Archive for category: Minister Message

Turn in Your Homework

I had a little problem growing up. It was completely self made, and no matter what my parents and my teachers did, every so often it would come back. I was one of those kids who just wouldn’t do his homework. I would have periods where I’d do better, and it always felt good. But then time with friends, working on theatrical productions, or some other thing would come into my life and I’d stop caring or just not have the time to get the work done. It was a constant source of tension for my parents, I’m not so proud to say.

Some of you are aware that I released a book this week. I’ve been very pleased by the response to it, and the kind words of support for this project mean a lot to me. One of the things I do in the book—even though I call it by another name—is assign homework. I was a little appalled with myself that I’d do this, to be honest. After all, homework has been a nemesis to me for a lot of my life. But it’s also been one of the most important parts of my later years of life.

Every day I write twice in a journal: once in the morning and once before I go to bed. In the morning I set intentions for the day, and in the evening I take a look how I did on those intentions. I write about other things, too. This is work that I am doing in my home, yes. So it’s a kind of homework. But it is something more than that, too. It’s a way of making promises to myself and then seeing how well I do in keeping those promises to myself. And promises we make to ourselves are the most important ones to keep.

Over the next few weeks your Stewardship Team is going to be sending out some material about the Stewardship Campaign this year. They will be asking you to make a pledge of financial support to the church, and I know that members of our community will do this. I’d like to ask you for a favor, though. I’d like you to do a little homework if you would.

Please just take a few moments and write down what you’d like our community to look like, what you’d like our community to be doing, five years from now. And if you’d be so kind, please turn in your homework. You can leave it as a comment here or you can email me at the address below. It is important for us all to be thinking actively about the vision we have for our community in the coming years. As our youngest members will be moving to adulthood, what kinds of experiences should the church hold for them? As we all mature together and we welcome new people, what do we want to be here for us? Really reach, really write, and really let me know. And don’t worry, I’ll be grading on a curve.

Many blessings to you on your work.

Rev. T. J.
minister@unitariansofhi.org

Inch by Inch

The thunderclap was ominous. I don’t hear as much thunder on Oahu as in other places I’ve lived. And when I hear it, there is usually rain close behind. As I exited the church after the 10 am service, I saw the gray patch on the otherwise bald sky and I wondered if it would all work. The planning, memorization, emails, and coordination were all helping to gather the members of our Young Family Ohana and other adjacent adults, to have our first Young Families gathering in more than a year, outside, with masks, social distancing, and hopefully, fun.

All week I’d been memorizing The Garden Song, a song by David Mallet that has been covered in various ways by just about every folk singer in history. I was all ready to wow the children with my guitar and the fun bouncy rhythm of the tune. I had this vision, you see, of the minister in the park under a tree with his guitar—the “cool” minister. And this was going to be my chance to fulfill that vision. But what is it humans are supposed to do to make the Divine laugh? That’s right: make plans.

As the families gathered, so did the rains. We rang the bell, we lit the chalice, and we circled round. We sang a welcoming song together, which was a challenge. Perhaps my selection of a round was not the way to go. And by the time our service rounded the corner to the story for all ages, the rain was starting to come. As I watched droplets collect on my laptop computer screen and keyboard, again, I realized this was a learning experience for me…but one I hoped would not come at too steep a price.

Any learning worth doing is like that. It has a cost. Yes, there is the time that learning takes. There are also sometimes actual costs and fees. In this case, one of our newest families brought soil, small pots, and sunflower seeds so we could each plant sunflowers. But real learning asks more than these things. The recognition that launching into singing a round with children and people who haven’t been to church in more than a year required some acceptance of my own shortsightedness. And then there was the rain—a lesson in powerlessness humans have over so much of our environment.

And this learning cost something else: The Garden Song. So much of the time together would have been perfectly summed up in its lyrics: the planting, the earth, the rain. But it was clear that time on the playground was yet even more perfect. So I stowed my guitar and my vision of “cool” and wrapped up the service with a blessing upon the seeds we planted. And in the moment I grieved my chance to sing “inch by in row by row, gonna make this garden grow” I also marveled at the dozen children who’d grown this year, inch by inch, and at what it meant to them to be playing together again. And like a clap of thunder, it struck me how much this year cost them, cost all of us, to learn the lesson of how much we need one another to thrive.

