The reminder that death gives

It's been a brutal start to the year with the news of several of my favorite musicians and actors passing away weighing heavily on my heart. It's tough to lose someone who has inspired you, entertained you, motivated you, validated you. It's tough to lose several of them within the span of a couple weeks.

It's funny what you think about when you're dealing with loss.

One of my overarching emotional responses has been what I like to think of as my death panic. As someone who likes to dig in and discover the root cause, solve problems and uncover unexpected issues that affect outcomes, death is really my nemesis. It is not a problem to be solved; it just is. And we don't know, no one does, what it really is. Is all of what I am here, right here, right now? All of these feelings and dreams and fears, are they just temporary, wiped out when I die? Or is there something beyond, and if there is, will I get to recognize and experience it?

A lot of questions with no answers + no way to really know = death panic.


But there ARE things you can control here and now. The death of my idols has been the catalyst to
reexamine my priorities. What is the life I really want to lead? Who am I, and who do I want to be for the people I care about? If today was my last day, what would be my regrets?

The big question: am I spending my most valuable resource, time, doing the things that are important to me?

As a product manager, one of the biggest factors in the day to day work that we do is time. Time is a known, limited resource. My whole job is to prioritize and make decisions around scope and urgency. I need to collect data and try to predict the future: what will have the biggest impact? what is the minimum amount of effort that will bring value? what should we do first?

When death affects me, I start applying those product management principles to my life. What is my minimum viable product? What bugs do I need to address? What enhancements do I need to tackle? What other resources do I need?

The world lost an immense amount of talent in a short amount of time; I lost some of my biggest sources of inspiration. As I'm mourning those losses, I'm also trying to appreciate the reminder that death gives. Thank you for one parting lesson, David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Natalie Cole, Lemmy Kilmister and Dan Haggerty.

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.

Holding your breath

Yesterday I saw this article posted on Facebook: Breath-Holding In The Pool Can Spark Sudden Blackouts And Death. 

I thought about how much I've been holding my breath lately. 

Yesterday, Caitlyn Jenner's Vanity Fair cover was released and took social media by storm. I held my breath, waiting for the transphobia and hate, because that's what you do when you have a kid who is gender non-binary. You hold your breath and hope that the world gets better and more loving and understanding. You hold your breath and hope that there are way more of us, allies and advocates, than there are of them (I'm looking at you Drake Bell and Fox News). 

I hold my breath, waiting for the transitions to shake out at work. Hoping that my work is noticed, that my passion is valued. 

I hold my breath when I travel, knowing that inevitably one of my kiddos or one of their schools will call me and I won't be there to fix it. 

I hold my breath as the side project I've been working on takes off like a jet, article published in TIME magazine and big meetings with important people that could mean big, big things. 

I hold my breath so my husband doesn't hear me wheezing the last few nights. He does anyway and knows that this cold I'm trying to ignore is kicking my butt. 

I hold my breath when I see a text from one of my sons. He is unhappy but fixing it would mean conflict and there's nothing he hates more than conflict. I hold my breath waiting for him to tell me he's ready for it. 

I hold my breath when I step out of my office building at the end of the day and the air is like breathing oil. Since the oil spill in Santa Barbara a couple weeks ago, there are times when the fumes are still so bad where we live that you can't ignore it. We shouldn't ignore it. 

There are so many other times I hold my breath. Sometimes I find myself taking a deep, gasping breath and realize I've been holding it in. 

When I saw the headline yesterday, I wondered if blackouts and sudden death were only symptoms from holding your breath under water. I worried. 

Today I listened in to a session at work with Matthieu Ricard, the "World's Happiest Man." I tried to follow his meditation exercise at my desk, but I couldn't stop worrying about my breathing. I thought about how I tell my bionic boy, when his ADHD overwhelms every cell in his body, to take a deep breath and he looks at me like, "mom, you really think that's going to help?" and I make him do it anyway. I even do it with him, trying to model deep breathing. 

Holding my breath is more than deep breathing: it's ultimate mindfulness, forcing to a halt my body's automation. Being still and not even letting the ebb and flow of air in my lungs distract me. It is ultimate focus. And it can only be temporary...until it's not. 

