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I can’t recall when I first learned the Golden Rule, but I’m sure I’d heard it plenty by kindergarten.  I didn’t know it had a biblical bas until a bit later, and I was well into adulthood before I realized Christians hadn’t cornered the market with their primary rule of engagement:  ”Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:1).

It’s a fine rule, from preschool through old age.  It works in a variety of circumstances including, but not limited to, the sandbox, the schoolhouse, the home, the church, the workplace, Congress, and social media.  Its versatility is complemented by its clarity: if you like being treated with respect and kindness, treat others that way.  No caveats, no disclaimers.  The Golden Rule is elegant in its simplicity.

The Jews presented the same thought with a twist over a hundred years earlier: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.  This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it” (Hillel the Elder, Talmud, Shabbath 31a).  In one of many of its explicit incarnations of the Golden Rule, Islam hinges this ethic to true belief: “Not one of you truly believe until you wish for others what your wish for yourself” (The Prophet Muhammad, Hadith). Further east, the sentiment is repeated by the Buddhists: “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful” (Udana-Varga 5,1).  Confucianism offers this version: “One word which sums up the basis of all good conduct… loving-kindness.  Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself” (Confucius, Analects 15.23).  And so go the Hindus: “This is the sum of duty: do not do to other what would cause pain if done to you” (Mahabharata 5,1517).

The Golden Rule is also known as the ethic of reciprocity, and regardless of the belief system, the message is one of empathy followed by compassion, respect, and kindness. This ethic of reciprocity, expressed in all faiths, extends beyond belief, existing as a principle of living in community that crosses religious and political boundaries.  Thus, the Golden Rule serves as a common ground for those of differing views about deities and theology.  As a Unitarian Universalist who draws truth and meaning from many spiritual practices, the Golden Rule provides a unifying theme that reminds me that no single belief system corners the market on ethics.

So what’s the problem?  So why are so many of our encounters filled with anger, distrust, fear, and loathing?  Why do we fail to treat others with the compassion, respect, and kindness the world’s belief systems agree upon?  We teach this principle to our children by age three, expecting them to follow it in encounters with friends and siblings.  Then as adults, we abandon it, or at least only practice it with a selected circle.  What’s going on here?

For me fear and anger are the emotions that lead me to choose a route other than that of compassion.  Fear of what is uncomfortable or different.  Fear of losing what I have (authority, security, validation from others, whatever).  Many of my rants at my kids come from my fear, generally fear about what their future might hold.  When one son hurts the other, either physically or verbally, my mind reels, fearing that this child will go on to treat others this way, losing friends, alienating loved ones, risking incarceration…  I’m very good at letting fear drive my mental train. Schoolwork not done?  Fear jumps in the driver’s seat as I worry about opportunities five, ten, twenty years down the line missed because of a moment of negligence today.  Yes, fear leads to many less-than-compassionate encounters with my children.

Anger takes turns, too.  The third interruption in a ten minute phone call makes alarm bells go off in my head.  Brushing aside how I’d like to be treated if I were the interrupter, anger trumps reason and the yelling begins.  Does the interrupter need to understand why he act is so annoying and inappropriate?  Yes.  Does he really need to be berated for it?  If that were the solution to the interrupting problem, it would have worked a good ten years ago.

It’s easy to lose sight of the ethic of reciprocity to treat those close to us.  They are so close that we wrap them into our minds and hearts, often losing track that they are their own people with their own hearts and minds.  Heck, we even unload on them when we’re really mad at ourselves.

What about our missteps with the Golden Rule and those not so close?  Why do we jump all over the stranger, the co-worker, or the faceless person online?  I’d bet fear and anger are the root of these missed chances for connection and compassion, too.  It’s easy to hold onto our own beliefs and truths so tightly that any comment or action by another that contradicts us raises the fear and anger alarms in our brains.  If we don’t pause to realize this event, we may forget to practice empathy — the cornerstone of the compassion — and lash out at what we fear or what makes us angry.

What happens on the individual level happens on larger levels.  As part of a group, it’s even easier to forget that the members of another group are, indeed, as human as we are. Cut them, and they bleed.  Shout rhetoric and hate at them, and they feel as fearful, angry, and hurt as we would feel.  Nation to nation compassion is no less needed.  The rule of reciprocity works on every level.

So what do to?  I start with myself, and I start over each moment of each day.  When I slip, treating another in a way I’d not want to be treated, I try to apologize. I’m a lousy apologizer, often justifying my wrong as I bumble through my apologies, but practice improves  my apologies, and the process becomes easier.  Better yet, I try to pause when gripped with fear or anger. A pause of even a few breaths can give me time to remember the Golden Rule and to practice compassionate speech, even when the message I have is in conflict with another. After all, it’s not the act of disagreeing that is without compassion, it’s the way that message is delivered, including whether the message acknowledges the other as fully human.  Even bad news can be delivered with compassion.

The Golden Rule.  The ethics of reciprocity.  Whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Unitarian Universalist, Humanist, or just human, those ethics are the same.  Let’s remember that when we engage with others, at home, in our community, online, and in the bigger world.  Let’s make that one rule bind us all.

On my bleakest days, I wonder what I’m missing.  Just how stupid am I, thinking we should just all get along despite our differences of race, religion, politics, gender, education, and all? It’s tempting to wall myself off from all that irks me and give up that idea that we’ll ever become a more compassionate world.

