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Sunday. February 17, 2008
“Ax of Kindness”

Quote: Only your compassion and loving kindness are invincible, and without limit.
—Thich Nhat Hanh 

Opening Words

This poem emerged from words and phrases participants in last year’s Odyssey class Belonging: an inquiry used to describe a time in their past when they felt they “belonged.” These are our opening words: 

Belonging
These are my people,
our mutual interests a bridge to belonging;
my life in yours and yours in mine—
familiar.
Those differences in common
turn it around, the fear and the isolation.
Many minds together
enlarge the possibilities.
Responsibility,
Community,
at one, in one,
unity in diversity.

Sermon - “Ax of Kindness”

“Ax of Kindness” I call this sermon. Thursday was Valentine’s Day, this is American Heart Month and today is the last day of Random Acts of Kindness Week. How many of you knew this week was Random Acts of Kindness week? Did any of you notice and accept the assignment I suggested in my sermon blurb in the newsletter? The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation so designated this week and encourages all of us during these seven days to make a special effort to focus on the welfare of people around us— people we know and people we don’t—to do little things for them to make their life easier, to see and honor others as you see and honor yourself, just for a few days. The hope is that if we all do those little helpful, loving things intentionally and frequently for seven days in a row, there will be a much better chance that we will glimpse the world we long for: a peaceful, sustainable, loving, accepting, equitable, just and sustainable world for all beings and the Earth we share. So a few weeks ago, I decided I’d like to talk to you today about Kindness at the end of Random Acts of Kindness week. I wrote down in my planner the title you see in your Order of Service. But I wrote “Ax,” spelled AX. Then I thought about the plural, you know, if you had more than one Ax of Kindness: Axes of Kindness. Which, of course, made me think of that well-known phrase “Axes of Evil,” which annoyed me very much when it was first conceived. But these are the Axes of Kindness and what kinds of weapons do they have there? Well, Weapons of Mass—what?—Illumination, Edification, Reformation, Inspiration, Amelioration? …You know those advertising slides they show on the movie screen in some theatres before the show starts? What if one day you were sitting there at the Fairfield Cinemas at Bullard Square and saw a photo of this church, and, say, the foyer and East Wing on the Committee Fair Day we held last month, packed with people and balloons and table displays of all we are doing here, and these words

The Unitarian Church in Westport:
bringing you
WEAPONS OF MASS RECONCILIATION AND TRANSFORMATION
since 1949.

Or this full-page ad in Time magazine:

Unitarianianism and Universalism:
creating and distributing
HERETICAL WEAPONS OF MASS SALVATION AND UNITY
since the 4^th Century AD.

Now this is an ad campaign I could get behind!

Well, any of the staff members here will tell you that I went a little crazy after that. I followed a stray thought to its ludicrous end. I started to make up names for other weapons in that arsenal, like:

canons of world wisdom literature,

laughing gas grin-aid launchers,

selfless care committee balmers,

and instead of bayonets, the obey-o-not of personal autonomy

and whatever weapon that is that inflicts a "stab of conscience.” [added after post-service foyer conversations: “an anti-goingballistic missal,” a “peace-tool” (= pistol), amored thanks (= armored tanks)] If we’re going to have a war, let’s have one like that: a war of teaching, laughing, healing, empowering; a war that arms people with skillfulness and brings them into generous and loving relationship at the Axes of Kindness. Is that a Vision Mission Covenant or what? …. I believe that we are living something like this Vision Mission Covenant here and that we will continue to pursue that end in the future, more purposefully and tirelessly.

Yesterday Judith Anderson and I facilitated a four-hour Nonviolent Communication workshop for fifteen people in the Meeting House. I think we are actually living something like that here and I think that we are going to continue to pursue tht end over time because this is a good and gracious and intelligent group of people and a powerful movement that we are in, at least in potential.