I used to have contests with my sister in my grandma's pool to see how long we could stay underwater. Sometimes we would race to see how far the length of the pool and back we could swim without coming up for air. Sometimes we would sink to the bottom and be still, feeling the burn in our lungs as air ran out until we finally pushed to the surface. I always won. Now I find out every one of those contests was inviting sudden death. I not only could hold my breath the longest, but I could also out swim the Grim Reaper. 

I think maybe all of this holding my breath I've been doing will not lead to sudden under water death but slow, above water tempting of fate. 

How do you practice NOT holding your breath? Isn't that just...breathing? 

I am thinking that instead of holding my breath with each challenge that, like lamaze for life, the important thing is to feel everything and still breathe through it. Maybe that is mindfulness. Maybe it's intention. I think it's better to not hold your breath. 

Make a game of it

Today I led my first service at USSB; the theme was how games can help heal brokenness. I led the congregation in a spirited round of massive multiplayer rock-paper-scissors. Below is my reflection, where I included mentions of Sid Meier, Katie Salen, Eric Zimmerman, Jane McGonigal and Raph Koster. It was a really fun morning for me & from the conversations I had with people after the services, it sounds like I helped people to think differently about the value of games. And Unitarians proved they are seriously into rock-paper-scissors :)

Here is my reflection:

My family had just moved to a new town at the beginning of my 6^th grade year. A few weeks into the school year, the entire 6^th grade had a pizza party at the local Little Caesar’s restaurant. This was back when Little Caesar’s had restaurants, and this particular one also had a bar with a huge dance floor where the locals hung out on Friday and Saturday nights. But on this particular Friday afternoon, my entire 6^th grade class was having a pizza party. And then a dance contest.

I had no intention of dancing. I really hadn’t made any friends yet. When a boy that I recognized from my math class named Kevin asked me to be his partner, I was so shocked that I said yes.  He pulled me out into the center of the dance floor and the music started.  The contest rules were simple: keep dancing until a teacher taps you on the shoulder, indicating you are “out.” The song for the dance contest was “I can’t drive 55” by Sammy Hagar. If you have ever heard this song, you’ll know that it’s not exactly dance contest material.

As it was, the song choice didn’t matter. I didn’t know that my dance partner was a 12 year old dance prodigy. To be honest, he could have probably won the contest on his own.  He was dancing so enthusiastically that I couldn’t help but try to match his clearly superior moves.

Something happened as I tried to keep up with my partner; I forgot all about the people watching us. I didn’t notice the teachers tapping the other couples’ out. I was focused on dancing. I was having fun. And for the 6,000 times they played that song, I wasn’t a shy 6^th middle school girl who was trying to make friends in her new school: I was a dancing queen.

When the music finally stopped, Kevin and I were standing alone in the middle of the dance floor, sweaty and triumphant. The kids surrounding us cheered and patted us on the backs; Kevin grabbed my hand and held it up in victory.

Now, I was a very, very shy 6^th grade girl. I had ended 5^th grade as a social outcast in my previous school, shunned and bullied by my best friends. I was honestly relieved we moved to a new town for middle school, even though I didn’t know anyone.  And then a few weeks into the school year, my shyness and relative anonymity were blown to bits in the middle of that dance floor at Little Caesar’s.

Our brains are quirky, funny organs. Brains are super pattern collectors and recognizers, constantly seeking out meaning amidst chaos. We delight in finding patterns where none should exist, like when we see a cloud that looks like a bunny, or we see the image of Jesus in a piece of toast. Our brains are constantly trying to make sense of the world, to get better and better at recognizing patterns and anticipating cause and effect.

The funny thing is, when we are presented with a new or unexpected pattern, our brains are not very good at dealing with it right away. It’s like our brain goes into shock, yelling “This is not what I expected! What do I do?” It can send us into a state of paralysis, or it may prompt you to make a decision you normally wouldn’t, like participate in a middle school dance contest.

In order for our brains to learn a new patterns to better anticipate cause and effect, we need to practice recognizing the pattern. We know that practice is how we learn. Need to learn an instrument? Practice. Need to learn how to do algebra? Practice. We know that practice is the path to master a skill.  

When we are young, we practice navigating the complexities of life through play. We learn to negotiate and argue and apologize and make new friends all within the context of make believe and games that we create our own rules for.

