We wait for whatever will come—which we do not yet know— “alone together,” as one recent columnist put it. While we are waiting, we absolutely must distance ourselves physically in order to flatten the curve and help lessen the likelihood our health care system will be overwhelmed. Doing so also helps protect each of us, especially those among us who are most vulnerable. Equally, we must not distance ourselves emotionally and spiritually from each other. While we must assume that anyone (ourselves included) may either be infected or a carrier of the virus, in our hearts, let’s not regard one another as just potential sources of infection. We are all still co-travelers together on life’s journey, held in the infinite web of all that is. In talking and in thinking about the pandemic, we can use people-first language: “people with Covid-19” and not “Covid-19 cases.” We can avoid blaming by using language like “people becoming infected” rather than “people spreading the disease.” And it isn’t the “Chinese virus”! I’ve found it helps me to be mindful of the language I use in self-talk, too. Simply thinking “I am staying home” is much better for me than “I have to stay home” or “I can’t go…”  “Self-isolating” sounds, well, isolating. On the other hand, “sheltering in place” has a much different emotional connotation and comes to the same thing. For the rest of this column, I will focus on a couple of spiritual practices that sustain me and help me feel connected to others. You

One of the joys of the house in Florida where Tom and I live for a few weeks in the winter is that it is less than a mile from the Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge (NWR). We were there one afternoon in February and I again admired the boardwalk that had been constructed to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the NWR movement. The boardwalk’s planks are engraved with the names, locations, and founding dates of many of the NWR properties in the United States and its territories. The walkway has several lovely places to stop and take in the scenery across the water from Pelican Island itself and to contemplate the amazing vision that started it all in 1903. Pelican Island was the very first refuge founded in what would become a network of 600-plus refuges. In March of 1903, President Teddy Roosevelt (1858-1919, president 1901-1909) founded Pelican Island by executive order to protect egrets and other birds who were being hunted nearly to extinction because their plumage had become very popular in women’s fashion. It also protected a large pelican rookery already on the island, hence the name Pelican Island. From this beginning as a single waterfowl sanctuary, the refuge system has grown into a network of over 600 public lands and wetland management districts encompassing over 150,000,000 acres set aside for wildlife conservation. These properties, now managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, are home to at least 700 species of birds, 220 species of mammals, 250 species

Shortly after we arrived in Florida, I found myself in a funk, oddly enough. The trip down had gone more smoothly than usual, no bad weather nor significant traffic jams. Things were mostly unpacked, and I’d fixed the disorganized mess that I found the kitchen in, at least enough that I could get a meal on the table. Meanwhile, we are within sight and sound of the ocean and breathing lovely salt air. So why the funk? I still don’t know exactly. But in looking around on the internet to find suggestions for crawling out of a funk, I came across a blog post by a psychotherapist, Alex Lickerman, M.D. Dr. Lickerman describes his own experience of being in a funk this way: “At various times in my life, I’ve found myself in a state I can only describe as a funk—not depressed, but listless, purposeless, unable to motivate myself and caring about very little. Words like ‘flat,’ empty,’ and ‘disconnected come to mind. It’s not a particularly pleasant state.” Wow! He had described my frame of mind and heart to a T. Goodness knows there is enough in the air right now to send anyone into a funk. The funk virus is out there and we’re all getting sick. I don’t need to detail the specifics—they range from the intimately personal and the congregational to the global. This item from USA Today puts a sharp point on it. “Each year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit group that sets

Many of you know that I received my theological school education at a United Methodist seminary, although I wasn’t and never have been United Methodist. It was 25 miles north of where I lived at the time. I still value the outstanding education I received there. Even more, I treasure the warmth and acceptance, the community, I found there; I belonged, with my “heretical views,” not despite them. That sense of belonging and community is one of the reasons church is so heavily about human community for me. Through the years, I have continued to follow the affairs of that denomination with interest. Most recently, I’ve watched with concern the ongoing debate over full inclusion of LGBTQI persons in the denomination. It’s a dispute that has alternately simmered and boiled for many years. A vote at the 2004 Annual Conference was overwhelmingly in favor of remaining united, even in their disagreement. Even then, though, leaders sensed that remaining united was fast becoming untenable. At the Annual Conference in 2016, the denomination had struggled without success to reach a consensus. The kettle pretty much boiled over after a February 2019, meeting in which the global church voted against full inclusion. There would be no ordination for openly LGBTQI persons, nor would same-sex marriages be officiated by Methodist clergy. Those who did could face removal. Seminaries and churches weighed in heavily on both sides of the issue, and a significant proportion of clergy announced their availability to officiate same-sex unions despite the ban. My

