by Laura Dent
February 24, 2013

[Play clip of Bill Cosby:  Noah – Right]

So, who is that still small voice, anyway?

As Bill Cosby as Noah says to the Lord, “Who is this really?”

Much closer to my experience, there’s a passage from Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love where she says:

“I DO NOT EVEN BELIEVE IN YOU!”

(that’s actually slightly sanitized for church!)

and the voice very calmly responds: 

“Who are you talking to, then?”

So, who are you talking to, then?  Who is this really?  Who is that still, small voice, anyway?

Sorry to disappoint you – I’m not actually going to answer that question, just explore it.  As my husband Noel says, it’s the questions themselves that are more fascinating than any answers we could possibly give.

And, I’m going to explore the possibility that what matters is not so much what we call that still small voice, but that we listen to it:  to learn to discern that voice, to cultivate our connection to it, and to heed its wisdom. 

Then, at the end of my talk today, I’ll invite you to join me in a very simple spiritual practice to cultivate your connection to that voice.

As I was preparing for this service, I was wondering, Where does that phrase, “still small voice” come from, anyway?  We heard that phrase in the hymn we just sang, “Blessed Spirit of My Life.”

I found the answer in this book, When God Talks Back:  Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, written by Tanya Luhrmann, who was my roommate at Harvard. 

Tanya approaches this subject with what she calls the “anthropological attitude”:  she’s investigating a culture, and trying to see what makes them tick.  As she says, the divide between believers and nonbelievers in this country is immensely painful, and damaging.   So, she’s doing what she can to bridge that gap, at least to have a conversation with the “other side.” 

These evangelical Christians are people who seek a personal, intimate relationship with God – to have “coffee with God,” as they say.  And they learn that to do that through a regular series of practices and prayers. 

[Read more…]

January 27, 2013
by J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.

1. In 1971 scientific opinion was evenly split between whether the world would cool due to rising particulate and sulfate emissions from burning coal or warm due to carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. World temperatures had been gradually declining since around 1940 and would only turn around to rise in an approximately straight line in the mid-1970s. By 1975 it had come to be realized by most scientists that indeed the heating effect of carbon dioxide would dominate the cooling effect from particulate aerosols and sulfates. The main reason for this is that carbon dioxide is slow to leave the atmosphere, whereas particulates and sulfates tend to leave with the rain. By 1978, there were no more articles in leading scientific journals arguing for global cooling. Symbolic of the shift between 1971 and 1975 are two papers by the late Stephen Schneider, one of the world’s leading climatologists, with the one in 1971 suggesting global temperature could go either up or down and the one in 1975 saying it was going to go up, which was an accurate but courageous forecast given that up until then global temperature had been going down for over 30 years.

Stephen H. Schneider and S. Rasool, 1971, “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effect of Large Increases on Global Climate,” Science, vol. 173, pp. 138-141.
Stephen H. Schneider, 1975, “On the Carbon Dioxide Confusion,” Journal of Atmospheric Science, vol. 32, pp. 2060-2066.

2. While the most straightforward way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is to drive less and use less electricity, in short, conservation, and much can be done by many on these fronts, for most of us there are limits in our current society to how much we can do. This moves us to seek alternatives to burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas, to allowing us to drive and use electricity. For automobiles, hybrid or electric engines are probably the most immediately available technologies, although others may be available in the future. While we are probably going to expand the use of natural gas in the near future for electricity production, which is cleaner than coal, other alternatives being used are wind and solar. Wind turbines have the problem of attracting endangered bats. However, the batteries in hybrid and electric cars, the magnets in wind turbines, and photovoltaic cells for solar power all share a problem: they all rely on the use of rare earth elements. The mining of these elements is highly polluting and most of them are located in China, which involves possible diplomatic and economic issues. We face serious choices if we wish to seriously expand the use of these technologies, although there is some hope that we may be able to develop photovoltaic cells that do not rely on the use of these elements. [Read more…]

January 13, 2013
by Rev. Emma Chattin

Lighting the Chalice ~ Reading

Ralph Waldo Emmerson once said:
“Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.”
In that spirit, may the spark of life that gives peace within you
become a flame to illuminate your mind, warm your soul,
and guide your feet
to places of peace.

First Reading
Matthew 25: 31-40
~ from The Inclusive Bible

At the appointed time the Promised One will come in glory, escorted by all the angels of heaven, and will sit upon the royal throne, with all of the nations assembled below. Then the Promised One will separate them, one from another, as a shepherd divides sheep from goats. The sheep will be placed on the right hand, the goats on the left.

