Ways to Thanks-giving

When I was in Divinity School, I had a friend who hosted Thanksgiving. She gathered up many of us who were not away for the holiday for an incredible meal. Before eating, we all sat down and shared our gratitude. This could take almost an hour as each person shared an incredible list of thankfulness. (In fact, one year, I brought a written list so I wouldn’t forget anything!)

The spirit of the practice was meditative, as each person took as long as necessary to say whatever they needed while deliciously conjuring up the sources of their joy. While we waited to eat our feast, we fed upon true spiritual food. I can still remember the feeling of that full table, candles lit (food waiting in the oven to stay warm), surrounded by the faces of my friends. The atmosphere changed as we recited all our blessings. Just as the smells of the dishes filled the air, the gratitude had an aroma, a sweetness that enveloped the room.

I do miss that ritual. Now, with children hungry and tired and impatient and young, we scramble to say a quick thank you before we dive in, or we dive in first and give thanks while we eat. Generally, there is chaos, not meditation, and I often eat quickly so I can hustle the cranky baby up to bed.

I like the practice of sinking myself deeply into gratitude. And I like to see what comes up as a result. For me, one of the direct results of feeling blessed is the urge to bless others. Again, though, I come up with a stumbling block. I used to be able to spend hours on projects, on service, giving my time to others. With three small children and household and work demands, I sometimes feel I don’t have enough time even for us. This feels awful. I want to give a return for the bounty I have been given.

I know, however, that there are seasons to one’s life. Having young children doesn’t lend itself well to many and in-depth service projects. Which is why I spend a lot of time brainstorming small ways that I can be a blessing to others. I want to share these with you.

And, as tomorrow is the biggest shopping day of the season, I want to share them in the spirit of genuine giving—the sort that can be done even for those of us who may have little money and—sometimes!—little time.

Some little ideas for giving thanks back:

Call someone. Anyone is fine. Maybe someone who has gone through a hard time, lost a spouse or a parent or a child. Tell them you are thinking of them and loving them.

Send a card. Fill it with loving thoughts and words. Send it to someone who may not get much mail.

Cook a meal for a busy person, a parent, someone who works long hours, someone who doesn’t like to cook, or doesn’t often get home cooked meals. Drop it off. Or cook a meal and invite a friend over.

Pray to be helpful. Ask the Divine Spirit to put people in your path who you can help with your abilities and gifts—whatever they may be.

Hug someone, or many people, even if it feels a little awkward. Do you know that some people don’t get hugged at all! Find one of those people, and even if it is hard, hug.

Forgive your family members and relatives. A good Thanksgiving ritual. No need to do it out loud or make a big deal of it. Silently forgive while you share food by sending love.

Pray. Think of those who are hurting and see them well, whole, healthy and at peace.

Bypass the food bank. If you know someone in your community who goes without, and you know where they live, leave food for them, or money, or a small gift, like a gas card from the store.

Smile, especially when you don’t feel like it, and especially at those who may be frowning. You can think of this in the cyber world too. Put something uplifting on Facebook or another medium you use. Use technology to encourage.

Invite someone for a walk. Walks in beautiful places are the perfect, free gift. When the weather is nice, you can walk and share a picnic.

What ideas do you have?

Rev. Sam Wilde

Powerless=Powerful

At our home in Massachusetts, the power turned off last Saturday night around eight p.m. All around the branches creaked, cracked, thudded to the ground. The 13 inches of snow took the leaves of our cherry tree completely to the ground. Although we wouldn't know it that night as we snuggled in tight under our heavy covers, it would be six more complete days before the power restoration. As our house is in the woods and we have no wood stove, we would also have six days without running water or heat, as well as the usual comforts of lights and refrigerator.

It was a long, stressful week, bouncing from one friend's house to another. The children were cranky and confused and probably a little afraid. The roads were dangerous with downed wires and massive trees hung precariously across power lines. The house, when we came to check on it, became colder and colder, filling with the smell of a fridge full of food now gone sour and toilets flushed with buckets of water.

It was, admittedly, hard to keep a happy face. I had laundry to face and nowhere to do it, including a pile of soiled clothes from a child who kept having accident after accident. Not wanting to outstay our welcome anywhere, we spent afternoons driving in the car. This allowed the kids to nap.

