What camp are you in? -
© Betsy Tabor 2009
Twenty-three years ago, on the eve of mailing out our wedding invitations, John and I panicked. We raced to a couples therapist, and in the very first session he laid out a concept I will always remember. What I loved about John was precisely what I couldn’t stand! I loved his calm, his quiet unflappability, his steadiness, but…he could be so remote, so in his head! Sometimes I couldn’t get through to him at all! Conversely, what drew John to me, my warmth and energy, drove him up the wall when I evolved into a red-hot furnace of agitation—apparently not easy to live with….
These flip sides of our personalities give our lives grip and richness. They often come into focus when we interact with others. All day long, whether aware of it or not, we choose how to relate to others. I like to think that, as we get better at that, we are evolving, approaching our higher selves, our essence. I consider this spiritual practice.
Humans are full of paradoxes. Including us, at
Like many of us, I’ve grown into my opinions. Once quiet and shy, I’m making up for lost time, nowadays full of opinions and up for a good controversy. Sometimes this is helpful to a situation, sometimes not so much. But finding our opinions is finding ourselves, our truth. As writer Brenda Ueland says, “Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable.” Honoring and expressing our truth feels like a gift, I’m sure you’ll agree. Anyway, I have landed, along with you, in a faith known for strong opinions!
It may just be human nature, but it seems we UUs find ourselves on one side or another of an issue more than most. When I first got here,
I figured that was all in the past. But eventually I would learn that there were all kinds of opinions here! Never mind the minister! We disagree about the appropriateness of clapping in church, about whether we like organ music, or saxophones, about the volume of music. We have opinions about where announcements belong in the service, whether we should shake hands or hug, whether laptops are acceptable up here, where to put the offering basket, whether to say “God”! And that’s the tip of the iceberg!
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The last few months, we’ve experienced a range of opinions and emotions: disappointment, shock, anger, relief, “whatever.” At one point, someone introduced himself at a church-wide forum and said, “I’ve always been in Roberta’s camp.” This was clearly a generous gesture at a difficult time, but it got me thinking about UUs and our opinions. What camp are you in?
Back in the days of Will and Marta, I thought we were lucky to have two different ministers. I’d say I was mostly “a Marta person.” She preached from the heart. Never before had I cried in church, but I filled my pockets with Kleenex when Marta preached. Her words made me catch my breath—I’d scribble notes to take home and most always wept. When Will preached, my brow furrowed, and I had to work to keep up with his intellectuality. Two distinct styles.
In a sense, having two ministers spoiled us: I knew that every other week one of them was likely to score a spiritual hit with me. Then again, maybe having that choice did us a disservice—because today, smaller, we will have one minister, with one spiritual style. I wonder whether having two may have contributed to our continuing to feel divided, as it had been before they came.
Talking about this with Ellen Forbes, she reminded me that UUs started out divided, by definition. Look at our roots. Unitarian Universalism is the union of two faiths: the Unitarians, who believed in one God, not the Trinity; and the Universalists, who believed in the goodness of each one of us and in universal salvation. Carol Cole (sitting out there) was a girl when, around 1947, this church, the Unitarian Parish, merged with the Universalist church, which stood where Citizens Bank now is. Imagine the intellectual, upscale Unitarians joining hands with the down-to-earth Universalists, many of them trades people, whose Women’s League was known for its folksy church suppers and Christmas bake sales. Maybe “being in one camp or the other” is in our institutional DNA!
As we think about our essence, we can look at ourselves through another lens, that of our spiritual styles.
When Rev. Roberta arrived two years ago, I found myself kind of missing that soft heart “hit” I had come to count on from Marta. I thought to myself, “This might not be spiritual enough for me.” What to do?
I was blessed at that time to have a cup of tea with UU Rev. Karen Brammer. I learned there is no such thing as “not spiritual enough.” Surely, we are all spiritual beings—but we feel and we live out our spirituality in different ways. Karen showed me a book called Discover Your Spiritual Type, by Corinne Ware. It’s about our four basic spiritual types: intellectual (think: “head”), social justice (“hands, or help”), emotional (“heart”), and holy (“?!”). This is not exactly how the book does it, but imagine four quadrants: 1) Down here are the head people—their style of spirituality is around learning and theology and fact and history. 2) Diagonally across are the people who live their spirituality through causes, through helping others. 3) Up here are the heart people. Their spirituality is nurtured by stories about our life experiences, by focusing on how we connect with one another and grow. 4) And I think (diagonally across) of this quadrant as the holy quadrant, where one’s spirituality might look like a quiet, solemn reverence. It has a mysterious, ineffable, mystical quality.
Got that?
Now, what often happens is that people tend to “ride” one of these two axes. If your spirituality is nurtured by knowledge, you tend to appreciate the same kinds of spiritual messages as do those who identify with social justice, with big causes. You might respond to a quiet worship service of chanting, say, with a frustrated, “Where’s the beef?” (You know who you are!) By the same token, people whose spirituality resides more in emotion or who yearn for quiet centering might live more along this axis. They are transported by a deeply personal sermon, and might come away from a rousing call to get off the sidelines and get involved having not felt touched spiritually.
