Spiritual Fortification
Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray
August 21, 2016
Reading
For our reading this morning I offer two perspectives on the meaning and nature of spirituality.
One is from the American writer, educator and Quaker, Parker Palmer. The second is from
Nichola Torbett, the founding director of Seminary of the Street, a nonprofit institute for the
spiritual formation of social change workers in the context of community.
From Parker Palmer:
By spiritual, I mean the ancient and abiding human quest for connectedness with something
larger and much more trust-worthy than our egos—with our own, with one another, with the
worlds of history and nature, with the invisible winds of the spirit, and with the mystery of being
alive.
From Nichola Torbett
In this country, we treat spirituality as a health additive, like the protein powder you can get
sprinkled on your imperial smoothie. For just a small extra charge, a little prayer or meditation
can make you run better, smoother, in service to the exploitative systems in which we are
immersed. No! Our spiritual practice is meant to make us dangerous, to temper us like steel into
cogs that grind the wheels of injustice to a halt.
Sermon
In the late 1960’s, two researchers carried out a study observing how people respond to potential
dangers.1 In the study, volunteers were asked to wait in a room and fill out a questionnaire.
While they filled out the questionnaire, a visible smoke-like vapor started pouring in from a vent
in the room. If individuals were alone in the room, they would quickly leave the room and go
find help. However, when several people were in the room together, individuals, upon seeing the
vapor, would look at others in the room to see how they were responding. If others were
remaining calm and continuing to fill out the questionnaire, they were more likely to do so too.
Apparently, even after they began to cough or have to rub their eyes, they would remain filling
out the questionnaire. Two thirds actually stayed until they ended up having to be rescued by the
researchers.
This is not one of those tests we human beings aced! When interviewed later maybe people said
they just didn’t believe the smoke was dangerous. Since others were not reacting with concern,
they figured they should not be concerned either.
1
Study by Bibb Lantané and John Darley (1968) cited in Active Hope by Joanna Macy and
Chris Johnstone, p. 59 (2012).
1
This study offers some explanation as to why it has been so difficult to get collective action and
response to climate change. We may hear terrifying statistics – and there are many – but then we
see everyone around us going along, business as usual – and so we maybe think it is not so bad.
Another reason people gave for not reacting to the smoke was that they felt uncomfortable being
the only one reacting. For many of us, we don’t like to stand apart from the crowd – we like to
get along and belong.
While this is all still true – the reality of climate change is breaking through in ways that are not
easily denied or ignored. This summer, globally, we saw the hottest June and July ever recorded
according to NASA. In fact the average global temperature for the first six months of 2016 was
the hottest since records have been kept in the late 1880’s – surpassing the previous record set in
2015. 2 It is hard to deny, temperatures are rising. And Louisiana, the people of Louisiana, are
once again underwater with flooding – losing everything, drowning, needing rescue. The images
are reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina just a little over ten years ago. The current flooding is being
called a thousand year flood – but that name is misleading.
Earlier this year, Missouri was devastated by the second so called hundred year, or five hundred
year, flood in less than 20 years. Most of the state was underwater earlier this year, just like it
had been in 1993, although this year the waters were higher. And more island communities –
including one off the coast of Alaska, are having to figure out how to relocate as oceans rise and
their island home is expected to be underwater in just 30 years. Who will make room for these
communities?
And in California and Arizona, miles of acres of forests continue to be lost to fire. Last summer,
when we were hiking in Prescott, a national forest ranger invited my family up to the top of the
fire tower where he lived six months out of the year. His job was to watch for fires and call them
in at first sight so the crews could respond quickly. There were three active fires we could see
from the tower – one had just started the day before. Then he showed us the dry bare mountains
sides where forests previously lost to fire had once stood. The forests won’t come back he said.
We don’t even plant new trees any more, he explained, because there simply isn’t enough water
for them to survive and grow.
The opportunity in all of this is that it is becoming more difficult to deny global climate change –
more and more people are naming it – it is breaking through our daily news. May it lead us to
actively engage these challenges. For the truth is that despite that study showing how the
influence of others can block our reactions, in the midst of tragedy and emergency, human
beings help each other. The best of us comes forth in moments of challenge and need. Once we
are aware, we can adapt, we can respond, we can and do come together.