So yesterday Judith Anderson and I facilitated a Nonviolent Communication workshop over in the Meeting House. Twelve people, four hours. It was a great session and a safe space and we learned a lot about how to stay connected, the art of staying connected. And I think of something that you’ve heard a lot from this very pulpit from Frank. Even I’ve heard it a lot and I’ve only been here a year and a half! Religion is the process of…yes, connecting: re-ligare, “to connect back again.” The process of enabling compassionate connection that you learn in NVC works only if you are truly desiring to recover or deepen your relationship to the person with whom you are engaged, to recognize your common humanity, and to honor his (or hers) as you do your own. This is one way I have chosen to practice and teach religion—to foster the intentional act of connecting. You can join me in that, if you like. You can register for a Friday evening and all-day Saturday workshop on Nonviolent Communication the upcoming “leap weekend.” An opportunity to really practice and extend your knowledge of what NVC is all about. I think we come together here for that purpose. That’s what makes this a “sanctuary.” This is a place deliberately designed, designated and maintained as a place where meaning is made by “connection” to ourselves inside, to others around us here and to people in town or far away from here and sometimes to an entity or power or mystery that includes and transcends all of that. Religion is the means: the place, the path, the processes, the conditions that bring us together for the purpose of connecting.

Last week Frank asked me to give him my definition of spirituality—which I did—and then he quoted me in his sermon: “Your spirituality lies in your ability to identify and multiply experiences that move you deeply, calling you back to that which is most worthy of your attention and love.” The purpose of your religion is to provide guidance and support as you seek a spirituality that works for you, that stirs your compassion for yourself and others and reminds you that you are good, vital, gifted, and free, that your life has purpose and beauty and that you are surrounded by other beings who also matter very much. Spirituality is about what “happens” after Religion has arranged the possibility of making a meaningful connection. Spirituality has to do with whether and how the “juice” flows through that circuit once the connection is made.

Kindness, as an act of Love, along with all the other Weapons of Mass Reconciliation, Transformation and Salvation constitute the “juice” that flows through the connections that Religion helps us make. The word “kindness” is derived from Old English words that have to do with family and kin, “the feeling that relatives have for one another,” our understanding of our commonality as humans. In modern English the definitions of “kind” reflect both our connection and solidarity as members of the human family and our tendency to categorize and separate, as in “this kind” and “that kind.” Those are our choices, aren’t they—always have been and always will be—to connect, unite and cherish, or to differentiate, alienate and despise. In order to connect we’ve got to seek a balance between considering our own needs and feelings and attending to the needs and feelings of others.

In the Confucian religious system, the prime virtue is jen. The Chinese wordis a combination of two characters, one signifying “human being” and one indicating “two.” TwoßàHumans. Together they convey the quality “humanheartedness.” Humanity towards others and respect for yourself are contained in the concept. Balance. Unimpeded flow between the two. Reciprocity. Kinned-ness. Compassion. The Hebrew word for compassion, invoked most often during Yom Kippur, is rachamim, the plural of the word for “womb.” My first image, reading about this linguistic connection, was of two beings in one womb, sharing nourishment in the circuit of the mother’s circulation. Twins meeting shared needs, together.

One of the premises of Nonviolent Communication is that human beings share universal needs: in their broadest categories they are needs such as authenticity, play, peace, meaning, physical well-being autonomy, and connection. The fact that we have these needs in common is the foundation of our ability to have empathy towards one another. A second basic principle of NVC is that we human beings are naturally inclined to want to contribute to our own well-being and the well-being of others. I noticed in the course of my reading that the word for empathy in Burmese (or one of the Myanmar languages, anyway) means literally “my heart trying to be your heart” (Ferrucci, 305). Empathy between us is part of the process of remembering that we share the circulation of critical nourishment. Common needs are the basis of empathy. Empathy is the basis of compassion. And compassion is the basis for connection. So no surprise that Religions of all kinds concentrate on the idea of compassion.

