Engagement

My sister called to remind me April is Autism Awareness Month, which got me thinking about the whole notion of Awareness Months. There’s a long list of them for April, indeed for every month, as if awareness were in short supply and each month has to see to it we stock up. But for all the good intentions of these monthly designations, awareness is not where it’s at. Engagement is.

People can be aware of our church building at the top of the common. From the sidewalk they can read the signboard and know our services begin at 10:30, and the forum commences at 9:30, but that isn’t enough to compel them to attend. We talk a lot about how to make others aware of the church via ads and business cards, pasta suppers and concerts, our blog and website; but to truly engage people in the life of our church we have to be engaged ourselves and share the significance of that with others. If we cannot, as our evangelical brothers and sisters can, share the power of spiritual transformation, awareness alone will never be enough.

Yesterday the board, staff and a few other folks spent the morning with the Rev. Jane Dwinell, who consults with small congregations. We read Jane’s book to prepare but she also emailed another suggestion to me called, Kicking Habits: Welcome Relief for Addicted Churches. The author Thomas Bandy details the difference between declining and thriving churches, of which I’ll say more at the end of the month when I preach on “A New Paradigm.” I mention Bandy’s book today however because all through it he speaks of the deep spiritual yearning people have. Not a yearning to belong to an institution nor a yearning to adhere to doctrine, but a yearning to discern one’s calling and experience as fully as possible a deep connection with all being. He refers to this as God, specifically Jesus Christ. As I read the book I kept thinking the challenge of applying his model to a Unitarian Universalist context involves more than just translating metaphors. It has to do with our understanding of spiritual engagement—the millions of moments shaped by choices tiny and big that either draw us into fuller connection or propel us further from it.

Take for instance this meditation. All week as I ruminated on Bandy’s advice to ministers to quit preaching from the head and speak only from the heart, I still thought out what I might say. I made all sorts of interesting intellectual connections and spent Wednesday morning crafting a sermon worthy of your time. Midway through, I got an email from Tricia asking if I had decided whether to give up dairy after the provocative service we had here on March 18 about ethical eating. So I emailed back: “I can’t decide whether it is more eco-friendly and ethical to drink milk from a herd of eleven cows who wander about freely on a local farm or drink a highly processed almond beverage substitute.”

On my walk in the woods a short while later I realized my dilemma is a false one. I don’t need to drink milk or almond beverage. I do it because I can, because I grew up in a part of the world and a time during history where I am accustomed to having what I want. Every day I enjoy a mocha made with milk, coffee, cocoa and sugar. It’s yummy; I love the ritual of it. I buy milk bottled in reusable glass by the two farmers who tend the herd of eleven heritage breed cows. I buy fairly traded coffee and keep on file the statement of fair labor and environmental sustainability practices from the cocoa manufacturer. The source of the company’s sugar is not one I have tracked down. But in short, I am aware of what goes into my mocha.

I am also aware that most of the world’s people do not have ready access to what they want to eat or drink. One out of six has no access to clean water much less any other yummy beverage. The same number or more lack adequate food. Most folks on the planet don’t have electricity or internet 24/7/365. The majority of humanity lacks affordable access to fruits of every region in every season. Most folks lack adequate protein and can’t afford a car or gas to go in it. Billions can’t afford to educate their children. Most folks can’t just get in the car and go to the doctor or hospital and get treated. We can. So we do. And we are raised to believe this is as it should be and we aspire to provide the same measure of access to our children if not more. While I’m sure we all appreciate and enjoy the privilege and plenty to which we are accustomed, it doesn’t promote engagement with all being. It separates us, because we are so used to what we have, it becomes unthinkable not to have it.

The question becomes almond beverage or cow milk in my mocha? Not why drink the mocha at all? We all know how dependent we are on what we have because now we rely on it.  I rely on the internet to research sermons and conduct church business via email. I rely on electricity; on a car and paved roadways to take me anywhere I want to go whenever I wish to go there.

The more embedded we are in a degree of plenty and a doctrine of prosperity globally unsustainable, the more we risk conflict over limited resources, and the quicker we view and commodify our fellow creatures as resources. We remove swaths of earth blocking access to oil, gas, and minerals. The oceans become another horizon to drill. Forests supply toilet paper and we like ours triple-ply. Twenty-four horses die each week at U.S. racetracks because we think they are ours to race so we dope them to mask injuries and enhance performance then shoot them when they snap their legs. We manage people as “human resources”—as in “a stock or supply of money, materials, staff, and other assets that can be drawn on by a person or organization in order to function effectively.” 