Many blessings, my friends,
Rev. T. J.
minister@unitariansofhi.org

To Love Alike

The friend I have had the longest in my life lives in Boulder. One of my best high school friends does, too. They both have children. Blessedly, they live in a part of Boulder that has its own fancy grocery store where they shop. So when I saw the news that a gunman opened fire in a grocery store in another part of town, I wasn’t overly concerned for the safety of their families. But this shooting and the shooting in Atlanta were painful and stark reminders of a pandemic that was with a nation long before the current one.

But the current viral pandemic seems to have blocked from view, or from the news, the horrifying reality that there was a drastic increase in mass shootings in 2020 and a significant increase in overall gun deaths.* I recall during the pandemic ignorantly thinking that the pandemic had decreased the number of mass shootings. It was only recently that I realized that it was the opposite. And I was left wondering how I could have been so ill informed.

I know some of us spend part of our weeks or days wondering how entire groups of people can be “misinformed” or completely “wrong.” In many of those cases, we can say that those people are ignoring objective facts to further their own world view or sense of how they think things should be. Even setting aside mass delusions and conspiracy theories, there are so many ways I am left scratching my head at what some groups will believe. Don’t they know how impossible what they believe is? Why are they so unwilling to take an action that might create real change?

And then I remember how smart I thought I was when I “realized” how many fewer mass shootings there were during the pandemic. I even texted two friends about it without bothering to check the facts. I feel pretty sick about that now. But I let my mind, my mood, and my feelings tell me what I thought to be true based on what I’d observed. I fell into one of the most satisfying traps for a human: the belief that our individual perception is everyone’s reality. Instead of creating curiosity in my mind, it created a conclusion and a form of delusion.

I’m not saying that I am willing now to give a pass to people who hold to dangerous and woefully uninformed convictions. But I do have to admit that I am equipped with the same potential to see things that are not there. And this is why a spiritual inclination that challenges us to hold more than one belief, more than one way, perhaps more than one faith, together in a church, in an online gathering, or even in our own minds, is more than a pleasant way to gather. It actually honors the truth of a complex and contradictory world. It honors the lives of those who cleared the way for this freedom. And it honors us both by trusting that we don’t have to think alike to love alike.

And may it ever be so.

Rev. T. J.
minister@unitariansofhi.org

*See https://abcnews.go.com/US/graphics-story-mass-shootings-pandemic/story?id=76628491

To The Moon

It must have been a terrifying experience. The clouds gathered. The winds picked up. And the water began to rise. It must have been hard to build a boat in the rain, a boat big enough to weather the storm, to withstand the flooding. And it must have been scary to try to build a house on the boat, more of an ark, to carry him to safety and provide a place to stay for the duration of the flood. And doing all of this while the God who brought the flood into being watched and waited must have been confusing.

I was reminded of this story this week. This is the story of Nu’u-pule, or praying Nu’u, from the Hawaiian faith. I know, it sounds like other popular stories from other lands. Indeed survival of floods, of deluges, are stories that are part of many cultures. And there is no evidence to suggest that the Nu’u story did not exist independently, long before any missionaries arrived in these lands, carrying the Book of Genesis and the story of Noah.

The independent existence of stories about floods, about waves crashing over everyone around us and chasing us to higher ground is no mystery. Who hasn’t been in a period where they can barely keep their head above water? Who hasn’t looked up from a swirl of pain or discomfort or confusion and wondered from where will my help come? The floods of emotions many of us know are sometimes made even more painful when it seems that there is literally no one else on earth who can help us. Or worse, maybe the people or the forces that are meant to help us let us down. Many of us need a lifeboat at times.

Nu’u escaped the flood and landed atop Mauna Wakea (Mauna Kea, today) and in gratitude for his safety, he made sacrifices to the moon he saw in the sky. But it was not the moon that saved him. The great God Kāne descended to Mauna Wakea on a rainbow (the story in Genesis had a rainbow too, we might note), and Kāne explained to Nu’u the way he had come to be saved at last atop the towering mountain peak.

I have been atop Mauna Kea to see the full moon rise. Breathless and giddy at the height, shivering at the temperature, a friend and I saw the moon glide up into sight, transit across the star-specked night, and light the darkness once more. I would have made a sacrifice to the moon then and there, too. And maybe I should have. Maybe it would have pleased the Gods and prevented the flooding we see this week. Maybe it would have pleased the Gods to know how grateful I was in that moment to witness such beauty. Maybe it would have pleased the Gods to know how that moment inspired me to be a better refuge from the floods of life for those who matter most to me. It hope it pleases Kāne to know I will try to be a better boat upon his ocean.

And I pray it may always be so.

