Blogging after a year's hiatus

I enjoyed blogging when I was in Mississippi. I found a certain amount of fulfillment being able to collect my thoughts and express my musings. Though I often thought about restarting my blog, I never got to it this past year as I settled into my new role as minister in Staten Island. So here I am in August of 2009, intent on blogging again.

There have been a few transitions to make in moving from Wilmington, NC and Gulfport, MS to New York City. Some claim that Staten Island is not really a part of the city--it's really a little provincial island unto itself; a bit of extended suburbia. Yet when I go through the neighborhoods with their diverse communities and take the bus, there is no mistaking that this small land mass called Staten Island, home to half a million people, is part of the city. Though we are one of the five boroughs of New York City, we have no public hospital here and I know that many people have to spend days in the emergency room waiting for a bed. We are often labeled "the forgotten borough" and I often find this to be true--in terms of health care, exorbitant tolls to get to work or to get home, and the underfunded mass transit here on Staten Island.

Like other parts of New York City, we are part of a diverse community that calls to me. Down the street there is a Spanish speaking church, and a local Catholic church provides meals every week. In the church I serve, we provide a safe and comfortable haven each and every night of the week to ten to fifteen men. We provide performance space to community theatre groups of all ages and art exhibit space often during the year. We hold services on Gay Pride and Marriage Equality. We address universal health care, immigration, prison ministry, and the high price of war and tough economic times. We hold Summer Forums on what it's like to be a Muslim on Staten Island, ethical eating, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These programs are not unlike those held by other Unitarian Universalist congregations or many other denominations. This borough is known for its pushback on people of color, immigrants, people with different sexual orientations and its amazing ability to retain the status quo despite thousands of people moving here and calling this island "home."

When I ride the bus or engage in one of my favorite pastimes, people watching, I see a different Staten Island. I remember riding home on the bus one late night. A man stood on the bus with his grocery bag leaking. Someone casually pointed this out to him while another passenger gave him one of her bags to put his groceries in. I have witnessed young men so often stereotyped as not caring about anyone else, move over so someone else can sit down and they have this unmistakable look of compassion and care on their face that just makes me smile. I have seen countless acts of mercy and good will walking or riding down the streets. I have seen the rudeness and heard the honks and the cursing too but that doesn't undo my love for this city and my hope that we can transform it with a spirit of feisty love, dedication and commitment.

A new church year begins in two weeks. We will start the year off with a Blessing of the Animals and our annual church picnic, a water ceremony, ingathering and Staff Appreciation Sunday. We have a new Religious Education Coordinator, Board, and Chairs of various committees. I had several wonderful trips this summer--to our Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Salt Lake City, to San Francisco and Pt. Reyes National Seashore and to an Adaptive Leadership conference in Boston, Massachusetts. I approach this September inspired and rested and ready to begin again!

Blessings on your journey,
Susan

The Knoxville, Tennessee Shootings on July 27, 2008

In Tragic Times Like These,
We Come Together in Love, Compassion and Support

Rev. Susan Karlson
Gulf Coast Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
August 3, 2008

I need the parable of the mustard seed this week. I have been reading news articles and minister chats, and op ed pieces all week long about the shootings in Tennessee. My heart has a little kink in it—I can’t seem to get the knot out. It feels like when they drained the fire hydrants outside my apartment because the pipes were sending out brown rusted water. Something in my soul needs flushing. Some hope needs tending. Some mustard seed needs to flourish. But it feels instead like something is broken into shards like the shots fired out last Sunday in Knoxville, Tennessee.

In the fall of 2001, I began my internship in Annapolis, Maryland. I took a few seminary classes at the same time—one on the Psalms and the other on Job. Looking back, I can see how much I needed those two classes. Less than a week after I started my classes and internship, the Twin Towers toppled and the Pentagon plummeted under the attacks of 9/11. I remember feeling numb, contemplating my daughter’s welfare who had just moved to New York, the world spiraling out of control before me.