What happens to us spiritually when we perceive everything first and foremost as a resource, an asset instead of an interwoven thread in the fabric of creation? What happens when we forget that how we live is neither representative nor sustainable?

As enamored as we are with benefits of the free market economy we enthusiastically export, the greater the number of people who also want unfettered access to electricity, superior healthcare, not only adequate nutrition but whatever appeals to the palate be it shark fin soup or beef raised on land deforested to satisfy the appetites of more and more affluent carnivores. What do we think will happen in China as the factory workers who make our smart phones and iPads save their overtime pay and want a piece of the free market prosperity pie?

It’s a bit like organic bananas, fair trade chocolate, or electric cars but on a larger scale. There are not enough organic banana growers to meet the demand were everyone to suddenly care about pesticide-laden bananas. There are not enough fair trade cocoa plantations to service the global desire for high quality chocolate. And if every potential driver in China, not to mention India, were to want an electric car to lower carbon emissions and dependence on foreign fuel, there is not enough electricity to power that number of cars. We can have what we want when we want it because others can’t.

But there’s a cost we don’t calculate because it is spiritual—which we mistake as invisible. We don’t need a designated month to alert us to the abysmal working conditions in many a Chinese factory ranging from harsh to potentially lethal. We are already aware that most of our consumer goods are made by people laboring in conditions none of us would accept. So what is the spiritual toll of awareness that doesn’t compel us to demand otherwise? To change our habits of acquisition and consumption? If we examine our lives we can see how the costs add up. Our exhaustion is not just physical; our stress not simply emotional. To live in a state of disconnection wearies us even if we attribute it to something else.

As a vegetarian who doesn’t like beans I get ample protein by eating fake meat; but the other night as I microwaved a Boca burger, I read the ingredients listed on the box. Many I did not recognize and nowhere on the box did it mention the source of the soy. Did it come from Paraguay where Mennonite ranchers are buying and burning forests to raise cattle and soybeans, forcing indigenous people off the land that sustains them so that the only work they can get is to burn down forests that used to be their home? Or did the soy come from factory-farmed lots in the American Midwest supported by massive federal subsidies that drive small farmers out of business? I stock up on overly processed veggie burgers but at what cost? Do I really want a patty born of burned out forests or drummed-out farmers? How does that deepen my connection to all being? It doesn’t. Why nourish the body to starve the spirit?

Each of our days and nights are filled with countless choices so routine we barely notice them but they accrue. And before we know it, disconnect us.

If we consider our unlimited access, what it would mean to opt out? When I asked myself this question strolling in the woods, for the first time in my life I understand the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew strange as they sound: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” (10:37-39)

I hazard a guess that we all think being able to provide as much as possible is a gift to our parents and children. A nicer house. A better vacation. A fancier meal. A higher quality education. But what if the best gift is less not more? If we were to acclimatize ourselves and our children to a life rich with pleasure and joy without the presumption that the planet and its inhabitants are resources exclusively available for our use, we would enhance the possibility of engagement.

In my sixth grade social studies class we studied in the parlance of the era, “Eskimos.” Inuit people. They lived self-sustaining physically demanding lives. They hunted and wore clothes sewn from the hides of caribou using needles of bone and thread of gut. They ate fish eyes as delicacies and spent evening hours amusing themselves with physical games. They laughed but had no apparent need for, or awareness of, psychotherapy. At eleven, I recognized they lived right-sized. I also realized it was the only reality they knew. Children born into that life automatically engaged in it; but it would be nearly impossible to adapt to such an arduous existence if one were raised elsewhere. It would be as unimaginable for me, an American babyboomer raised in postwar prosperity to give up my comfortable convenient life to live among the Inuit people. And yet that is what I have come to understand as parallel to what Jesus means.

Jesus is not preaching a gospel of prosperity: success in material terms. He doesn’t exhort: do well, do really well. What I understood in the woods was not a call to deprivation, but discernment. As in “perception in the absence of judgment with a view to obtaining spiritual direction and understanding.”

Buying glass-bottled milk from a tiny local dairy is nice but it’s not akin to moving to Nunavut. For years, I waited for my friends, especially clergy, to call me to task for the accumulations and indulgences that exceed my gut sense of right-size. But no one ever did. Or does. Among peers I live relatively simply as a vegetarian heating with wood, reluctant to use a clothes drier or turn on the furnace. But if I were to decide to truly keep Sabbath one day a week by skipping the mocha, not turning on lights or checking email; if I were to delight in my senses by praying and singing with others, making music, sharing stories, breaking bread, to engage the spirit instead of substituting almond beverage for milk—I would need a faith community. It’s a lot easier to keep kosher in a kosher neighborhood. Now admittedly, driving forty-five minutes to be with you presents a carbon compromise but I’m not seeking or suggesting absolutism. What I yearn for is transformation.

