Metacentricities

No. I’m not on vacation, even though a lot of other people are. I get summer vacation in September, when Ruth and I go to P-Town for a few days, but that’s after Fall equinox, so, it’s actually a Fall vacation.

So why that post title? I have been spending a lot of time working in our screen porch, which feels like heaven. And just earlier I was standing at the stove, making tomato sauce for dinner, with these amazing fresh summer tomatoes from our CSA farm, and feeling a summer breeze flow through the kitchen, and I felt a real sense of peace. The feeling of being at home, really at home, safe, loved, and enjoying a moment of cooking therapy made me feel like I was on vacation.

And, of course, that’s the way it should be, right? We can be in the midst of craziness and stress of work, lots of other things going on, but if we can find peace and centeredness in the midst of that - well, that means we get vacation all the time, or, at least, we can feel those moments that are like vacation during times when we are not.

I while ago, when I was still part of the UU Blogosphere, I kept up with lot of UU blogs, like Philocrites, Chalice Chick, PeaceBang, and quite a number of others. After I left UUism, I didn’t read very many UU blogs. I think Boy in the Bands (Scott Wells) was one of the only UU blogs that I regularly read, partially because of the Universalist stuff he’d write, and partially because we are fellow Linux geeks. The other was Ministrare (Rev. Sean), because we’d first met in RLP’s chat room, and we’d just missed getting to hang out in real life, because he spent a semester on sabbatical at Starr King the spring after I’d left PSR - so there was a personal connection.

And every once in a while, I’d catch a whiff of a UU blogosphere conversation (like Beauty Tips for Minsters, and a much more recent one about Christian practices among UUs.) Interestingly enough, it was that most recent one that sent me back to reading some UU blogs, and I’ve added a bunch back to my “religion” tab on Netvibes (how I read RSS feeds.)

I find that I like the things I’m reading and the conversations people are having - especially the UU Christan folks. The kinds of questions and discussion seem refreshing and interesting to me.

After I left seminary, and in a space of real struggle with where I sat in terms of Christianity, I wrote a piece a while back (late last year) called “Sacrifice“:

I realize that I must sacrifice my desire to sit within Christianity, or any religious tradition – I must sacrifice that impulse, that drive, to find myself at home within some given structure or institution. I must sacrifice a comfort and familiarity of a known, an understood. I must sacrifice this all, in order to really be able to fully embrace the God I know. God is so much bigger than one faith tradition.

Cough. Sputter. Er. Sounds a bit like a UU doesn’t it? We’ll see.

I still read some UU bloggers, and it seems this quiz is going around the UU Blogosphere (That’s Rev. Sean’s link). I figured I’d try it out.

Your Inner European is Swedish!

Relaxed and peaceful.You like to kick back and enjoy life.

Who’s Your Inner European?

It has become somewhat of a meme, that phrase, taken from reports about the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota. Of course, like many things for us, it takes a big disaster like this to wake us up to the realities: twenty seven years of fiscally conservative, largely trickle-down economics (Clinton didn’t significantly change anything), and the focus on the military-industrial complex has meant that our entire infrastructure, the things that we depend on every day, like roads and bridges and schools and hospitals are all full of structural deficiencies, and are ready to collapse.

But, of course there is more. Our American society as a whole is full of structural deficiencies. Structural deficiencies in priorities, in compassion, and in awareness. We all fiddling while our Rome burns. It is, of course, burning. It’s been burning for a while now.  I think we’re finally beginning to really feel the heat.

In a pessimistic moment, I hear people say “here’s a wake up call,” and I think “how many of these do we need?” We’ve had a gazillion already. But then, I think perhaps it’s like those mornings when you don’t want to get up, and you hit the snooze button over and over, until, at some point, you realize it really is time to wake up.