What would Geraldine Ferraro do?

This Sunday I had the privilege of leading services at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara; I chose to tackle the topic of gender equality. The following is my reflection on gender discrimination.

I know the exact moment I became a feminist.

It was 1984 and my elementary school was holding mock presidential elections. I knew I was a democrat because, while Walter Mondale was running for president, I barely noticed him in the shadow of my hero, Geraldine Ferraro.

My mom had raised me to believe that I could do ANYTHING I wanted to do, be anything I

wanted to be. But when I learned about history, specifically US history, and I saw that endless parade of white guys, I wasn’t sure that being president was included in that word “anything.”

I was only 10 years old at the time, but I also remember that about the time that I was learning about political party affiliations, I also learned about sexual orientation when I heard Geraldine Ferraro called a lesbian and asked my mom what that meant. While my mom answered me with definitions not emotion, I understood from the way the media was depicting Geraldine that the only thing worse than being a female Vice Presidential candidate was being a gay female Vice Presidential candidate. I didn’t understand either as being an insult, although that’s how they were being depicted in the media. In spite of all the vitriol flung in her direction, I hoped and prayed that Walter Mondale would win so that Geraldine Ferraro, a woman, would be 1-step away from being President.

It was, of course, not meant to be, and I heard all of the commentary after the election that maybe having a female running mate had been a publicity stunt, or that it cost him the election. I was angry: angry not only because Geraldine Ferraro wasn’t going to be Vice President, but because so many people thought she shouldn’t, or couldn’t, be because she was a woman. I realized that while my mom told me I could be anything I wanted, a lot of people didn’t agree. I was frustrated, I was confused, I was sad. And I was angry.

I know the exact moment I decided to stop taking math classes.

My junior year of high school, I was taking a class called math analysis, which was the name for the honors pre-calculus class. My teacher had been teaching this class and honors calculus for over 40 years. I was getting a B in the class, which was driving me crazy because it was ruining my straight-A grade point average. About half-way through the second semester, I was frustrated when I got another test back with a B grade. I reviewed my answers and couldn’t figure out why I had gotten one of the problems wrong. I compared my test to my friend’s; he had gotten an A. We reviewed my wrong answers and found that they were exactly the same, except his were marked correct and mine were marked wrong. I remember walking up to my teacher with both tests in hand and asking for an explanation for why my answers had been marked wrong.

My teacher answered, “Because you’re a girl.” I wish I could tell you that he was joking, but he wasn’t. He refused to correct my test grade. There were only 2 other girls in my math class. They had gotten lower grades, too, but didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.

You’d think that I would have freaked out, and you’d be right. I went straight to the principal’s office after school and showed him the two tests, then told him what my teacher had said. I told him I wanted the teacher fired, and I wanted my grade changed. The principal said, “Your teacher has Parkinson’s disease, so he’s only teaching for another couple years. There’s nothing we’re going to do.”

For the rest of the year, I despised walking in that classroom. I didn’t take calculus my senior year so that I could avoid having another year with that teacher. But something else happened, something that I didn’t acknowledge for another 10 years. My perception of math gradually changed from “I hate this situation” to “I hate math” to “I’m not good at math.” By college, I truly believed that I wasn’t good at math and I avoided any majors that required math classes. I actually changed the whole trajectory of what I believed I was capable of because one math teacher in high school told me girls weren’t good at math. Even though I was angry and didn’t believe what he said was true, the power of his words changed the course of my life.

Years later, I took a calculus class at a community college because it was a prerequisite for a graduate program I was applying for. I aced that class. I loved it. I realized how many years I thought I couldn’t do calculus, that it was too hard. I thought about all of the doors I closed, what potential paths I didn’t take, because I thought I couldn’t be successful because of my gender.

Geraldine Ferraro is my hero. She had to have faced a million of those obstacles along the way, people who told her she was less than because she was a woman. People who wouldn’t hire her into their law firms because they weren’t hiring women. People who pushed back against her fight for wage equality. People who said a woman wasn’t qualified to be Vice President. She faced much worse opposition than a sexist high school math teacher, and she had the strength to move forward.

I remember Geraldine Ferraro when I’m ignored or marginalized. I remember Geraldine Ferraro when someone implies that my abilities are limited by my gender. And when I look at my daughter, I hope that next year, when she is 10 years old, she sees the first woman elected President and grows up trusting that she can be anything she wants to be.

My activist heart

I was Worship Associate at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara yesterday and as part of the service, I not only got to be the voice of Mother Earth (!), but I also delivered this reflection on the tension of wanting to devote your life to making the world a better place and the daily demands of life.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

You might not think by looking at me that I am an activist.