When Tricia gave a testimonial in March about giving up sugar she spoke of the impulse to simply replace it. To eat a handful of almonds or watch TV instead. But then she decided to sit with the craving and see what it revealed.

I long to have the internal courage and strength to do that. To reframe my day so that the big decision isn’t what kind of product I use to make my morning drink of choice, but how will I engage my senses in a way that requires no consumption. How might I reframe my day in a way that manifests solidarity with—not just awareness of—the billions of beings who can’t just mosey downstairs and whip up whatever suits them? I could begin my day strumming my banjo or singing along to a favorite song. I could delight in balancing on my right leg, with its formerly shattered tibia. I could gaze at the glass polar bears in my prayer space that bring the peace of wild things inside.

To reframe my life, to discern what constitutes the spiritual equivalent of moving to Nunavut, I need you because that kind of transformation happens in community. It’s why Jesus didn’t have one disciple; he had twelve. 

At the leadership session yesterday, Jane Dwinell asked why this congregation exists. Why does it matter and to whom? What attracts people to this spiritual community? What attracts me is the literal embodiment of spirit, not a building, not a history—but a continually evident manifestation of connection and transformation visible in our lives.

Engagement, like the filament of a web, connects us in inescapable ways. We hoodwink ourselves into believing the web does not exist or that we can somehow exist without it. Not because we are bad but because we are entrenched in ways of being so ingrained change seems impossible. But still it beckons.

Beyond the daily comforts and conveniences, the expectations and routines, we yearn to inhabit the gift and tremendous burden of human consciousness. To experience the immobilization inevitable amidst the complexities of our world and yet still make music together. To take the jeweled botanical offerings of this sweet earth into our hands and mouths and say with every action of our day thank you. Dayenu. It is abundantly enough. To recognize our bounty does not come with a spirit-backed guarantee.

We transform our lives by choosing with intention. By welcoming a pathway of less as a connection to more. We engage not by depending not on substances but on the substance of who we are. Amen.

The World According to Autism

My sister, Sand, called me last week to tell me April is Autism Awareness Month, with yesterday, the 2nd, designated Autism Awareness Day. I asked her if she wanted to offer a testimonial. She declined because she is not comfortable speaking in public but she agreed to write about her experience.

Autism seems worthy of a sermon not just because one in 110 children receives a diagnosis somewhere along the autism spectrum, not simply because more and more adults with Asperger’s Syndrome, a milder form of autism, are penning memoirs and in the case of Temple Grandin, multiple books. Autism reframes ordinary experiences non-autistic or neuro-typical folks take for granted. Peering through the lens of autism allows us to glimpse our world from a different angle. That is where the spiritual value of a sermon lies.

Whenever we cling to a singular vision we risk becoming entrenched and entitled. We chance a fundamentalism of our own making if we become purveyors of a singular truth enabled by a singular view. What seems apparent, even inarguably evident from our perspective is often not the case from someone else’s. In Libya, rebels fight to overthrow a despot and his supporters fight to retain a leader who has provided stability. The U.S. military forms part of a NATO coalition to protect Libyan civilians from attacks by weapons the U.S. sold Qaddafi.

We live with and within a multiplicity not a singularity or duality of perspectives; autism provides a useful, less politically charged way of remembering that.
When my sister and I went to lunch last Monday, she handed me four carefully handwritten pages entitled “My World with Autism,” or “Coping through the World of Autism.” Her titles alone are instructive. It is in fact, her world, a world shaped by the autism she experiences markedly different from ours. “Coping through the World of Autism” evokes a series of passageways to be negotiated, rather than a series of experiences to be savored.

I have edited her remarks for concision but otherwise I present to you what she wrote.

Since I suffer from Asperger’s Syndrome which is one of the most common forms of autism, I interpret the world differently. I am not able to understand what people say to me often because I take everything literally, I am not able to understand when people joke or kid around with me, or people’s sense of humor. I cannot interpret facial expression, read body language, or understand nonverbal cues socially or otherwise; therefore I have great difficulty understanding nonverbal communication. I can only process information at a concrete not abstract level so that’s why I take everything literally. I am only able to process verbal, literal communication.