This bout mental gloom began with a question.  A Facebook friend, whom I do know in real life, asked a question regarding a politically charged issue.  Now, I’ve been called naive before, although I prefer to think of it as hopeful.  I assumed (first error) that her question was genuine: a gentle probe to understand the other side of an issue she holds dear to her heart.  So I answered (second error), with a gentle, honest, brief answer.

For a few minutes after I replied, I thought I’d entered a real conversation.  Dialogue, I thought.  We’ve started a dialogue!  Not the kind that radically changes anyone’s mind.  Not the sort designed to move one from Camp A to Camp B.  Just the kind that increases understanding across the aisle, even if just by a hair.

Then the bottom dropped out.  Vitriol, assumptions, and judgement from others of her mindset began to fill the page.  Stunned and feeling rather ambushed, I sat, heart pounding and stomach rising. Her question was no genuine question, no reaching out to understand. It was rhetorical, aimed at those who espoused her opinion.  Rather than an invitation to dialogue, it was a request for affirmation from those of similar mindset.

I could have walked out then.  Perhaps I should have.  But still clinging to the idea that social media can offer us a unique opportunity to see and better understand the views of others, I hung in.  I briefly and politely replied a few times to the loudest responder, then feeling discouraged, wrote and posted a blog post on reversing the polarity of social media.  I didn’t advocate for a side (indeed, I’d not taken one).  I didn’t verbally spar. But I did give up, removing my replies (thus evoking  cheers), and chastised myself for my naiveté.

And then I despaired. If in this forum, we can’t make an attempt at civil and respectful speech, what hope to we have in the larger community?  Here, where we’ve selected to whom each missive goes, should we not be ready to be grown-ups, indeed models for the children of ours who are certainly watching, and agree to disagree as we teach them to do? Not to compromise their values, but rather to practice right speech (speak the truth with kindness and compassion).

In short, if we can’t practice tolerance and right speech among “friends”, where can we?  If we can only practice those traits with those who share our opinions, faith, and long-held beliefs, we are only walling ourselves off, missing opportunities to understand others and for others to understand us.  We’re missing our chance to practice our beliefs regarding love and respect. On a simply practical level, rancor and ridicule never moves someone to your point of view.  If anything, it moves them further away.  Back to that catching more flies with honey than vinegar adage…

So I get it.  Facebook and other social media are really places for us to justify ourselves and our stances.  After all, most of our “friends” think just like we do, right? And if they don’t, who cares?  We’re just being ourselves, true to our beliefs.  And that, of course, justifies any behavior or word these days.

But, I want better than that, online and in real life. I want a world where voicing a differing viewpoint isn’t an invitation to inhibition and insult.  I want to be able to disagree with respect, receiving respect in turn.  As humans, we owe that to each other, at least in my naive way of thinking.

This is far from the first time I’ve despaired about humanity, losing hope that we could ever truly learn to love each other with all our differing beliefs and opinions.  As I age, I ride the roller coaster of delight to despair more often, perhaps simply because I’m thinking more about it.  As my children grow, I strive to teach them to live lives of compassion, love, and respect.  I fall short with my own words many times, and then I despair in me. Perhaps the stakes just seem higher than ever, with increasing polarity in our nation and decreasing tolerance for what is not our own way of being.

So what to do?  Undoubtedly, start again, albeit a bit wiser.  Remember that above all, we’re all just painfully human, tightly identified with our minds and easily threatened by what we do not understand. Remember that it’s not defending an opinion or belief that is the problem, it is forgetting that those who don’t agree are as fully human as we are.  Thus, we open ourselves to greater understanding of others, which can only help form the path to peace.

Namaste.

We’re human.  We seek out other humans who are like us.  We look for a neighborhood that we think fits our family. We look for a church that matches our belief system.  We seek an education for our children that fits what we think education should be.  It’s human nature and completely understandable.

It’s also dangerous.

When the only voices we hear are the ones that validate our existing point of view, we miss the balance that comes from hearing what doesn’t match ours.  I’m not talking about the “hearing” that is followed by rolled eyes and online rants.  I’m talking about real listening to another side of the issue and to what the other person has to say.  Whether it be about politics, religion, a current community issue, or a standing social concern, the key here is really listening without judgement.

This is hard.  As  Unitarian Universalist, a member of a liberal religious tradition, I stand by the right for every human to search for what he or she finds true and meaningful, within the bounds of respecting the worth and dignity of every human being.  That can really be tough, requiring far more breathing and pausing than I sometimes care to practice.

To be sure, listening to opposing viewpoints does not mean agreeing with them.  It doesn’t mean never presenting a respectful rebuttal or providing additional (neutral) information.  It does require an open mind and heart and some creative thinking.  It takes creativity and openness to look at the world through another’s eyes, if even for a moment.  It takes knowing where your own buttons are, remaining alert what might threaten to set them off.  It takes love — the kind of unconditional love Jesus taught– and compassion — the sort the Buddha demonstrated — to quiet the mind and just truly listen.

Why bother?  Because, at best, ranting and raving at the other side accomplish nothing.  Because digging in, calling names, and making broad assumptions is the job of two-year olds and teens (the latter of whom we rightfully expect better).  Because, like it or not, much of life is a mystery, as is all of the future.  None of us have the market cornered on the best way of living in this remarkably complicated world.  Really. And no amount of vitriol and rhetoric actually changes anyone’s mind.  Does the adage, “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” ring a bell?

