Families Belong Together

Recently we have seen a travesty of justice, a betrayal of the very values that are core to our nation. We have witnessed children ripped from their parents arms and thrown into cages. There is no due process, there is no justice, there is no mercy for these families who came to our borders seeking asylum, seeking aid, seeking human compassion. But they did not receive these things. Instead, they were torn apart under the inhumane dictates of this regime while politicians quoted Christian scripture to justify this unholy act.

Tonight I spoke at a rally protesting these detentions. Here is what I said:

I’m Rev. Dr. Nori Rost, minister of All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church, and here representing the Colorado Springs Sanctuary Coalition

It’s not surprising that Jeff Sessions used Romans 13 to try to validate separating families at the border. In fact, that is the scripture of choice for white supremacists around the world.
Romans 13 was used to condone the expelling of the Jews in Rome; it was used to condone apartheid in South Africa; it was used by the segregationists Presbyterians to condemn the civil rights movement.
Anytime you see a politician quoting that watch out.
Now I could counter with other verses from the Bible but I don’t need to. Why? Because we are not a Christian nation and frankly it doesn’t matter what the Bible or any other sacred text says.
As a Unitarian Universalist I am bound to a higher law. The first of our seven principles that says every human has inherent worth and dignity.
I am bound by the founding documents of this nation that says we are a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people; a nation that holds that all humans are created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The Colorado Springs sanctuary coalition was founded over a year ago expressly to keep immigrant families together, to advocate for just laws for creating a society where no one need be afraid to get stopped by the police, where all can seek to be contributing members of society.
To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. : “We must all learn to live together as kin or we will all perish together as fools.  We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.  And whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.  For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way the universe is made; this is the way it is structured.”         
Let these words ring in our hearts, let them inspire us to never give up or shut up or sit down or slow down or stand down or go away until no family need fear being torn apart.

The Making of a Nation

This past week a friend and I went to NYC for vacation. New York is one of my favorite cities in the world. I come alive there in a different way than anywhere else. We stayed at a friend’s apartment in the Bronx and took the subway or walked everywhere. The weather was perfect: brisk, cloudy, rainy, and snowy one night!

I had a Nathan’s hotdog for lunch every day and we hit my favorite haunts: the New York Public Library, Central Park, the Brooklyn Museum of Art (Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party is on permanent display there!) and, of course, Broadway.

We saw three shows, The Waitress starring Sara Barielles, The Parisian Woman, starring Uma Thurman, and, how could we come to New York and not see the hit musical, Hamilton??

I have listened to the soundtrack of Hamilton for months but nothing prepared me for its power and beauty. No wonder it won 11 Tonys, including best musical. The first Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, seems an unlikely subject for such theatrical success, yet, listening to the soundtrack, I got it. Here was a retelling of the Revolution and our earliest days as a nation not told in the dry, academic style of textbooks; rap is the music of Revolution in this show.

The fact that the cast is racially diverse with African American and Latinos playing the parts of our august forebears makes this even more electrifying. This is not your staid, whitewashed Revolution. This is earthy, gritty and filled with the indomitable hope of those yearning to break free; this Revolution is edgy and sexy and real. In one song, Hamilton sings, I am not throwing my shot! I am not throwing away my shot! Yo, I’m just like my country: I’m young, scrappy, and hungry, and I’m not throwing my shot!

What was it like, then, I wondered, when our country was young, scrappy, and hungry? What was it like to be at the forefront of building a new nation? To be so committed to liberty that you were willing to die for it?

As I witness the unfolding of this new administration in Washington, DC in bas relief against the boisterous spirit of Hamilton I can’t help but think that somewhere along the way we’ve lost the vision that our forebears had, imperfect though it was, in its fledging state, depicted in the musical with one exchange between Hamilton and Aaron Burr about the constitution, Burr says, The constitution’s a mess! Hamilton replies, so it needs amendments. Burr: It’s full of contradictions! Hamilton: so is independence.

Maybe that’s what we’ve forgotten: independence, democracy, is not a black and white matter, there isn’t a right way and a wrong way. There is only a commitment to find the best way, the way makes room at the table for the most people.  Throughout the presidential election and in the  first year of this new regime, what I’ve seen is an attempt to turn our democratic process into a reality show, even though it doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to the reality of our citizens. Outrageous claims have taken the place of civil discourse, including proclamations of building walls to keep others out, forgetting that immigrants are what made this country great in the first place (One line sung by Lafayette and Hamilton: Immigrants! We get the job done!)

