russkay

02:33 pm: Mind Over Matter -- It Matters. A sermon
This was presented at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester on May 8, 2011:

chalice lighting and opening words

 

Let the lighting of our chalice this morning remind us that the flame of knowledge and discovery illuminates our past but also casts shadows into our future.

 

And let us remember the words of Kathleen McTighe:

We come together this morning to remind one another to rest for a moment on the forming edge of our lives, to resist the headlong tumble into the next moment, until we claim for ourselves awareness and gratitude, taking the time to look into one another’s faces and see there communion: the reflection of our own eyes. This house of laughter and silence, memory and hope, is hallowed by our presence together.

 

reading

 

The Peace of Wild Things

A poem by Wendell Berry

 

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

  

offertory

 

We meet here each Sunday in community and worship, sheltered by our physical building and nurtured by our church’s institutional infrastructure and support staff. But it’s up to us to supply and support that structure, infrastructure, and staff, so I ask you to please be as generous as you can in your donations today.

 

reflection

 

mind over matter … it matters

 

 

nce upon a time I was young and immortal. Not that I believed I would live forever, mind you, but I simply never thought about growing older, about facing physical challenges or serious medical issues. No, I was simply going to go on living for the foreseeable future and enjoying life just the way I was used to.

 

That state of mind and way of living went on about 40 years too long. Eventually, the real world caught up with me, and life changed.

 

A year ago, I was spending the day with a friend and she asked me “What’s the next reflection you give at church going to be about?” I told her “Whoa – that may come when I have something more to say, but right now the pantry’s empty.” And then she proceeded to tell me exactly what it was I had left to talk about, and why she felt it important that I do so. My friend turned to me and said “Don’t be silly! Of course you have something to say. Look at all you put up with every day, look at all you deal with in terms of physical problems and limitations, and yet you continue to maintain a positive, sunny attitude toward life. I don’t know how you do that, but I think if you can talk about it, a lot of people will want to hear how it is you cope.”

 

“The thing is,” she continued, “we all face challenges and restrictions and problems. We all have health issues at some point, and for most of us these are serious and scary life events, and we don’t know very well how to deal with them. But there you are, faced with so many problems that I and others hope never to see, and the difference is, you don’t let them get you down. Despite the problems you keep going, and you do it in an extraordinary and positive way. This is what the rest of us need to hear about: How do you do it?”

 

 

o today i’m going to talk about another journey I’m on, an adventure that is both physical and spiritual. How do I do it? my friend asked me. I stand up here, folks, in a somewhat confused and bedazzled state of mind. My good friend has told me I have an important message for you and her, but I don’t feel particularly special or even that I have all that much to say. Yet I accept her judgment and so here I am, putting myself on the line while remaining conscious of my humble status as just another member of the human race and of this commu­nity. I can talk about what I do, how I cope. How do I keep going in the face of challenges and limitations that threaten every day to drown me, to send me to the depths of despair and depression, to discourage me, to make me wonder why I keep on living? Is it all worth it?

 

I am 68 years of age, and that’s not especially old by contemporary standards. Just a few years ago, I was prepared for life to go on with little change and a lot of satisfaction. And then the bottom dropped out. My wife died after 41 years of marriage; I lived alone for the first time in my life; I got very, very sick and nearly died myself.

 

A couple of years ago, someone I respect told me that with my life experience, knowledge, and what he termed my capacity for mystical self-reflection I had become an “elder of the tribe.” I think he’s off-base and his label is a rank exaggeration, but I do wish I could put down some of the baggage I’m now forced to carry on my journey. Nor do I always appreciate the insights that seem to pop up along the way. Last summer, for example, I came to a new awareness. Two years ago, if I had to put a label on myself for some obscure reason, I might possibly have called me an “older man.” But worsening medical and health issues have limited my horizons and presented me with a series of new challenges and physical restrictions. I’m no longer an older man; today I feel like an “old man” … and frankly, I don’t like it one bit. I hate being forced to come to terms with new limitations, with not being able to do simple things I could do six months or a year ago. My world is shrinking, getting smaller, closing in. I have to pay much more attention to everyday activities, and many little things I used to take for granted have now become big deals, and I must think about them consciously every time I encounter them.

 

What I’m talking about is physical deterioration. I’m getting older. The machinery is wearing out. The pace of the modern world is accelerating, and yet my own life is slowing down. I have to come to terms with new ways of living, often more cumbersome ways of doing things. I must face the fact that I simply cannot do everything I’d like to, and I will never do many of the activities that have been on my personal bucket list. There are so many things I’ve always wanted to do, places I want to go, and I figured I would get to them “someday.” Except now I know there is no someday. I can only count on present time and on what I can do today.

 

I’m not going to bore you with my complete medical history, but so you can better understand my situation and my perspective, I need to give a very brief outline of events in my life over the last decade, and a lot of them are health-related. Back around 2000 I finally confronted my lifelong weight problem with the seriousness it deserved. Some of you remember me when I weighed 360 pounds. I had surgery, lost 150 pounds and became what seemed to me an entirely different person. Then my wife’s breast cancer, which we had hoped was gone, suddenly returned and spread, and two years later she died. A few months after that I learned that my kidneys were failing. A long period of increasing sickness followed, and then I began regular dialysis treatments three times a week. In the first six weeks of dialysis, I lost another 50 pounds: that was six gallons of excess fluid my body had been carrying around, and I didn’t even know it!

 

Dialysis went on for a year and a half, and then I received a kidney transplant. By the way, that transplant happened on my late wife’s birthday, and I will always think of that kidney as a gift from her! The procedure, unfortunately, was followed by complications requiring two additional surgeries. But finally the new kidney was working, I was myself again, and my life went back to something like normal.