In college I worked in inner city schools in Lansing, Michigan to try to prepare the kids they deemed “disadvantaged” to go to college. Later, after grad school, I quit my corporate Training Manager job and helped start a charter school in Philadelphia based on the radical constructivist educational beliefs of Paolo Freire. I’ve participated in pro-choice rallies and I even got to sit in the office of the Deputy Governor of Pennsylvania and explain how the legislation they were passing to heavily regulate women’s health facilities would impact the women of Pennsylvania.  I financially support several grassroots and lobbying organizations that support movements like equality, clean water and climate change.  On Martin Luther King Day, I take my children to work on projects in the community.

I’m proud to be a Unitarian Universalist, in part, because of our history and beliefs rooted in social justice. I am an activist in the deepest part of my being, wanting to change the world, leaving it better than when I came into it.

There’s another side to the story, though. I don’t know what happened to those kids I tutored in Lansing…I graduated before most of them would have ever even applied to college. Two years after helping start Freire Charter School, I had to leave and get a “real job” because I couldn’t afford my student loan payments. That legislation in Pennsylvania passed and many, many clinics that had provided abortion services were forced to close their doors. By that time, I was accepting the job that moved me here to Carpinteria.

I want to be an activist, I want to stand up for my liberal beliefs, I want to make the world better, and yet the demands of daily life: my financial obligations, the things I want to be able to provide to my children and the things that simply bring me joy…these things are in constant competition with this feeling that I can, and should, make a difference.

I feel this most acutely when I see the phenomenal work and effort of others. Becca Claassen, one of our own congregation, has dedicated her time, energy…her life…to her passion: protecting our water in Santa Barbara county and working against climate change. I cannot tell you how much I admire her and the work that she is doing, standing up for what she believes in. Her passion and commitment is inspiring as an example of living our principles.

Watching Becca and others who live their values makes me deeply consider if I’m practicing what I preach. We all have our unique passions that drive us, and mine is gender equality. As a woman in the tech and gaming industries, I’ve faced more bias, discrimination and harassment than even those closest to me will probably ever know. I’m not alone and gender discrimination in the workplace is just the tip of the iceberg. Recent public conversations about street harassment, rape culture in schools and college campuses and the heightened focus on domestic violence prompted by arrests and indictments of NFL players, fuel my passion to work toward gender equality. When I see the work of Wendy Davis in Texas, I long to join the cause that seeks to make this country, this world, just as safe and full of opportunity for my daughters as it is for my sons.

There is a tension. I’m not in a position that I could quit my job and dedicate my time to gender equality, even if that’s where my activist heart is. I have bills and kids and a house to take care of and commitments to honor to my family and to myself.

What can I do? For me, the sentiment “Think global, act local” rings true. Maybe today isn’t my day to change the world in a big, public way. Maybe there will never be that day. But today is the day that I can teach my children about gender bias and discrimination. It IS the day that I can raise issues in my workplace that level the playing field. It IS the day I can write blog posts, post articles via social media. It IS the day that I can offer financial support to those who are dedicating their lives to the causes I believe in. It IS the day that I can jump in when I can, to march in a rally or make canvasing calls.

Today is the day that I have shared my passions with all of you. Maybe you are a passionate feminist too…maybe there are ways we can work together and support each other. Maybe today is the day that you share what you’re passionate about with someone after the service and you make a connection that leads to action that really does make the world better.

Maybe I don’t have to be an army of one to change the world. Maybe we are the army already.

My littlest teacher

My youngest daughter, Sallie Rose, is 8 years old today.


Have you ever met someone who, as soon as you talk to them, warms your heart? Who when they listen to you, really listens and understands? Who knows just when you need a hug, or a word of encouragement? Who has an infectious and totally unselfconscious giggle? Who is wise, insightful and mature beyond her years?

I gave birth to one of those people. I wasn't sure I wanted more children after I had settled in with my two older boys (funny, now that we have six...) and I was pretty sure I was a "boy-mom." As we like to say, she snuck in there. I cried when I found out at my first ultrasound that she was a girl; I didn't think I'd know how to raise a girl.

It didn't matter what I thought I knew, or what I didn't know...Sallie has taught me. She has a heart so big it can't be contained in her little body and you can sense it whenever you are near her. She makes life better for everyone around her. I admire her strength and wisdom and most of all, her radiating love.

We find many teachers in our lives and learn different things from these people that help us grow and evolve. My daughter has been one of my greatest teachers. She gives me strength and perspective and courage.