At some point, though, we flip the expectation that play is the catalyst to learning and growing and begin to see play as a waste of time, a form of entertainment with little other value. As we stop valuing play, we deprive ourselves as adults of a safe place to practice and fail and learn how to navigate new, complicated situations. Our brains haven’t changed: we still are constantly struggling to learn and recognize new patterns. Just because you’re 16 or 36 or 86 doesn’t mean that you know everything you need to about relationships or about yourself.

I face issues every day that I don’t know how to respond to. Sometimes I think it would be great to sit down and have a tea party with my 8 year old and try to work through them, but I’m pretty sure her stuffed animals aren’t as experienced with working through the nuances of my adult relationships with my parents or how to deal with gender discrimination at work.

Still, there’s something to be said for play as a way to make us better, stronger and more confident in navigating the world around us. And games are the perfect way for us, even as adults, to play and learn and grow.

What is a game, really? Sid Meier, who is the famous designer of the Civilization computer games, defined games as “a series of meaningful choices.” This definition has always rung true to me, although probably a little too broad: couldn’t life itself be defined as a series of meaningful choices?

Another definition from game designers Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman says that a game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome. I like this definition, particularly because of that last piece, “a quantifiable outcome.” This is what differentiates play from games. In a game, there is an outcome, usually a score that tells you who won and who lost. Those outcomes, whether successes or failures, serve an important purpose: they provide you with feedback. Are you winning more, getting higher scores? You’re learning and improving. If you aren’t getting better at the game, what do you need to differently to improve? What are others doing to win that you can learn from?

Games, really, are patterns that we learn to solve. The simple ones, like tic tac toe, are fascinating to kids who are just learning pattern recognition. But one day after a couple years of practicing tic tac toe, you realize that you can win or tie every time depending on the skill of your opponent, because you have learned every pattern possible in the game.

My uncle was so good at solitaire that he could tell after only a few minutes of play whether he was going to win that hand or not. I was not that good, and I would get so frustrated watching him for a few minutes and just as my mind was starting to get into the game, he’d fold the deck and deal a new hand. How do you know? I’d ask him. And he’d say, I’ve played this a million times. I know.

In 2009, I attended the annual Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco and saw a presentation that changed my life. Jane McGonigal presented a session on how games can change the world. She had recently launched a game called “Top Secret Dance Off” with one goal: to make people happier. The game was simple. You went to the game website and joined a team. Once you were on a team, you could start completing dance challenges. For each dance challenge, you needed to complete 3 steps: 1. Assume a secret identity. 2. Video tape yourself completing the dance challenge in public. 3. Upload the video to the game site. Once you uploaded the video, other people could vote for your dance  - the team with the highest vote total for their dance videos “won.” The website still exists and if you visit it today, you can still see the amazing and hilarious videos of people in disguise dancing in public.

What was the pattern that Jane wanted people to recognize in this game? Simply that dancing makes you happy. Even watching other people dancing makes you happy. In her talk, she proposed a noble purpose for games: games can be designed to elicit lots of different types of emotions and develop different types of skills. What if we designed games to help make people better and, even grander, to change the world for the better?

I knew that what she was saying was true. A decade earlier, I had made of game of eating using Weight Watchers points and over the course of a year had lost 75 pounds. If I could make something super hard, like losing weight, into a game that I could play and win, why couldn’t that same idea be used to solve even bigger, more complex real problems?

Two years after I saw Jane McGonigal speak for the first time, she published her first book, Reality is Broken. In it, she expanded on her idea that games can be a catalyst for growth and change, for individuals and for the world. Her idea was catching on. A game called Re-Mission helped kids with cancer understand how chemotherapy and radiation worked and let them play along fighting cancer cells during their treatment. Another game, World Without Oil, challenged people to go through their day without using oil products and to journal what alternatives they used in order to help other players facing the same challenges.  There were games addressing subjects as complex as how to most efficiently rescue survivors during a natural disaster like a typhoon or hurricane or how to achieve peace in the Middle East.

Even more powerful than the games that were allowing people to work through complex problems were the real issues gamers were being asked to solve.  In 2011, gamers were able to solve a virus enzyme structure in 3 weeks that scientists had been unable to solve for over a decade.  In the same year, gamers were able to identify cross-species DNA segments that geneticists were unable to identify using computers.  All by making a game of science.