 

That state of affairs lasted approximately two years, and then the new kidney failed. Because of the insidious nature of kidney disease, it took me a couple of months to realize the kidney was no longer working. You’d think I would know about that immediately, but kidney disease does weird things to the mind as well as the body.

 

During the period when my transplant was working, I was taking a daily cocktail of anti-rejection drugs to protect the new kidney. However, I began to develop other medical problems, including a very severe case of anemia. My body just completely stopped making new blood cells, red or white. I spent nearly a year getting blood transfusions every two to three weeks while the doctors tried to figure out what was going on. They suspected that one of my drugs might be causing the anemia, and they tried cutting the dosage way back, to little avail. The kicker came after the kidney had failed. I went back on dialysis and stopped taking the anti-rejection drugs. Within four weeks, the anemia situation had essentially resolved itself, and my body was making blood cells again. Thank you, bone marrow!

 

Unfortunately, other physical problems began appearing at about the same time. The steroid I’d been taking daily for two years caused a dramatic loss of strength in my lower legs. On top of that, I developed a severe loss of feeling, what they call neuropathy, in both legs and to a lesser extent in my hands. The leg problems caused me to fall several times due to losing my balance – I couldn’t always tell where my feet were underneath me. These falls caused injuries that forced me to spend time in a rehab hospital. I now have a lot more trouble moving around than ever before. Walking is something I have to concentrate on consciously. Stairs are an obstacle I can handle, given enough time and determination, but even so the three steps leading up to my front door still present a severe test every single day.

 

 

kay. That’s the end of the medical report. I’ve gone over this in some detail so you can appreciate how much of a change my life has undergone in the last few years – and how many different things I’ve been hit with. But the real reason I’m speaking today is to tell you how I deal with – how I live with – these issues.

 

It does absolutely no good to say “Oh, poor me!” Sure, that might make me feel a little better for a couple of minutes, but mainly it’s a kind of slow poison. Instead, I’ve been fortunate enough to have been shown a better way. The finest example I have ever seen of how to live one’s life in the face of adversity was given to me by my late wife Harriet. She lived with breast cancer for 12 years – the diagnosis, the treatments, the going forward with “no evidence of disease” while still always aware of the Damoclean sword hanging over her, and finally recurrence, the spread to other organs, and the ultimate letting go. During those years following the initial diagnosis, she never once said or lived the phrase “Why me?” No, she concluded that breast cancer was such a hit-or-miss proposition that a better question would be: “Why NOT me?” Harriet lived with cancer, she lived with all the cancer treatments – surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation (what the breast cancer community refers to as slash, poison, and burn) – and six years ago cancer took her. The way she lived – and no less the way she faced her world while she was dying – was to me and many others a remarkable example of courage, strength, honesty, dignity, and self-respect.

 

During those dozen years, Harriet became an activist and advocate for those with breast cancer as well as an incredible support and information resource about the disease. At the time she died, I was keeping a couple of hundred of her “breast cancer buddies” informed about her condition on a daily basis. These people were located all over the world, demonstrating that the Internet had become a true lifeline for Harriet, her friends, and – as it turned out – for me too.

 

While I was writing my nightly e-mails, I discovered that writing about Harriet’s disease helped me to come to terms with it inside myself. As I sought to inform others how Harriet was doing and what was going on in our lives, I learned to talk about deep, personal events. I’ve been a professional writer all my working life, but while dealing with Harriet’s dying days, I discovered within me a whole new personal voice, one that now not only helps me communicate with others but also keeps me in touch with my own feelings, my inner self, the emotional core within my heart. It’s this voice that lets me know for certain that I have a soul.

 

As I look at my life today, so much of it does not happen the way I wish it would. For example, I live alone, and while I have proved to myself since Harriet’s passing that I can manage that, I’d really rather not. Over the past few years I have expended considerable emotional and psychic energy in looking for a new partner to share my life’s journey. I have met some wonderful people, and I’ve been in a couple of relationships that showed initial promise. I’ve been in love again, and I have to tell you that’s a pretty wonderful thing at any age. But in the end, those relationships didn’t pan out, and so I still live alone and spend much too much time with only myself for company. This is a challenge I try not to dwell upon too much these days. Que sera, sera, the song says, whatever will be, will be. And the real world reminds me every single day that It is what it is.

 

 

o how do i do it? I don’t have any unique answers. With my recently discovered new inner voice, I’ve been able to share with you folks in this church many of my thoughts and feelings. I spoke two years ago about my spiritual path, a journey based largely upon the teachings and practices I have learned in 12-step groups, particularly Al-Anon. Then last year, I spoke a few times during the Stewardship Campaign about what this church and this community means and has meant to me over the past 40 years.

One major lesson I have learned through my 12-step programs is that I am always – always – free to make a choice. Recall the famous conundrum about a glass filled with water halfway to the top. The pessimist says the glass is half-empty. The optimist says the glass is half-full. The pragmatist says they’re both wrong, that the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. I can decide to look at my life in negative terms, or I can choose to view myself in a more positive and I hope a more balanced way.

 

I have unequivocally and without hesitation opted for the positive. I recognize that in spite of physical challenges and limitations, regardless of the many things I can no longer do – notwithstanding all that, my life is filled with goodness and I am surrounded by wonderful people, more of them now than at any time in the past. I recognize this even as I now confront a new and changing set of challenges, limitations, and – just maybe – opportunities. A few years ago a friend in this congregation referred to my attitude as an example of grace. I prefer to think of it as simple gratitude, as appreciating what I do have.