Just try it.  Try it on your public media of choice.  The next time someone posts a favorable link about the politician you hate, the church you can’t stand, or the cure-all that you’re sure is garbage, don’t just move on.  Click through. (Judiciously — I’m not advocating damaging your computer or being irresponsible.)  Read the link.  It may be a one-sided rant full of — wait for it — vitriol and rhetoric.  Or, more often in my experience, it may be a more thoughtful look at the other side of a subject. Before cursing it on or off-line, look for what’s behind it.  Google the politician, church, or cure-all and read more.  Listen while you read, to the people behind those messages that drive you out of your mind.  Listen to their fear, their hopes, their concerns.  Listen to your own heart and mind, noting judgement and your own fear, hopes, and concerns.

Repeat this exercise until you kind of get it.  Not believe it (although that could happen), but just understand that there could be another valid way of looking at the world.  That other way may be in stark contradiction to yours, and you may be more opposed to it than when you first began your search.  That’s fine.  The point is to know what the other point of view is about. After all, it came from human beings (and, if it’s via social media, it came from human  beings you call your friends).  It’s worth understanding where they come from.

Don’t be surprised if your heart softens a bit, even if you hold your stance as tightly as before.  Don’t be surprised if you find it harder to lambaste folks you don’t know online and off, now that you have a better feel for them as human beings.  Don’t even be surprised if you now find it easier to respectfully voice your own opinion.

The secret is this.  The more you know about another way of looking at the world, the more you understand just a bit of the people behind those crazy ways that are not yours, the more you see how you are similar to them.  The woman who opposes all vaccinations? She has fears for her children, just like you have for yours.  That’s common ground.  The man who rages against higher taxes for national health care?  Perhaps he worries about not having enough resources down the line, like so many of us do.

We have more common ground than we think.  Our internet communities can make it seem like we have none, breeding hate, anger, and fear.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Until we see what we share and at least try to recognize the thoughts and feelings behind another’s point of view, we’re living neither the message of Jesus or the Buddha.  We’re simply practicing polarity.

So just what do I want for my children?  My standard answer is as follows:  I want my boys to be productive, contributing members of the world.  I want them to be moderately happy.  I want them to be tolerated by others of their species.  A bit low-reaching — even incomplete?  Nope.  That’s my list.  And it allows me plenty of room to love them unconditionally, correct them when they’re out of line, and teach them algebra and research paper writing.

But what about college?  Marriage and families?  Church membership?  Voting Democratic?

That all sounds fine to me, but those may not be their paths to happiness, productivity, and social acceptability.  Take happiness.  An Ivy League education won’t seal the deal for happiness any more than learning a trade or working on a ranch in Colorado.  Either way, you’re stuck with yourself, and unhappiness with yourself knows no economic, educational, or political boundaries.  Happiness won’t be found by gaining wealth, amassing friends on Facebook (really), or collecting every new electronic gizmo that comes along.  Sing it with me.  Happiness comes from within.  Misery comes from the same place.  What I want for my kids is an appropriate amount of the former, stemming from a good amount of self-knowledge tempered with love of that self, the others around them, and this universe we share.

Productivity is relative.  As an at-home, only occasionally-working-for-pay, homeschooling mom, I keep my self sane by reminding myself that all productivity isn’t tied to a paycheck or an office with a door.  Okay, I’d like to also see them in their own homes some day, although a communal farm or Buddhist monastery would fly, too.  I’d include financially independent, but who am I to say what sort of partnership them may form someday, what domestic agreements they’ll make?  It’s more than a hope for them economically.  It’s a hope for their hearts and souls.  I hope that the way they live in this world contributes goodness to it, either through their career choices or their general way of being on this planet.   I want them to add to the repair end — tikkun olam — more than the breaking end.

My line about tolerance by others is only a bit tongue in cheek.  With one child who is somewhat naturally oblivious to the habits of the humans in the world (but perfectly clear on cat social protocol), this is a serious challenge.  What passes as cute at ten (and far less does pass than it did at six) looks quirky at fifteen.  Nothing wrong with quirky — quirky works for all in this house.  But soon, ignoring the ways of the Earth’s most complicated species can make for a lonely life.  My younger’s Asperger’s makes learning the ways of the social human a fairly large, life-long project rather than a life-and-learn affair.  It takes loads of cues and commentary on what others might be thinking in a social situation.  His Asperger’s is going to stay with him, along with his green-grey eyes and love for complexity.  I’d not wish any of those to change.   Even for my neurotypical older son, getting along with others without being a sheep is a skill to learn and takes time to hone.   I’d like them to have friends as they go through life, so social awareness is part of the curriculum.

Ah, if it was that easy.  Have three simple goals.  Love my children.  Live our lives.  It’s not.  I’m pretty good at rationalizing most of the other stuff I do so it fits those goals, however.  Education tops my priority list.  Not for the sake of a particular diploma but as a path to choices.  My kids have (shifting) ideas about what they’d like to do when they’re older.  Neither mentions fast food counter work or anything requiring physical labor as goals, so we stay the course that offers the most options later on: we plan for college.  Not the stress-filled, do-it-all, kind of way to plan for college.  Not the lackadaisical, do-what-you-want way either.  We take the middle way, stressing strong reading, writing, and studying skills and enough science and math to open the doors in that direction should that be desired.