Happy birthday, Sallie Rose. And no, you don't have to ride in your booster seat anymore :)

Product trumps marketing: Stop telling me Goldie Blox is revolutionary

As the only football lover in my house, I used all kinds of tactics to lure everyone in to watching the Super Bowl with me. Snacks work, and so does the promise of a showcase of some of the best commercials of the year. So together we sat yesterday, me watching/tweeting the abysmal game, John looking up how to build our new house (another blog post on this forthcoming) and the kids grazing on a buffet of snack foods and gathering for the commercial breaks to critique the ads.

When the commercial for Goldie Blox came on, I not only paid attention to the commercial, but also to my 7 year old daughter's reaction. She is the target audience for Goldie Blox, my princess who loves to read, create art, hike, cook and build things. She received Goldie Blox as a gift for Christmas, and she knows that it's supposed to inspire her to learn engineering and math and engage in problem solving. Except...it doesn't. And as we watched the ad together, Sallie simply said as the commercial ended, "I have that toy. It's not that fun."

Exactly. And that's the problem with Goldie Blox in general. It's a great story, and it's marketing is targeted at adults who want their daughters to know that they can do or build anything. It sells itself as the solution to parental guilt. It tells parents, "you don't want to discriminate against your daughters in the toys you buy them, do you? Buy this toy to teach your little princess that she can do anything that boys can do."

There are so many problems with this. For one, Goldie Blox are still overwhelmingly pink and feminine. So much for "disrupting the pink aisle." But if you look past the feminization of non-gender specific activities, if you accept that maybe the first step in getting girls interested in STEM education and careers is by making them pink, there is an even bigger issue, as my 7 year old so simply noted: Goldie Blox are "not that fun."

The commercials, both the Super Bowl spot and the Rube Goldberg machine video that went viral where the use of Beastie Boys' "Girls" was used and is now in a legal dispute over copyright infringement, show girls creating all of these elaborate contraptions to complete simple tasks (as a designer, I could also cast a mark against them for promoting "over-design," but there are bigger fish to fry). None of those things are actually possible using the Goldie Blox toy. As an instructional designer and a game designer, one of the things that I talk about a lot is replayability. A game isn't much fun if you play it once and win...what's your motivation to play it again? And that's basically what happens with Goldie Blox. A few simple pieces that can be put together to create a contraption, following the accompanying story about Goldie, and then the toy is done. Boring. Not obviously replayable. Not that fun.

My 7 year old daughter has the luxury of having older brothers, brothers who play Minecraft and have a bazillion LEGOs and who have Snap Circuits. We are also a "maker" family that builds robots and upcycles old cake pans into lights, who sews each other presents and that has a hot glue gun on the ready next to our spare circuit boards and googly eyes. We often discuss as a family what 3D printing projects we want to take on, and whether or not it's worth getting an Arduino kit (it is). She sees me building and making things right alongside "the guys" and coming up with my own solutions to science, math and engineering problems. She does enjoy the pink aisle when we visit a toy store, but she also enjoys figuring out how to solve a problem when we're building something.

I see a lot of people praising Goldie Blox as revolutionary. Ugh. Do these people have a 7 year old daughter? Have they tried to play with Goldie Blox with a little girl? More than once? Yeah...not that fun. Just because the marketing messages tell you that a toy is revolutionary doesn't mean it is. Just because you make engineering tools pink doesn't mean girls will want to use them. If you want to get girls into STEM, then don't make it about them being girls. Give them an interesting problem to solve and the tools and support to solve it. Inspire their creativity and their problem solving skills to address an issue that they are passionate about. Don't tell girls that they need different toys than boys, or reinforce for boys that LEGOs or circuitry is only for them because they aren't pink. Stop reinforcing gender bias through color and marketing. Girls don't need separate toys to learn science and engineering, they want and need role models.

You aren't supporting a revolution in girls' involvement in STEM by heaping praise on Goldie Blox. You are supporting gender differentiation in non-gender specific activities, and supporting a company that's making a pretty crappy toy. Just ask a 7 year old girl.



More articles on Goldie Blox:
Another girl's review
Another take on dumbing down engineering toys for girls

Ada Lovelace would probably be pissed that she has a day

(Let me caveat this rant by saying that I think it's important to recognize the significant achievements that women have made and are making in science, technology and mathematics. I think the intent of Ada Lovelace Day is good and YAY and etc.)

Doesn't it piss anyone off that we have to have a day to remember the achievements of women in STEM? Because Ada Lovelace day totally annoys me.

I was reading an article about Ada, and read this about her tutor:

But Ada persevered in her studies, and De Morgan recognised her brilliance when he said that had she been a man, she would have had the potential to become “an original mathematical investigator, perhaps of first-rate eminence."