What would happen if we returned to the values upon which we were founded, values of freedom, inclusion, diversity, and a spirit that recognized that we are always imperfect, full of contradictions, in need of amendments, and apologies and reparation and grace?

We still don’t have it down, 240 years later. Racism and intolerance are still embedded institutionally and culturally; we weep over the needless deaths of unarmed Black men, women, and children, feel outrage over the treatment of Muslims, forced to deplane aircraft for doing mathematical problems or wearing a head scarf. Poverty is still the reality show for 48 million Americans, according to a 2014 report from the Census Bureau.

Perhaps the call isn’t to make America great again; but rather to continue to make America, to build on the best of the foundation laid in 1776, while demolishing that which has bound us to racism, xenophobia, and the garden variety intolerance that is still rooted in our soil. Maybe what the musical Hamilton can teach us is that the language of Revolution must be sung in the language of every generation, to remind us of what a great country this is, and to plead with us to not throw away our shot to make it greater, still.

The Unwanted Anniversary

The first week in January has always been a portentous week for me. I started my first ministry, as the Minister of Evangelism at Metropolitan Community Church, Long Beach, CA on January 1, 1989 and left five years later to begin my ministry at Pikes Peak MCC on January 2, 1994. Twelve years later this week, I bid farewell to that congregation to finish my Doctorate of ministry and try my hand at non-profit work.

In 1995, I conceived my son on January 5^th. Trust me, when you’re using alternative insemination and have fertility issues you know exactly when these things occur.

This year, January 5^th marks another major milestone, though darker than the others. On that day I will be as old as my older brother will ever be.

Erik was the second youngest of us five siblings; the only boy in a sea of girls, the second step of our stair step progression, so close in age that when I was born, the youngest, my siblings were five, four, three, and 18 months.

In some regard, I got along better with my brother than with my sisters. I was the perennial tomboy, not given to playing with dolls; dresses were anathema to me. Erik and I would pretend to be cowboys, riding the roughhewn pallet lean-to that held our lawnmower, scrambling on top of the roof, sneaking through my bedroom window at midnight to go for walks. He was the first person in my family I came out to as a lesbian, writing to him with all the angst of my 16-year-old heart.

We weren’t particularly close as we grew older, although in our overlapping military service years, he would drive up from San Diego, CA to Castle Air Force base where I was stationed. We shared Thanksgiving dinners more than once and he even made it to the Base Airman of the Month banquet where I was awarded that honor. He looked so dashing in his meticulously kept Navy whites; everyone thought he was my date, which gave my girlfriend and me a chuckle.

My brother, Erik, completed suicide over four years ago at the age of 55 years, 203 days.  I will be that age on January 5th this year.

I always considered myself a "grief expert." My father died of cancer when I was just shy days of my 23rd birthday; the following year, my only nephew died of SIDS. Add to that the scores of deaths I witnessed, and the memorial services I did during the US AIDS years and you get the point. From 1981-1995 I lost 33 friends to AIDS, not to mention the countless memorial services I led as a queer minister in a queer church. 

But dealing with the grief over my brother's suicide is singularly piercing and in its own category. In those early days following his death, someone told me about a page on Facebook: Sibling Survivors of Suicide. That page became my grounding in those early months and years. It was the only place where I could be with people who understood what I was going through. On July 3, 2014, not quite a year after my brother's death, I made this entry:  color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px;">For some reason, this week has been really hard for me. No anniversaries or triggers-- just one second away from crying, every second of the day. I feel like this page is a parallel universe for me. "Out there" in the "real" facebook world, everything is bright and sunny, and my posts are political or funny; then I sneak away and enter here-- it is a darkened room, or cave-- and am drawn to the circle of this group, where there are candles lit and our voices murmur words of anguish and comfort and hope. This is a universe no one knows, except for those of us who live in these shadowlands, and I hope there will be no one else who has to discover it, though I take comfort in knowing we will be there for them, when they stumble through this portal for the first time.