I wish just the social piece was easier.  I am not always sure when what I’m asking my younger son is for him and when it is for me.  Not the parts about not scratching certain regions in public or considering the feelings of other before making random comments that sound hilarious in his head.  I’m good with all of those, and those lessons are good for him.  Inhibiting shirt chewing (I often do) or insisting on eye contact (I try not to) are more questionable corrections.   Between the Asperger’s and, well, the being a boy thing both guys have going on, much of my girl-based social information seems suspect if not just irrelevant.  I’m best when I stick to the standards:  listen to others, chew with your mouth shut, and shower daily.

Even with the answer in place, I still ask myself — many times a day — what I want for my children.  It’s a reminder of what I hold important.  It’s a tug back to what’s truly important in their lives now and what is likely to be important later.  It holds me to those snarky, modest goals that aren’t really that modest after all.

My children have been raised on folk music.  Not just folk music, for that would be an unbalanced musical diet.  Classical, pop, show tunes, alternative, chant, and occasional rock music make their way into our home, but much of their listening diet is folk music, mostly newer folk with some classics.  It’s what I was raised on.  While I went through a time (okay, about 20 years) where I avoided the music of my early years, eventually I returned to folk music.  Perhaps it was the arrival of my first child.  My mother danced me around the room to The 59th Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy), and once my older son was born, it just seems the right kind of music with which to dance a fussy baby.

Only my younger embraces the folk genre as I have.  Folk on acoustic guitar has generally straightforward music with often arresting words.  We both love lots of words, and perhaps that’s the draw.  My older one may be less annoyed by it than I think.  It’s hard to sort out what is rejected because the child is fourteen and what is truly not liked.  Both have attended folk concerts, but it’s my younger who looks forward to the events.

Seventy two percent of my iPod music is classified as folk or other near-folk genre.  It’s wordy stuff, some full of protest, some full of love and angst.  Since my iPod lives hooked up to the car stereo system, it’s also what we all hear on our drive time when public radio isn’t what’s playing.  My older counters this with his own iPod, wired to his ears.  My younger makes requests.

Folk music starts conversations.  Bus boycotts, evolution, world religions, politics, and Middle Eastern peace are all topics covered on my iPod.  Plenty of love songs and more love lost songs play as well, although my boys don’t find these terribly interesting yet.  So when the iPod shuffled to David Roth’s “Be Kind to Yourself” a few days back, I made a conversation-starting comment.

To put some context on this conversation, here’s a snippet of lyrics:

It’s easier said than done, I know
I’m the first to admit I take it slow
I just have a hard time letting go
Letting go of the critic inside me

Sometimes I prefer to stand and fight
Then you remind me “Take it light,
Would you rather be happy or be right?
Would you rather be happy or right?”

I have a strong inner critic.  I have a strong outer critic as well, as does my younger son.  Sensing a teaching moment for him and a reinforcing moment for me I charged forward. “That last line challenges me.  The one about rather being happy or right,” I said to my younger. “Does it challenge you?”

“No,” comes his blunt reply.

“Which one would you rather be?” I ask, pretending I don’t know the answer.  ”Happy or right?”

“Right!” he answers.

“And what about you?” I ask my older. “Would you rather be happy or right?”

Just as definitively comes his answer: “Happy.”

That sums us up.  My younger and I struggle mightily with our desire to be heard, to be right.  Being wrong scares the both of us.  It chinks the armor that gets us through the day, so identified with our minds are we.  As I’ve grown, I’ve been able to generally temper this desire to be right  – to be recognized as being right — when the cost of that act may be at too high a price for the situation or relationship.  But under stress, I too often revert to wanting to be right, even when I’m wrong.  Right in the face of evidence I’m wrong, even.  It’s ugly.

My younger is no different.  At six, he fought for twenty minutes over a math problem.  He’d blundered in a calculation, saying 7 +4 =12.  (It doesn’t.)  Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary (counting marks on the board and blocks on the floor, checking on two calculators), he insisted he was right. He knew way too much math to really not know, but he’s a tenacious child and held on for the duration.

At six, it’s excusable.  With his Asperger’s and accompanying tendency to lock in and fail to switch gears when needed, it’s understandable.  At 38 and fairly neurotypical, my twenty-minute counter-argument was not.  Two people, locked into being right over all else.  Talk about ugly.  No one was happy, especially not my older son, then 10, who continues to crave harmony above truth, sometimes to his detriment.

My younger son defends his position without shame:  Being right makes him happy.  I’m far more sheepish about this truth about myself, knowing the key to happiness involves far less dependence on being right.  And I believe that.  I’m more happy when I can let more slide.  When I allow for humanity to be human, myself included, I’m more peaceful than when my inner critic comes out and “rights” all over the place.  It’s a process, a slow, sometimes painful process for me and those close to me.  But I’m generally moving toward the happy camp.

My younger remains set in the “right” camp.  I see signs of growth in him, too, however.  He’s starting to apologize when he’s wronged someone, a hard task when admitting you are wrong is akin to having your skin removed. While he’ll still  verbally spar about a myriad of details he sees as right when challenged by another, this small change brings me hope.  Knowing this is so hard for him, this allowing himself to be wrong and having others know it. In turn, I work harder to let “right” go in favor of compassion and peace.  For compassion and peace tend to bring happiness.  And that’s really what I’d rather have.

“Hey, look what I got!” said my younger son, giddy with Hanukkah excitement.  ”Guilt!”