So is it really any different today, when we have to have a special day to recognize and celebrate the achievements of women in STEM careers? I can imagine how Ada felt, hearing from her tutor that because she'd been born the wrong gender, she really didn't have a chance to lead her field of choice. I can imagine it, because I remember in 11th grade Advanced Trigonometry, when I got the exact same answer (and worked the same process) on a test as my male friend, but he had it marked correct and I had it marked wrong. I took both tests up to my teacher and asked him why. He replied, "It's because you're a girl and girls aren't as good at math." There were only two girls in that class, and the following year there was only one in calculus, because I decided I wasn't going to spend another year with that same teacher being subjected to ridiculous gender bias. (I took calculus in college and aced it, btw.)

This is not an unusual story. There's rarely a day that goes by in the games and tech industries that there isn't an article published about the struggles of women to be treated equally and with respect. I know it's no different in science or math. Those of us who stick it out find coping mechanisms, learn how to pick our battles and seek each other out for support. 

And then once a year, we get to hold up Ada Lovelace as a beacon for other little girls, to have at least ONE role model in STEM to whom we can refer when we tell our students and daughters that there is a place for them in medicine or math or robotics or physics or programming. I don't want to have to tell my daughters to lean in. I don't want to tell them they should wear high heels to make them look taller when dealing with all of the men in the gaming industry. I don't want to tell them that there are so few women in these fields that we have to have a special day. I want them to know that they are smart enough and geeky enough and logical enough and techy enough to outperform their male peers in any field they choose. I want my sons to know that women are a force to be reckoned with, not dismissed. 

So thank you, Ada Lovelace, for being our role model. I think the best way to honor you is by ensuring that there's a long list of women that make your day irrelevant.

A Habit of Forgiveness

Wayside Pulpit quote

Yesterday morning I led my first service at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara. This month's theme was forgiveness, and I focused the service around learning to forgive, and building a habit of forgiveness. I can tell you that this process of leading a worship service is one of the biggest challenges I think I've ever taken on. It has taken me weeks of focus and thought to figure out how to approach the service, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to push myself to learn and grow and hopefully help others to see forgiveness in a new way.

A surprise good luck card

Thanks (always) to my wonderful family who were amazing cheerleaders, to Minette Riordan for being a great worship associate partner for the service, and to Ken Ryals for surrounding us with beautiful music.

Here, in its written form is my reflection: 

A Habit of Forgiveness

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm really sorry. I'm sorry.

I have a really bad habit of apologizing for...everything. Problems big and small, things that I did directly, or things that I had nothing to do with, chances are if you are upset about something and tell me about it, I'll apologize. It’s not that I walk around carrying the weight of the world; I just tend to take on responsibility for things in an attempt to alleviate the burden on everyone else. So I'll say I'm sorry for all manner of things and shift the responsibility of dealing with issues from other people to myself, as if to say "this is my fault, I'll try to fix it and make things better for you."

A few years ago, I made it my New Year’s resolution to stop apologizing.

It's not that I didn't want to offer support or friendship or kindness, but just the simple act of apologizing misplaces responsibility when the apology isn't warranted and puts me in a position of constantly being responsible to everyone. Quite frankly, I make enough mistakes on my own without taking on other people's.

To be honest, I failed pretty spectacularly at breaking the habit. What the resolution DID do was force me to take a look at how much I apologize and why. 

We all learn to apologize at a very young age. Our caregivers prompt us to say I'm sorry as part of the process of learning from our mistakes. We learn that apologies do two things: first, they allow us to take responsibility and acknowledge our mistakes and secondly, apologies are implicitly an ask for forgiveness from whomever our actions impacted. I learned this from my parents and teachers, and in turn, I'm teaching my children the importance of apologizing too. 

We also are taught, from a young age, that there are "right" ways to apologize. It's not simply a matter of saying the words...you have to show that you mean it and that you don't intend to make the same mistake again. We learn that an insincere apology often has the exact opposite affect of what we want; when my kids try to give me a fake apology like "I'm sorry that you're upset that I didn't finish my homework" or "I'm sorry that I can't seem to do anything right" or "I'm sorry that you didn't wake me up on time"...typically, that will escalate the conversation to a more unpleasant one about taking on personal responsibility, sincerity and consequences for not owning up to your mistakes. But a sincere apology conveys an important message: the person who hurt me is sorry, I believe that they understood what they did and I believe that they will try not to hurt me again.