The grief that accompanies suicide is unlike any other and leads to its own unique accounting system. I remember telling a friend that it was the 8^th month anniversary of my brother’s death. She said she wouldn’t keep track of the dates like that, as it makes it more painful. But I feel differently. 

It’s like parents keeping track of their baby's life by months. There's no way you could pass the date of the month and not exclaim, "This is my baby's 6^th month birthday!" Grief is like that; an unwelcome new family member, whose early days and months are ticked off in exacting measure. And then grief turns a year old and, beyond that annual anniversary, has its own assortment of personalized holidays; the birthday of the own who died, the first holiday without him, the first birthday of your own without him there. And now this new one, this date that I surpass my brother in age, this stepping off point into a future age he will never know.  I would say that, really, grief needs its own calendar, but the heart manages to keep track of it just fine.

]If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, there’s help. Call 1-800-273-8255 or text 741741. Never give up your place in the order of life.

The Guest House

I have been musing, recently on the complexity we human beings manage to hold within our individual bodies. We each  have within us the unbearable lightness of being (as described in the novel of the same name by Milan Kundera) and the unbearable weight of our shadow self, those parts we don’t like to name, and like to acknowledge even less, though they are always there.

As the Sufi poet Rumi put it:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
[…] The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in….
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Recently, I’ve seen only the darker angels clamoring at humanity’s door: the strident denial of the need for saner gun ownership legislation in the wake of an onslaught of gun violence; the people who entered evacuated areas of Santa Rosa to burglarize empty homes; the white supremacists with tiki torches held aloft,  wearing their hatred and bigotry like a badge of honor.

These are times when I can only look at the capacity we humans have for death and destruction, out of the corner of my mind’s eye; to view full on would, surely, like the sun’s total eclipse, blind me with hopelessness and despair.
But just when I’m about to give up hope for humanity, I see other visitors to the collective house we call the human race: interfaith clergy forming a line of love in front of the white supremacists in Virginia; the footage of hundreds of vehicles towing boats, crawling along the freeway towards Houston to help in the rescue and recovery; videos that show men rescuing an exhausted dog from a deep well of water, or men helping a hawk covered with cactus bristles, unable to fly.

Those are also guests in our being human: guests of compassion and tenderness and inclusion. Guests of love.
I get it. Sometimes it’s easier to let the other guests in—guests of fear and hatred and intolerance. Those guests can free range over our hearts and spirits without asking anything of us. Love costs. Love fiercely demands that not only do we let love in, we let love renovate the place, throw out the dusty old curtains we used to hide from the world, remove the mirrors that only showed us what we wanted to see.

A New York Times article suggests that all it takes to fall in love with a stranger is to stare unblinkingly into one another’s eyes for four minutes. There is science to back this theory and the results have been intense for those who try it. I was thinking maybe we should have gazing cafes set up around the city, the nation in which we invite people to gaze into the eyes of someone different from them for four minutes.

What would happen if a white man with a white pride tattoo gazed into the eyes of an African American? If someone who voted for Clinton stared into the eyes of a Trump supporter? What if an ICE agent dared to look for four minutes into the eyes of an immigrant? What could happen if we allowed the differences we fear to be guests in our humble human home?

I don’t know but I know we must try something. Our children, our children’s children, our planet depend upon us no longer slamming the door on that which we fear but welcoming it all in with laughter, with gratitude, with grace.

Through consciousness, our minds have the power to change our planet and ourselves. It is time we heed the wisdom of the ancient indigenous people and channel our consciousness and spirit to tend the garden and not destroy it. -- Bruce Lipton

Note: This is the text of the sermon I preached on August 13, 2017, following the devastating events in Charlottesville that weekend. You can find the audio of my sermon here.

So today is World Indigenous People’s Day, and I have at least two former pastors in the room today. I don’t know if there’s more , nut I know there’s at least two, and so I hope I don’t speak out of school, but typically the way I prepare a sermon is to, throughout the week, just kind of think on it, and then write down notes. And then, typically, Saturday at 10 PM I begin to write.

Fortunately, this week I started earlier; I started Friday at 10 PM because I knew I had a busy Saturday. And so really, by Saturday morning, the sermon was almost done.

And then, yesterday happened and I felt like I needed to make a change.