“Gelt,” I corrected him, choking on my sip of wine.  ”Gelt is the foil-wrapped chocolate coins we have at Hanukkah.  Guilt is something else entirely.”  He proceeded to repeat his verbal faux pas for the remainder of the evening, although seemingly for reaction each time.  ”Gelt,” I reminded him each time.  Thirty minutes later, we bundled into the car and headed for their father’s house for, as they call it, Christmas Eve Eve.  I said a quick goodbye, envious of the easy excitement of the young. I headed home, which was conspicuously quiet and calm.  Time to spend a peaceful evening with my mom and — hopefully– sleep with more ease than I had for the last few weeks.

Sleep has been an elusive companion lately.  While falling asleep is occasionally a problem, staying asleep from five onward plagues me far too often.  As an eight-hour-a-night person, this drop to five or six night after night makes for an out-of-sorts string of days.  Knowing (or at least hoping) it’s the stress of the holidays helps.  While I don’t go all out for the season, I do enough to create a fair amount of extra work.  I try not to worry about what isn’t done, but concerns nag at me, and they seem to like to do this most several hours before the sun comes out.  Guilt walks closely behind — or perhaps ahead — of my worries.

Ah, gelt would be such an improvement.

Because I haven’t dictionary-delved and dissected for a while, lets turn to the online Merriam-Webster for a definition of guilt:

Guilt has its place.   Definition 2a, the state of one who has committed on offense especially consciously, is the prick of discomfort that can keep us from a Lord of the Flies existence.   Guilt about wronging another can lead to efforts to repair those wrongs.  Many might prefer to ditch the word guilt, replacing it with self-awareness, but I prefer the bite of good-old guilt.  Guilt can drive us to do the right thing when we really don’t want to.  A bit of guilt can lead one on to a heart-felt confession and determination to do better next time.

But definition 2b, feelings of culpability especially for imagined offenses or from a sense of inadequacy, is a different beast entirely.  I’m a pro at imagining offenses, either ones I imagine I already committed or ones that I might commit if I say or do the wrong thing.  Or if I don’t say or do the right thing.  Either way, like worry, guilt (2b) is useless and damaging.  This season, I’ve done my share of both, and I paid with my ministrations to those futile emotions with my sleep.  Do I make the cookies my mother loves, or let myself off the hook this year? Did I get the gifts for the boys even?  Did I overdo it for them?  Did I miss a cue during that conversation with so-and-so?  Did I stay too long when I visited?  I’m getting it all wrong!

Yeah, that stuff is the useless guilt and worry that folks say to discard.

If it was only that easy.  I’m convinced some of that tendency toward worry and guilt is imprinted on my DNA.  I can’t place that load on my Catholicism, which wasn’t the faith of my most formative years and was not practice in a place that paired the faith with guilt.  There is a fair amount of tendency to ruminate and feel guilt (2b) on my father’s side of the family, with a lessening of intensity as those genes are diluted by passing generations.  I’m able to talk myself through most of my worry and guilt, but I’ve yet to reach the point where I don’t feel them come on, unbidden and unwanted.  Like the neighbor’s cat that frequents our back door, guilt and worry return spontaneously, since at times they are fed. (Yeah, sometimes we feed the neighbor’s cat. I don’t feel guilty about that.  Much.)

So as the end of the year approaches, I continue to work on letting guilt (2b) and worry go.  With the more preparation-heavy holidays past, they are less likely to keep me awake. The pair is likely to continue coming, however unbidden.  After 42 years, that seems unlikely.  I can continue to acknowledge them then let them go.  All feelings pass, and these are no different.  As for what I pass onto my sons, that remains to be seen.  I’m hoping it’s gelt.  That’s the good stuff.

I doubt I like or dislike the post office any more or less than anyone else. Less than a mile away and on my general route to almost anywhere, it’s convenient. The wait times is lower than that of the post office of my youth, although whenever possible, I avoid the line for a clerk and used the automated kiosk.

Alas, the Very Important Envelope precluded use of my automatic friend. Eight days before Christmas, I’d have to wait my turn in line for a real person. The queue was surprisingly short for the time of year, but my stomach plunged when I saw the available clerks. There she was: my post office nemesis, whom, for convenience and politeness, I’ll call Nancy. Plenty of other names cross my mind when I see her, but none would be respectful or polite, and even if I knew her given name, using it here would be unwise.

I did what I do when Nancy is at the counter. I counted the people ahead of me and tried to estimate given package load of those customers and the status of the current transactions who’d be my clerk. I’ve repeated this ritual my past four trips in the counter line. It makes no difference in the outcome, of course. Every time, Nancy is mine.

Nancy and I go back about three months. Progeny in tow, I stopped by to mail some homeschooling curriculum (workbooks and a textbook) to family across the country. My automated friend doesn’t work for media mail, so I headed directly for the line. After a reasonable wait in line, I found myself in front of Nancy. Nancy asked the usual question about the contents of the package (bound, printed material, etc). I affirmed its acceptability for media mail status, adding that it was homeschooling curriculum.

Rule number one. No small talk or additional information with Nancy. A sharp look from her was followed by sharper retort that curriculum was not media. Thrown, I answered that I’d sent this type material several times. For years, in fact. I received it that way as well. It took a few minutes to convince her that we were indeed talking about the same thing: bound, printed material. She then proceeded to the questions regarding hazardous or fragile contents, firearms and the like. My children, sensing tension, decided to start talking. “What’s media mail, Mom?” my younger asked.