That is where the Psalms came in. My professor, Denise Hopkins, had just completed a book on the Psalms. In it, she talked about the four seasons of that poetic book. The four seasons included a time of beginnings, excitement, passion; a time of dissolution and disorientation, a time for readjustment and reorientation, what I call the in-between-ness of life and a time for renewal and the birth of hope and vision. There in that numb, dislocated place, I pondered the question of the Psalmist—oh my God, why have you forsaken me? Why have you forsaken us? What is wrong with us human beings that we could do such a hideous thing? How will we ever live to hope and dream again?

Well of course we do. The human spirit is resilient. It is wise and brave and daring. It is that spirit that infused the Tennessee congregations even when they were in the midst of their personal agony. It is that way of life that becomes your default setting when you are in the midst of a crisis. You live out the fears, the ingenuity, the backlog of your life that informs how you are going to approach a rudderless time in your life. Greg McKendry had his default set and it was pretty clear that he didn’t need to think or worry; he just acted in the best interest of those children, their parents and the rest of the congregation. Those brave souls that wrestled Jim Adkisson to the ground also had their default system in place. They acted on auto-pilot within seconds of the attack. They are not just heroes—they are wise intuitive souls and their love and compassion and bravery showed up in that moment.

But I am not saying that it is bad if our response, if our default position, is set differently. We all wonder if we would act in a similar vein if something of such horrific magnitude happened to us. That is where the seasons come in—they strip our egos of right and wrong, presumed patterns we all should follow. They put us in the now of life as Eckhart Tolle describes in his book, The New Earth. They allow us to be aware of what we are feeling in this instant, to immerse ourselves in this moment, not to moralize ourselves into some future place we ought to be in.

I think we jump too quickly sometimes from disorientation to new beginnings. We push away the doubts and try to put a band aid on our wounds so we won’t know we hurt. We wipe away all the natural feelings we have in a tragic time like this so we can feel happy, certain and safe. My friends, life is just not ever certain. There is one certainty on this physical plane and that is that we have a body and we will lose this body one day. Meanwhile, we have this present instant—this second here now—the golden present. Feel that now-this one second-tick tock. Now we are on to the next one.

These days following the Tennessee shootings of our sister congregations is a wake up call. I am not saying we need tragedy to give us a wake up call, to call us to attention. But often tragedies mobilize that awareness within us; they transform us through the crucible of fire and cause some shift within us. We can ask ourselves where we are right now—in a time of disorientation and pain, undergoing a period of crisis, feeling that we are forsaken by those we love, perhaps even our understanding of God or the Divine in our lives. Or are we in a holding pattern, managing in the in-between spaces. Are we facing new beginnings, an exciting time of possibility or adventure? Or are we reorienting, resetting our compass to true north, aligned with the core of our being?

At the end of the course on the Psalms, we planned a chapel service and let everyone pick a color of yarn of their choice representing the seasons. I chose gray because I felt that my life was dissolving—not a negative thing. One has to die to be reborn, to thrive and grow. Four short months later, my mother had surgery for cancer and my cat was diagnosed with a lymphoma and died within the month. The dissolution continued, the grief and sorrow were indescribable but out of that chaos, a new life began for me and for my mother. Like the phoenix rising out of the ashes, sometimes the disorientation cycle brings us to a new birth, a greater hope, a brighter calling.

Out of the desperation and despair, hope shines forth. And that cycle of the seasons in the Psalms is like the first tiny shoots of the mustard seed in the Parable of Jesus recounted in our story for all ages. The mustard seed sprouts, emerging from the cold, barren ground. The mustard seed parable has deep meaning if we ride with it down all its metaphorical meanings. The mustard seed is that small bit of infinity that is programmed to just “be”. It is our nature to set seed, to nurture that fragile growth of this birth, to tend to one another and support one another as we realize our true nature and the spirit that is our essence. In that place, we grow from the tiny mustard size to the fully embodied spreading mustard tree, sheltering and nurturing all life that we are connected to and in deep relationship with.