We, humanity, prove over and over again that our brains are the most incredible pattern recognition systems and problem solvers. And it’s not just that we’re capable of doing it. We think it’s fun.

Fun is a loaded word. Raph Koster in his book A Theory of Fun defines fun as “the act of mastering a problem mentally.” I like this definition because mastering a problem mentally defines fun as an active state, which differentiates it from entertainment or enjoyment or delight. Koster further defines fun as learning in a context where there is no pressure.

Learning in a context where there is no pressure. This is why games matter.

This is why playing games, at every age, is important. If we are constantly in a state of brokenness, then we are always in a state of repair. When we don’t know how to fix a situation, we must learn. How better to learn a new pattern, a new cause and effect, a new way to look at the world, than in the safety of a game where we can practice and learn and get better, step by step? How better to make ourselves and the world better than in a game where we can have fun doing it?

When I look back now, I can see why winning that dance contest in sixth grade meant so much to me.  It was the perfect game for me to play at the perfect time. I needed to learn how to make friends in this new environment, but there was no pressure in that dance contest: I didn’t know anyone and I had nothing to prove. But I learned that taking a risk, putting myself out there and trying something new COULD be the catalyst for friendship and success.  It’s a pattern that I have recognized and repeated throughout my life, from starting my own business, to meeting my husband on a blind date, to joining this congregation.

Any challenge can be made into a game, just by approaching it in a playful way. My daughter makes something as simple as walking down the street a game by trying to avoid the cracks (and sparing my back from breaking).  More complex challenges like exercising more, I can break down into smaller challenges and reward myself for achieving milestones along the way.

What challenge are you facing? How can you make a game of it?

Killing me with delight

Below is my reflection shared as part of the service on August 3rd at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara.
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I'd like to share a poem that was introduced to me by Nancy Edmondson at a recent retreat for the Worship Committee at USSB.

Mindful
by Mary Oliver

Every day
      I see or hear
            something
                  that more or less

kills me
      with delight,
            that leaves me
                  like a needle

in the haystack
      of light.
            It was what I was born for –
                  to look, to listen,

to lose myself
      inside this soft world –
            to instruct myself
                  over and over

in joy,
      and acclamation.
            Nor am I talking
                  about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
      the very extravagant –
            but of the ordinary,
                  the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
      Oh, good scholar,
            I say to myself,
                  how can you help

but grow wise
      with such teachings
            as these –
                  the untrimmable light

of the world,
      the ocean’s shine,
            the prayers that are made
                  out of grass?

- See more at: http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/blog/2012/08/31/mary-oliver-mindful/#sthash.IayDrrmU.dpuf


During the retreat, we reflected on what kills us with delight. I knew right away what I would share.

This summer, my 12 year old's voice changed. One day he was a sweet soprano, and the next day he sounded like Bowser from  Sha-na-na. "Hey mom." I'd make him repeat it, just so I could hear it and reconcile this grown man's voice with my first baby's face. "Hey mom," he'd say again, humoring me. 

It killed me to hear it. It killed me with delight, this incongruous sound coming from that same boy who's first word was "hi!" which inevitably made every stranger he greeted melt. This new deep voice would stop me in my tracks and make me giggle. He knew it, and would repeat whatever I asked him to, giggling with me. Laughing together at the wonder of life, growing up and recognizing that while he's always going to be my first baby, he's not a baby anymore. 

This month's theme is transcendence. It's such a big word, transcendence. And there are multiple meanings. It's original definition was that God is outside of and beyond the world, as opposed to being in and part of the world. Later, Immanuel Kant defined transcendence as that which lies beyond what our faculty of knowledge can legitimately know. Most of his philosophical thinking was focused on the relationship between our knowledge of self and our knowledge of objects. For example, how do we assign characteristics to new objects we encounter without having previous knowledge of those objects? This is the basic plotline of many a horror movie...we encounter aliens for the first time with an expectation that they are friendly, only to be horribly horribly wrong. And then there is the modern colloquial definition of transcendence, a feeling of going outside of yourself, a mystical sense of the universe.