The Ruler will say to those on the right, ‘Come you, blessed of God! Inherit the dominion prepared for you from the creation of the world! For I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me; naked and you clothed me. I was ill and you comforted me; in prison and you came to visit me. Then these will ask, ‘When did we see you hungry and feed you, or see you thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you as a stranger and invite you in, or clothe you in you nakedness? When did we see you ill or in prison and come to visit you? The Sovereign will answer them, ‘The truth is, every time you did this for the least of these, who are members of my family, you did it for me.’

Second Reading
~ from Thich N’hat Hanh

Let us be at peace with our bodies and our minds.
Let us return to ourselves
and become wholly ourselves.

Let us be aware of the source of being,
common to all of us
and to all living things.

Evoking the presence of the Great Compassion,
let us fill our hearts with our own compassion
– towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

Let us pray that we ourselves
cease to be the cause of suffering to each other.

With humility,
with awareness of the existence of life,
and of the sufferings that are going on around us,
let us practice the establishment of peace
in our hearts and on earth.

I think it’s important to note that many Christian churches this morning
will be recognizing the Baptism of Jesus in some manner.
It’s one of the Big Five in the ministry of Jesus.

When I was little, I envisioned the Baptism of the baby Jesus, because infant Baptism was what I was more accustomed to seeing, but my dad was quick to point out that this was the Baptism of the full grown Jesus. Some 30 years old.
And of course… (counting off the years)…
I said aging 30 years in just a few weeks… wow… that IS a miracle!
Time for my father to do a face palm and explain to me
that we were now re-joining the life of Jesus,
some 30 years later, already in progress.

The baptism of Jesus is considered to be the start of his public ministry.
It takes place in the countryside, in living water– water that’s moving —
in the Jordan River, by a person we call John the Baptist. [Read more…]

by Joni Grady
Sunday, January 30, 2012

I’m going to talk about webs of life, at least 4 of them, and a period of time spanning 350 million years. That these webs grew and spread and intersected and finally became so inextricably mixed that I wonder if they can ever be separated, is one of the great ironies of my life.

The first interdependent web that concerns us is the one that existed at least 350 million years ago when the world had erupted with life on land and sea. The climate wasn’t that different from our own though our continents were unrecognizable and proto North America was situated near the equator. There were swamps in what is now West Virginia and Pennsylvania and a shallow sea covered large areas to the west. There were huge palm-like trees and weird creatures living on land, and, like now, jillions of microscopic creatures and plants and algae in the sea, all connected and nourished by the sun and the air. There was so much life that when it died it often got buried in the swamps or the bottom of the ocean without being decomposed by bacteria first. In the oceans this resulted in large masses of organic material being buried under subsequent deposits as shale was formed from mud. This massive organic deposit later became heated and transformed under pressure into oil from the Mississippian period. On land, with less heat and pressure you get coal and the Pennsylvanian period. It was a pretty good system if you want to make fossil fuels and have lots and lots of time to wait. Millions and millions of years. Time for the continents to drift around some more, for species to come and go, for ice ages to pull the water out of the seas, and warm periods to put it back, for mountain ranges to rise and be eroded and rise again, for many more webs of life to be created. And some of that was destined to be buried and transformed into oil and coal, or maybe tar sands and peat, as well. Meanwhile the oil is moving out of its source rock, flowing through permeable formations, getting trapped by impermeable ones, waiting like an imprisoned creature to be set free.

I very much doubt that Colonel Edwin L. Drake thought of it that way, however, when he began looking for oil in the 1850s, many tens of millions of years later. Oil springs, like water springs, were known near Titusville, Pennsylvania, indeed, Native Americans had used oil from seeps for hundreds of years to waterproof clothing and canoes. The Seneca Oil Company was founded on the belief that if you could just get the oil out of the ground instead of waiting for it to rise by itself, you could corner the lamp fuel industry instead of relying on whales which were hard to come by and getting harder all the time. Drake and his crew struck oil at about 69 ft in 1859, leading to the first of many oil “booms” around the world and forming the first node in the interconnected, interdependent web of the oil industry—and many millions of human lives. [Read more…]

December 2, 2012
by Keo Cavalcanti

Taoism has been my practice for almost 25 years, almost half of my life. The centerpiece of this practice is a little book, the Tao Te Ching, written some 2,500 years ago (for those interested in a good translation, I recommend the edition translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, published by Vintage Books). There are other Taoist writings that are part of the Chinese collection of philosophical classics, but the Tao Te Ching is central. NOTE: The link will take you to an online version of the translation.