And so it is with us in solidarity with sisters and brothers in Knoxville or other places where prayers and support dispel that false notion of isolation. For deep down we are all connected by a mighty taproot and we cannot really dislodge that connection through acts of hate or bitterness.

Knowledge of trauma and recovery processes tells us that one trauma will reactivate a past trauma. That is actually the way of the mind and the ego altogether. It will latch onto something that fuels its engines and run with it. In these times, it is often necessary to be gentle with ourselves, to not fault ourselves because we are moving slowly through healing, forgiveness and getting on with our lives. There is no right or wrong speed of moving through disorientation, orientation, reorientation and renewal. We just observe ourselves and our thoughts and feelings.

We can’t stand the uncertainty of life—not knowing if we might be targeted, if disaster may strike or strike again! We need to safeguard our children, put trauma response protocols in effect and do what we can to handle a future emergency. But no security policies or personnel, no emergency preparedness, locks or gates or lockdown procedures will guarantee awful events won’t happen. As the Buddha revealed, the human life is full of suffering but there are ways to awareness, a way through the darkness and the pain. There are ways to plant the mustard seed of hope and heaven on earth that will flourish as it unfolds in its time and in its unique way.

The good news of the past week is that people from every denomination and religion rallied around the Tennessee congregations with an outpouring of prayers, love and support. More people are learning some truths about Unitarian Universalism, and liberal religion through this tragedy.

The mustard seed parable plants a larger vision in our hearts—it is the power of love that continues to grow though it is threatened by larger and more pernicious weeds and vines. The love keeps right on growing, irrespective of the force bent on killing it. There are some things that cannot be eradicated. In Knoxville, the hate that burst out last Sunday could not drown out the spirit of that church—for “love is the spirit of that church and service is its law”. That is the birthright of each of us as mustard seeds in the fertile ground, becoming more aware of how closely we are tied together in a “network of mutuality”.

I read a beautiful illustration of the power of love and hope and the season of renewal recounted by the religious education director at Tennessee Valley, Brian Griffin. First Baptist in downtown Knoxville held an ecumenical service with more than 150 people in attendance. Two candles symbolized the lives of Greg McKendry and Linda Kraeger who died last Sunday. After the altar candles were lit, Brian Griffin lit a third. “This candle sat in the middle of a chalice decorated with a painting of smiling children holding hands that Griffin carried to the church.”

He said he grabbed the chalice almost instinctively as he left the church. The chalice means a lot to the “children who were traumatized last Sunday, who saw one of the worst acts I have ever witnessed in my 51 years, and they lived through it.”

“And it is their resilience and the resilience of this community that has caused me to see the hope that will come.” Lighting the chalice there was “a symbol of love.”

“I lost sight of that during the shooting; I lost sight of that for moments [on Monday]. But I have not lost sight of it now. I have never felt more confident in the power of love.”

Let us not lose sight of the power of love and hope—a force so strong that Martin Luther King reminded us: “hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that.” May each of us find the season of our life in our midst. May we find reassurance and a calm center in us that grows as the tiniest mustard seed and spreads out to Knoxville to shelter our own spirits and those who feel great suffering and in pain at this very hour. May it be so.

Sermon--Truth and Reconciliation in Mississippi

The Rev. Susan Karlson

July 6, 2008

As a child, I remember watching television court dramas like Perry Mason. Witnesses swore to “tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.” As an adult juror, I heard a similar oath taken when people took the witness stand.

I doubt we Americans are so devoted to telling the whole truth. Children are taught glamorous versions of our history. A student of James Loewen’s, the author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, even claimed “[Abraham Lincoln] was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands” (p. 184). Think about that for a minute--why can’t our heroes and heroines be ordinary people who do some extra-ordinary things that we hope to emulate?

I confess to some big misconceptions about Mississippi. Last month I rounded out my view of Mississippi history with a trip I made to Natchez that totally blew me away. I saw the Native American Indian Mounds. I felt a sense of awe, climbing the thirty foot Emerald Mounds, piled high by the Natchez people long before white settlers arrived. I saw these incredible historical murals in Vicksburg with children from different races playing together in the fountains downtown in the sweltering Mississippi heat.