In a wonderfully serendipitous way, I’ve come across several things recently that have encouraged me in light of the pain, limitation, depression and uncertainty resulting from my having broken my leg recently. One of these was “What Does ‘Recovery’ from Severe Mental Illness Look Like?” that Jessie Creselious posted on Facebook. The author is Tony Zipple:

“For most people with a severe mental illness, recovery is an ongoing process. Since the illness is not likely to get totally resolved, there will be ongoing management of the condition. Recovery is a process of reclaiming one’s life from mental illness. As with other difficult events in life, over time, people learn to adjust to their challenges. Recovery is about:

• finding one’s place in the world.
• attaining peace of mind.
• establishing relationships with friends and family.
• discovering opportunities to grow.
• finding happiness.

Recovery is not:

• a cure
• freedom from symptoms
• an end to challenges.
• the elimination of relapses.
• life as originally planned.

But it can be a good, if different, life.”

I do not mean to downplay the challenges of living with mental health concerns. I was struck, however, by how much this piece spoke to me about the various challenges I’ve faced in life. It speaks to transcending the challenges that all of us will face in some form or other. It speaks to the awe-inspiring resiliency of the human spirit and body in overcoming the difficulties life inevitably sends our way, as individuals and as communities. Recovery, in whatever form it takes, is always about reclaiming

She had been both a colleague and a dear friend of many years. We had supported each other through serious and not-so-serious ups and downs in both our lives. Now the cancer for which she had been in treatment for a year or so was wreaking its inescapable havoc. Further treatment was medically futile and would only have added to her misery. Nonetheless, her dearest hope was to complete a book which she had begun writing prior to her diagnosis. Hospice was called. What Jillian (not her real name) wanted more than anything else was to be adequately free of pain but also clear-headed enough for long enough to finish her book and send it off to her publisher. Hospice was able to provide care that enabled her to meet that objective. Her pain was managed well enough, without clouding her thinking, to enable her to write. She did not live to see the book published, but died knowing that it would be. I have been drawn to the concept of hospice care from the first time I learned of it. There comes a time when further medical treatment only worsens suffering, as would have been Jillian’s situation. There is still much that can be done at that point to enhance someone’s quality of life and to support the dying person, family and friends through the process of dying and grieving. In what follows I have relied heavily on information provided by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and their supporting

As we usually do in staff meeting, in preparation for whatever theme is coming up for the next month, we reflected last month on our upcoming October theme of Belonging. Part of that reflection centered on the differences between belonging and fitting in. I’d never really thought about the distinction between them. If asked, my unreflective answer would probably have been that they are similar and related. Maybe not identical, but similar. Further, because I’d spent a lifetime fitting in (or trying to), I’d seriously confused and conflated the two. I might have said I “needed to fit in to belong.” As we talked and as I’ve thought about it since, they aren’t the same, and the difference is significant. Put simply—perhaps a bit too simply—they are nearly opposites in some ways. Remember how Expectation was our September theme? One way to understand fitting in is that it is about meeting expectations. It’s about what we must do to fit in. It’s frequently about changing how we would otherwise be. Fitting in was a predominant theme in my family of origin. In part, that was simply the culture of the late 1940s and 50s. There were rules and standards, and one was expected to abide by them. [My use of the impersonal and stuffy “one” here is intentional. It conveys the emotional tenor of what was going on.] Many of these rules and standards were gender- and class-based. Women typically did not wear slacks in public even if they did at home

Our theme for September, Expectation, led me to think about what happens when our expectations aren’t met. One name for unmet expectations is “disappointment.” Disappointment is our emotional and mental response to not getting what we want, what we expect, when we want or expect it. It’s the dissatisfaction that arises when our expectations aren’t matched by outcomes we perceive to be congruent with them. Unmet expectations are one key dimension of what’s happening in our church community right now. We went into the search process that resulted in hiring Rev. Seth as our new settled minister with expectations, both communal and individual. We had additional expectations of what our church community would be like after he arrived. While unmet expectations aren’t the whole story of what’s happened, they are certainly a significant part of it. As we begin the healing process, perhaps it is useful to look at this aspect. The types of situations that lead to disappointment tend to fall into one of several broad categories. I’d invite you to reflect and see whether you can identify these disappointment triggers in your own experience.

• We can be disappointed by other people. They don’t meet our expectations, or they say or do things that hurt us. We come to feel they aren’t quite who we thought they were. They don’t “measure up,” as we see it. Some of us clearly feel this kind of disillusionment now. By itself, this sense of things can lead to putting all the blame on one
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