Consider for a moment the nature of my sermons. As you know, I rely on metaphor. Two weeks ago, I quoted from another Unitarian Universalist’s sermon identifying figurative language as the hallmark of our liberal faith. This is why in large measure, my sister will not worship here. It’s not just that she prefers the lively beat of praise music and the repetition her pastor employs in his preaching style: it’s that she worships in a context of literalism. The Bible is understood as the literal word of God. The stories aren’t metaphors meant to be untangled by critical, abstract thinking. They are admonitions and examples to be followed by the devout.

The figurative world we inhabit so rich with subtlety and metaphor is a planet inaccessible to my sister. The faith that gives us room to worship freely locks her out.

Consider the onslaught of nonverbal cues and subliminal advertising we are expected to read along with the nuance of facial expressions, body language and social cues in order to successfully interact and professionally advance. Now imagine being illiterate—unable to decipher any of the signposts in everyday life. Erase being able to read tone of voice, facetiousness, sarcasm, irony, expressions, gestures, even posture.

Suddenly the world becomes a foreboding and forbidding place.
Sand continues:

"I have difficulty in social situations due to not understanding what people say to me and not being able to handle words, or too much auditory and visual information. I have severe sensory issues, a major characteristic of autism; therefore I can’t tolerate too much auditory or visual input and I have severe sensitivity to touching or being touched. With over-stimulation I get overwhelmed, which causes a sensory overload. I get headaches, I get upset and angry very quickly and I can’t put my mind at ease. It can take me anywhere from ten minutes to ten or twelve days to overcome a sensory overload.

Due to my autism, I do not do well with change or surprises. I thrive on structure and routine; when there is a change I get upset and overwhelmed. I am learning to cope with this issue by understanding change is part of life whether it is sudden or not. I thrive on sameness. One important aspect for people with autism is a predictable environment—knowing what to expect and the order in which things will occur.

I am learning by working with children who have autism just how imperative this is. I have great difficulty with the need to have constant reassurance, for example, if I have something scheduled I have a tendency to ask if the appointment is still on or if the plan is still taking place. I do not do well with uncertainty at all."

Many of us don’t but we adapt more readily. We all like to feel assured our lunch date hasn’t forgotten us or the appointment hasn’t been changed but we don’t need to call five times to make sure. Given the rapid pace of change technologically and practically the world becomes a whirlwind of uncertainty. Note the use of obstructionist metaphor there.

Sand continues:
"When I do not have reassurance about what is happening that causes me to become very disorganized and upset. I tend to get angry because I live as though my life is then unsettled. This doesn’t happen out of meanness; it is just the way I respond emotionally. These same emotions arise when there is a change in my routine or a surprise. That really puts my system off base and my response is to automatically get angry and upset. It takes time to recover."

More weeks than not my sister spends at least a day if not two or three recovering in bed. For Sand, it’s not just surprise parties or unannounced visits that unnerve her; any variation, even a suggestion that would save her money or time, if it requires deviating from her route or routine, rattles her. The underpinnings of her world are precarious enough; the slightest shift to them threatens a tectonic eruption no less consequential to her than the actual earthquake was to Japan. In my frustration at her inability to focus outwardly, I try to draw her attention to the crisis in Japan or the unrest across the Middle East, but she can’t go there. She has told me time and again empathy is extremely difficult for people with autism to feel. As she says it is not out of meanness, but limitation imposed by living her life on high alert.

If we consider what it might be like to be bound to literalism, to perceive the world in gradations of threat; if we sit for a moment imagining what it would be like to experience this worship service as a sensory assault: the crescendo of the organ, the barrage of words, unpredictable movements as people rise to make an announcement or light a candle, the sudden return of the children from downstairs, a handshake offered, or worse a hug—if we can conceive that what comforts, inspires, consoles us could unhinge another, we begin to understand the limits of using ourselves and our own preferences as a reference point for anyone else. It’s human of course to do that. To think, I like to have this so I’ll get one for you. I’d love it if my friends drop by so I’ll stop in on my way home. I enjoy worshipping this way so this is the best way to do it.

Just as political choices and military decisions reflect social location, economic advantage or lack thereof, personal history and future interests, the shape of religious community and spiritual practices do, too. As we consider the direction this congregation will take, let us consider what the inclusion we seek would really mean.

A recent newspaper article addressed reasons Sunday morning in church continues, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr, to be the most segregated hour on earth. Most congregations remain homogeneous. Primarily white or Latino, African-American or Korean, and to some extent divisions remain in some churches around class. In most cases, according to the report, primarily white churches want to be multicultural but the difference in worship and music styles as well as variations in culturally held values accounts for the lack of successful integration. We may want others to experience what we enjoy, but we forget that our pleasure may be their dissatisfaction. For me, there is no better reminder of this than spending time with my sister, Sand.