 

And I choose to associate with people who also have gratitude in their lives. A good friend of mine has an e-mail signature line that asks “What if everything that happens to me today is a blessing?” My experience in life cannot refute that statement. Maybe she’s got it exactly right, and everything that happens is truly a blessing. In fact, we cannot know right now, in present time, exactly what something may mean or might lead to. So why not assume it will turn out to be a blessing? I think we can do that without being either naïve or irrational.

 

Do I get depressed? Of course I do. I feel really down once in a while and I have bad days, like everyone does. But I have lived long enough and in enough situations to know that I can get help for that too when I need it. It’s just another part of the human condition. My instincts tell me to keep on looking around. Things will continue to change: some for the worse, others will get better. I will welcome some changes and look askance at others. But I will continue to deal with the world as it is, to face reality and not make-believe. Every single day of my life I make a concerted, conscious effort to find the positive in what’s out there. At this moment in time, whether through force of will or more probably just plain dumb luck, I’m able to confront my life and its vicissitudes while maintaining a clear head and a generally upbeat attitude.

 

Right now I’m thirsty, but I know where I can find a drink. The glass is there, waiting for me. Whether it’s half-full or half-empty hardly matters so long as there's enough in it to keep me going. And yes, maybe it’s only water and not the Diet Coke I’d prefer … but I know that what I need to keep going will be there for me. My journey, so far, has taught me that somehow, someway, so long as I do my own work and take responsibility for my own actions, I’m going to find and get what I need. In fact, I’m going to be OK. This is not a certainty, but at the same time I have no doubts about it. For me the answer lies somewhere between knowledge and faith … yet it is not quite either one. I don’t really understand, but I have learned to accept.

 

This, friends, is how I do it.

 

Amen, and Blessed Be.

 

 

 

 

postlude

 

Before we listen to the Postlude, I’d like you to hear the words of Garrison Keillor. Pay careful attention, because his formulation is complicated:

 

“Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted

but getting what you have,

which once you have got it

you may be smart enough to see

is what you would have wanted

had you known.”   

 

(Postlude is the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” sung by the cast of Glee.)

 

 

closing words

 

There’s one final thing I need to say that is at least as important as anything I’ve talked about so far this morning. I’ve learned I cannot do life alone, by myself. I need other people, I need help, and I need the ability to ask for and accept that help. I need some kind of higher power in my life, and I need to live in community. In the end, that may be the primary reason I’m up here today.

 

This concludes our worship this morning, but hardly our service to one another. Let each one of us attend to ourselves, to our friends, to our family, to our many communities of association and interest – and let us never forget that we need them, and they need us.

 

Blessed Be.

Tags: aging, death, illness, limits

10:57 am: The Passing Parade

The Passing Parade

An Encounter with Death

 By Russell Kay

  

It was a dream, of course. I was sleeping in bed, taking a late afternoon nap. l awoke a little groggily, and was surprised to see a woman’s head on the pillow next to me. It was my wife Harriet – I think – though her hair was a different color. And I knew that Harriet had died five years ago. The dream was clearly set in the present. I reached out to touch her, but I could not do it. It seemed as if every time I tried to touch or stroke her head, my action erased a part of the image I was seeing. After five futile moments, all I could see was a pile of rumpled bedclothes, full of deep shadows.

I got up and went outside. Here I have to tell you the setting of this dream, because it too had a dreamlike quality. I was clearly in the house on Tupelo Road that Harriet and I lived in for over 30 years, the house in which we raised Alex. But instead of a collection of neighbors we barely knew and had little interaction with, the next several houses to mine in this dream were the houses of my friends.

Also, these friends were just as dreamlike as everything else I’m writing about. What I mean is, they weren’t really people I know, or love or even like, in real life. But they seemed to be my best friends, so I’ll describe them. First was a couple with two children, a boy and girl aged 10 and 8 or thereabouts. The father was my closest friend (though I cannot put a name to him!) and resembled a man who was once a good friend in the real world.

Another neighbor, though he doesn’t really figure into this dream otherwise, was a former minister. The third person – indeed the heart and soul of this dream – was named Adam, and he looked exactly like Alton Brown, the television personality. Adam was wearing a black shirt with a dark purple necktie and over that a blue string tie or ribbon.

I described my vision of Harriet and explained how confused and troubled I felt. Adam smiled, with a twinkle in his eye, and said not to worry about it. “You‘ll see,” he said, “Things will work out fine.”

My other friend turned to Adam and looked at him quizzically. “Do you know something you’re not telling us?” he asked. Adam smiled knowingly, a Cheshire cat sort of grin, but said nothing.

 
“Are you OK?” my friend continued. It crossed my mind as I listened and heard this that I suddenly knew something I had not known the moment before … that Adam was dying. I said something rather incoherent, for I was very confused.

With that, Adam turned and walked back to his house and got into his car. I followed him, cutting between the bushes that marked his property. Then I came back home and went up to my second-floor living room. By now it was getting dark – just past dusk, I’d say.

I looked out the front window at the sidewalk below. From the left, the direction of my friends’ houses, I saw two people walking. One was a young man, a teenager or perhaps a 20-something, wearing shorts and a striped tee-shirt. The other I cannot recall a really clear picture of, though I now have the impression of a man who looked homeless.

I suddenly knew that the young man was, somehow, my friend Adam, and that he was on his way out of this world. I called out: “Goodbye,
Dom; have a good trip!”

How did I know this? Why did I call him Dom instead of Adam? The only answer I can offer now, when I am awake and trying to recall precious detail, is that dreams are like that – inconsistent, illogical, inchoate, lots of other ins. I just don’t know.

But in my dream I knew with certainty. And I wanted – needed – to know what would happen next. So I ran downstairs after Adam and the other man. They walked the short distance to the corner at Burncoat Street – well, it wasn’t really Burncoat but it was in the same place, with more trees on both sides, and wider.