It was frustrating and annoying and difficult, to be sure. In the midst of the powerlessness, however, shining pearls of truth dropped into our lives, like those heavy trees arriving with certainty to the ground. We connected with friends and neighbors whose hospitality and kindness carried us through our days. We had meals and conversations we never would have had otherwise, making a host of new memories, and for a week setting aside entirely the TV, the computer, even the phone.

What is the true power? I have always believed it is love--not the sentiment, but the lived, expressed verb of love. This is what we met in the faces of those who took in our family of five and housed us and fed us breakfast and shared with us a fellowship of common humanity.

I like electricity, of course. For all sorts of reasons. But I am grateful to have been reminded of the true power source in my life, in the lives of my children. The internet for all its marvels, does not connect us, nor the telephone, nor the television, nor the busy demands of a household with all its incredible machines. "Only connect," wrote E.M. Forester about a century ago. Our connections are precious treasures.

That first morning I found myself standing on my street, trapped. A tree down on one side, wires on the other. My cell phone had no signal. We had no water, no heat. From the houses around us emerged the neighbors I have spent years making connections with and I was no longer alone, nor was I trapped, nor was I without the essentials of life. To the contrary, in the most profound way, I had everything I needed.

Sometimes a disaster is truthful--and truth isn't a disaster, but a reminder of power in our lives. We truly do not live by bread alone, but in and through and with one another, find, discover, remind, and reclaim the Divine reflection, the indwelling divinity, Love expressed, the Love that needs no outlets, not motors, no wires, no repair.

--Rev. Sam Wilde

The Goodness of the World

I had a rotten day last week. Every direction I turned, I seemed to face obstacles. I received a frustrating, unkind email. Conversations meant to bring consensus brought more complications. A driver yelled at me, swearing and cursing, after I made a minor traffic mistake. It was one of those days, a kind most of us have, when the world, and its inhabitants, don't seem very beautiful at all.

In fact, I headed into the woods for a hike with my children feeling like people in general were difficult and annoying. Things, even little things, seemed hard. I felt glad to be in the woods, away from traffic and emails and phone calls and relationships. The trees and the streams and the dirt path were a relief.

As the children skipped and frolicked with pure joy, I began to relax. Together we came around a bend in the river and stopped to throw stones into the water. After a few minutes, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, two younger men on the path. They were wearing sagging jeans and hooded sweatshirts and laughing. They were probably college age. I immediately felt uncomfortable. I wondered what they were doing in the woods. I figured they must have come in to smoke pot. They did not seem like the types to take a nature hike.

They got closer to us and I could hear their voices and almost continuous laughter. So much laughter, in fact, that I decided they must already be high, or perhaps drunk. While I didn't fear for our safety, I was eager to have them pass.

And the did. But first they smiled and said hello to all four of us. One said, "You've got the whole gang!" and gave another laugh. The laughs were feeling up the forest. Still, I was happy to have them walk on.

A few minutes later, we continued on our way and came to a place where, normally, when the river is low, you can cross by using stepping stones. With all the rain we had that week, it was no longer possible to forge the river that way. Instead, someone had put down a heavy branch. Crossing it was possible, but only just. I had a baby on my back in a hiker, a three year-old and a five-year old. I didn't want to fall in with Emmett on my back, and I wasn't sure my young daughter would be able to make the distance.

The four of us contemplated the route for a few moments. The young men, now on the other side, turned to see us.

"Hey," one of them said in a lilting, melodic voice. "Do you want some help?" And then the two men helped us all across the river.

What restored my heart that day was not, simply, the beauty of nature, but the beauty of those two human beings. They restored my faith in the goodness of people and so also in the goodness of the world. They returned my mind to a place of innocence--seeing the innocence of those around me. I was disappointed in my own initial suspicion of them, but I know sometimes it is hard to feel good about others, about the world. And yet, the goodness of the world remains present, close at hand, unexpected and joyful, just like those two men.

May you run into such goodness this week, in surprising form, and know it also as your own. This wonderful kindness surrounds us, carries us over the makeshift bridges, fills the forest with laughter and heals the suspicious heart. It is God moving in and through us and others, Love expressed, Love received.

--Rev. Sam Wilde

Home

My family is in the process of selling our home, the home all three of my children were born into. I labored here and nursed them through all their newborn days in this bedroom, rocked them and sang to them in this nursery, cleaned up a thousand spills and exuberantly flung Cheerios in this kitchen and countless times chased them round and round the downstairs rooms. It is hard to leave! We have cultivated the berry bushes on our land and worked the soil year after year to improve our vegetable crops. Slowly, through small changes, we have made the house what we needed.

