Mingle² - This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

• death (5x)
• pain (2x)
• dangerous (1x)

I guess I'm pretty morbid... Gotta pick up the tone!

Empathy and Stoicism

I, like many other men in my generation, was brought up to not to cry. Not to say this was a direct teaching of my parents, but the overall effect of my upbringing. My parents, on the other hand, are recovering hippies and did their best to try to counter the teachings of society. So I developed this interesting dichotomy of dealing with emotional pain.

In times of stress and where other people need a foundation, I handle emotional pain like any good father/husband/boyfriend/male -- by being strong foundation and holding together the family/friendship/parter. But when alone, or in a comfortable place, I find my empathy overwhelming. I use the simplest of opportunities to catch up on all the crying I should have done when being stoic for someone else. When I do open up, not only do I process overdue emotions from myself, I seem to be a beacon for empathy. The rest of the day (or week sometimes) I feel and experience the emotions of everyone around me.

I bring this up on this blog because of my plans to enter into UU lay ministry. Pastoral Care is a large part of this endeavor. Before my marriage, I was the guy that everyone went to for advice. When I studied as a Shaman, my goal was to help people spiritually, and I was fairly good at it. Unfortunately, things changed after my sister died. I could make many guesses and rationalizations on why, but the bottom line was my role changed. Soon after her death, I became a husband, a step-dad, and then a father. I think my stoic side took over. I was no longer the emotional supporter for my peers.

Over the last 2 years, as divorce and single parenthood changed my station yet again, I find myself filling the role as an empath again. Maybe it has to do with reconnecting with my spirituality. Maybe it has to do for my acceptance of the divorce. Maybe it has to do with mending the wounds of my sister's passing. Maybe it has to do with being a full time father and loving every second of it. I don't know the reason. All I know is that I feel a lot more nowadays. I feel my own emotions and those around me.

And I like it.

Rev. Anthony David on Fatherhood

Over on The Best of UU, Jess has found a older sermon on Fatherhood by Rev. Anthony David. Anthony has recently been called as the Senior Minister for UUCA. This piece won the UU Men’s Network sermon award in 2002, and was delivered on Father’s Day in 2001. It's been a few days since Father's Day, but since this from our new Senior Minister, I wanted to share. It's very well written. It looks like we have a lot to look forward to once he starting preaching in the fall.

Remembering Fatherhood
by Rev. Anthony David

Today is Father’s Day, and on this day we remember our fathers. I also am a father—I have a nine-year-old daughter named Sophia—and so it is on this day that I feel most aware of belonging to a tradition larger than myself, a tradition passed down from generation to generation, from my grandfather to my father and, finally, to me.

What is fatherhood? On a day like today, it is easy to get sentimental about fatherhood and to end up sounding like a Hallmark card. To be honest, sometimes fatherhood is the place in my life where I feel, most clearly, my “growing edges.” It’s funny. When I was Sophia’s age, I felt I was bulletproof, ready to take on the world. Now, at 34, my hair is turning gray and my stomach is becoming finicky so I have to watch what I eat. Just when I want to be all knowledgeable and wise for Sophia, I realize how much a work in progress I really am.

Well, I suppose I can take heart from something Bill Cosby once said: “If the American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right.”

Here’s a scene from several months ago. It is morning, and I am walking Sophia to school. We are late. I tend to get anxious when I am late, so I have already been needling her to hurry up, and this isn’t helping at all. Halfway to school, I notice that her running shoes are untied and the laces are turning brown in the muddy slush of Chicago’s springtime. This irritates me. If I let her do this, is she going to grow up taking things for granted? So I tell her to tie her shoelaces, and my irritation comes through loud and clear. Fed up with all my poking and prodding, she stops walking, turns slowly to face me, stares me down in a way that is somehow strangely familiar, and says, finally, no!

I hasten to explain that it’s unsafe for her shoelaces to be flopping all over the place—she might trip herself up. Besides, she needs to take care or her belongings and show more gratitude for what she has. Things only go downhill from here. Sophia is furious and stalks off, doesn’t wait for me. She’s ten feet ahead when something very odd happens. My identity splits. Part of me stands back from the whole scene and feels, in a word, sheepish. Why am I being so controlling? How absurd it all is! The other part of me, meanwhile, can’t let it alone, can’t walk away. Just like Mom or Dad used to say to me, I say to Sophia, “you just wait! Just wait ‘till you have your own children, and then you’ll see what it’s like!”

What is fatherhood? Sometimes it is like a time warp in which the tracks of past and present blend and blur together. So as to achieve clarity and consciousness about what is happening, the different tracks need to be untangled and sorted. At the same time I am Sophia’s Dad, I am also, like a psychic, channeling my own father. Then there is the question of who, exactly, was late, and who was taking things for granted. I raise this question in light of my anxiety around being late and my irritation at the thought of anyone taking things for granted.