As Adam reached the corner, a bus came from the south and slowed. Now, I have never seen a bus like this. It was clearly an older vehicle, of an indistinct color, sort of grayish-brown. And it had platforms all around its outside perimeter – sides, front, and back. But forget the bus itself. What really caught me was the fact that it was filled inside and out with people who were hooting and hollering and having what seemed like the time of their lives. But I knew otherwise.

“Come on, Adam and Billy, come on board!” the people shouted from the bus. But what was most notable and noticeable was the sheer joy that filled the bus and emanated from it. It was a happiness and sense of well-being that surpassed anything I had experienced. It went beyond understanding and claimed the whole of my being – feelings, thoughts, things I cannot name but seem to know.

Adam and Billy (whose name I now knew) crossed the street and climbed onto the front of the bus as it began to pull away. And that bus was followed by several more buses, each looking just like the first and each filled with happy, laughing people. As they pulled out of sight down the street, I knew suddenly and at least for a short while, that there was a heaven and it was to be sought and cherished. The folks on those buses – they weren’t having the time of their lives; they were having the time of their deaths, passing into a new existence.

I walked back from the corner toward my house, to see the street filled with all sorts of strange objects I cannot now name or enumerate. With the possible exception of a large stuffed bear (or was it a bison?) that had one ear hidden in its furry coat. All these objects, I knew somehow, had belonged to Adam and they were now being dispersed, as if in some gigantic, strange yard sale.

My other friend was there with his two kids. They were all looking scared and confused. “Is Adam …” they tried to ask. “Yes,” I replied, “He has died and passed on. The passing parade just went down the street, and they became a part of it.”

The kids started to cry, as children will, and I tried to comfort them. “No,” I said, “It’s not a sad thing but a happy, joyous occasion. Adam is where he needs to be, and wants to be. His time with us has ended, and he has gone on to a different place.”

Well, that’s pretty much it for this little dream. Before I went to sleep I did not believe in a heaven – though it always seemed like a good idea. But while the dream held me in its thrall, I did believe, and it was a happy, joyous thing for me too – just as for all the people inside the dream and on those buses.  Hooting and hollering and having a wonderful time. I knew while in my dream that I envied those people but was not prepared to join them.

And now that I’m awake, I feel good if not joyous. Do I now believe there’s a heaven? I’m still on the fence about that one, but I’m also grateful for the glimpse of whatever it was my unconscious mind ch0ose to generate that night.

Life is good, even when much of it is not so good. As I grow older I become ever calmer about the approach of life’s ending. Yes, it’s been on my mind and it’s an important idea for me to reflect upon as my days go on, especially when I face new challenges, new limitations, new obstacles … but also new opportunities. Life is good, and I’m doing my best to enjoy it as fully as I can.

 

Tags: death, dreams, spirit

06:56 am: The Ferrari in the Sky

The Ferrari in the Sky

 

By Russell Kay

 

“Look, up there, it’s Ferrari,” the kid said, pointing up at a spot in the night sky.

 

I don’t know who the kid was (or is), just a random stranger encountered at a highway rest stop. But a heavenly object named Ferrari? I’m no astronomy expert, but the only context in which I’ve heard that name before is the Italian sports car, not a star or planet or anything else up there.

 

Still, with all the fuss, it was hard not to look at the corner of the sky where the kid was pointing. I focused on the tiny pinpoints of light until I noticed one was moving slightly relative to the others. “Aha!” I thought. “Maybe it’s not Ferrari, but a planet. Or more likely a meteor.”

 

Since one doesn’t see meteors all that often, especially outside the Perseid showers in August, I continued to watch as the pinpoint of light moved slowly across the sky. Then I noticed it was picking up speed. Very strange, since all the meteors I’ve seen before were both faster and moved at a relatively constant speed. What was this “Ferrari”?

 

It was unlikely to be an airplane, because if it were close enough for me to see its lights, it would also be close enough that I could hear its engines. No noise, therefore no plane.

 

I continued to watch.

 

As the object picked up speed, it seemed to grow a bit larger, and instead of being just a pinpoint light started taking on an irregular shape. Finally, as it neared the other side of the horizon, I could see a complete, perfect circle that was vaguely pale yellow in color. I called out to my companions to see this strange thing in the sky, when suddenly it started curving around, not quite retracing its path but certainly ended up going back the other way. The circle got larger and clearer, and seemed to have some distinguishing internal features, like the faces one sees in the moon, or objects in clouds.

 

The object traced a broad circle in the night sky, getting ever larger until it was dime-sized and still perfectly circular in form. Still no noise, no fuss of any sort except for what I and my companions were making.

 

I was prepared to watch it careen through the sky; I was not in the least ready to see it come down to earth not 30 feet away. It was still perfectly circular, looking a little larger than a bushel basket, bouncing up and down in fact, next to a tree, as it continued to glow with a very peculiar, not very bright light. Still pale yellow, on the lemony side.

 

The bouncing subsided, the object was still, and its light faded out.

 

I went over to see what this thing was. It did indeed look something like a basket (or a small but very heavy parachute), made from very heavy canvas attached to canvas straps a couple of feet long and armed with some very sturdy attaching clips and snaps. It was in fact yellow, not fluorescent but a strong, mainstream yellow. Markings stenciled on it said “USNR Trng” or something very similar. What was this thing?

 

I cannot tell you, because I do not know. It was at this point that I woke up.

 

Tags: dreams

07:55 am: I'm trying a new form of therapy against the winter: writing haiku

Cold I go to bed,
Covers and blankets hug me;
Warmth comes slow and sure.

All day I shiver,
Bed covers hug and warm me
I don’t need to sleep.

I feel always cold
But bed clothes, they cuddle me
And make me warmer.