Such a big idea, and yet, it's often quite little events, little moments, when we feel that sense that there is something bigger than us. It might be standing in the never ending ebb and flow of the waves on the beach when I realize that I am small, and weak, and powerless to stop their relentless motion. It may be as I'm standing in the middle of a crowd, looking across at people all with their own stories and hopes and fears that are probably not so different than my own, that I feel like I am one small piece of a puzzle so big I can't grasp it's size or meaning. It might be looking up at the stars and wondering if anyone else is out there. It might be examining a spider's intricate web and marveling at the beauty of it's form and function. It might be examining the wings of a ladybug that my daughter caught that don't seem capable of carrying it's hard-coated body. It is definitely hearing my son's newly deep voice, and realizing that just as he is changing, so am I...so is everyone. It is bigger than me and it is miraculous. 

You'd think that feeling small or insignificant or mystified would elicit negative feelings, fear or anxiety. But it's really quite the opposite, isn't it? When I feel transcendence, I am killed with delight. I feel hope and connection and a faith in a power much bigger than me and bigger than my capacity to understand it. I feel it when I hear my son's newly deep voice. I feel it every Sunday, here with you. Transcendence makes me feel the compassion of the universe and my fellow travelers in it. I appreciate our shared human experience and our unique roads on the journey. I feel wonder. I feel love. Maybe I am small and insignificant, but I am also important and able to do good.

Perhaps you feel it too. Perhaps you feel it here. So today, as we finish singing Call out a Blessing, you know that the little squeeze you give to my hand? That squeeze is going to kill me with delight. 

Life in bloom

Another reflection at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara this morning. Today's post is in honor of Spring.
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My husband John and I have become infamous among our friends and family for taking pictures of ourselves, selfies, on the beach. After one photo posted on Facebook a couple of weeks ago, my sister commented "How many beach selfies can one couple take?" My husband replied, "I don't know, but I'm willing to try to find out in the name of research." The real reason I take and post these pictures isn't  in the name of research but more to do with gratitude.

Springtime in Santa Barbara is very different than springtime where I grew up in Michigan. While Southern California enjoys flowers blooming and birds chirping year round, the signs of spring are hard won near the great lakes. While here we count the days since the last rain, I remember growing up in Michigan in winter when the news broadcasters had a counter on the screen ticking off the numbers of days since we had seen the sun. Winters were harsh and we anticipated spring much like hungry bears coming out of hibernation, but we weren't looking for food. We were looking for crocuses.

If you don't know what a crocus is, imagine a tiny, delicate flower, usually purple or yellow, popping

up through melting snow. Yes, often these little flowers pushed up through ground still covered with snow white flakes, proudly waving the banner that Spring is Near! on their tiny petals. More reliable than that fickle ground hog and more constant than the first robin picking the ground for worms, crocuses were an undeniable beacon of the imminent spring and a reminder that growth and renewal are always possible, even when the winter has been long and bleak.

I know that every life has ebbs and flows, ups and downs, dark winters and jubilant springs. I know this in my head, the rational part of my brain that manages my expectations and helps me steer a course to my goals. But when you're in the low times, the times when all you see is grey and it stretches ahead of you without an end in sight, it's hard to fathom what it will be like when you aren't in that endless winter. For many years, it was hard for me to imagine being comfortable in my own skin, hard to imagine feeling light again. I made mistakes that spiralled me further down, my inner compass broken, pointing me farther into the snowy woods instead of out into the sunny fields.

Sometimes change happens all at once, dramatic and jarring. Sometimes hope appears like a crocus in the snow and reminds you that spring is just around the corner. My winter ended like that...first some crocuses, then daffodils, then tulips. Except it was me finding Unitarian Universalism, meeting John, and moving to California...and suddenly it was spring and my life was in bloom again.

That's what those pictures on the beach really are: they are my testament to my renewal and my celebration of this springtime in my life. Those beach shots are my appreciation for the love and light in my life, knowing where I was and how hard I've worked to get where I am now. I am joyful and grateful and that has manifested itself into a series of pictures I've taken over the last two years of John and I at the beach.

We all have things that give us hope. Listening to the ocean waves, hearing a child laugh, taking a run...all of these things can make us feel that glimmer of hope and a sense of renewal. Whether you need a break from a bad day or a spark of light in a long dark period, we need to be vigilant to notice the things that bring us joy and raise us from the low times.

And while I know, like any good Game of Thrones fan, that Winter is Coming, as it always is, these pictures that I take will be my reminder of what springtime looks like and my incentive to weather the cold, grey days because sunshine and flowers, probably crocuses, will soon reappear.