The fact that my anxiety and irritation were so extreme and almost out of control suggests that, in some strange way, I was taking things personally; that, incredibly, I interpreted Sophia’s behavior to indicate something about me, about who I am. Could it be that the real guilty party was me, that I was the one who was late and taking things for granted? Could it be that Sophia became, for me, a screen upon which I projected my own life and inner conflicts?

As odd as this conclusion sounds, my sense is that we project our lives upon our children’s lives very often. When they do something wonderful, we are the ones puffing out our chests. When they do something shameful or embarrassing, we are the ones squirming and blushing. Ultimately, the issues here have to do with healthy boundaries and with taking responsibility. Because it is so easy for boundaries between parent and child to blur, messages about taking responsibility can end up being confusing and self-contradictory. I still think that Sophia should have taken better care of her running shoes, but I am proud of her that she said no to me. She was saying no to all the psychological baggage that, in truth, was mine and belonged only to me.

What is fatherhood? It’s a growing edge, a challenge to become more conscious and aware of myself in the privilege of bringing up Sophia. I also think that fatherhood is a place of passion, of joy and sorrow. My seminary, Meadville Lombard, is affiliated with the University of Chicago, and on Wednesdays the food court there sells milkshakes for one dollar. Sophia and I go every Wednesday—it’s a bonding time for us. Usually we eat a bit of dinner first. Sophia likes Taco Bell, and every time she puts her order in, I watch her as she stands on her tiptoes to speak above the counter. I listen to the music of her songbird voice. I can’t help but remember a time when she was more likely to wear her food than to eat it.

While we eat, we talk. I ask her, What’s going on? How’s life? She tells me about her friends, how so and so is hilarious and how what’s his name is definitely an idiot and I do not like him. She shares the latest joke she’s heard:

“Knock knock,
Who’s there?
Canoe.
Canoe who?
Canoe you help me with my homework?”

We also talk about school, and I tell her about how seminary is going for me. She complains about her yucky music teacher, and I grip about my yucky hymnody professor.

There is so much I want to teach Sophia and to share with her! I taught her how to ride a bike, and on a sunny day we’ll explore the University of Chicago neighborhood together. When I was still teaching philosophy at Blinn College, Sophia became interested in logic, and so I taught her how to create arguments called “categorical syllogisms,” as in:

All cats are mammals
All mammals are animals
Therefore, all cats are animals

This was fun, and she did a pretty good job with something that even college-level students can have a difficult time with.

There are times, however, when it feels as if we live in different worlds, and there is nothing I can share. At such times, I feel the pure cold of space between us, which is a frozen silence. Once, we were arguing and I asked her to help me to understand where she was coming from. I will never forget what she said in response: “Dad, you will never understand me.” Later, when things cooled down a bit, she told me that she didn’t mean it, that it had to do with the fact that I wasn’t a girl. I wasn’t a girl, so I wouldn’t be able to understand like Mom could. How could I disagree with this? Yet it did not take away my loneliness for her, my memory of standing there helpless, not knowing what to say, wishing more than anything else to be able to understand.

Silence also settles around the issue of work. As a philosopher and now an aspiring minister, I identify with the poet Rilke when he says,

“Sometimes a man stands up during dinner
And walks outdoors and keeps on walking,
Because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.”

A vision of Truth, of God, of Life Abundant grasps me, and I go where I am sent. Yet how can I express my anguish about the time it takes away from being with my family? How would Sophia understand? I feel this so keenly because I was the son of a workaholic, a medical doctor whose patients simply adored him. Medical school taught him how to be a fine doctor, and the world honored him for it. But medical school did not teach him how to be a father, and the world made it difficult for him to juggle work with family.

Lately a big topic of conversation between Sophia and me has been my father’s recent death. We talk about death, what it means to live leaning into one’s inescapable death. I talk as a philosopher and theologian, but I can go only so far before I hit a wall in myself, a wall of pure numbness, which is not about philosophy or theology but about my life. Long before I can get to that point, however, Sophia says, “Dad, you’re getting too serious again!” I honor the boundary she draws, and I snap back from my sadness. There is only so much philosophizing and theologizing you can do with a nine-year-old! Yet I feel like I have been in my life an explorer of strange and new worlds and I yearn to share the sights with Sophia and also to share in what she sees.

Have you ever seen the pictures of medieval explorers, gone so far in their explorations that they have reached the edge of the flat earth, beyond which lies an otherworldly ether populated by strange beasts, angels and demons? With my father’s death, I feel like I have gone to this supernatural otherworld, this place beyond all places, and what I have found is that fatherhood, ultimately, is a place of suspicion and remembrance, anger and reverence.