Rev. T. J.
minister@unitariansofhi.org

Stuck

The dark of morning was as still as it always is. My morning writing was done. So was my morning workout. It was time to log in and say “Hi” to my friend. He’s always good to see, with his huge beard and bright smiling eyes. I thought about the line of beard-care products he started and wondered for a moment if he could now ever get rid of his beard while also advertising his line. Probably not. It’s funny how we get stuck to things sometimes.

We caught up some about our lives. I don’t think many of the things causing us challenges since the last time we spoke had actually changed that much. Families, careers, exercise, diet, pastimes all went on like they did so many times before. We even got into some spirituality, which isn’t all that rare for me these days, even with people I’ve known as long as this friend.

The grin he always had through high school was still there. Now, it sort of says, “Hey, you can’t fool me.” In high school it was different. He was two years older, and he had a locker by my sister’s. I remember that grin and the chill up my spine from some of the things he’d yell through it to his friends—repeating words he thought were playful ribbing but struck fear in others because those same words described too closely something we feared about ourselves.

And then years went by with reports of his struggles with driving under the influence, losing his license, and needing rides places. A lot of times he’d just crash where parties were happening rather than ask for a ride home, curling up on a couch or in a corner. And I remember the close quarters of his basement apartment in a town not far from my own where it seemed the world was closing in on him, like he might be stuck there forever.

And I remember the dumb luck that he moved in a few houses down from a friend I was visiting just a few years ago. And when I needed a ride somewhere, the friend I was staying with said that this same friend would be going to the same place and I could get a ride. I did. And since that ride, this friend and I have been in closer touch than ever before. We discovered how much we really had in common, and we share now so many of the same ways we choose to look at life’s challenges.

It’s hard to explain the feeling of hearing “Love you, dude” from someone you once truly feared and later truly pitied. It’s not that it’s strange or weird or even unexpected. It’s more that I get the sense that this was always how it was meant to be, stuck together by something beyond our control, grinning through the dark mornings at one another, and laughing, still, at the children we were, and maybe the children we are.

Love you, dude.

And may it ever be so,
Rev. T. J.
minister@unitariansofhi.org

Just a Moment

As some of you learned yesterday, I was feeling a little under the weather the past few days. I am feeling better today, which is wonderful. And one of the advantages of actually feeling under the weather is that I slow down a little. And in slowing down, I’ve learned in some ways to just give in when I am feeling ill. Times when I try to keep going even though I’m not feeling well result in much longer illnesses. So I just hunkered down and focused on taking care of myself.

On the advice of a friend, I began listening to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by occasional Hawaii visitor Robert Louis Stevenson. I must confess, I only thought I knew what this novella was about. Through grotesque characterizations of its story in other media, I figured I knew what I was in for, but I was wrong.

See, the novel formed the plot of a sensational musical called Jekyll and Hyde, which was really a pop opera of sorts, crowned with the soaring Frank Wildhorn anthem from its score: “This Is the Moment.” If you’re curious, this was the musical that David Hasselhoff starred in for a stretch on Broadway. And my interest in this musical was encouraged in high school by a close friend. We would play some of the score on night drives around town or to and from theater rehearsals. It made for good driving music.

The novella surprised me. Since I wasn’t feeling well already, the themes of illness struck a chord. But the surprise was the characterization of Mr. Hyde. Throughout so much of pop culture, Hyde is a monster, large and unwieldy. But in the novella he’s younger, stout, and possessing traits that are very human, if not basely so. His whims and passions are on the surface always and boil over in ways that are terrifying and violent at times.

And in the telling of the tale, it was hard not to remember a cold night in Western New York, when hanging out with my friend after rehearsal, maybe listening to “This Is the Moment,” and with the most tentative and gentle gesture, I received the surprise of the very first kiss from another guy in my life. It’s hard not to remember how much of a life a child tries to hide from those around them in those years: the very human (if not basely so) feelings a child fears might come out from within and tear a child’s life apart. It’s hard not to remember the safety of a moment, though, when whatever was hiding is held close and cared for, doing nothing at all to the world.

Lives change in moments. With small decisions, we direct the course of our lives in different directions. We may not feel the difference then. It’s only after the moment and years on that we notice we arrived somewhere we could not have imagined (like Hawaii). And so it might be wise to wonder today, or in the coming days whether this is the moment. Or is it this one? Because what you find in a moment can surprise you.