In the novel Roderick Hudson writer Henry James proposes an interesting definition of happiness: “True happiness… consists in getting out of one’s self. But the point is not only to get out – you must stay out. And to stay out you must have some absorbing errand” (I got this quote and the title for the sermon from Janna Malamud’s book, An Absorbing Errand, Counterpoint Books, 2012).

The thought of finding happiness through a distraction is too delicious to ignore. So, this Sunday morning I’m inviting you to consider its possibilities. I am hoping that you will be intrigued with the notion of an absorbing errand too. In his novel Henry James seems to be saying that perhaps the only way we can be saved from our intense self-absorption, from our relentless preoccupation with ourselves, is to find a distraction; a distraction that shifts our focus of attention…

But James is also saying something else. He is saying that this is no simple, small errand. This errand must be absorbing. It must be entrancing, captivating. It must be something that makes us forget all other pressing matters. It must be something that keeps us occupied, immersed and engrossed in both its practice and logic.

An Absorbing Errand in pdf format

October 21, 2012
by Richard Wolf

Two decades ago, in the mountains of North Carolina, I worked with two Mayan day-keepers.  I learned a time-keeping system for interpreting 13 tones and 20 glyphs, counting in concurrent cycles, within constructs of larger numbered patterns. 

As with western astrology, one can look to the tone and glyph of one’s birth date for clues as to identity, orientation, or mission.  My entry count and glyph are 2 – Cimi.  This date signifies a polarized orientation (2), together with the further polarizing Cimi as “world-bridger”, also translated as “death”.

The motion or role of Cimi is equalization through polarization.  This sounds and is daunting but especially resonates with the “mission” aspect of my situated life-form.   “Division toward Unity” might be my personal motto.  But Mayan day-keeping isn’t really our topic today. I just present this to offer some background and qualification for my offering you this particular talk, initially entitled “Our Unwelcome Familiar”, which evolved into “…the same motion.”, and now into the current working title of “…to the same motion.  1725.”. 

Reverend Emma Chattin and Noel Levan, offering our past two Sunday messages, provided some fascinating threads of paradox and duality.   I thought I’d dare us to take a few more steps, if you want to go, toward a few more indefinite, apophatic dualisms:  ones like birth / death;  living / dead; us / them;  then-of-the-past / then –of-the-future.  That third one could also be seen as harmonic tension between the disguised opposites of linear time and eternity.  I invite us to consider our own traditional or emergent apophatic supports, the unique and shared ways we live beyond grief and survive through loss.

[Read more…]

October 14, 2012
by Noel Levan

Each week I sit with people who are at odds with one another, in my capacity as a mediator at the Fairfield Center downtown. I listen intently as they lambast one another, accuse one another, deride, demean, power-trip, and so much less frequently collaborate for their mutual well-being and the well-being of their children. The relationship that they once en-joyed having gone south, will never return. I see all too frequently that these individuals have a paucity of interpersonal communication skills, lack general awareness, and are living in fear; of victimization and of poverty. I see poverty of words, poverty of ideas and poverty of action, and every time, when the case is finished, when I’ve typed up the agreement that will go before a judge for ratification, I am exhausted from my effots. I’ve done my best to assist these people to make better sense of their situation, to improve their awareness of the potential for better communication and thought-full actions; in short, to care about each other. I also, more-often than not sigh, in great relief, recognizing how immensely blessed I am, in so many ways.

The mediation process is (for me) about getting to “what works”. My directive to clients is, “We’re here to create a document that will work for you and your children, for the foreseeable future.” I talk with clients about how they know that things change in their lives and whatever we come up with today may only be workable for them until such time as something changes significantly enough to warrant changing the document, so that it continues to work for them.

That’s mediation. It’s empowering people toward just solutions to difficult and ongoing, relationship-based interactions.

When I sit with them and witness all the extremes of their emotions, part of my job is to reflect it back; acknowledge and praise their participation (under less-than-ideal circumstances), validate their feelings and ensure that the other person is present to hear those feelings. I know that quite often it’s hard to hear that you’ve caused another pain, and it’s also hard to forgive and move on; particularly when there are children who (hopefully) benefit from the presence of each of their parents.

My observation in mediation and in my own relationships bring me (almost forcibly) to consider how our world “works” and/or doesn’t work.

Over the years my views have changed; who’s haven’t?

[Read more…]