So I began, yesterday, to scribble down some more notes, some sermon notes as I like to call them, on what I would preach about. But what happened is that I had so long a time of writing notes, that I never actually got to write a sermon; so I’m just going to share my notes with you today.

This is World Indigenous Peoples Day, but this sermon must put Charlottesville and white supremacy at the center.

This sermon must juxtapose the wisdom and beauty ff indigenous culture with the violence and bigotry of white supremacy that quashed indigenous folks always.

This sermon must reflect on the indigenous natural methods ff healing disease without harming the environment, and how white supremacy seeks to control drugs and medical access to fill their pockets with money.

This sermon must be an angry sermon.

This sermon must denounce the emboldened Neo-Nazi/white supremacist movement.

This sermon must draw a line, must show how the thread of white privilege-that was first sewn into this land’s quilt over 600 years ago-has been the constant thread that has led to the horrific acts of violence, terrorism , and hatred that we saw unfold on our television, our laptop, our ipad, our smartphone’s screens.

This sermon must dare to connect the dots of the election of a man who openly spewed racist, misogynistic, homophobic screeds, whose campaign speeches could be classified as hate speech, whose utter disregard for the planet that indigenous people consider kin, whose complete lack of empathy for those who don’t fit into his narrow vision of what constitutes someone of worth and dignity--which, by the way, doesn’t include me, as a queer  person--or anyone else who is queer, or a person of color, or a woman, or an immigrant, or refugee, or trans, or poor---

this sermon must connect the dots from this man’s election to yesterday’s carnage, as heard in the remarks of former Grand Imperial Wizard Of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, who said in an interview yesterday, with the Indianapolis Star, “This represents a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in, that’s why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he’s going to take our country back and that’s what we’re going to do."

That connect-the-dots-image reveals a gross perversion of justice, of democracy, of what has really made America great in the past.

Those dots connect to a flashing neon sign that says Make America Hate Again.

And too many are too willing to comply. Not just in Charlottesville, VA, but in Bloomington, MN, where the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center was bombed on August 5,  and in our own town, where the “n” word was spray-painted onto cars in the neighborhood next to mine, and where the Jewish synagogue was defaced with swastikas and Nazi statements.

This sermon that I’m going to write must, of course, show how those dots go all the way back to the genocide of the native folks, the indigenous folks of this land, carried out by white people far from here, who already had firmly embraced the idea that their way was the best way; that their desire for land, for power, for wealth superseded the indigenous folks right to simply dwell in peace on the only land they had known for generations.

This sermon must point out we lost so much when we destroyed entire nations of peoples, even while we engaged in human trafficking, bringing over and enslaving other nations of people,  other peoples of color; as is white was the only true humanity, as if white really did make might.

But this sermon must also speak about hope.

This sermon cannot end with despair, with an overwhelming feeling of hopeless.

No, this sermon must also speak of the pockets of beauty that are waiting to be picked by our seeking hands:

The Love Lives Here rally that was held in Bonforte Park last Sunday in response to the vandalism in the North End where so many people of so many faiths gathered together; where Muslims mingled with Jews, and the neighbors of the Old North End joined the liberals of downtown.

This sermon must remember the tear-inducing video ff clergy of many faiths standing arm in arm

in Charlottesville yesterday, facing the armed domestic terrorists who swaggered down the streets in the combat fatigues, and overly compensating semi-automatic weapons.

This sermon must speak about the bold words of Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, who said what the president did not; who clearly said to the white supremacists and the Neo-Nazis:

Go home. You are not welcome here. You are not welcome in America.

This sermon must also tell how Minnesota governor, Mark Dayton, unflinchingly called the bombing of the mosque an act of terrorism, and said, Let’s face it, if it had been the other way around, we would have already been calling it that, if Muslims had bombed a Christian church.

This sermon must talk about how already, by Monday morning, just two days after the attack, over 900 people had contributed over $36,000 to help with the repair of the Mosque.

This sermon must mention the 3 plus hour meeting I attended yesterday, along with  Isabel, and Charles, and Jan, and Rick; how we gathered with members of the Colorado Springs Sanctuary Coalition, as well as members of the Metro Denver Sanctuary Coalition; how we talked with those who fear being ripped away from the lives they’ve made for themselves here, from the families they created here; how we know that today, Foothills UU Church in Fort Collins is on the cusp of a vote to become a sanctuary church, as well.