It's a sin

Today I served as worship associate at USSB and read the following reflection on sin, sloth and service.
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I recently visited Las Vegas for a conference, and it struck me that Vegas is a vacation destination that promotes sin as it's main tourist attraction. It is Sin City after all, with the tag line "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," as if anything that you do in Vegas is understood to be ok even if it's not ok anywhere else.

Vegas really banks on the allure of the "sexy" sins in the Seven Deadly Sins list: Greed. Gluttony. Pride. Envy. Lust. Everywhere you look in Vegas, you see the promise of these sins in excess, from the  photos handed out on the sidewalks that most closely resemble trading cards of scantily clad companionship for an evening, to the adult version of sippy cups filled with frozen mixed drinks, to the urgently blinking, ever present lights of the slot machines promising the possibility of riches. Even wrath is starting to make an appearance on The Strip; there are ads everywhere for gun ranges where you can fire machine guns and high powered assault rifles to work out your aggressions.

What's interesting is the Deadly Sin that doesn't feature in the advertising for Las Vegas: sloth. Sloth is not a sexy sin; sloth represents laziness, inaction, wasting time. It's funny, but Sloth is the sin I'm most offended by, and the sin I fear most for myself.

I walk through most of my days feeling an internal pressure to do more. Get more work done. Do more housework. Spend more time with the kids. Finish that knitting project. Write another blog post. Schedule that appointment. The To Do list never ends, and at the end of each day, I usually make a list of what I didn't get done to set myself up for failure the next day. It becomes a never ending cycle. While my intentions are always pure in seeking a sense of accomplishment, the truth is, I know I'll never do everything I want to do. I'll never solve every problem and I'll never feel good enough. I'm forever seeking that golden ring of achievement beyond reproach, especially from myself.

I once had a conversation with a good friend who asked, "do you think you will ever feel satisfied?" And I wanted to answer yes, but when I thought about it, I couldn't think of a condition or state when I would feel like there was nothing left for me to do. There are small moments when I feel a glimpse: when ALL the laundry is done. When I received an award for my book. When I sold my company. When another parent compliments me on one of my kids. I feel for a moment like I've accomplished something meaningful. And then I start reviewing the list of what else I need to do. I'm constantly trying to outrun the shadow of sloth.

What drives this feeling in me is a desire to change the world, to leave this place better than I found it and to be a good example to the people I'm raising into adults. One of those young people is traveling on the YRUU trip over spring break to the Hopi reservation, and her trip has sparked anew my own To-Do list for service and activism.

The opportunity for activism was one of the things that appealed to me when I attended my first Unitarian Universalist service. Not just the opportunity, but the explicitly stated value of action for UUs. Here at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara, our mission is "Living with integrity, Nurturing wonder, Inspiring action." Inspiring action is one of the three components of our mission. How better for me to inspire action than by example? How better for me to change the world than with others who want to do the same?

If one of the core values held by Unitarians is action, then sloth may be our most deadly sin. And more, I wonder, if Unitarians are attracted to action as a spiritual practice, is this feeling of never doing enough common in our membership? From the friendships I've made in this congregation and from my relationships with the ministers and staff here, I would guess that I'm not alone in my feeling that I always have more to do.

As I think about this pressure to do more, and as I look at the teens preparing for their mission trip, I am reminding myself that my action, my contribution, my efforts are measured not by one rally, or signed petition, or service trip, but by the values I hold and the way I engage with the world every day. Today, that might mean having a dance party with my 7 year old or finishing the laundry or giving my husband a break and cooking dinner for once. Tomorrow, that might be me attending a rally or speaking at an event for women in technology or mentoring a young person interested in game design. All of these things will in their small way make the world better. I need to keep reminding myself that showing up with good will and intent and living my values are ultimately what makes the world a better place.

Maybe Vegas has it right. Just like the allure of Vegas in allowing us to dip our toes into sin a little bit without abandoning our values and responsibilities, relaxing every once in a while might just be the break I need to remind myself that even if I don't accomplish everything on the list, allowing myself time to play, rest, reflect and take a deep breath aren't symptoms of sloth but are actually necessary to make me whole, balanced and able to take on tomorrow's to do list and the world.

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.