Usually by the time we're adults, we've learned from role models and experience the importance of a sincere apology. For some people like me, the lesson was over-extended, learned so well that it became a habit. I had begun to confuse empathy with apology.

We learn how to apologize, but do we learn to forgive? 

Forgiveness for me is a much harder habit to form than apologizing, because apologizing is a simple ask, both a statement and a question: I’m sorry and will you forgive me?  But forgiveness is not so simple. Forgiveness is a process of letting go, and healing that doesn’t always happen right away. Forgiveness is both healing and release, and some times those things take time.  But it is worth it, learning to forgive, because without forgiveness we would walk through our days with broken hearts…suspicious, bitter, angry…when we forgive our hearts are mended and we are able to move forward in joy and love and an openness to what is next.

Forgiveness is also much harder to teach because while apologizing is an outward expression of regret, forgiveness is an internal process, often unnoticed and not explicitly communicated. How do we learn something that needs to happen within us, without external feedback from others?

Colloquial wisdom tells us to "forgive and forget." But let's be honest: when we are hurt or when someone does something hurtful to us, do we ever really forget? Yes, the intent of this quick phrase is good...when you forgive, you should truly forgive and let the hurt go. But forgiving should not be followed by forgetting, even if we'd sometimes want it to be, or else we can’t learn from our experiences. 

We've probably all known someone who, as I call it, is prone to bring out the "laundry list." You know, the person who appears to forgive some infraction in the moment, but who, at some tipping point, can list out everything you've done wrong in the last 10 years in great detail. It becomes clear that they didn't truly accept your previous apologies, just as surely as they won't truly accept your apology in that moment. Maybe you've even been that person, the one who has brought out "the list" even though you knew that you would neither receive a real apology for your list of grievances, or if you did, you were likely not in a place to offer your forgiveness. It's hard to forgive the accumulated hurts we collect over time all at once, if not impossible. And forget them? Not a chance. 

I taught a workshop a couple weeks ago on learning; specifically, the cognitive science of learning and memory. There's sensory memory: everything you perceive creates a sensory memory that you may or may not even realize moment to moment. We remember the taste of really good hot cocoa or the sound of our partner's voice or the subtle smell of our grandparent's house that we probably can't describe, but we know it when we smell it. There's also short-term memory: a little bit of information that we can store in our brains until we use it...and then it disappears. And then there's long-term memory: things that we remember because as we take in the information, it makes connections in our brain. Those memories strengthen the more connections that are made, or when the same thing happens repeatedly. Each time I walk into my kids' rooms and see that they didn't put their clean laundry in their drawers, it connects to the previous times that that has happened and fires a series of responses in my brain: they're lazy! they're dirty! they're rooms are a total mess! i'm a bad mom! i'm not appreciated! or, they're just kids and when I was their age, I didn't much like putting away my clean clothes either...and it's with that last one that I set aside whatever anger and frustration I feel and move on to forgiveness, and resolve to work as a family in keeping our house in working order. 

When we remember, we have learned something. When we use that information, retrieving it from our memory over and over, to apply it in new situations, with new memories formed each time we use what we know in new contexts, it strengthens the staying power of that information in our brain. That's the value of the memories of my childhood in raising my own children - I can remember what it was like to be 11, and it allows me to empathize with my kids and move past hurt to forgiveness. 

There are different types of memory: episodic memory is the composite of your experiences. And "flashbulb" memory - the memory of a particularly emotionally charged event. I used to ask the question "where were you when the space shuttle challenger exploded?" until I realized that many younger folks weren't born yet. Unfortunately we have a more modern collective memory: where were you on 9/11?  Our episodic memory and our flashbulb memory are why it's difficult to forgive and forget. In fact, we shouldn't forget, because forgetting means we haven't learned. Keeping the memory of a past hurt or pain is what can help us not repeat mistakes, or motivate us to approach life differently, or reprioritize the things in our life that are truly most important. If those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, then remembering the past, good and bad, helps us to move forward, learn and grow.

Sometimes, we use knowledge so much and in so many different contexts that we develop muscle memory - the type of memory that causes you to automatically brake when you see a police officer with a speed gun on the highway, or not remember how you drove from home to work, or allows my pre-teen boys to play a video game using complex button controls without thinking about it...or allows me to play the song from my freshman year of high school marching band from memory if someone were to hand me a mellophone. 

This muscle memory is the sign that you've mastered and internalized a process that you can retrieve at the right time without even thinking about it. This is the same type of memory that forms habits, like my constant apologies. 

What if we learn to forgive and practice it so much that we create a habit of forgiveness? What if, just as we learned the right way to apologize, to identify and communicate the feeling of remorse, we could learn, internalize and build muscle memory around the process of forgiveness? 

