Pastoral Prophetic Care Corner
By Rev. Michelle Walsh, November 7, 2024
There’s a meme of unknown origins going around Facebook at this time, though attributed to first being seen by Andrieh Vitimus in a post by Winter Amanda. The graphic spoke to how we often prize some emotional states as ‘more spiritual’ and hence ‘correct’ than other emotional states. I’ll share the image here:
On both personal levels and societal levels, we are experiencing varying levels of stress and anxiety. Personal issues impinging on many of us include health concerns and chronic pain for ourselves or those we love, major life changes and/or losses, loneliness, and job or economic insecurities to name a few. On the larger societal level, we are facing a major national election and global instability.
A temptation, often reinforced by popular culture, is to believe in some mythic perfection and possibility of serenity no matter what we face. We can believe that if we are engaged in “correct spiritual practices,” we are always filled with joy, love, and a sense of peace. We are perpetually enlightened and never feel depressed or fearful or get irritable or lose our tempers. This belief often results in judging both ourselves and others as “failing” according to some hierarchy of expectation when we are not perfect enough. We “fragment” who we are and try to push out or away what feels unacceptable, and this then usually worsens the cycle of feeling like a “failure”.
In reality, the more we practice turning toward ourselves with loving compassion, curiosity, patience, and acceptance, including toward the feelings or behaviors that challenge us most deeply, the more fully we are able to practice and deepen into being authentically human and emotionally generous. On our FPUU website, we highlight what our 20th century UU theologian James Luther
Adams reminds us, “Church is a place where you get to practice what it means to be human.”
Our greatest danger in challenging times is to lose our sense of humanity, both for ourselves and for others. In accepting our personal limitations, we can find relief as well as humor and forgiveness of self and others – a type of emotional spaciousness. We begin to understand that there is a larger love that can hold all of the complexity, even what is most uncomfortable. And in this, there is the hope of staying connected and committed to ourselves and others, even amidst conflict or polarization, as well as the hope for “repair” (our Soul Matters theme for November).
As we move together as a congregation through the uncertainty and discomfort of these times, may we remember that it is possible for joy to exist alongside sadness, peace alongside fear, and love alongside anger or disappointment. Welcome and embrace it all as a spiritual practice of depth by noticing when we want to shut down and push out one for the other, dehumanizing and judging ourselves and others. Paradoxically, welcome and embrace even the desire to judge or dehumanize ourselves and others in these times. It’s all human, it’s all sacred, it’s all an opportunity or wisdom.