Last week, I referenced Joanna Macy’s and Chris Johnstone’s book Active Hope to talk about
the kinds of spiritual practices and characteristics we need to build as a community in order to be
a place of courage, resiliency and engaged hope and action given the urgency and uncertainty of
the times we live in.
2
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/19/weather/hottest-june-record-world/
2
All this summer we have been looking at spirituality and what it means to be spiritual people.
We looked at it through many different perspectives with individual members reflecting on how
spirituality has changed for them, is still growing in them, how it is a source of strength. Today, I
want to look at this idea of spiritual fortification. Standing on the Side of Love is our faith
tradition’s – Unitarian Universalism’s – national campaign for justice and human dignity. And
they have been reflecting on the importance of fortification of people and movements in this time.
Fortification is an interesting word. It has two primary meanings. The first is a militaristic one, it
means to build up a wall around something to increase its protection and guard against attack. In
this time of great uncertainty and anxiety this definition of fortification is used a lot – build a
wall. Build a wall to keep out the uncertainty – the threats of the world – as if somehow we can
separate ourselves from these changes and disruptions – as if we don’t have a hand ourselves in
creating and contributing to these disruptions, as if we can somehow isolate ourselves from the
realities of our planet and fellow species.
Interestingly, another way I hear this militaristic sense of fortification being used, even if not
explicitly, is the idea that in response to uncertainty, the United States ought to double down on
its consumption, its materialism, its way of life – change is not required of us - keep doing what
we’ve been doing and if we just do it better – all will be okay – better than okay – it will be
tremendous.
Here’s a good example. There is a new professional field growing in the United States. It is the
Wall Street Coach - part performance coach, part psychologist – these coaches are hired by Wall
Street Traders to improve their game, their edge, their success in making money. Apparently this
is a new trendy thing in Wall Street. A reporter was interviewing a trader who has used such a
coach to great success. He said he expected the coach to give him trading tips, but instead she
wanted to know about his family and how he dealt emotionally with loss.
As Nichola Torbett says, “In this country, we treat spirituality as a health additive, like the
protein powder you can get sprinkled on your imperial smoothie. For just a small extra charge, a
little prayer or meditation can make you run better, smoother, in service to the exploitative
systems in which we are immersed.”
Counseling, coaching, spiritual direction, religious community – efforts to understand ourselves
more fully are beneficial. However, the key question is to what end? As they continued to
interview the trader, some things he spoke of touched a bit on the spiritual, but in the end, it
sounded like therapy that just nurtured the ego to be stronger than the internal critic that we all
experience. Of course the problem with the ego is that while it can make you feel indestructible,
and it is helpful in competitive fields, when life intervenes as it does for all of us – an illness, the
market crash, the family falling apart – the ego will not get us through it – at least not with health
and wholeness. For this, we need something more solid.
Parker Palmer defines spiritual as “the ancient and abiding human quest for connectedness with
something larger and much more trust-worthy than our egos—with our own, with one another,
with the worlds of history and nature, with the invisible winds of the spirit, and with the mystery
of being alive.”
3
This is where the second definition of fortification comes in, the one that is the meaning
connected to spiritual fortification. The second definition of fortification means to strengthen and
invigorate, to make healthy. For example, vitamins fortify our bodies. This is about
understanding where we have deficiency, where is our longing, and building strength in those
areas. Torbett says we use spirituality as an additive. It’s sold everywhere – on tv, in crossfit
centers, on Wall Street – meant to help us survive the daily grind, the demands, pressures and
uncertainty of our world that weigh on us. And it is not surprising – and it is a better option than
some others. After all, depression is reaching epidemic proportions in the Western world, with
one in two people likely to experience at least one episode of major depression.3
But the real religious and spiritual teachings from which the additives are being commoditized –
turned into something you can buy and sell – are actually meant to help us see more deeply,
beyond our egos, beyond the constructs in which we live to a more honest and compassionate
way of being. These teachings are meant to help us see our connection to each other, our
connection to a larger view of time that connects us to nature, to history and to our
responsibilities to the future. They are meant to help us live new stories, not just survive the
business as usual story. This is why the earliest Christian communities were communities that
sought to separate themselves from Rome – and were committed to nonviolence and generosity,
providing for their collective needs.