Today, during a quiet moment with my baby, I felt tears begin to overcome me at the thought of parting from a house that holds so many precious, irreplaceable memories. As I started to indulge them, I had a counter thought come to my mind: those memories belong to me, not to the house. Then I asked myself: where is your true home?

This question of the perfect home has come up for my family over and over again as we have gone in search of our new house. Where will we live? What town? What neighborhood? What style home? Every new house has something different wrong with it, a new kind of compromise, a problem, a missing piece. The perfect house seems not just elusive but impossibly expensive! And when I let myself get frustrated about that, I think that I will not ever have the home I most desire.

As I nursed Emmett today, I let myself have a conversation with Love that took me beyond these strong emotions to the comfort found in truth. Where is my true home? Is it ever in a single house? Can it be in a house at all?

There is a sweet chant I like to sing and one line of it is: "For God is my home." God, by whatever name you may use, is truly the perfect home for each of us. When we feel "at home" it is because we recognize the God-qualities in a place--peacefulness, joyfulness, spaciousness, love and ease. Also, when we don't find them, we can "put" them into a place with our own God-qualities. As a matter of fact, when I first moved into the house we live in now (the one I was just crying over leaving), I didn't like it at all. I found it dark and small and outdated and wrong for me. Over the years, we have poured love into our house, we have loved here, and Love is now reflected in this place.

What a comfort to know that the Love that makes a home goes with me wherever I go, and, like those memories, does not belong to a room or a location. No true and great thing does. How turtle like is our place in God, then. We carry our home with us, our home is all around us, a shelter and protection, a refuge and a sanctuary.

Rev. Sam Wilde

Our thoughts are not who we are

Thoughts flow through the mind endlessly. The river of our thoughts create our experience and feeling tone in our lives. We cannot control which thoughts arise in our minds. However,
We have choices on how to approach them.

I would like to share three ways to approach thoughts which have helped me, when I feel
uncentered, disconnected from love and from God.

In order to create a change, I have to first notice that my mind is moving in a direction that
escalates feelings of doubt, fear, anger, insecurity, or any negative energy. The awareness
Of observing the thought pattern assists in detaching from the identification with the thoughts.
Once I can see what is happening, I no longer am the victim of my thoughts. Distance is created. I become the witness to my thoughts and no longer see myself as the thoughts.

We are the witness of our lives. We are pure consciousness.

I have the choice now to decide if I want to continue experiencing the suffering or to
redirect my attention toward a direction that brings healing and peace.

My teacher, Swami Satchidananda, advised me to repeat my mantra when my mind
indulges in harmful thinking. It works and is a very simple practice. A mantra is a sacred sound vibration which uplifts the mind. The energy of the sound is healing. A very simple mantra is:
Om Shanti. Shanti means peace in Sanskrit. If you are more comfortable repeating peace in English, that works also. There are thousands of mantras. Use the one that works for you.
This is a form of training the mind. We benefit from being in charge of our thoughts instead of our thoughts being in charge of us.
I enjoy practicing metta when my thoughts are not helpful toward my well being.
Metta is wonderful at any time.  It is a practice taught by the Buddha to his disciples
to help develop loving kindness and compassion in our heart. We begin with repeating the following phrases to ourselves:
May I be safe from inner and outer harm
May my mind be peaceful and happy
May my body be healthy and strong
May I live with ease in this life.
You can alter the phrases so that they feel good to you.
Engaging in a spiritually uplifting practice helping to open the heart shifts energy into
A healing direction. In doing metta, do not be surprised if sometimes you feel unloving toward yourself instead of loving. It is a part of the process. Be clear about your intention of
Moving toward loving kindness and allow whatever needs to be cleared and felt move through you.  Compassion toward your human experience will arise in time.

I hope that these suggestions are helpful. 
Truth is one.
Paths are many.

With love,
Rev. Supriya Swerdlick

Stay on the Path

Many years ago I heard for the first time the phrase, "trust the process," which is now, in certain circles, thrown around as a cure-all much in the same way "Let go and let God" is used. Trusting in the process means relaxing into the flow of life with the a belief in its goodness. In an essential way, it is the very base level of faith--a belief that there is something beyond us, something both seen and unseen, something greater and powerfully real.