Rule number two. Don’t talk to Nancy about post office regulations of past or present. I answered my son, referring to the book rate designation of the past. “There was never a book rate,” interrupted Nancy. After a brief, stunned silence, I quietly returned that indeed there had been — I’d mailed many a book that way. From there, the conversation became bizarre. A tirade followed, a litany of items people attempted to mail via book rate (yes, she used the term freely at this point), including coats and car parts. She became combative, even starting in on homeschooling as well as postal crimes of the past. I used a tactic I’ve generally reserved for my younger son: I told her we needed to end this conversation, as it didn’t seem to be very productive. She harrumphed. We left.

As the fates would have it, I was to require counter service a few other times over the next few months. Once, my automated friend was out of service. Another time, I needed another media mail transaction mediated by a human. Each time, I found myself with Nancy. Even without any confrontational postal exchanges, I found myself sweaty and tense approaching the counter, bracing myself and using as few words as possible. Until last Saturday and the Very Important Envelope. I rarely have Very Important Envelopes to mail, and this was the first required certified mail and delivery confirmation. I perused the possible forms in the counter cubbies next to the line, choosing one that seemed promising, and approached the counter.

Rule number three. Don’t ask Nancy questions about post office stuff.  This seems counterintuitive, since she’s a postal worker and all, but trust me on this one.  Nancy rapidly listed what I needed, so I returned to the form area and produced three choices. Two were correct, and with some prompting, she agreed to tell me which two.  My additional questions to clarify some details were met with cryptic answers in an annoyed voice, but somehow I made it through with (I hope) the proper documentation required.  Somewhere in all this, I ended up mailing a 15 ounce, $15 paperback to Arizona for the $9.61.  I’m sure that was above and beyond for the eight days remaining until Christmas, but the transaction occurred without my involvement while I was figuring out the Very Important Envelope’s journey.  I briefly questioned Nancy about that and was quickly rebuked.  I let it go.

I left fatigued and irritated.  As with the other Nancy encounters, I also was a bit shaken, wondering how someone could get through each day with that much hostility and anger. I also left wondering what I can learn about me from Nancy and folks like her. I wonder if those encounters could be spiritual work.

I can’t change Nancy, but I can change my response to Nancy. Okay, I could also change my post office, but that would be pretty inconvenient.  I didn’t exactly enter these encounters with good will and patience, at least not after the first one.  I entered tense and ready for conflict.  I never swore or treated her disrespectfully, but I was hardly warm and compassionate.  And Nancy did not disappoint.  I almost wonder if she enjoys seeing customers squirm as their blood pressure rises.  So I wonder what would change, at least for me, if I greeted all that vitriol and unhelpfulness with a smile and warm comment.  Would she respond by softening?  Maybe, but that’s not the main question (although that would be a fine outcome).  What matters would be what happened inside me.  I just might soften, and I’d likely leave far less shaken, irritated, and fatigued.  I might even walk away with a smile, if for nothing else than the knowledge that I’d not allowed another person’s misery to become mine.  Certainly, it’s worth a try.

My only picture of my boys with Santa. Okay, it's their dad dressed as Santa, ready to head out and delight/scare (several did cry)neighborhood kids.

I grew up without a Santa Claus.  Sure, I visited Santa at the mall for many years as a child.  And the presents in our stockings?  They were always addressed from Santa, in handwriting that was undeniably either belonging to one of my parents or to me.  On Christmas Eve, however, filling the stocking with a few of the basics was my job.  The orange or apple (for me — I didn’t like oranges) went in the toe.  Chocolate or nuts in their shells followed.  During filling, I’d pose for the annual “laying (her) finger aside of (her) nose, and giving a nod, up the chimney (she) goes” picture, head tilted, finger places, sack across my shoulder.  I’d leave cookies out for Santa and head to bed, too excited to sleep past five or six the following morning.

I’d awake knowing a present (always a book) was hidden, wrapped in my room.  Designed to keep me occupied and contained until the more reasonable hour of seven or eight, the book was the first sign that Christmas had begun.  Upon descending the stairs (with my parents at the appointed hour), I’d nearly burst with excitement at the sight of the overflowing stockings and the gifts under the tree.  The routine was stockings first, followed by sour cream  coffee cake for breakfast, eaten in the living room while we opened presents to a crackling fire and Christmas music.

But Santa?  He was just a story, a part of a poem, a guy at the mall dressed up to pass out candy canes.  I never recall believing in a Santa who came down the chimney and brought presents.  My parents confirm that they’d never taught me to believe, meaning I never had to unbelieve.  As an older child, I had friends whose siblings believed, and I was amused at the ends to which their parents would go to convince these younger ones that Santa was real.  For one family I knew, Santa wrapped in comics.  For another, only stocking gifts were from St. Nick.  Others wove more elaborate tales and ruses to extend the time which their children would believe in Santa.

I don’t recall any ugly confrontations, but it’s possible that in my youth I ruined Santa for a friend or two before I understood that the old man was meant to delight and that other kids really enjoyed it.  I certainly never gave the secret away once I understood that Santa was important to some families.  When my first son entered the age of Santa reason (the Christmas he was two and a half), his father and I were Santa-neutral.  We neither encouraged nor discouraged belief, and given that sitting on a stranger’s lap at the mall was one of the last things our older would have chosen to do, this wasn’t a tricky tightrope to walk.  His paternal grandparents, on the other hand, were full of Santa sentiments.  ”What do you want Santa to bring you?  Did you see Santa?  Be good!  Santa is watching.”  He was their first grandchild — the only until our second child came along two years later — so all the kid-Christmas energy went toward him.  Being the rather distracted child he was (and is), he seemed to let it go by.