But the most transformative time for me was stopping at the Natchez Museum for the Preservation of African American Culture. The interpreter told me stories about the African American heritage in Natchez and the state of Mississippi for over an hour—some parts were radiant, others tragic.

Mississippi elected two African American United States Senators in its history. When you consider that there have been only five African American U.S. senators in all of American history, you see Mississippi anew. He told me about a law prohibiting the importation of anymore slaves from Africa. Creative Northern businessmen found a way around it—ships sailed to Caribbean ports and then transported their human cargo to the South. Plantation owners didn’t live in the South however—they lived in the North and only came down here when it was time to sell the king cotton crop. Racism and slavery is a blight-filled legacy that mars all parts of this country.

African American and Native American museums, heritage tours and itineraries are so popular now that they are overcoming many local citizens’ fears that people will be shocked and scared away by the truth. I believe in
another reality—that we are able to deal with the truth when we hear it, that the human spirit is eager to hear about real people who made all-too human mistakes, just like we do. Telling real life stories about historical people and events can embolden us to work to counter the sting of racism in and around us.

As I left Natchez, I stopped at the Forks of the Road auction block. This is the site of the second largest auction block in the United States, second only to the one in New Orleans. It felt eerie to walk on land where our African sisters and brothers were bought and sold. And though I felt a kind of grief that left me breathless, I wanted to be a fearless witness to that historic agony because it affirms the importance of investing my energy in racial justice work.

Unitarian Universalist history is full of abolitionists, martyrs and those who worked for racial justice. But that’s not the complete story. At antiracism Jubilee World workshops, we often start by creating a Wall of History. We tape newsprint paper on every wall and write the people and events we can remember that sought to eliminate racism and strove for racial justice. But we also dedicate portions of the wall to the names and events that reinforced racism. In this way, we begin our work by telling the whole truth about Unitarian Universalism, not merely some myth about who we are.

In my experience, this work of truth and reconciliation is powerful and transformational. Some years ago, my mother researched our family history and she found that our family owned two slaves. My mother quite confidently felt that she had nothing to do with that, she didn’t condone it and it was way before her time. She was right, of course. None of us need be ashamed of actions taken by family members long before we were born.

But I have another perspective. I figure if your family is dependent on the servitude of others to make ends meet, no matter how poor a farmer you are or how well you treat those you enslave, there is something inbred in your attitudes about relationships with other people. And unless you are aware, you will likely pass those unconscious attitudes on to your children and your children’s children and on beyond that, forever. I realize it is up to me to rectify my attitude and my relationships, knowing that part of my family history.

We all live in a country that justified slavery for centuries and fostered unwritten laws to deny the worth and dignity of all people. That history is embedded in our national DNA. My message this morning is about asking
ourselves what messages we received that are life giving and which ones to discard because they enslave us to fear and constrict our hearts.

If you examine most Unitarian Universalist congregations in Mississippi and the nation, you’ll see we have few people of color. Particularly in Mississippi, our congregations don’t adequately reflect the racial mix of Mississippians in general. It might behoove this congregation to hold a Jubilee workshop or some other such event even if more people of color never come here. It might give you a clearer sense of your history, values and priorities as you imagine the future of this Fellowship.

This congregation is blessed to be part of a rainbow coalition, the Steps Coalition, where Vietnamese Boat people work alongside Latinos and Latinas brought here to do recovery work. People from the Turkey Creek project brought the FEMA trailer they’ve driven across the country to the
Unitarian Universalist General Assembly held last month in Florida to let people know the situation here in Mississippi. This is the beautiful side of Mississippi life — uniting to address common needs.

In this country, people from European American backgrounds have a certain amount of inherent power and privilege because of the perception of being white. It is possible to create a different future if we use that power and privilege to tell the truth about our history and work on reconciliation.

