Experiencing the Sacred in Everyday Life

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​I will never forget that pivotal moment when I found myself at a crossroads. A threshold. In my case, a literal train track. In the summer of 2000, I moved to San Jose, California for a new fundraising position at the Red Cross. I lived with a dear childhood friend of mine where we enjoyed summer picnics and concerts in the park with our friends. I had also become actively involved as a lay leader at the First Unitarian Church of San Jose. Everything in my life fit beautifully together like a unified whole — meaningful work, close friendships and a soulful community of faith. 

Then one day, that beautiful wholeness shattered. On that day, I commuted to work by train as usual. And on that day, September 11, 2001, tragedy struck. I gathered with my Red Cross coworkers stunned as we viewed the horrific news on the TV screen. In New York, nearly 3,000 people were killed when hijackers used two passenger planes as weapons to topple the twin towers of the World Trade Center and another to attack the Pentagon. It became an infamous day in history known as 9/11.

Crisis upturned my orderly world. I returned home absolutely disoriented, in shock and feeling the pain of the world pulsing in my body. That night, I attended the candlelight vigil at church honoring the lives lost to tragedy. This simple ritual served a vital purpose. To honor life. To grieve death. To sing, cry and pray together. To bring healing and wholeness to a fragmented world. To experience the sacred in everyday life. 

The parallel train tracks of my life came to a screeching halt. One track represented my professional life as a nonprofit fundraiser. The other track represented my spiritual life as a religious lay leader. These two tracks did not converge. What if I were to travel along a more unified path leading to greater integration, healing and wholeness? This discernment process guided me toward seminary at Starr King School for Ministry in Berkeley, California.

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, brought valuable language and structure to this human experience of separation in his book, The Wisdom Pattern. He described it in three words: Order, Disorder and Reorder. Each of us is called to travel this journey of faith so that we may contribute toward healing the fragmented pieces of our individual and collective lives with greater wholeness. 

And here is where we find ourselves today. Grappling with this same wisdom pattern of Order, Disorder and Reorder within our own UU faith tradition. In particular, we are called to make sense of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s report on Widening the Circle of Concern. Many thanks to Grace Colton and Maury Edwards for their excellent leadership in engaging a discussion group with East Shore congregants addressing this report. Here is a brief introduction to provide some context. 

At the New Orleans General Assembly in 2017, the UUA Board of Trustees announced and chartered the Commission on Institutional Change. The charge given was to conduct an audit of the power structures and analyze systemic racism and white supremacy culture within the UUA. The Commission pledged to report back to the Board and General Assembly its learnings, recommendations, and guidance for ongoing work over the next three years. This report was completed in February 2020. It is now April 2021.

So what have we learned? Where do we go from here? As a UU minister who joined this faith tradition 21 years ago, I find myself gravitating to three particular words. Three words that might offer some grounding and orientation to our faith. For me, these three words are: 1) Humility, 2) Accountability and 3) Wonder. Imagine, a new trinity for UUs!

HUMILITY

Let’s begin with our first guiding word: Humility. 

In celebration of Earth Day, I would like to draw our attention to the nature image of mountains in relation to humility. For those of you who were present for the East Shore worship service on March 7th, I introduced you to our guest speaker, Mary DeJong. She shared her perspective on the intersection between ecology and theology through the lens of Celtic spirituality, as well as broader themes of mythology and eco-psychology. In her seasonal online course called Wild Winter, Mary explores the significance of mountains. She asks this question: 

So how do we begin to think like a mountain? Thinking like a mountain is a term coined by Aldo Leopold [American ecologist, forester, author and environmentalist] in his book, A Sand County Almanac. Here Leopold discusses the thought process as a holistic view on where one stands in the entire ecosystem. This sort of holistic view requires the perspective of the high places…

To follow a higher calling always involves a kind of death. You have to let go of what no longer serves your soul. Old beliefs, old systems of thought or ways of being have to be left at the trailhead of transformation as you assess your load. What is essential? What is integral? Who am I really? 

…When we dedicate our climb to something bigger than our personal ambitions, we climb with humility. …We climb with the knowing that we will be coming down again. That we cannot sustain a life at the peak forever. Those who think they can will soon find that they cannot breathe for very long at the top. This is a very interesting thought practice to hold alongside hierarchical, organizational structures. 

Histories show us again and again and again that our climbs to the high places, to the top, are not meant to be long-time endured. To do so creates a false power dichotomy that sees the mountain experience as the most valued. And if it is the most valued, why not stay there? We were simply not created to live in such extremity. 