Yawning I’m in bed
Then lie, awake and tired;
Much later, sleep comes.

I feel much too cold;
I wear too many layers;
They warm me up some.

In winter I am cold;
Last summer I was cold too;
Will warmth ever come?

Global warming, yes!
To feel more heat would be nice;
I need to move south.

The heart is at home;
My home feels always too cold;
But my heart is warm.

Three shirts, sweater, coat.
Yet still I shiver and shake
I am at ice age.

Temps are much too low
Where can I find more of them?
Summer will never come.

I need more degrees
Lest I freeze solid, in place,
And be a statue.

Cold is too cruel;
I shiver and shake and ache;
Time to go to bed.

My hands are freezing;
It’s hard to think anything else.
Warmth … just a false dream.

I am much too cold;
I know it’s me, not the world,
But still I shiver.

Yes, I wear a hat
I need the insulation
Else my head freezes.

11:51 am: Serving a Bigger Cause

 

I’ve been super busy for the past six or seven weeks. I’ve been a member of my UU church for close to 40 years now, and during that time I’ve been involved with a great many leadership and program activities. However, I have always avoided – like the plague! – having anything to do with what we used to call the annual pledge drive. Oh, I helped create a couple of brochures, but that’s as far as I would go.

This year everything changed. I was asked to be co-chair of our Stewardship Committee (the current euphemism) and told that the jobs were being redefined. I would be responsible for the creative and “marketing” aspects: writing copy, helping define the program and give it a personality, producing brochures and other printed material, and acting as a public spokesman to our congregation. I would be working with another person who would handle all the record-keeping, training, assignment and followup of volunteers, and such. Given that view of the job, I realized that the part of me that wanted (desperately) to say NO! was actually the me from 10 and 20 years ago. As being redefined, this was a job that I could do, and do well.

 So I agreed to take the job. It’s been a lot of work, but overall it has come more easily than I expected, and the material that I’ve produced has been better than I thought I’d be able to do.

Planning started right around the first of the year. We launched the campaign on Saturday night with a Spaghetti Supper and after-dinner dance (yes, I was the DJ) and two special Celebration Sunday services the next day, Feb. 14. I ended up giving a talk, which I’ll put in below, three times in the space of about 16 hours. This was only the second time I’ve ever given a sermon, and I’m happy to report that it worked pretty well. I had to read this one more than the one I did last year, but I got a lot of positive feedback on both the message and my delivery.

 

 

Tags: fund-raising, uu church

08:31 am: The Librarian – a new take on the adventure hero

Over Christmas weekend I happened to record a bunch of television shows that sounded like they might be interesting. One turned out to be quite different, if not all that good. The Librarian - Quest for the Spear offers a kind of Indiana-Jones take on history and fantasy featuring not an archaeologist but … yes, that’s right, a librarian! Filmed in 2004, perpetual student Flynn Carson (played by Noah Wyle, remember him from ER) is tossed out of school with his 22 degrees and urged to find a real job. He gets an invitation to apply to be the librarian of the Metropolitan Public Library, where he is interviewed by Jane Curtin and Bob Newhart. Aided by lame dialogue and Sherlock-Holmes type deductions about personal life and habits, Carson gets the job, which turns out to be secret guardian of the secrets and artifacts of mankind (including sword-in-stone Excalibur, which Carson later pulls out, proving something or other) located in a massive underground facility reminiscent of the Indiana Jones Government Warehouse crossed with the storehouse from National Treasury. Carson’s first job is to find the three scattered pieces of the Spear of Destiny, the lance which reputedly pierced Jesus’ side on the cross and is a talisman of unimaginable power. (Hitler thought so.) It’s important to find these before the bad guys do (you can tell them by the snake tattoos on their forearms). And leader of the bad guys turns out to be Carson’s predecessor as Librarian!

So aided by a beautiful bodyguard, through adventures in the Amazon and in Shangri-La, Carson manages to let the bad guys get the spear pieces and attempt to reassemble them with the help of Carson’s old professor, but of course the good guys prevail in the end. Which is why there are two more episodes: Return to King Solomon’s Mines, and Curse of the Judas Chalice (which is evidently about vampires). Maybe his newfound skill at reading the language of the birds (which was key to finding the spear fragments) will come in handy here.

Recommendation: How can you not want to like someone who makes a librarian into an action hero! Unfortunately, the worst of the Indiana Jones movies is far better than the Librarian, which seems clearly made for TV and budgeted accordingly. It ran on TNT. Watching it is a way to pass time, but probably not the best way.

11:28 pm: A Thanksgiving Appreciation

This is the fourth time in the past five years that the Young family has made me so welcome, indeed made me feel that I’m an ex-officio member of the family. It would be five times, except that two years ago I was in the hospital after my transplant and UMass refused to let me out, even though Steve had arranged for someone to pick me up and take me back.

For me, 2009 has been a year of challenges: physical, medical, pharmacological, and even of the spirit. I’ve had to face the reality that I cannot do everything I want to, including some things that were easy just six months ago. But I’m not going to let that wear me down. I’ve arranged for help in clearing snow this winter and doing yard work next year, thus ending my abortive relationships with lawnmower and snow-blower. I’ve asked for and gotten help from friends in moving excess furniture out of the way so that I can once again use my spare room as a bedroom instead of a storage dump.

I turned 67 last Friday and got taken out to dinner by each of two ex-girl friends, and that made me feel very special. I’ve decided that from here on out I will probably always feel cold – although there was a brief window of warmth in August – and in self-defense I’ve bought myself a fleece jacket to wear inside, zipped up all the way, and it makes a big difference in personal comfort.