I have said so many times, “I don’t want to make the same mistakes that my parents made. I want to do better with Sophia than my own Mom and Dad did with me.” And even now I cannot renounce these words. Fathers and mothers, even the best of them, with the best of intentions, hurt us and scar us. There is clear cause for suspicion and anger with the inner parent pops out and says, “You just wait! Just wait ‘till you have your own children, and then you’ll see what it’s like!” and in this way passes along an ancient curse.

But as bad as the hurts and scars might be, still, my father—our fathers—have shaped and formed us, for good and for ill. They are part of a past that has made us into who we are, and we must not turn our backs upon it. It is a past for us to struggle with, to wrestle with until it blesses us. A wise person (Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza) once said, “The enslavement of a people becomes total when their history is destroyed and solidarity with the dead is made impossible.”

I say this from experience. There have been times when I have tried to forget, to deny, to change my name so that my roots became untraceable. I was like a Stalinist propagandist, airbrushing the politically incorrect out of photographs. The end result was not liberation, not more freedom, but a feeling off living in limbo, of existing nowhere, of being a mere abstraction. It is fatherhood, ultimately, that has taught me to affirm my father and to love him even though at the same time I must struggle with his memory and wrestle a blessing out of him.

On this day, which is father’s day, may we remember our fathers in suspicion and love, anger and reverence. If we are fathers ourselves, may we accept and know our growing edges, may we embrace the passion of fatherhood and to it, ever say yes.

Source: Rev. Anthony David, UU Men’s Network Sermon Award 2002 (PDF file)

Google Searches

This new blog has been active for about a month now, so I am starting to see traffic from google searches. Some of them are expected, but check out number 2. Bonus points for those readers who can point to which post I mention 'pornsite'.

1. belief o matic
2. pornsite journey
3. uu 7 principles
4. gnu uu
5. religion+2 minutes
6. xavier uuca blog
7. history of religion 2 minutes
8. "7 principles" movie themes
9. "william r. murry"
10. being a uu minister

Installing Love

Blatantly stolen from CUUMBAYA.

Customer Service Rep: Can you install LOVE?

Customer: I can do that. I'm not very technical, but I think I am ready to install now. What do I do first?

Customer Service Rep: The first step is to open your HEART. Have you located your HEART?

Customer: Yes I have, but there are several programs running right now. Is it okay to install while they are running?

Customer Service Rep: What programs are running?

Customer: Let me see.... I have PASTHURT.EXE, LOWESTEEM.EXE, GRUDGE.EXE, and RESENTMENT.COM running right now.

Customer Service Rep: No problem. LOVE will automatically erase PASTHURT.EXE from your current operating system. It may remain in your permanent memory, but it will no longer disrupt other programs. LOVE will eventually overwrite LOWESTEEM.EXE with a module of its own called HIGHESTEEMEXE. However, you have to completely turn off GRUDGE.EXE and RESENTMENT.COM. Those programs prevent LOVE from being properly installed. Can you turn those off?

Customer: I don't know how to turn them off. Can you tell me how?

Customer Service Rep: My pleasure. Go to your Start menu and invoke FORGIVENESS.EXE. Do this as many times as necessary until GRUDGE.EXE and RESENTMENT.COM have been completely erased.

Customer: Okay, I'm done. LOVE has started installing itself automatically. Is that normal?

Customer Service Rep: Yes it is. You should receive a message that says it will reinstall for the life of your HEART. Do you see that message?

Customer: Yes I do. Is it completely installed?

Customer Service Rep: Yes, but remember that you have only the base program. You need to begin connecting to other HEARTS in order to get the upgrades.

Customer: Oops...I have an error message already. What should I do?

Customer Service Rep: What does the message say?

Customer: It says, "ERROR 412 - PROGRAM NOT RUN ON INTERNAL COMPONENTS". What does that mean?

Customer Service Rep: Don't worry, that's a common problem. It means that the LOVE program is set up to run on external HEARTS but has not yet been run on your HEART. It is one of those complicated programming things, but in non-technical terms it means you have to "LOVE" your own machine before it can "LOVE" others.

Customer: So what should I do?

Customer Service Rep: Can you find the directory called "SELF-ACCEPTANCE"?

Customer: Yes, I have it.

Customer Service Rep: Excellent, you are getting good at this.

Customer: Thank you.

Customer Service Rep: You're welcome. Click on the following files and then copy them to the "MYHEART" directory: FORGIVESELF.DOC, SELFESTEEM.TXT, REALIZEWORTH.TXT, and GOODNESS.DOC. The system will overwrite any conflicting files and begin patching any faulty programming. Also, you need to delete SELFCRITIC.EXE from all directories, and then empty your recycle bin afterwards to make sure it is completely gone and never comes back.

Customer: Got it. Hey! My HEART is filling up with really neat files. SMILE.MPG is playing on my monitor right now and it shows that WARMTH.COM, PEACE.EXE, and CONTENTMENT.COM are copying themselves all over my HEART!