Any change to worship style will include some and alienate others, but we might think about the additional ministries we could offer that might reach a wider range of people. To be able to plant seeds methodically in rows or walk the familiar pattern of a labyrinth, to create space for quiet contemplation alone or with others throughout the week would foster inclusiveness. As Rumi reminds us, “there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”

Sand’s autism did not get identified until she was twenty-nine which means she spent almost thirty years misdiagnosed and misunderstood. She did not speak or walk until age two. As a crawler when a lot of kids become toddlers, she remained locked into either silence or screaming, often overturning the living room furniture with the force of a tsunami. She cried for hours on end—inconsolable and unreachable in her own unidentified world. The hugs we offered, the steady stream of words, the scent of my mother’s perfume, the lights flipped on, the constant noises, the jerk and whirl of motion rained down on her in torrents we never understood.

Now when my sister repeats herself ad nauseum I cannot help but think, payback is a—well, you know the expression. She writes:
The most major part of my autism is my perseveration, my need to constantly repeat things. I usually would not mean to repeat intentionally but it happens perpetually. This affects me in social situations and in the job world too, along with my other communication problems. The repetition is an aspect I honestly cannot help very well. I also have great difficulty explaining things, sharing information and conversing with others.

I do well with children now as an adult in terms of them understanding me. Adults often do not understand me and that leads to me feeling frustrated and agitated at times. On a positive note, I have been blessed to find a wonderful speech therapist who specializes in autism who helps me to communicate better, share information with others, develop conversational skills and enhance interactions. I take medications for my Asperger’s but I must be honest; it only helps some. It is my speech therapist, my occupational therapist and my dedicated supervising teacher at the school where I volunteer with children on the autism spectrum who are trying to make a difference for me.

I interpret the world differently and cope with everyday life situations differently due to my autism. I am thankful for the help I receive professionally and through my volunteer experiences.

One of the most poignant illustrations of how Sand interprets the world occurred last year when we went to an Expo on Autism at Antioch College in Keene. We attended a presentation by a woman with Asperger’s Syndrome who enumerated the symptoms Sand named. The physical pain of too much sensory stimulation, how viewing rapid-fire images literally hurts her eyes. How sudden noise disables her. How unpredictable motion unsettles her and can activate panic. What was fascinating is that as she spoke, she showed a rapid-fire barrage of powerpoint slides. Her service dog barked erratically and the woman flapped her hands and jerked her body. Within moments Sand leaned over and said, “This speaker is terrible.” I assured Sand I found her interesting so we stayed. I completely missed the cue that Sand was actually asking to go. It was horribly overstimulating for her.

That’s when I realized that for Sand, being with another person with autism is not necessarily helpful much less comforting. Sand’s world occurs at the same time but not on the same plane; the terrain is always rocky, the ground constantly shifts underfoot and the dark clouds we recognize as brimming with precipitation lurk over her head about to dump rain unannounced.

To greater and lesser degrees we all cope with uncertainty. Autistic or not, we attempt to control our environment to the best of our ability. We order our little corner of the universe by establishing routine and recognizing pattern. We habituate ourselves with morning coffee, the same route to work, the good-night phone call or kiss. We willingly inhabit consistency as if it were certainty. We do this to function without succumbing to panic or debilitating fear. As Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said recently on NPR, of course no one can guarantee a nuclear power plant will never have an accident or a plane will never crash. We assure ourselves with positive safety records. Otherwise we would never get in a car, or for that matter, take a breath.

The acuity with which my sister clings to routine reminds me we all need reassurance. We recalibrate by checking in with ourselves and each other. Here it is the very expressions of presence and care we offer one another during worship and social hour that help us feel connected. Religion, from religare, is about what re-fastens us. None of us wishes to drift isolated and alone. We want to feel tethered to the tree of life. Not constricted but lovingly held.

Being Sand’s sister is sometimes a deeply frustrating experience. I find myself far less patient than I wish to be. I get exasperated with her easily because I want to live in a world sculpted by empathy so when I bump into Sand’s inability to express it, ironically I lose my capacity to empathize with her. I have to remind myself Sand doesn’t choose to focus on herself because she values self-centeredness as a spiritual goal. She focuses on herself the way any creature experiencing an assault on the senses turns inward to self-protect, to survive.

The world of poetry, pathos, and unexpected delights many of us joyfully inhabit is part of a multiverse not a singular universe. There are not just other perspectives on this world, but other worlds co-existent with ours—rich with lessons in a language not our own. Amen.