So life goes on, and in fact goes on pretty well. It keeps changing, but on the whole I keep my spirits up. A woman I’ve been dating recently asked me what was my most cherished hope for the future. My response to her was that I just don’t have a lot of big-time, most-cherished hopes or plans or even dreams. I once wanted to travel a lot, but since I’ve gotten a bit older, suffered through some health crises, and become a little less comfortable moving around all the time, I’ve gotten much more content with enjoying wherever it is I am at any given moment. The one thing that I do want is to find someone with whom to share my life. This is a very big priority for me, and I’ve kept myself pretty busy looking around for that partner.

In the course of my life I’ve given up a lot of dreams, many of which were unrealistic to begin with. I never won the Nobel Prize, didn’t have enough to say to write the book I wanted to be author of, didn’t take the trip around the world, and won’t ever be a grandfather. And you know what? None of that matters very much. The fact is, I’ve led a life I can be proud of, I have a son whom I love and respect, and I was able to stand by my wife through 12 years of crisis and suffering, giving support and sticking with her until her death. And right now, both here in this room and in the larger communities I live in, I am surrounded by people who like and love and respect me. Even considering all that I’ve lost in the last several years – and I’ve lost a lot – I can truthfully say that my life has never been better than it is at this moment. But the world keeps on turning, and I continue to renew and remake myself – physically, spiritually, and emotionally. I don’t know where my next big challenge / opportunity / turning-point will come from, but I plan to be there and to grasp it fully. I’m nowhere near ready to quit or give up on life, the universe, or anything else. A friend of mine likes to say, “What if everything that happens to me is a blessing?” What if, indeed? And so I give thanks today and every day for all the blessings that have been given to me. I am a very fortunate man.

11:53 am: Wallpaper meme
1. Anyone who looks at this entry please post this meme and their current wallpaper at their LiveJournal.
2. Explain in five [or fewer] sentences why you're using that wallpaper.
3. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on.



This is a photo of the Great Smoky Mountains I took last November outside of Asheville, NC.



Tags: photography, wallpaper

10:05 pm: How much do I value myself? Or ...

The Price Is Right

 

By Russell Kay

 

There is a well-known tale of an encounter between George Bernard Shaw and a prominent actress. “Would you sleep with me for a million pounds?" he asked. “Oh, Yes!" she replied. “Would you do it for ten pounds?” he asked. “Do you take me for a whore?" she responded sharply. Shaw’s retort was a classic: “We’ve already established what you are, ma’am. Now we’re just haggling over the price.”

 

They say that everyone has his or her price, and I’ve just discovered mine. It’s forty bucks.

 

Now, it’s not that I’d commit murder or rob a bank or even sleep with someone undesirable for $40; in fact, it’s not at all about what I’d do for that much money. It’s about what I will do to avoid spending that amount of money.

 

The first inkling of this new insight came when I got my yearly phone call from the Vietnamese family that has been taking care of my yard (lawn is a little too nice a word to describe what surrounds my house). For the past three years I’ve been paying them $40 to mow and “clean up” the yard, and this had to be done roughly every two weeks between early May and late  September. I’ve been happy to have them do this, because I detest yard work. I’ve been unhappy to have them do this, because I detest spending money on things I don’t much care about.

 

Given the state of the economy, given the state of my retirement funds, the declining fortunes of my one remaining freelance client (and thus my income), I decided that I somehow could no longer afford this luxury. So I did some math in my head. Let’s see, $40 every two weeks over a 19-week period comes to $400. If I went and bought a lawnmower for $300 or $400 and did the mowing myself (oh, the horror!), I’d pay for the machine in one season. And at the end, if I didn’t want to ever do it again, I could sell the damn lawnmower and come out ahead of the game!

 

And besides, I told myself, I could really use the exercise.

 

So I did some looking around, decided on a machine I thought would fit the bill and probably hold together, and bought it from a place where I knew I could get good service if I needed it. The cost was around $385. So I’ll end up spending/saving my forty bucks each time I open up the back shed and take out the mower.

 

Well, sure, that makes sense, but it hardly means that my price is $40. No, I came to that realization when I opened up my latest statement from Charter Communications, which covers my cable TV, Internet service, and home phone. A year ago, when I got notice of a price increase, I had successfully negotiated a reduction in rate to a point where I was OK with the cost/benefit equation. All I had to do was take a two-year commitment.

 

At least, that’s the way I remember it. Charter, on the other hand, says it was a one-year promotion, and it’s over. And they were adamant about the new price, offering no reductions even when I threatened to take my business elsewhere. This year’s increase over what I was paying: yup, $40 a month.

 

So I’m in the midst of making other arrangements for everything. I wanted Verizon’s FIOS, but although it’s widely advertised, it’s not available in my neighborhood. It looks barely possible that I may have to stick with Charter for my Internet service (I’ve gotten two conflicting statements from different DirectTV reps about the availability of DSL), but everything else is going to someone else. For a lot less money. And if things work out the best way, I’ll end up saving forty bucks a month instead of spending an additional forty bucks.

 

After all, $40 is $40. I should know.

 

08:45 pm: Step by Step

Step by Step

A Personal Reflection by Russell Kay

This is the text of a reflection (aka sermon) I gave on April 19, 2009, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester.

Every year the Worship Arts Committee sponsors a service we call “Views from the Pews.” Usually this takes the form of short mini-reflections by several church members about their personal beliefs or views. I originally volunteered to do one of those, but along the way some things happened to me and I found myself with a good deal more to say than I had expected. So this morning I’m going to take up the entire reflection and tell you a little about my own spiritual path.

I was raised in a liberal Baptist church (liberal here means, among other things, that we had dances inside the Baptist church). As a child, I participated actively in church life, and I even went off to college on my denomination’s largest scholarship. But I never really believed in the divinity of Jesus; indeed, I was quite uncomfortable with the idea of God. I was studying to be a scientist, and I just didn’t see any relationship between what my church taught me and what I learned in the real world. After college, I more or less forgot about church.