Charles Duhigg, the author of the book The Power of Habit, breaks down the process of building a habit into three steps.

Step 1 is “The Cue.” The cue is the context, the trigger for the habit that you want to create. If the habit we are hoping to develop is forgiveness, then you might think the context or trigger would be an apology.  But how often is an apology insincere, or never comes at all? An apology might be the prompt to express forgiveness to another, but can’t be the cue to develop a forgiveness habit. Better, the cue for forgiveness is actually the hurt itself, the point at which we feel emotional, psychological or physical pain. 

Step 2 is “The Reward.” When forming a habit, Duhigg tells us that one of the critical components is making the behavior more favorable than any other action. In the case of forgiveness, it’s hard to imagine what type of reward would be better than the forgiveness itself, and that’s actually a good thing. Because in order for a habit to really form, we have to be able to remove an extrinsic reward like a cookie, and replace it with the intrinsic reward of the feeling we get from repeating the habit. Anyone who has had to potty train a toddler knows this all too well. The tipping point of potty training is not when the child gets a gold star on the potty chart, but when she is motivated to use the potty because she’s proud of being a big girl. Until the intrinsic reward is motivating, though, cookies and star charts help to tip the balance to motivate us to practice our desired habit.

Step 3 is “The Routine.” It’s not really a new step so much as a call to action to commit to performing the desired habit whenever presented with the Cue and to follow that up with a Reward. Neuroscientists have traced our habit-making behaviors to a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which also plays a key role in the development of emotions, memories and pattern recognition. Decisions, meanwhile, are made in a different part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. But as soon as a behavior becomes automatic, the decision-making part of your brain goes into sleep mode and transfers responsibility for performing the behavior to the habit-performing part of the brain. That transfer of memory from intentional to automatic is the goal of forming a habit, and establishing the routine to reinforce it is critical to getting your basal ganglia to take over.

Duhigg cites research that suggests the best way to create the routine is to write down your intentions.  In it’s basic form, your plan should be  “When the Cue, I will Routine because it provides me with Reward.” For example, if your goal is to lose weight: When my 2pm meeting is over instead of getting a snack in the break room, I will take a walk with my co-worker because it provides me with a chance to catch up with a friend.

While Duhigg uses lots of examples in his book of how this process works, one of the most recognizable is Alcoholics Anonymous. He says,

“There's no real logic to how AA was designed. But the reason why AA works is because it essentially is this big machine for changing the habits around alcohol consumption and giving people a new routine, rather than going to a bar or drink. ... It doesn't seem to work if people do it on their own. ... At some point, if you're changing a really deep-seated behavior, you're going to have a moment of weakness. And at that moment, if you can look across a room and think, 'Jim's kind of a moron. I think I'm smarter than Jim. But Jim has been sober for three years. And if Jim can do it, I can definitely do it,' that's enormously powerful."

In the case of AA, the Reward is the social connections and support for not drinking, until you get to a place in your life that you’ve created new habits, removed triggers and established an ongoing support system to help you handle the inevitable cues that used to result in having a drink.

But what about forgiveness? Some of us have already developed routines to help us along with the process. Taking a drive, going for a run, grabbing coffee with your best friend, listening to your favorite song…these are all examples of routines that we establish to help us work through our emotions when we are hurt or angry or sad. Sometimes they help, but sometimes they are more of a distraction, a temporary band aid that doesn’t elicit the forgiveness we want to achieve.

Forgiveness is a process prompted by a decision to forgive. In creating a habit of forgiveness, the intent is to get to a point that we can bypass that decision and internalize the forgiveness process for the little hurts, and be armed with the ability to forgive when we are strong enough for the big hurts. Not all forgiveness is equal, not all pain is the same, and hurts may not be forgiven equally. But by knowing, and internalizing the process of forgiveness, by making forgiveness a habit, we will have the ability to truly forgive when we are ready.

Although I wasn’t so successful in breaking my habit of apologizing, I’m now more interested building a habit of forgiving. I’m learning that this forgiveness habit, not surprisingly, comes easily now when with the daily hurts and grievances, but I still have to work at the big things. I think that’s ok, because when I face those big things, my heart is already light, not weighed down by accumulated pain, but open to begin the journey down the tougher paths and armed with the knowledge and experience of the process and joy of forgiveness.

There are many examples of how to intentionally practice forgiveness, and I’d like to share one with you today in our meditation.  This process can be used as your Routine to practice, a few simple steps to repeat on the path to making forgiveness a habit.