Customer Service Rep: Then LOVE is installed and running. You should be able to handle it from here. One more thing before I go...

Customer: Yes?

Customer Service Rep: LOVE is freeware. Be sure to give it and its various modules to everybody you meet. They will in turn share it with other people and they will return some really neat modules back to you.

Customer: I will. Thank you for your help.

Happy Daddy's Day

Happy Daddy's Day to everyone out there who have the awesome opportunity to have the love of a child. Here's a few recent pics to share of my lovely little girl:

Recharged and Ready to go!

I would like to thank my new friends that invited me to the beach for two weekends in a row, the 20s/30s group at UUCA. Not only did I have an absolute blast, I came back with a new energy. A take-on-the-world type of energy. I am looking forward to spending more time with each any every one of you. If anyone needs a favor, you got a new guy on your list. I am just very appreciative of the hospitality you offered to a newcomer.

I kept forgetting that I had a camera with me, so I only took a few pictures. Anyways, until next time.

PS. For all you doubters.

Back to the beach!

I got to spend a few days with the UUCA 20s/30s group in Panama City last weekend. Those that could take off from work stayed all week. Well, my plans for this weekend feel through, so I am off to the beach again. Great fun! It's nice to spend some grown-up time while my daughter is at her mother's for summer visitation. And here's a silly LOLcat to match my mood:

Answering the question, Why?

A friend of mine posted the following question and wanted to share my response. She has a good post about her first experience with The Book of Mormon. The thread in her post is also worth a visit.

Whether or not you cared to read the above about my own spiritual exploration, I invite you to contribute to my research. For any who would care to answer, I'd like to know simply: Why do you believe in the divine? Monotheist, polytheist, whatever your religion, I don't much care. I'm not even (right now) interested in why you choose your particular religion. I'd like to know, in your own words, why you believe there is a god. Have you felt the divine spark? Do you think you have seen, heard, or felt god? Simply do you find the universe impossible without some sort of great creator(s) out there? If you were raised to believe in god, has there ever been a time when you doubted that and had to find your faith on your own?

Such a good question. I have come to realize that there are multiple perspectives. So even thought I have dismissed the idea on a separate omnipotent entity, I no longer dismiss those that do view God in that way. My perspective is that God is the combination of the consciousness of all living things. We possess amazing power and knowledge as a whole. But that is my humble perspective. Even those that do not see any divine presence and figure everything is casual, I respect their perspective as well. There is no 'one truth' but 'multiple truths'.

Because I accept multiple truths, my choices for a 'religion' is limited. I associated myself as a pagan for a long time. But with being a single father, I wanted a more structured community to be a part of. That led me to Unitarian Universalism.

But I think I have a more exact answer for you question, "Why do you believe in the divine?". I need to know that there is something bigger than me. That as a whole, humankind is inherently good and we all have the capacity to love. Why do I believe in the divine... to give me hope that we can improve our world, spread love and understanding, and teach the next generation that there is a reason for living a life full of love.

So would you say that yours is a conscious choice of belief, such that it's possible? You would like to believe these things are true, and so you choose to believe it. Much in the same way that in a dangerous situation, you might tell yourself it's all going to be okay?

Yes, belief to me is a conscious choice. That may be my existentialist upbringing showing, but whether we are responding to an emotional or supernatural experience, I propose that we have to accept or dismiss that experience. Therefore it is a conscious choice to believe in something. In many different folklores, choice is one of the definitions on being human.

I certainly support the notion that choice is indeed a very large and necessary component of being human. This is why I find it such an extraordinary combination with contemplation of that which is not human, or more than human.

I've always figured that if there is a god, he offers free will because we're more entertaining that way. We are capable of the unexpected. But why be so mysterious about his existence? Why not be outright about it? Why offer choice, and make it a difficult one? What worth is real faith like that? I don't know.

If as you suppose, divinity is a label for the super consciousness of all human (and all?) life, then choice is part and parcel of it. The existence is in the awareness, and the awareness is in the choice. That is in itself an interesting meditation.

I respect your choice, and I wish you good things with it, for yourself and your daughter. I think it's wonderful!

Beginning the Path as a UU Lay Minister

I am very excited to announce that I have been accepted into the class for UU Lay Ministry at UUCA. As I posted earlier, I am looking forward to helping out with both the growth of UUCA under a new senior minister and helping out the members congregation. I know this stage in my life I will be learning a lot more from the congregation, but I am confident that I can help in some way. I don't know 100% about what I am jumping into, but it's going to be fun and rewarding. Ever since reconnecting with my spirituality after my divorce, I have been on a good path. Honestly, ever since that journal entry I made seeking a religion based on love, things have gone in the right direction for me. Maybe I can spread that good luck to others.