And may it ever be so,
Rev. T. J.
minister@unitariansofhi.org

Blessed Thoughtlessness

I’m listening to a book right now that a friend recommended to me. In fact, he forwarded a link to the audio book to be sure I couldn’t make any excuses about not listening to it. And since the “credits” in my Audible account have been piling up lately (due to a pretty busy schedule of late), I went ahead and dowloaded the book and I’ve been giving it a listen on some free time and before bed.

The book is called Falling into Grace: Insights on the End of Suffering by Adyshanti. First of all, my favorite thing in audio books is when the author of the book reads their own work. And this is the case with this book, so that is a plus. And I have to say, I was skeptical of the book for a few reasons, not the least of which was because I spent years in the study of meditation and mindfulness to address suffering, and a title like this seemed a bit audacious. But in giving it a try, a theme the author develops over a few chapters started to come into focus more for me. The theme is that the thoughts we have are not actually real things.

Now, I have a lot of thoughts. I have thoughts about food, about exercise, about friends, about justice, about pretty much everything I see around me. And the thoughts of some of the great minds and great artists of time are of enormous value to me, too. Are those imaginings, those works of thought also not real? As it turns out, the author does address some of these things in a way that is helpful, but what I have received from the book has been kind of remarkable, which is why I’m sharing it here.

For the first time in a while, in my waking, non-meditating life, nothing crosses my mind. I have gone long periods with a blank mind. Maybe this is something others readily access or experience and I’m just late to the party. Certainly we have all experienced drivers who seem not to have a lot going on in their mind, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about having a type of waking, conscious nothingness in one’s mind. I’m not even sure yet whether it’s something I care for too much. It’s still remarkable, though.

Because in the silence of my mind of late, my vision is wider. I see the beauty of the island even more crisply. In the silence of my mind of late, the voices that question me about worthiness and acceptability are as silent as all other thoughts. I see the beauty of my own life more fully. And in the silence of my mind of late, I don’t feel loved. I know I am loved, that I am beloved. It’s not even a thought on my mind. So I hope that each of you will know also, that you are loved, that you are beloved, no matter what else happens to cross your mind today.

And may it ever be so,
Rev. T. J.
minister@unitariansofhi.org

Seeing it Coming

The boos from the gathered crowd started slowly. They were only scattered. And there was also applause. Somehow laughter was starting to roll through, too. No one was sure what to make of the situation. We had all seen it coming. It only took some foresight to see it might be a problem. But it was only when the time came, when the exact moment presented itself, that the crowd let it be known how they were feeling about what was taking place. Sometimes we don’t know what we’re going to do until we are forced to act. But this I know: blocking a sunset ought to be a crime.

See, I was part of a crowd about a week ago sitting there at Kaimana Beach. And we were watching two tugboats guide a Young Brothers barge across the horizon, carrying shipping containers packed seven or so high into the air. We saw the tugs coming, we saw the barge following, and right at the moment the sun was going to set over the horizon, right at the moment we all wanted to see the “green flash,” the barge pulled in to block the entire beach’s view of the sunset. And the reactions from the crowd on the beach were kind of hilarious.

My friend had sort of predicted it. He saw the vessel coming and wondered if this would happen. So when it did, I booed the barge. He laughed. Others applauded. But no matter how you responded, the feeling on the beach was that we’d all witnessed something uncommon and not everyone was sure how to react.

I think a lot of us are feeling that way right now. Visions of people invading a capitol and the deadly impact of the invasion leave many with the sense that what they are seeing might not even be real. This combination of two things we are so used to seeing–angered crowds and the U.S. Capitol building–are suddenly and violently coming together in a scene nobody has ever seen before, colliding in a way that for many was unthinkable and yet for some was inevitable. The vision of this collision is etched in the minds of many, and will be for a long time.

People of faith are a people of vision. We gather together in different ways, in different times, to wonder at what we might uncover of the truth that unites us. Sometimes we seek to sit and watch a revolution of the sapphire swathed earth that makes the sun seem to set before our very eyes, only to have the vision we hoped to see blotted out, blocked, and booed. Other times our vision might see beyond the barge passing, and we can remember all of the setting suns we’ve known before, rest our hope in those suns to come, and bear the passing of what seeks to obscure the truth we know. And then there are times we yell, “boo” like a child at something over which we have no control at all, just because it feels good. But our friends are still there by our side, laughing with us, or maybe at us, until it passes, until we can see clearly once more.

And may it ever be so.