(This exercise is adapted from Robin Casarjian’s Forgiveness: A Bold Choice for a Peaceful Heart.)

Everyone take a deep breath.

Close your eyes.

Take one more deep breath, and think about someone who recently upset you, made you angry or hurt your feelings…someone who you want to forgive.

Think about what the real issues behind this conflict are for you. Think about what you are feeling about this person.

Think about what is still valuable, still workable for you in this relationship.

Take another deep breath and feel the strength and wholeness within you.

Now imagine yourself in a safe place with this person.

In your mind, tell this person, as simply and clearly as possible, how you perceive the issues between you and the truth of your experience.

Speak from your deeper self to his or her deeper self.

Imagine that the person really listens and hears you.

When you are ready, bring your attention back to the present moment.

As you bring yourself back, think about what it would be like if you could actually have the conversation you imagined. If you can’t have that real conversation, imagine what it would be like to move forward as if you had.

As you go out into the world this week, find opportunities to actively practice forgiving. Think about what it feels like, think about the steps in the process and practice a meditation or reflection when you’re faced with an opportunity to forgive. Let your heart be light with forgiveness, towards yourself, towards the people you love, and towards the world. Let’s all work on building a habit of forgiveness together.

Putting yourself out there

At the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara's new members' luncheon this spring where John and I were celebrating officially joining the congregation, Rev. Aaron McEmrys leaned over and said to me, "You should join the Worship Committee." We were actually in the middle of a whole group discussion, and the comment was a whisper, almost as if he had slipped me a note in the middle of class. My heart almost literally stopped. How did he know, how could he have known, how much that one sentence would mean to me?

On our first date, as I was throwing everything I could at John to scare him off, I told him that I wanted to go to seminary. He didn't flinch, but even as I talked to him about it, I was terrified.  With many of my crazy ideas, reality (at some point) settles in and I realize what I've gotten myself into. Usually, this pertains to something fun, like driving cross-country or creating our own prom. Sometimes, it's big stuff, like starting a company or writing a book. In all of these things, when I start out down the path, I'm excited, not scared.

It is different when it comes to my spiritual beliefs. As passionate as I am about my own journey, what terrified me was leading others in their journeys. How could I teach anyone else anything about spirituality when I have so many questions myself? How could I be worthy of that awesome responsibility?

Yet, I wanted to try. When Aaron invited me to join the Worship Committee, I said yes. And then I signed up to help lead the service on August 4th. The monthly theme was despair (great, uplifting theme for my first service!). The service ended up including a puppet show put on by our kiddos and John supporting the service on stage, doing the candle lighting and helping with the puppet show. I was honored to be trusted to help lead the service and honored to have John by my side as I put myself out there (literally, actually...Ken Ralph, who was the other lay-leader for the service, built an extension for the chancel so that we could do our reflections closer to the congregation).

I am so very grateful for my amazing partner and family, and for Ken Ralph, Rev. McEmrys, the Worship Committee and USSB for trusting me. Yesterday was amazing and everyone's support got me to take the risk of putting myself out there and work through my fears.

Below is my reflection that I shared with the congregation yesterday. I'm already looking forward to the next service I'll help lead later this month (two services on despair!) and more committed than ever to working, seeking, persevering and honoring the title of our service: "Pounding the Stone."


Finding my religion 

Growing up, whenever someone asked me what religion I was, my mom told me to tell them "Christian." The truth was, we weren't really anything...I suppose if pressed, I would have said yes, I believe in God, and I do remember praying, but I never had any sort of religious education. By high school, I was starting to feel a gap. I had lots of questions and I wanted answers. I decided I would find my own beliefs, not blindly believe what someone told me I should. 

The first real connection to religion I felt came when I stumbled across excerpts from the Old Testament and the Torah. That's it! I thought...I'm Jewish! I told my mother that I wanted to be Jewish, and she patiently explained to me that being Jewish and practicing Judaism were different, that I could practice Judaism but that by bad luck of birth, I would never BE Jewish. It felt like a door closed on me that day, but I kept searching.

I took a comparative religions class my senior year and was introduced to Hinduism with its beautiful gods and Buddhism with its centering meditational practices I still use today. I learned more about Muslims and Christians...the basic facts, really, but enough for me to question the validity of organized religion. Over and over again, the stories the same: my beliefs are right, yours are wrong and you should be punished for not thinking the same as I do. And the Jews...usually the target of the other religions, the perpetual underdogs, but with idiosynchrocies in their own right...I realized I couldn't convert to Judaism after all, as I was NEVER going to give up bacon cheeseburgers. 