In Buddhism, for instance, absence of compassion is the cause of suffering. The 2^nd of the Four Noble Truths explains that suffering is born in the rupture of relationships that results when we value our own fulfillment at the expense of the fulfillment of other beings. Last Monday I was doodling in my notes—during a Board of Trustees meeting, I admit!—perfecting an idea I had had. Two overlapping yin-yang symbols, the symbol of Taoism—you know, those white and black “commas” nested back-to-back, white with a round dot of black, and black with a round dot of white in the fat part of the shape. And overlaid on the two overlapping yin-yang symbols, a Valentine-heart with the round bottoms of the “commas” nestled in the cheeks of the heart.  The overlap creates an elliptical opening in the center of the heart. “Ah,” I thought, looking fondly at my drawing, “circulation through open hearts can only happen when two people are connected.” Religion brings us together. Spirituality is all about maintaining the flow of compassion through the opening that is formed. God or “Good” is the Power and the Kingdom and the Glory that arises when the connection is sustained and the flow is unimpeded.

Flow is my metaphor of choice. I have always been attracted to the idea, the image, the feeling of “flow” from the time I was a little girl. There was a creek, for instance, in the pasture behind our house on Faculty Row. As soon as I was old enough to roam, I was convinced somehow that it was my job to keep that little waterway clear of debris and free-flowing. I spent many hours in a week after school down there, immersed in the life of that stream. And then it was any creek or river or lake, and over the years: white water canoeing, rowing, Tai Chi, human anatomy and nursing, cardiac surgery ICU and circulation through the human heart, through intravenous tubing I changed daily…. In the end my earth-centered theology. So when Frank used one of his favorite Robert Frost poems in offering me the Right Hand of Fellowship during my Installation as your Associate Minister, I knew what he was talking about:

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
 I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.     
[Robert Frost, “The Pasture,” 1915]

It’s all of a piece. Thomas Hobbes, the 17^th Century Materialist, said “What is the heart but a spring?” Certain conditions in my growing up conspired, nevertheless, to educate me out of the natural impulse to keep the channels of connection clear. My trajectory in developing the virtues of empathy, compassion and kindness was long, necessitated, in fact, twenty-two years of nursing before I could become a UU minister. I had to be tamed and it seemed to take forever. When I was a teenager, I used to bite kids standing in front of me in lines at school on the shoulder. I was known for that. I remember as a freshman in college making a plan for the summer that included learning how to hug people. I was a beast, a wild thing for a time. The Little Prince says to the fox, you remember, because Frank quotes this passage often enough also, “What does that mean, ‘tame’?” And the fox replies, “It is an act too often neglected. It means to establish ties.” To tame means to connect, a religious end, to be able to take another’s needs into account, to establish a conduit for compassion and the kindness compassion inspires.

That’s what we do here in our Small Group Ministry Program [ask participants in Small Group Ministry to stand if able and willing]. We have, I think 15 groups now, and those are groups of six to ten people, so you do the math, that’s a lot people in the congregation who are coming together monthly for two hours, purposefully intending to connect with one another in various ways: creating sacred space, lighting a chalice, sharing what’s going on in their lives, discussing a common issue. The issue last month was Compassion.” There’s a beautiful curriculum written for each of those topics, that all the groups in the Ministry think about and talk about together. If you are not involved in a small group of this kind, you might consider signing up for one.

Thich Nhat Hanh is quoted on the cover of your Order of Service, saying "Only your compassion and your loving kindness are invincible, and without limit."  If Good is flow, my own theology claims, then Evil is the condition that prevails when flow is blocked, a kind of starvation that distorts the human effort to meet needs. And that’s another aspect of this story, another sermon, a sermon that focuses on how evil processes flourish behind such obstructions, in individuals, within institutions, in the governments of countries. That’s where the Ax of Kindness and all our other Weapons of Mass Reconciliation and Transformation come into play. They alone have the power to penetrate the open hearts and minds to the flow of love through channels of compassion. They are the weapons of connection and compassion.

To close I bring you the words of Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron: “Let us talk,” she writes, “about awakening the heart…Let us talk about how to awaken our genuine compassion.  If we are willing to stand fully in our own shoes and never give up on ourselves, then we will be able to put ourselves in the shoes of others and never give up on them.  True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all things.” 

Our kinship. Our kind-ship. AMEN.

Closing Words

If there is any good thing I can do,
or any kindness I can show to any person,
let me do it now; 
let me not defer or neglect it,
for I may not pass this way again.    

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