The key question we must ask in seeking spiritual fortification is what is the end – the goal – of
my practice, of my community, of the teaching or counseling I am following? In the interview
with the Wall Street trader, he is asked whether or not he thinks these Wall Street traders are
going to catch on. His answer was “I hope not. And if it does, I hope it grows slowly, because
right now I have the edge and if it catches on I won’t have it anymore.”
Compare this to the story of the Buddha, who upon attaining Nirvana, enlightenment, chooses
not to be released from the cycle of life and death and rebirth until all people have attained
enlightenment. He is not in it just for himself – his enlightenment, his spiritual practice, leads
him to want to see this freedom for everyone.
The question we must ask of our spiritual practices is whether they are serving to make us
stronger in order to survive in a narrative of isolation, competition and disconnection – or are
they helping us move beyond that narrative to a deeper story of compassion and connection –
helping us bring about new narratives of how we might live and shape our lives.
Spiritual fortification – spiritual health and strength is necessary – to keep us in the struggle.
True spiritual fortification engages us in acting against narratives of domination and working
toward narratives of collective power and compassion. It helps us have the courage, awareness
and clarity to see the smoke, to step out from the crowd, name it and work to address it.
Fortification helps us begin to live new stories.
Torbett would have our spirituality make us like steel. I prefer the gentler analogy of Palmer –
seeing ourselves as part of a greater sense of history, a larger understanding of self that helps us
3
Macy, Johnstone, Active Hope, p. 47.
4
collectively nurture stories that can help us make a turn in this changing time toward responding
to challenges we face with compassion and courage, love and justice.
So how do we build up spiritual fortification, the qualities that help us stand up, act up, find ways
of living that nurture ourselves, others and connect to the mystery of life itself?
First, we make time to develop spiritual practice in our daily life; a practice like a daily gratitude
practice has the effect of reminding us of the ways we are not alone, but of ways we are
connected to others. Gratitude reminds of the people and things that hold us and that we can
count on. Understanding, experiencing, feeling connected to others and to life itself is
fundamental to nurturing our strength and health.
Second, nurturing friendships and relationships of care and solidarity. All of us will experience
moments of loss and despair; we need companions we can reach out to, who will listen, offer
help, a shoulder, or a perspective to help us see our situation, our struggle or our despair from a
new perspective.
We don’t get through this thing of living alone; developing, nurturing and maintaining
friendships that feed us and fortify us are essential. Here at UUCP we offer these opportunities to
make and nurture connections through, for example, our small group ministries and Community
Nights. It can be hard to connect and build relationships in large communities. Our small groups
ministries, which will kick off again in October, are chances to meet regularly with a small group
to share our stories and build connection and support.
Third, we talked about this a little last week, we need to develop a strong capacity to honor and
feel our emotions. One of the dangers we face in times of anxiety or uncertainty is shutting
down our emotions, deadening our response. In that smoke filled room, people saw the smoke.
Their first reaction had to be concern, but not seeing others react, they deadened that response,
ignored it. This is dangerous, when we do not listen to ourselves.
And finally, we need to understand a larger sense of self and a larger sense of time. In our lives,
we will experience moments of success and moments of defeat. Those times of defeat, failure, or
loss are so difficult. Friendship, gratitude, honoring how we feel in the process is so important.
But so is not forgetting the larger picture, even as we are consumed with the moment. Whatever
we are experiencing in this moment, this is not all life has for us. It may feel that way in the
moment, but truly it is not all life has for us. Even when we become full of despair for how
much needs to be done to move our world forward in the way of respect for life, for dignity, for
justice, for peace, with a longer view of history, we remember that change does happen, and that
we are not the only ones to struggle, to love, to live and die – the work is not all ours – we only
have a small piece of it – the only piece we can do.
5