In college, I read the Bible cover to cover. Yes...even every "beget" in the Book of Numbers. I read more of the Torah and continued my study of Jewish history. I read much of the Quran. I read Siddhartha and books on Native American mysticism. I researched the Mormons and Mayans and the practice of VooDoo and HooDoo. I read story after story of near death experiences, watched the tv psychics who claimed to speak to the dead and researched ghost stories. I did everything I could to try to see the patterns, to see what all of these religions and spiritual connections were trying to tell us, to understand the underlying thread that ties together religious beliefs and tries to answer THE question of the meaning of life. 

In graduate school, I attended a Lutheran church and went through classes to be baptized. Every week I came to class and argued with the Pastor about the content of the homework he had assigned to me. I didn't even really buy the concept of baptism by that point, and I was disillusioned that I could disagree with so much of the Lutheran religion but by showing up each week and arguing, they would baptize me anyway. What was the point of it all?

At the end of all of my seeking, and after reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I decided that as an answer to “What is the meaning of life?” 42 was as good an answer as any. 

Many years later, recently divorced with three small children, my parents having moved back to Michigan from living with me in Pennsylvania, in the midst of a destructive relationship from which I was desperately trying but couldn't seem to break free, I started questioning whether "42" was really enough of an answer, and whether it was enough of an answer for me to give my kids as they started asking inevitable questions. I felt alone, more alone than I had ever felt in my life - I felt alone in my soul. Reaching that point, the bottom of the pit of despair, is not always a sudden, shocking drop. Sometimes falling into despair is a slow descension, as bit by bit, every belief you have is challenged, everything you hold true is shown to be false. When I looked in the mirror, when I looked at my life, I didn't know who I was anymore and I didn't know how to find her again. 

What do you do when you realize that your life is not what you want? How do you move forward when you don’t know what will make you happy? I didn’t know where to start. It became difficult to face each day, to wake up to that loneliness, knowing that I didn’t want to be in this place of sadness, but not knowing what to do to change my life and move forward.

Religion seemed an unlikely answer to my despair. I had studied, researched, analyzed and tried on so many beliefs, but none of them fit. I was still asking the same question: what is the meaning of all this? What is the point of suffering through all of this loneliness, pain and sadness? I couldn't answer it for myself, and I couldn't answer it for my children. 

In a desperate conversation, I expressed all of this to a friend. She listened to everything I had to say, then simply said, "you sound like a Unitarian. You should check out your local congregation and see what you think." I was skeptical, but despair can drive you to try one more time.

The first service I attended was almost exactly two years ago today. I went alone, sat in the back of a converted Colonial house in West Chester, PA on a metal folding chair. The room had a Shaker feel - wood floors, white walls with quilts hung for decoration. I listened to Rev. Deborah Mero lead the sparsely attended summer service. It was the first time I had been to a church led by a woman. Not long into the service, she lit the chalice and invited anyone to come up and light a candle, and if they so chose, to share with the congregation the reason for lighting it. She called it "caring and sharing," and as I watched that week and each week after, members of the congregation would come up to light a candle, sometimes alone, sometimes as a family, and take the microphone to tell of the death of a loved one, or thank someone for an unexpected kindness, or to celebrate a birthday or birth. Sometimes candles would be lit for a political cause, or for someone none of us had ever met but had heard about through the news. Sometimes no one would come up to light a candle at all. The "caring and sharing" each week helped me get to know the congregation and, when I eventually found the courage to share myself, gave me the opportunity to let others get to know me, too. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad - lighting candles together was my favorite part of the service, because it was completely unpredictable and undeniably human. It was what showed me, more than anything else, that I am a Unitarian. It let me know that I belonged, I was not alone, and that sometimes, even when you think you've tried everything, you should give it one more try.

As this is my first service assisting as a Worship Associate, I'd like to share with all of you the experience of sharing together our Joys and Sorrows. Ken and I will be bringing the microphones down into the congregation. If there is a joy or sorrow you’d like to share, please let us know. In the interest of time, ten people will share with us today and John will light a candle for you as you share with all of us.

To begin, I’d like to light two candles today, first, for my first Unitarian family back in West Chester and for Rev Deb as she prepares for her retirement. Thank you for raising me up from despair, not through any special outreach, but just by sharing yourselves with me. And second, for my new Unitarian family here in Santa Barbara: thank you for welcoming me and my family so warmly, for giving me an opportunity to continue my seeking surrounded by support and enthusiasm and love. 

[congregation lights candles]

And now I light a candle for all of those joys and sorrows carried in our hearts which could not yet be spoken aloud. May this candle lift them out of the darkness and into the light.