By three and a half, he was aware to the Santa story.  His paternal grandparents kept up the Santa talk, at least until my sensitive, anxious older son broke down.  Santa scared the crap out of him.  We assured him there was a cap on our chimney, showing him from outside.  We worked the logic end of the equation.  We told him we were Santa (and other intruder) safe.  Even his grandparents said Santa could deliver his presents to the mall, for his parents to pick up.  When the anxiety reached its peak, we told him point-blank — Santa isn’t real.  He’s just a story.  He’s supposed to be a fun story.  My older son was inconsolable.

How did he manage to continue to believe in the face of his parents’ honesty on the subject?  I’m not sure, except that all the other regular adults in his life, from daycare to parents of friends, talked the Santa talk.  We were in the minority and, I guess, not terribly convincing.  The fear continued the next holiday season, and we repeated our reassurance.  For a child with a scientific mind and high ability to reason, he was tenacious in his fearful belief.  Somewhere in the next year, about the time he lost his first tooth, he left Santa behind.  (No tooth fairy, either.  Way too scary to have a stranger in your room at night.  He left teeth on the kitchen counter and was wise to the deliverer of the dollar bill.)

Our matter-of-factness et al bit us in the rear in the start of second grade, ironically the semester that was to be my older’s last in school before coming home.  I received a call from his teacher during the day in late fall.  She notified me that my older had outed Santa in his class of first and second graders.  Not maliciously.  Not condescendingly.  Just honestly.  And then he promptly outed the tooth fairy.  Somehow, he left the Easter Bunny alone, although his teacher may have pulled him aside before more revelations were made. Interestingly, she said no damage was done.  The kids simply didn’t believe him.

He was flummoxed as to what he’d done wrong, and we assured him telling the truth was, generally, the right thing to do.  We did manage to convince him that believing in Santa was important to many children and their families.  To honor that, we asked him not to give the truth away.  We were met with incredulity: “A stranger coming into your house at night!?  What’s to like?!” We went through a list of his friends who believed and asked for his help in withholding his information about Santa (and the other characters) until we let him know that they already knew the truth.  This was hard for me, who values honesty above warm, fuzzy feelings about guys in my chimney.  But I think it was the right thing to do.  Every year, we’d review the list of friends and remind him to hold his tongue.  He did a fine job, as far as I know.

His younger brother never had much Santa exposure, what with having a brother who thought the idea was akin to being stalked by zombies and not having daycare to preach the Santa message.  Still, his dad and I maintained a Santa neutrality, not teaching Santa but not debunking him every time a family member or friend invoke the guy’s name. By four or five, he asked.  After asking him what he thought (“Just tell me mom.”) and saying that we were all Santa to each other (“Mom!  Just tell me!”), I told him the truth. This confirmed his thoughts, and he was quick add that he was sure the tooth fairy and Easter Bunny were also lies (his word).  As I had with his brother years earlier, I told him not to tell so as not to ruin the fun for those who believed.  As a child who longs to enlighten the world about all that he finds true, this silence is hard for him, but I don’t think he’s slipped yet.  At least, I haven’t received any phone calls from parents or seen friends of his in tears in December.

So next Saturday night, I’ll fill stockings after the boys have put in an apple or orange into each.  Come morning, my younger will likely wake me early while his teenage brother snoozes longer.  We’ll stay upstairs until 8, or at least 7:30, in an attempt to let their grandmother sleep a bit longer.  Then we’ll open the stocking that we filled together, eat sour cream coffee cake, and open the presents under the tree, gas fireplace on and Christmas music playing.  And we won’t ruin Santa for anyone.

So glad this sign has finally changed. (Photo by Harry Mudson)

This morning, my boys and I returned to church.  For the past five and a half months, the Universalist Unitarian Church of Farmington was closed for construction.  The problem?  Our 160-plus year old meeting-house and it’s newer additions were far from accessible to the disabled.  From the rocky, uneven parking lot to the series of steps needed to enter the meeting-house, our boast at being a welcoming congregation was limited to welcoming those who could manage the unwelcoming barriers in and out of church.  We closed at the end of June, with plans to reopen in September, but construction rarely proceeds as planned, and numerous delays pushed that day back to today.   There’s still work to be done.  An elevator, connecting the meeting-house to the lower level of the building, should be complete in January.  Other odds and ends are yet to be installed as well.  But we’re back, and that’s what matters most now.

Five and a half months is a long time to go without a church meeting as church.  Honestly, the first two months were a gift.  We traveled extensively this summer, and for many of the weekends of July and August, we weren’t around anyway.  I’ll admit to enjoying the break in Sunday routine and taking pleasure in extended jammie time.  By September, I was ready to return, although I admit to luxuriating in our free Sunday mornings, the only morning of the week with no driving force behind it to do anything.  I’ve moved from anxiously anticipating the opening to a rather apathetic stance toward this church I love and back to anticipation.  Good thing we’re back before I cycled ’round again.

Today did not disappoint.  I’d been in the building the previous day, cleaning and preparing with dozens of congregants as eager as I.  But none of that prepared me for the elation I experienced pulling up to UUCF this morning for service.  Stepping into the gathering hall in the basement, filling with familiar faces, brought a flood of love.  Love for a place that’s endured the decades, changing as needed, even when change hurt.  Love for the spirit the church embodies, enduring throughout those changes.  Love for that community, that welcoming community, dedicated to creating a place for the religious (or not so religious) progressive, the spiritual seeker, and the lost.