Last week I took my children, a friend, and her child, to walk a labyrinth. It was a spectacular sunny, summer day. We had views of the mountains and down into a lake. We walked through a field of wild flowers to pass through a wooden arch into the labyrinth where the children, the three little walkers, began to excitedly follow the path as it circled in and then out and then back in again. On their way to the center, they each asked me, at different times, how to get to the end. My son even once traveled backwards, worried he had made a misstep. "You can't get off the path," I told them. "Just keep walking and you will get there."

In the labyrinth, this is absolutely true. All you need to do is keep walking on the path. If you follow it, it will lead you where you want to go. You simply cannot get lost. It isn't a maze with false dead-ends, though at times it can seem similarly confusing. But with a maze you may not make your destination. In a labyrinth, put one foot in front of the other and you can't not make it.

As I walked the labyrinth and kept saying over and over to the children, "just stay on the path. Keep going. You'll get there," I heard my own voice and my own words like an offering. "Just keep walking. Stay on the path." I began to savor the idea that you can't get off the path, and I started to see how this is the truth of life, though at times we may not believe it. But faith and trust require a level of daring, a willingness to let go of pretending we know everything, to find we have been given all we need to know.

"Trust the process" may be trite at times, or insufficient, but it speaks to the simple truth of Divine Love's universe: you will make it to the center. No matter the circuitous path or the moments when you may fear. "Just keep walking." You will get there. We do not need to know how it unfolds exactly. We can let go of our disbelief and open to a more childlike delight just as the three children at the labyrinth, on their second stroll around, began to giggle and skip, run and hop the labyrinth walk. They knew, then, that they could not get lost. And neither can we.

--Rev. Sam Wilde

Faith Amalgam

Recently I was asked to lead worship at a local Christian church, something I do on occasion.  Whenever I am asked I feel obligated to say “yes.” I gave up being a pleaser many years ago; my life subsequently got a lot more interesting when I started doing only things I felt really called to do. Leading worship is, however, not one of those things. In fact I have always felt out of place in such a role…Me? In a robe? You might be wondering, then, why I would say “yes.”

As an Interfaith Minister, I truly believe that the only singular path to God is the one each soul chooses to take in this lifetime. I find beauty and merit in all faiths at their core and have lived my life with a Faith Amalgam, borrowing from the wisdom of the Lakota, the Sufis, the Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Taoists and more.

Studying a wide range of traditions has worked for me, enriched my life, opened my mind and fostered in me a tolerance for even the fundamentalists. Because I see the Path of Faith as a labyrinth, the circuitous path that leads always to the same center no matter where you begin.

When I am asked to share a message in a Christian church, it feels like a great challenge, not the size of it, the degree of worth. It seems to me the world has never needed the Interfaith message more than now -when it seems the left hand has no tolerance for the right and would rather cut it off than oblige a compromise. So, I say “yes” in the hopes of bringing to a community of faith, the primary Inter-faith directive: Love. In fact, isn’t it the primary directive of any religion in its concentrated state?

So, the senior pastor of said Christian church got wind that an Interfaith minister had been invited to preach the following Sunday in her staid and called to interrogate me. “Now, where is it you were ordained?” and “What exactly does your seminary teach?” etc. I told her that we believe that God is Love and there are many paths to love; we practice tolerance and diversity of all faiths as long as they are non-violent. We promote peace, community and respect. She responded, “I’m sorry, but that’s not the direction I am taking this church.” She went on to tell me how progressive and tolerant she really was, but just could not have that kind of message when her main goal was to build her church.

I felt the fear come through in her voice, I felt the wall that separates the “us” and “them.” And, I felt the judgment rise in me, a moment of sadness for the lost opportunity – for myself and her church community, and I felt a jab of hurt, I had never been rejected before, this was a blow to my ministerial ego. Then my own words circled back on me like a boomerang, “…tolerance…peace ... respect.” 

It was, for sure a “practice what you preach” moment. It also reminded me to keep following my path not the path anyone else thinks I should take. In doing what we love, believe in and are drawn to, we fulfill our destiny and give to the world the very specific gifts that have been planted in us to give. Isn’t that what any of us can hope to accomplish?

Howard Thurman, theologian, writes, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.”