Well, upon hearing this, I was thrilled to recognize myself as—I’m sure you’ll be stunned—a heart/holy spiritual type. This explained my response to ministers over the years! The thrill did not last long, because I realized that we now had a minister whose sermons tended to be informational, her message action-oriented. I had to come to terms with that, or go elsewhere. Obviously, I chose to stay, and I’m glad I did. I like to think some of my sharper opinions have softened, and I’ve learned a lot about how different—and how alike—we all are.
I’m curious what you think of this? Obviously, we each have elements of all four quadrants. Can we have a show of hands for people who tend to ride the pragmatic, rational, social causes axis? And how about people who see themselves more along the heart/holy axis?
The plot thickens…because that’s only half the theory. Our challenge is not to identify our spiritual type, rejoice and then stay there! Sorry. No, the idea is to be aware of our own spiritual leanings and then to broaden our reach, to go beyond our comfort zone, and to tiptoe toward the other axis! In other words, to grow! Easier said than done—and worthy of a whole sermon series….
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A teacher and a rolfer, Paul Gordon posed a question the other day, “How do you live a spiritual life?” Surely, on some level, we all want to do that, right? I mean, here we sit—this thing we do every week is about finding a place for the spiritual in our lives. We come to church with our spiritual needs. But we find that being “met exactly” isn’t likely to happen every week. What to do?
When master homeopath Jan Scholten visited from
For starters, we can talk with worship leaders about what we need—that’s always a good idea. We can hunker down or hit the re-set button, to use the language of Marty Linsky of Cambridge Leadership Associates. Hunkering down might mean doing the work of looking toward the other axis. Hitting the re-set button: going somewhere else. Since UU services are baked fresh weekly, we can take it one week at a time. Jo Maden made a great point in a Worship Associate meeting. If a service isn’t your cup of tea—heaven forbid, maybe people are waving their arms in the air during a hymn, or maybe there hasn’t even been a sermon!—she says just sitting there is a spiritual gift, an act of generosity to your neighbor.
As for our opinions, being a people of many points of view and beliefs is one of the beautiful things about Unitarian Universalism—and about humans. We do not have to be intentional about this—individuating and finding our truth comes naturally! Especially our strong, humdinger opinions. But what to do with our opinions? In the heat of a moment I try to ask myself, “Someday when I’m looking back, how will I have wanted to handle this?” Then there’s Julie Draper’s “What is my next right move?” Maybe the question to ask is, when is my opinion helpful? When is expressing it a spiritual act?
I once happily offered my view about this or that minister, but I now wonder to what end. After these two years, it is clear to me that it’s a heck of a challenge for any one minister to satisfy all the spiritual types that we are. If we’re in this for the long haul, we might do well to keep our eye on the prize, which is a thriving, loving, forward-looking faith community. Our prize is our one-ness. It is in finding that that we can mine some spiritual growth J
If we are lovingly aware of our differences, then we can—if we’re paying attention—offer opinions that will help us spiral up into a big, spacious one-ness. We can cultivate that one-ness. We can post on the fridge our beautiful sources and principles (if you haven’t seen them, they’re in the hymnal, just before the first hymn). In the weeks ahead, we can relax into a variety of faces up here and services that will vary more than usual. We can express gratitude, and compassion, to Board and committee volunteers are working hard to manage this transition. And we can think about how to move toward the big picture at
How do we live a spiritual life? Well, if I am aware that I tend toward hot and bothered, I can—if I am paying attention—choose a more evolved response to what life gives me. “My way, or the highway” is always an option, but couples counselor Terry Real nails it: “You can be right,” he says, “or you can be married!” We can be right, or we can be in a community with each other.
So a way to live a spiritual life is to pay attention. To ourselves. To be aware of how we respond to what comes our way. I like to think—and I do believe this—that people are moving toward a greater collective good. This is a process—it’s not automatic but something we choose to do. Whether in this community, or at home, or out in the world, we choose many times a day where we are headed—“guided,” as Lincoln said, “by the better angels of our nature.” Moment by moment is how we live the spiritual life.
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So, here we are. This is our reality, our essence beautiful…and vulnerable. As Maggie Schneider says, “Naming it helps.” Some of it is UU and South-Church-specific, some is human nature. And it’s OK! There’s no judgment here. It’s OK that this church thing can feel challenging. It is.
Every house of worship has the challenge of egos and opinions, of meeting diverse spiritual styles, and of all those personalities and life situations, all those emotions and needs! Pleasing all the people all the time is a pipe dream—there’s always going to be some edginess.
And UUs face special challenges—so we need to cut ourselves some slack! Unlike the churches and temples around us, we’re not brought together by a common creed, a prayer book, or even a worship format. We do not share one official source of faith—chances are, you have a different belief system, a different way of praying, even, from the person sitting right next to you. In recent years our church has seen its share of drama. Historically, this faith has survived turbulence and change. Given our theological diversity, our church’s story, our unique spiritual styles, our strong opinions and our own reasons for walking in the door today—there’s good reason we occasionally feel a separateness—it is a miracle we keep showing up!
And we do show up. We’re a sturdy bunch. And, you know? These are tough times—so many people out there are yearning for something that has meaning. Here in
That is something to feel good about, to celebrate. We have so very much to celebrate.