And how--even though we were talking about such dire things as men and women in fear for their freedom, in fear of what will happen to their families, should they be snatched up off the streets and deported--how I felt suddenly, in the midst of that dire conversation, a small spark of hope, of comfort, a certain joy that I was not alone, that these men and women were not alone, that our small, intrepid coalition of a rag tag band of folks from different organizations and faith communities were not alone, that the counter-protestors in Charlottesville, VA, and the Love Lives Here rally last week were not alone.

We are, none of us alone. We have others who are showing up with us, showing up for justice, for peace, for equity in human relationships.

We have an entire seminar coming up in Boulder, an entire seminar on Dirt. There’s a youtube video that shows how simply composting, creating dirt, can save our planet, even if our government will not; that she is not alone, that we have not forgotten all the wisdom of the ancestors of the indigenous folks who once lived, and who still live among us, ready to share their wisdom, ready to introduce us to our mother, Earth, whenever we are ready to truly meet her.

This sermon needs to call us back to a simpler understanding of the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.

But not is some schmaltzy, kum-by-yah way that attempts to sugar coat the ways that we have been complicit in the system of white supremacy, that allowed nations of indigenous folks to be murdered, or forced off their land, or forced to adopt a culture that wasn’t theirs, that profited from the selling of humans in the most inhumane chapter of our history, that allows us to turn away from the rhetoric coming from the White House, or the violence spilling over in the streets of not just Charlottesville, but every city in our nation, with a simple click of a button.

This sermon needs to be a clarion call to action! To rise up! To speak up!

But also to shut up! And to sit down! And to listen, listen deeply. Listen deeply to the voices of the indigenous people of all cultures, to the voices of the marginalized peoples in our own town, to the voices of hope and peace, and a way out of the shadows of bigotry, and hate, and oppression, and hopelessness.

This sermon needs to remind folks that there is a way. It is the way of love, of never-ending love, of love which never gives up, or gives in, of love which is embodied in our words and actions, in how we protect one another, and learn from one another.

 Of love that recognizes we are , each of us, indigenous citizens of this planet earth and we cannot survive, until and unless, we embrace our diversity, and embrace our Mother, and channel our consciousness and spirit  to tend the garden and not destroy it.

That’s what this sermon needs to say.

Now, if I can only find the words to say it.

Now, if I can only find the way to live it.

My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world. --- Adrienne Rich

Earlier this week, I was reading one of my favorite poems to my girlfriend. The poem, Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev by Adrienne Rich speaks in the voice of Elvira who perished, along with all the members of a women’s climbing team while attempting Lenin’s Peak in August, 1974.

Adrienne writes with such simple beauty:

If in this sleep I speak
it's with a voice no longer personal
(I want to say with voices)
When the wind tore our breath from us at last
we had no need of words
For months for years each one of us
had felt her own yes growing in her
slowly forming as she stood at windows waited
for trains mended her rucksack combed her hair
What we were to learn was simply what we had
up here as out of all words that yes gathered
its forces fused itself and only just in time
to meet a No of no degrees
the black hole sucking the world in 

As I read these words to my girlfriend, tears streamed down my face. At first I tried to stop and regain my composure but then I thought, what the hell, and just cried.

This isn’t the first time in recent months that I’ve openly wept at beauty. Last month my gf and I were in Northern California, a birthday trip from her to me. We were driving up 101 to Redwood country. Although I’d lived in central California for four years and Southern California for five years, I’d never made it up north and this was my first time seeing the ancient sentinels. We were in a borrowed convertible, the top down, and when we entered the first grove of Redwoods, I felt my heart swell in amazement, their beauty was breath-taking; I wept.

This is a new development in my life, to be so openly moved by beauty—whether in written word, nature, or acts of kindness that I read about in my newsfeed—that my only reaction is to shed tears. I know that part of this is a consequence of becoming more open with my heart as I’ve gotten older. I remember my younger years---holding my feelings close to my chest, trying for a bluff rather than showing my ace of hearts. I remember those days of yearning to be seen for who I am, yet so fearful of revealing myself. The need for approval has peeled back like so many layers of the proverbial onion as I’ve gotten older, becoming more boldly myself, replacing my tough persona with my tender heart. (“You need someone tender,” my gf said the first day we met and were talking about our lives, in a casual getting-to-know-you sort of way; she didn’t know I’d see the tenderness in her and decide the position was filled.)