I hung my coat and ascended to the new, accessible vestibule and entered the meeting-house.  With ten minutes to go before the service, the room was filling rapidly.  I found a spot with friends, and our smiles reflected in each other’s faces.  Despite the setbacks, delays, meetings (sometimes unpleasant), and upheaval, we were still there.  More than that, we were there with energy and enthusiasm for the place we’d been drawn to two, five, ten, and even forty years earlier.

It’s been four for the boys and I, four years of previously unimaginable change and a fair amount of pain and and the healing that follows, if we allow it.  Four years I can’t imagine having managed (managed sanity, at least) without that community.  Sometimes all that help me together was singing hymns in the meeting-house on a Sunday morning.  When chaos erupts, any small routine can anchor a soul to earth, and those hymns sung in that community were my anchors many times.  With questioning encouraged, my wondering children found a home where deliberation rather than doctrine dominate.  Reason rules, compassion and acceptance accompany that reason, making this a home with a heart and soul, not just a brain.

This morning, my boys and I returned to church.  We returned to a place that existed long before we were imagined and will, with the strength of community witnessed through these last, long five and a half months, continue long after we’re gone.

Namaste.

Doug Muder, UU/Humanist and writer of Free and Responsible Search, sums up spirituality thus: Spirituality is an awareness of the gap between what you can experience and what you can describe.  Alex, Unitarian Universalist minister,  sees spirit as our true nature, hidden by our mental, emotional, and physical selves.  The spirit is what remains when the ego is silent.  Doug mentions meditation, and those moments of what can’t be described when sitting, breathing, and, well, doing nothing.  Alex mentions meditation, chant, and yoga as opportunities to touch the spiritual.  Alex maintains the paths to the spiritual are with us, in the spiritual texts that have survived centuries, millennia even. Doug, in contrast, references nature and mathematics, citing Archimedes instead.

Do those definitions of spirituality hold for me?  Well, yes.  And, no.

I’m not a theist.  I’m not an atheist either.  At this writing, I believe in something bigger than the individual yet not what some call God.  I’m  not terribly concerned about what to call it, or the true nature of that whatever that is actually is.  Our minds, amazing tools that they are, aren’t it.  Our bodies and emotions aren’t it either.  All are too fallible, to0 changeable, to be all that can be.   When we touch the something within us as individuals or as larger collections of humans that goes beyond our minds, bodies, and feelings, I’d say we’re in the realm of the spiritual.

Like Doug maintains, the spiritual is in that gap where words fail us.  Not that learning more words (or more science) can erase spirituality.  Understanding of the mechanisms of the human body or the cosmos (and on the latter my understanding is minimal), doesn’t decrease my sense of wonder of our existence and the existence of the universe.  If anything, the incredible complexity of this world and beyond deepen my wonder and reverence.  That reverence is spiritual.  In that moment where all drops away –when I drop away — is a spiritual experience.

It’s markedly similar to the lack of self sometimes present when gazing at my children.  For a moment, one will awe me, silencing my thoughts leaving only my essence that knows no words.  All the words, harsh and loving, fall away.  What remains is connectedness and wonder.  It’s not the rush of love that follows that moment of awe.  It’s what comes before my heart feels and my mind adds words.

I’ve found these moments in meditation, but not as often.  I’m hardly an accomplished meditator.  I’m inconsistent and impatient.  I’ve yet to practice with enough regularity to call my mediation attempts serious spiritual practice, and I lack the drive in that direction to make that change happen.  Chant has offered windows to the spiritual, longer looks, in fact, than I find in nature and my children.  Those glimpses of the transcendent part of life pull into longer gazes during chant.  Like meditation, I’ve only experienced that leap in fits and spurts.  Yoga, similarly, has offered moments of spiritual experience, but these are brief. My formal spiritual practice has been less than focused.

For me, spirituality is these tiny moments along with all that surrounds those moments.  Losing myself for even a few seconds while hiking through the woods makes the walk spiritual.  The flash of connection I sometimes experience in the meeting-house is deeply spiritual, as is the brief loss of ego in a generally fidgety sitting for meditation.  The brief connection sanctifies the experience.  Or something like that.

Those moments feed me, reminding me I am but part of a larger whole.  They remind me I’m more than my ever-changing thoughts and feelings, that we’re all more than the sum of those elements with which we most often identify. They are not, however, an endpoint.  Living a spiritual life, at least for this UU, means moving beyond those moments, taking the connections to the all gained in a spiritual experience with me to energize the rest of my life.  It fuels my quest to respect the dignity and worth of every human being, to strive for justice, to love unconditionally, to let go of transgressions, to care for this world.   So informed, those acts become spiritual acts — spiritual practice even.

For me, these internal and external spiritualities complement each other.  When I’m taking the time to quiet my mind, body, and heart, I touch the spiritual part of life.  The more I touch that part, even for an instant, the better I carry peace and love to those whose lives I touch.  When I ignore the internal, contemplative end, I’m more stingy with that love and peace, perhaps because it is just less familiar.  When I reach out, practicing love and peace, I find it with more ease when I turn inside.  And so it goes, spiraling outward and inward at once.

An internal spiritual fest without external expression in life is incomplete.  Whatever practice one chooses, whatever silences the bounding mind and those churning feelings, reminds one of the peace possible.  Keeping that peace to oneself is insufficient.  It’s in the living, our spirituality is fully expressed.