decrease my carbon footprint a little, and listen to my boys a little more, and discover the deeper truths that sustain you and me in our relationships and in community.

So what am I going to do? Well, on the third Wednesday of the month, I plan on having water for lunch, breakfast and dinner. I will see how that goes. I plan on saving a little money, and then donating it somewhere, with this first month going to our charitable offering, and the second month going to Eliza Petrow’s AIDS program in China, as mentioned in our newsletter. I invite others to join me, in fasting from food, or TV or driving or whatever it is you want to give up; once a week or once a month. I have cards over there on the side table, and perhaps we can check in with each other. I am seeing this somewhat like the reading on prayer from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. I resonate with her nickname “Groceries,” for in my stint in a lifetime of eating in my own little Italy, I have learned how to eat well. She learns she needs a diversion to keep her from her appetites and learn how to pray, and so her diversion must be pure love. I am not so sure that fasting will lead me to divine love, but it sure is a diversion from my other diversions, like eating. I think a diversion like fasting will gets us away from whatever unhealthy honey-like diversions we have, and will answer our own version of that prayer of Richard's from Texas. “Please, please, please open my heart.” Now the practical person might say that if I change my eating habits, I will not have my heart literally opened liked Richard. I might say if I take on this practice of fasting that my heart will turn to issues of love and relationship and away from consumption diversions. It will be the good sustaining book, like Pooh needed to get out of his being stuck in a hole with tightness. Many religions have fast days. Some fast to focus on spiritual matters, and others to purify the body. Some fast to control our desires, and others fast to feel solidarity with the poor. Some churches have a fast offering on a designated Sunday each month. Perhaps you could give your fast to our monthly charitable collection. Like the Puritans, the hope for fasting is that it will bring some spiritual gain. Weight loss, perhaps, but also a healthier body. Less waste, perhaps, but also a healthier world. I am sure in a real Pooh story he would have tried to wiggle around and make the hole bigger, but we have done enough of that already. Now is the time in our lives, and in the life of the world to shrink, to fast from all our feasting. Maybe, we will taste a little divine love.

Closing Words - from Rumi

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You’re covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side, Die.
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.