But I think this latest iteration of being moved to tears has another element to it. The world we’re living in has become increasingly ugly in recent months—or rather, I should say the humans in this world have been covering up the beauty with the smog of bigotry and intolerance towards others and a cruel, dispassionate tossing away of our natural resources; like petty vandals so many are carving their names in ash and poison into the earth, toppling over the mountains with a concerted push, setting a match to our forests ‘til they burn like kindling.

The rhetoric coming out of our nation’s capital is that of stripping away protections from people and our planet in order to generate more wealth and power for a few; in our streets, people drive trucks proudly waving confederate flags or Nazi swastikas while others live in fear of being deported from the only home they know; in my own town, cars are vandalized with the “n” word, swastikas are smeared on a local Jewish synagogue.

So much ugliness in this world.

And so, beauty seen in nature or seen in loving acts of kindness from one human to another, from one human to the planet, or beauty felt in poetry or great literature now moves me ever deeper than before; it causes tears to well up and spill down my face. They are happy tears, of course, but also tears of relief that such beauty still exists if we know where to look for it, and that my heart, so embattled and scarred over these past months, can still dare to let it in , to let it all in, to allow myself to be touched by the wonders of this world.

It reminds me of poet Rainer Maris Rilke’s advice:

Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final

And it gives me strength to know that even though much has been lost that I couldn’t save, even in the midst of such ugly destruction of decency and concern for others and our planet, still I will cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world. And I will do it from one moment of beauty to the next.

The Truth Shall Set You Free

(This was originally published in the July 26, 2017 editions of the Cheyenne/Woodmen Gazette Community News, with the headline When Truth in Identity Sets You Free. I do a quarterly column for them.)

Loving-kindness toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything.... We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest. – Pema Chodron

Recently, while visiting mom in Austin, TX, I stayed on the comfy couch downstairs. My first morning, I was still sleeping soundly when around 630 AM I heard a repeated thwack coming from outside. Whatever was making the noise was determined to keep on making it, it seemed, until I got up.

In exasperation, I half rose and looked out the window to see if I could spy the culprit ad find a way to make it stop.

Imagine my surprise when I saw a small, red cardinal hurl itself at the window—thwack --- only to be bounced to the ground by the unyielding glass and then, once it got its bearings, launched himself at the window again.

When I told my mom what I had seen she said he does that every morning. My sister, Kari, shed some light on the reason. She had googled what causes that behavior; it seems the male cardinal mistakes his own reflection for another bird and aggressively attacks it.

Of course, the enemy turns out to be his reflection and all that he gets is a bump on the head.

The colorful, pint-sized Don Quixote continues his morning battle for the rest of my stay. I learned not to look; it was disturbing to see.

But it made me think of how often we humans engage in battles against imaginary enemies, only to find we are railing against our own hidden shadow side. If we aren’t fighting against it, we’re shamefully trying to hide it, not willing to acknowledge the darkness within us, as well as the light.

Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron shows us another way: radical self-acceptance and self-love. This means embracing all of who we are, acknowledging all our flaws, our fears, our insecurities, our biases, our ignorance.

There’s a well-known Christian scripture in which Jesus says, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. (John 8:32) Another meaning for the Greek word, know, is allow, be aware of. And doesn’t that make more sense? We do know the truth of who we are and we fight against it, hurling ourselves at its reflection in our lives over and over. It’s only when we allow the truth though, that we are set free to deal with it, study it, come to know, as Pema suggests with tremendous curiosity and interest.

Just think if those of us who are queer didn’t have to struggle with our truth, didn’t have to “come out” but rather welcome people into our deepest truths. Or if those who are in unhealthy relationships or miserable jobs didn’t have to put on a happy face or pretend everything is fine but rather allow the truth to set them free. Recovering addicts know all about allowing the truth of their addiction to be acknowledged and finding freedom.

Imagine if that cardinal just stopped for a moment to gaze at his reflection rather than fight it; just think what a beautiful creature he would see. And so would we, if we only do the same.