We must learn to climb with humility. When you descend the mountain with the same love and attention you brought to the ascent…you will learn to move more freely between the vertical realm — navigating the highs and lows of life — with equal nimbleness.

What a poignant moment to consider breath in the context of the times we are living in these days. We are over a year into a global health pandemic whose core medical condition is shortness of breath. We also witnessed a summer of racial violence around police brutality when George Floyd’s final dying words were these: “I can’t breathe.” 

As Mary pointed out in her mountain reflections, hierarchical structures create a false power dichotomy. It is only with humility that we can begin to reorient our values toward an eco-centric worldview in collaboration with the earth vs. an ego-centric worldview grounded in a top-down power structure of domination over the earth. 

Furthermore, it is imperative to recognize that this posture of humility with the natural world must also extend to our relationships with BIPOC folks. These report findings share a similar holistic perspective between ecology, theology and human relationships. The Commission on Institutional Change said,

We frequently heard that we should be focusing on climate change rather than anti-racism work. This is another false binary in the face of extensive research that climate change is already affecting Black/Indigenous/people of color communities more quickly than it is affecting other communities. 

ACCOUNTABILITY

This brings us to our second guiding word: Accountability.

Consider accountability from a musical perspective. In our UU hymnal, we sing these lyrics: “From you I receive, to you I give, together we share and from this we live.” These words are very simple. And the message is very clear. To live. The breath of life. Together. This means all of us. Including BIPOC folks. So why can such simple words and such a clear message be so hard to live out in our UU faith tradition? 

It seems to me that part of our struggle grows out of our human nature to resist change. Especially when the current systems of order, structure and power benefit white folks. Who wants to move from the comfort and familiarity of order to the chaos and confusion of disorder? In particular, when racial reckoning calls us to grapple with tender human emotions of vulnerability and white fragility. I get it. This is difficult terrain to navigate. 

Perhaps this is why I find Rebecca Solnit’s words so wise and insightful in her book, Hope in the Dark. Here is what she says about the human condition regarding paradise and crisis in relation to accountability: 

…Paradise is imagined as a static place, as a place before or after history, after strife and eventfulness and change: the premise is that once perfection has arrived, change is no longer necessary. …paradise does not require of us courage, selflessness, creativity, passion: paradise in all accounts is passive, is sedative, and if you read carefully, soulless. …before the fall we were not yet fully human — Adam and Eve need not wrestle with morality, with creation, with society, with mortality in paradise; they only realize their own potential and their own humanity in the struggle an imperfect world invites.

The two words that captivate me most from this story of paradise lost are these: static and imperfect. In a dynamic world that is constantly in motion with the spinning of our planet, how can we contend with a theology that is static? As Solnit points out, we discover our humanity and grit in the face of adversity, not in the passive glory of perfection. And for those of us who participated in our congregation’s racial justice work with Beloved Conversations, we may recall the article by Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones describing the “Characteristics of and Antidotes to White Supremacy Culture.” It is no surprise that Perfectionism is the very first characteristic named on this list. 

We are not meant to live forever in paradise. There is no liberation in a life of innocence without accountability. We are also not meant to live forever in the high places, the mountain tops where the air is too thin to breathe. And we are not meant to live a life of faith as UUs whose religious roots do not deepen, grow and change into a more liberatory faith for the 21st century. 

What we seem to be bumping up against is the impact of western civilization on our souls. Between philosopher Rene Descartes’ proclamation: “I think, therefore I am” — another white supremacy characteristic of Individualism — and the American work ethic of time, productivity and economic output — we have desacralized nature. We have turned it into a commodity to be controlled and monetized rather than the sacred center of creation that once oriented our sense of meaning, purpose and life force. No wonder we are experiencing the ache of separation. We have forgotten our original connection to the earth and, by extension, our human connection to each other.

This is what I appreciate so much about Linda Hogan’s recollection in her book, Dwellings: 

In spite of our forgetting, there is still a part of us that is deep and intimate with the world. We remember it by feel. We experience it as a murmur in the night, a longing and restlessness we can’t name, a yearning that tugs at us. For it is only recently, in earth time, that the severing of the connections between people and land have taken place. Something in our human blood is still searching for it, still listening, still remembering.  

WONDER

This brings us to our third and final guiding word: Wonder.