When I was 25 years old, my wife Harriet was pregnant with our son, and she gave me an ultimatum with respect to religion: “Look, we have to raise the kid as something. I don’t especially care what, but if you don’t make a different choice, I’m going to raise him Jewish, because that’s what I know.”

So we talked about options and together we went looking for a church, a religion, something. We were so very logical about it. We made up a list of candidates; as I recall, Unitarianism was at the head of the list, followed by Society of Friends, Bahá’í, and Buddhism. We went first to a service at the Evanston Unitarian Church, in the Illinois town where we lived. Within five minutes, both Harriet and I knew we belonged there. We never made it to any of the other candidates on our shopping list.

A couple of years later we moved to Worcester for a new job. Ultimately we joined this community and raised our son in this church. (I should mention here that Alexx no longer attends any church, but when asked has been known to refer to himself, with a smile and a twinkle in his eye, as a “lapsed Unitarian.”)

But that’s enough about churches. What I really want to talk about today is spirituality and spiritual growth, not religion. For most of the past five decades I considered myself an agnostic, even a secular humanist, and I was quite comfortable with those labels. I thought the idea of a God was nice in theory, but I couldn’t actually believe it without some sort of proof or demonstration, so I remained a skeptic.

About 20 years ago, I started going to 12-step meetings. I eventually got accustomed to the mentions of “God” in the 12 steps, and I gradually arrived at some new insights. I began to find what we in these programs call “recovery,” and with it I gained a deeper sense of spirituality and what it means to live a moral, examined life.

After my wife’s death four years ago, I met someone from a religious and spiritual background unlike anything I had ever before come across. My new friend had been raised in a fundamentalist Mormon family, lived for several years as a nun in a Vedanta Hindu ashram in California, later became involved with Native American religion, and more recently has studied anthroposophy and the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. As we got to know each other, she pressed me on what UUs were and what I personally believed.

In trying to explain myself, I uncovered a dirty little secret that I had been unaware of: underneath the carefully polished descriptions and labels that I had created for myself, there was almost no real substance. There was no there there. I hadn’t thought about these issues for so long that I didn’t know any more what I did believe, or why. I no longer knew who I was. I was honestly horrified at this revelation, and I needed to change. Since then, I’ve been on a search to find out just what it is that I do believe. And that friend who started me on this journey has become an important spiritual mentor, a touchstone in my life.

At my friend’s suggestion, I started reading a series of books called Conversations with God. I had come across these once before and dismissed them out of hand. Now I approached them with a more open mind, not blindly accepting the ideas presented but willing to think about them.

Shortly after that, I had a couple of experiences unlike anything I’d ever encountered before. I could call them visions, insights, moments of spiritual enlightenment. What happened was, out of the blue, while I was in a more or less meditative state – I was actually having a dialysis treatment at around 7:00 in the morning and kind of zoning out – I was suddenly confronted with situations and people from my family and my past. They were right there in the room with me – really, these were open sores that had been festering for decades. I wanted to run, but my jugular vein was hooked up to a machine, so I chose to confront these apparitions. And by facing up to them and being honest with myself about the past, I was able to make peace with them inside my heart. I talked to my stepfather, who died 10 years ago, and found the sudden strength and urge to forgive him for many things. I got rid of a ton of resentments that day.

Most surprising of all, I discovered shortly after that time that I seemed to have hopped off the agnostic fence into a not-totally-secure but more-or-less-comfortable belief in God. To say that I was startled is serious understatement. Even though my profession is communicating through words, I cannot tell you clearly what it is I believe in. But I do know that something changed deep inside of me at that time, and ever since I’ve looked at the universe differently.

In thinking about my experiences and pondering a variety of spiritual writings, I realized that the 12-step way of life had become a central part of my core beliefs, helping me know how to live a moral life. There’s not time enough for me to discuss or explain the 12 steps this morning, but the more I learn about them and about other moral systems, the more I am struck by the similarities and parallels between all paths that include an examined life. I believe that, while the scenery along the way may be different, all these roads lead in essentially the same direction – and possibly to the same destination, though I’m less sure of that. I’m struck by the importance of searching for answers within oneself, and also by the need to seek out the right questions to ask. Tolerance and acceptance have always been important to me, but nowadays I’m more open-minded than I ever used to be. I believe that I’m finally realizing I don’t know nearly as much as I used to think I did.

Everything I’ve said so far is background to the next experience I want to share with you. In my 12-step program we would call this a spiritual awakening, and it was indeed an awakening. It came to me in the form of a dream two months ago that has helped focus my beliefs and values in ways I would not have thought possible before that February night.

I should start by telling you that I never remember my dreams. It just doesn’t happen. Five or ten seconds after I wake up, dreams are gone forever. But this night was quite different; I woke up recalling every detail of the dream. I lay in bed for half an hour, bathed in warmth and serenity, thinking about what I had just experienced and afraid that I might lose it all if I went back to sleep. So at 4:00 a.m. I got up out of bed and started writing about it. Here’s some of what I wrote down that morning:

I was 21 again, just out of college. A graduate student in a strange city, I was getting settled into a dorm room and feeling many of the things that characterized much of my young life: I was scared, alone, isolated, weird, different, unloved … I was full of being-apart, by-myself feelings.