I stopped by a park near the beach in my Gulfport neighborhood. Family members celebrated a young teen’s birthday. I was the only white person in that park. I approached an empty swing and a young man began talking to me, telling me about his relatives and identifying each child’s relationship to him. And later, some girls in the family asked me to give them a push on the swing. One girl asked if this was my park or if I built it.

I like to think that our interactions opened up something inside of each of us—that to them, I became at least one white woman who could be trusted to swing them or a person interested in their family celebrations and how much they mean to one another. That experience reminded me once again how I carry my white skin privilege and power wherever I go and how my whole experience here in Mississippi has transformed and opened my heart. This is not just the amorphous deep South to me now but you have shown me that Mississippi calls diverse people to learn and work together. May each of us listen for the whole truth and swear by it, day by day.

Truth and Reconciliation in Mississippi

After coming to Mississippi each month since October, I decided to visit some of the sites
on the African American and Native American travel itineraries. I traveled to Natchez and Vicksburg and took these photos. I'll include my sermon by the same title shortly.


Emerald Mound, ancient Natchez Indian site
Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi









Downtown Natchez Historic Home
"Beyond the Gate", my title









Historic Mural,
Vicksburg, Mississippi








Fork of the Roads, Natchez, Mississippi
site of the 2nd largest
auction block in the United
States

Life From Both Sides Now--Attack of the Nesting Terns

I wrote about the attack of the nesting terns in my July minister's column for the Gulf Coast Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in coast Mississippi. I was walking along the beach in Gulfport, feeling the cool summer breeze on my skin when I noticed a sign with instructions to stay off the beach because terns were nesting there. I walked on the sidewalk, but suddenly noticed hundreds of terns circling above me, dive bombing me as I walked. I looked to see if I missed nests on the sidewalk or if there was another sign. No, no nests, no more signs. The tactics of the terns worked somewhat--they got my attention. I would have walked away completely but I was afraid I'd really step on a nest if I skirted the sidewalk and what righteous bird would nest on hot pavement anyway? Some birds strategically aimed their droppings just to make sure I got the point--"You are not welcome here. Get out!"

I kept checking the cement. I did see one flailing featherless chick-- with wings spread out twice the size of its scrawny little body. All my motherly instincts were to cradle the young one in my arms and protect it from the June heat and the scorching pavement. Ah, but I remembered the birds and their droppings and decided against it. It was their job to safeguard their brood and they seemed to figure I was some kind of large bird of prey.

I thought about the letter of the law which I obeyed. I was not stepping on the beach; I was not in official nesting tern territory. I was doing the right thing and yet...

How like a human to consider how this experience relates to human beings! I was right--the bird nests weren't there on the sidewalk. No danger for them from me really. But they were right too--and after all, they weren't adept at reading signs. There was one little chick there, all alone, crying out in need and they were doing their best to cradle that chick in the way they could--dive bombing the intruder.

We humans tend to neglect looking at the other point of view. We know we're right but from the other side of the earth/sky continuum, they are right too. They have roles to play and every instinct in them is finely tuned to carry out their responsibilities until that baby bird grows up and leaves the nest to carry on the tradition.

Liberal religions like Unitarian Universalism honor the traditions of other religions and diverse cultures. Each person has the right and the responsibility to make their own way down the road of life and we encourage others in their spiritual search. But we are all human and we too get stuck in legalistic thinking. We get entrenched in doing things like we've always done them.

Maybe it's enough that we notice this time that there are two sides with valid perspectives and we take the time to reflect on these matters. Maybe next time we'll consider a different route that doesn't turn flocks of birds into defenders of their region. Maybe, just maybe, this little incident has something to teach us about how we approach one another in our families and our communities. And probably it is equally apt in this political climate in this country and in our relationships with people from other countries. It matters where we walk and how we choose to meet those on the journey--whether two-leggeds, four-leggeds, slithering or swimming creatures or the winged migrants that share this path with us. A little more tolerance and forethought, and a bit less arrogance may change the dynamics enough to make the planet more sustainable and help us consider the impact of our actions and our presence in the web of life. That is my perspective looking at "life from both sides now". I hope it flies!