My introduction to this UU faith tradition 21 years ago began with a deep reverence for wonder. When I opened the doors to the First Unitarian Church of San Jose, my eyes grew large as I witnessed a magnificent labyrinth in the center of the sanctuary. This historic church was built in the shape of a round. Everything was designed to draw one’s attention to this sacred circle of beauty, wonder and welcome. 

My gaze gradually shifted from the center of the labyrinth upward. And before me, I beheld an even greater wonder. Six large, round, gold plates hung majestically upon the wall near the chancel. I peered closer at these plates with engraved symbols, but no words. It filled me with a sense of mystery and awe. I later learned that those six gold, engraved plates represented the Six Sources of Unitarian Universalism:

1. Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
2. Words and deeds of prophetic people which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
3. Wisdom from the world’s religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
4. Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
5. Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit;
6. Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

There is a reason why the world’s religions use engraved symbols, iconography, labyrinths, pilgrimages, koans, chants and parables. These artistic, embodied spiritual practices bypass the rational mind. They imbue a sacred space of what the Greeks call Kairos, the holy timelessness of time vs. Chronos, chronological time. 

I fear that we have lost our sense of wonder in our overly rational mindset and culture. We have forgotten the sacred core of who we are apart from all our doings. Albert Einstein put it this way: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” 

The Commission report reveals three similar findings:

• Our justice work isn’t grounded in our faith.
• Intellect, debate and social ties leads to burnout and no emotional grounding.
• Justice seeking replaces spiritual faith.

How do we reckon with these disheartening findings? Maria Harris, a 20th century UU feminist scholar and religious educator expressed it best in her book, Teaching and Religious Imagination. 

People are not motivated by direct appeals to the will. People are moved by experiencing their imaginations touched by someone or something that excites them into hoping and acting. When the word is made flesh, redemption is at hand.

What we need to be redeemed from is an overly rational mindset that leaves us soulless and burnt out. 

This is why I invited four UU congregants to participate in a generational group poem after our chalice lighting this morning. I wanted to honor and acknowledge the inherent worth and dignity of every person at every threshold of life. This includes: Kristi Weir, an honored elder; Amanda Strombom, an active leader; Benji Langrock, a young adult; and Leta Hamilton, a family member with young children. My heartfelt thanks to each of you for your generosity and kindness in accepting my invitation. 

In closing, may the power of communal witness remind us of our place in the world. From dust we come and from dust we shall return. This is our reminder of Humility. Through sharing the spoken word, we recall the breath of life — a gift given to all people, from all walks of life and among all races. This is our reminder of Accountability to humanity. And finally, in lighting a flame together, we ignite the spark of mystery in our souls. This is our reminder of Wonder. 

May these three words — Humility, Accountability and Wonder — guide us in our faith as UUs so that we may once again experience the sacred in everyday life. May it be so! 

Amen, Shalom, Salaam, Namaste and Ashe. 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Rev. Jennifer DeBusk Alviar’s current engagement with Seminary of the Wild:

Seminary of the Wild is an innovative, environmental nonprofit dedicated to the deep soul work of ecology and theology. 

Rev. Alviar’s blog posts:

Seeking Wholeness in a Fragmented World, January 13, 2021 (Storytelling as transformative social change)

Repairing the Circle, September 15, 2020 (Nature, land acknowledgment and care of the soul)

A Group Rhythm of Solidarity, September 10, 2017 (Arts-based facilitation and social change)

Thank You Epiphany Parish!, August 16, 2017 (Youth-led humanitarian aid care packages for Syrian refugees)

A Child’s Perspective of Money & Human Dignity, April 12, 2017 (A school art fundraiser to benefit Seattle Children’s Hospital with art created by kids, for kids)

Rev. Alviar’s homilies: 

Experiencing the Sacred in Everyday Life, East Shore Unitarian Church, Bellevue, Washington, April 25, 2021

Changing America’s Narrative, Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Treasure Coast, Stuart, Florida, February 7, 2021 (homily portion of video runs from 24:24-48:15)

Healing Our Nation, Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Treasure Coast, Stuart, Florida, November 15, 2020 (homily portion of video runs from 17:24-37:05)

Navigating the Soul of Human Nature & the Natural World, Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Marin, California, July 26, 2020 (homily portion of video runs from 2:07-18:15)

A Question of Faith, East Shore Unitarian Church, Bellevue, Washington, November 17, 2019

Meditation Poses from the World’s Wisdom Traditions, East Shore Unitarian Church, Bellevue, Washington, August 11, 2019