Then, in the space of a day or two, I came to realize that life didn’t have to be that way, that I didn’t have to be that way. My dorm-mates, both men and women, came up to me, hugged me, talked to me, talked to each other about me, and in almost every way possible (no, no sex) made me feel loved, accepted, liked, wanted. They made me know that I was surrounded by and supported by people who really cared about me and my welfare. I suddenly realized that I could choose to be alone, to isolate myself, to live apart from everyone else, and if I did that the others would accept and respect my choice. But I also knew that would be a decidedly unhealthy decision.

People made me hear, feel, and know that I was OK just the way I am. I was made welcome and brought into the group, both by individuals acting on their own and also by group action, pulling me out of my shell and asking me to join them, to participate, to be a part of something bigger than myself. One person told the others that I needed help in joining the group, and I was asked to talk about myself, to open myself up to the group, to share in the overall sense of belonging and of being valued. I did that, and then others joined in, each reaffirming in a different way that I was OK, that the place I was in was where I belonged, and that things were going to work out. People held my hands, embraced me, supported me.

I knew, for maybe the first time in my life, that I am not alone.

I do not need to be alone.

Not ever.

And this is when I woke up, back in the real world. But the feeling of peace, of belonging, of being supported and held in the hand of something bigger than myself, was still there, strong and utterly palpable. I’ve thought a lot about that dream since, and I’ve shared it with a number of people. What did it really mean? Why did I have it?

The start of the dream wasn’t really like the way I lived and felt when I was that age. But the loneliness, the fear, the isolation – all those feelings of not fitting in, not being good enough – I was very familiar with them. I started out in a state of extreme desperation, pretty much without hope. And then people, individually and collectively, reached out, drew me in, made me know that I was not alone. I had found peace with the world … and peace within myself.

As I tell you about this, I cannot begin to express the feelings that made that dream so real, so moving, so powerful. Whatever I say here today is only the palest reflection of what I experienced. But I need to try and understand it, and I’ve learned I cannot do this by keeping it to myself. I don’t need to puzzle it out or to analyze it to death, but I do need to fully realize the experience within myself. And that’s an important reason I’m standing up here this morning.

I am 66 years old, and I’ve got real problems. I’m closer to and more aware of my own mortality than ever. I don’t know – I can’t know – what’s going to happen to or with me, and I’m plenty concerned about the future. My new kidney is in a certain amount of trouble, and the doctors don’t know for sure how bad it really might be, or even what to do about it. I live alone, with no partner in prospect, and I don’t much like that. I’m very conscious of what I’ve already lost and afraid of losing what’s left. I lost Harriet and the life we had together for 41 years. I lost a lover and the life I hoped we might build together. I’ve lost most of the small amount of financial security I thought I had when I retired. I want someone to come and take care of me, and life doesn’t work that way. The world economy is in the tank, the country is in trouble, and I’m in a funk. I put up a brave front … but behind it, I’m scared.

And in the middle of this pain and angst I am given this remarkable gift of a dream that tells me I’m OK, that I just need to relax and let things be. I’m asked to trust that things will work out. I know that I have to do my own footwork, my part of the job, and all too often I don’t know what that is. But if I just keep on trying, doing my best, then I believe things will work out the way they’re supposed to. Whatever that is. Whatever that means.

This is the most extraordinary sense of well-being I’ve ever had, a gift from … from whom? A higher power, God, the universe? For the first time in my life I truly understand that I am not alone. Yes, I am a tiny creature in a very large ocean, but I am also more than that. What was and is so moving is that I FEEL this – I don’t think it, don’t believe it, don’t know it in my head, don’t hope it. No, I FEEL it, deep inside me.

I have been so relentlessly hard on myself for all my life that I’ve never let myself be accepted for the imperfect human being I am. I know that I don’t have the answers to life, the universe, and everything, but that really doesn’t matter. In the immortal words of Popeye, “I yam who I yam!” That’s good enough for my higher power. That’s good enough for my friends. And it damn well ought to be good enough for me.

That dream touched a chord deep within me, and I’m trying to deal with it in the only way I know how – by writing and talking about it, sharing the experience with others, examining it from different angles. Trying to find the answers. Still looking for the right questions.

Over the past half-dozen years, my life has had a lot of ups and downs. Nietzsche once said “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” In my 12-step program, we sometimes say that “pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice.” Like everyone, I have to acknowledge and deal with the not-so-nice things that happen to me. But I’ve learned to work very hard and very consciously every day, every single day, to maintain a positive attitude and to be grateful for the good things in my life – and most especially to appreciate all the wonderful people who surround and enrich me.

I recall the darkness I felt in those first months after Harriet died. I had lost more than a wife and best friend; I had lost all my hopes, dreams, expectations, plans, goals, ambitions, desires, everything. I didn’t look up any more, because there was no horizon for me to see. There was nothing left inside of me; I was an empty shell. But even at that low point I knew that I had to just go on putting one foot in front of the other, step by step, and that eventually the darkness would begin to lighten up. In time I would want to move forward and rejoin the world. And that’s just what happened.

Now, I know that I still need to keep moving forward, step by plodding step. I need to acknowledge my fears – oh yes! – but not be overcome by them. I need to remember that I am held in a web of loving support by two important and distinct communities I belong to, and one of them is this church – these are communities where I am welcomed, valued, accepted, and loved. Where I can turn for help when I am feeling overwhelmed by the world and my individual problems. I have no choice but to experience pain and difficulty at many levels, but I know that it’s not the end of the world – it’s not even the end of the world as I know it. For me, right now, it all comes down to this rather simple, even simplistic statement: I’m really OK; and you guys, you’re OK too. That doesn’t sound very profound, but it’s very, very real. And as dark as things may look in the world, somehow we’re going to make it through, together, step by step by step.

Blessed Be. Namaste.



Those who may be interested can listen to the audio delivery of this at www.uucworcester.org/downloads/Reflec20090419.mp3

Tags: al-anon, church, spirituality, uu