Rev. T. J.
minister@unitariansofhi.org

Just One Person

I was Snoopy once. It sounds funny, but it’s true. In high school we did a production of the musical Snoopy!, which is a darling musical about…well…Snoopy, the beloved Peanuts character. One of the things we did to promote the musical in high school was to spend a day traveling around many of the more junior schools performing a few of the numbers. And a lot of the children came to see the show. But it was what happened after the show that struck me more: kids would recognize me around town as…well…Snoopy.

Blessedly the recognition faded, and I did move away from town. But something of that experience stayed with me. It was such a special cast of 7 of us, a magical number. The entire cast made something of a go of acting or music after high school. And to this day, I am in regular touch with some of the cast. But I love them all deeply. In fact, Heather Moran, who sang for us on Women’s History Sunday was Peppermint Patty in that production. There is something special about being part of an ensemble that comes together to put something new and fun into the world.

I watched the Peanuts special again this past week, as some of your might have gathered from my sermon. And I was touched by the sweet voice of the actress who played Sally, Charlie Brown’s sister. And when I heard that voice, I remembered sitting in my apartment in Queens after graduating college, and hearing the terrible news. The young woman who played Sally in our own production, who was in college, had died. I was in a car that weekend with Peppermint Patty and Woodstock, traveling to meet the rest of the cast and many more for the memorial.

At the memorial, dozens of voices who’d joined together in life with our friend, sang again together to honor her death. We sang “Just One Person,” a song with the message that it takes a person to believe in you, before you really can believe in yourself. And belief is like that sometimes. The meaning of belief is rooted in the idea of “what you rest your heart upon.” It’s hard to rest a breaking heart. But there is nothing like losing something you believed in to make you treasure what you have.

In the coming days, a celebration of a child’s life that sparked revolutionary belief will be upon many around the globe. This may not be your faith, but it is still a reminder to notice where we rest our hearts today. And so I offer these hopes for you. May we rest in the care of a community that seeks justice. May we rest in the kindness of friends. And may we rest in the sacred task of sometimes being just one person, believing in another person, and knowing that act, of bringing one heart to bear with another’s, is an act that can literally change the world…just one person at a time.

Joy to each one of you and joy to the world.
Rev. T. J.
minister@unitariansofhi.org

Turning it Down

The music wouldn’t stop. In fact, it was getting louder. And as the hours stretched across the day, I couldn’t escape it. A friend visiting our campsite brought with him a very loud speaker that he seemed to take everywhere he went. Even when we were in the water bodysurfing, he lugged it to the beach and blasted the music loud enough to hear it through the surf. At one point I got into the backseat of my car, lay down, and put on my noise cancelling headphones just to get a break from the onslaught. It was a lot.

I confess to my own dramatic flare at times. I own this about myself. And I realized that none of the other people I was with seemed bothered in the slightest by the music. In fact everyone else was loving it, adding to the mood of the experience for them. And so I resisted my impulse to curb the music…mostly. I did remark to my friend whose birthday we were celebrating, “It’s killing me, man.” And that friend asked that the music be turned down. I was grateful for the slightly mellower vibe with the quieter music, but I was thinking about other things by then.

Everything he was playing was highly produced electronic music. Some of the songs were clever remixed versions of familiar tunes I knew. And others included samples of singers playing to thumping rhythms. But as I heard friends asking for particular songs and talking about the artists who arrange these songs, I started to realize how willfully ignorant I was to an entire world of music that is deeply affecting and widely loved by people, and in particular, people younger than I am. And as one song started, my speaker-wielding friend commented that it doesn’t have any lyrics…but there it was “I got a feeling that I never, never had before.”

Because it was a sample of a song, they didn’t think of it as lyrics. And it was clear they didn’t know who was singing. Because where I come from, when Etta James sings, you listen. This song sampled the opening to Something’s Got a Hold on Me, which typified the uptempo hits James had before so much of her life was ravaged by heroin and personal tragedy. And the thump of the speaker seemed less in that moment, when a voice from beyond reminded me that we can get better.

I thought of the life we were celebrating around the fire and how at times I wondered whether what had a hold on that life would be too much for it to bear. And as the fire warmed us all against the night breezes, I had a feeling like I’d never, never had before. I thought of the return Etta James made to music, and the incalculable ways she changed music, bending genres and mastering styles in the way only genius can. And I thought of my friend, smiling, watching all of his friends enjoy the music for his birthday, and the blessing of learning what’s killing us, and finding the strength at long last to turn it down.

Many blessings, friends.
Rev. T. J.
minister@unitariansofhi.org