Where Do We Go From Here UUSIC pg �1 November 8, 2015

In August of 2013, I was dying. I had been taken to Stanford Hospital. I remember very little of those days. What I do remember is an epic struggle . . . I remember…

“The dust / is choking; dry and thick. // I can not breathe. Dust coats my hair; is inside my nostrils; is parted by my tears. I am head-butted again and again; rolled in the dust. I hurt deeply. My screams sound like crumpled paper. I rise out of myself; a vision as real as if I was observing a film. I can't breathe.”

I wrote these words in the spring of 2014 as I recovered form a near fatal bout with sepsis. They are part of a personal story - a dream encounter with Wahatonka - the buffalo God. Re-reading them months later, I was taken aback. I could not help but hear Eric Garner's final words. I had intended to reflect with you on a very personal journey of suffering and transformation, these themes however, are seldom exclusively about the personal. The personal is always social.

Jeffery L. Ford

Where Do We Go From Here UUSIC pg �2 November 8, 2015

In my memory or dream ( which was it ) a basin is surrounded by the men of the tribe. They are smoking and laughing. Mostly bored. Wahatonka mauls me in the dust of the depression. I can't breathe.

Off to the side, a group of women are beading and watching the children. Their clucking voices express their disdain for the lethargic and sadistic men. The women begin to sing. // Wahatonka hesitates - - as they sing - I gather strength. The Men turn and stare at the women. The women continue singing. The dream replayed over and over.

~~~ Months later I picked up the journal my mother-in-law had kept during my two weeks of intensive care at Stanford. She had written....

“Lynette, Katharine, and Michael have been singing to Jeffery - it seems to calm him.”

************

During the last days of his life, William Stafford wrote a poem entitled “Where We Are”

Fog in the morning here will make some of the world far away and the near only a hint. But rain will feel its blind progress along the valley, tapping to convert one boulder at a time into a glistening fact. Daylight will love what came. Whatever fits will be welcome, whatever steps back in the fog will disappear and hardly exist. You hear the river saying a prayer for all that’s gone.

Far over the valley there is an island for everything left; and our own island will drift there too, unless we hold on, unless we tap like this: “Friend, are you there? Will you touch when you pass, like the rain?”

I have known what it is to drift in the fog ’til even what was near seemed far away. In the hospital, I sat in bed leg less - fingers black and curled. I laid restless through long nights alert with pain. I struggled with ungainly devices.

Jeffery L. Ford

Where Do We Go From Here UUSIC pg �3 November 8, 2015

But all along, family and friends were with me. My family sang and gathered from across the country. Steve Locker brought poetry and Buddhist inspired meditation. Hundreds of cards and caring bridge post offered your support and love. All along the way, rain touched one boulder at a time converting it to glistening fact - all along - someone, family, friends, sometimes strangers were with me, encouraging me, embracing me - singing to me.

Bishop Carter Hayward writes:

"to pay serious attention to anyone is to encourage that person, indeed to expect him or her to meet you on common ground - holy ground.”

I have learned any thing over the last 24 months it is that our presence matters. It is by our presence that compassion is known.

"A gesture of love," Margaret Wheatley writes, "is anything we do that helps others discover their humanity. Any act where we turn to one another. Open our hearts. Extend ourselves. Listen. Any time we're patient. Curious. Quiet. Engaged...Speaking to each other involves risk. It's often difficult to extend ourselves, to let down our guard, especially with those we fear or avoid. When we're willing to overcome our fear and speak to them, that is a gesture of love.”

When we remind people of their value, when we remind them that they are capable, when we remind them they are loved, compassion transforms that which threatens to diminish them. ~~~ I am often asked what role “faith” played in my recovery. How did I get off the ash heap? Why did I not curl up in a ball, turn to the wall and despair of life? I will confess, I did not look for miracles. I learned long ago that faith in the miraculous collapses in the face of experience. Furthermore, I did not seek escape in the promise of heaven; for faith based on the tenets of personal salvation tragically misses the point. I believe we make meaning. And I believe the underlying values and truths of the worlds religions, have a great deal to offer to our conversation regarding the making of meaning.

What sustains me, what inspires me, indeed what drives me, is the vision of compassion held forth in nearly all of the worlds religious traditions, >>> it is a vision, in the words of Martin Luther King:

"of infinite hope in a world of finite disappointment."

Jeffery L. Ford

Where Do We Go From Here UUSIC pg �4 November 8, 2015

Faith is not a rational ascent to an other worldly dogma. Faith, for me, is confidence in the transformative value of compassion lived large.

Karen Armstrong writes: “The one and only test of a religious idea , doctrinal statement, spiritual experience or devotional practice is that it must lead directly to practical compassion….Compassion was the litmus test for the prophets of Israel, the rabbis of the talmud, for Jesus, for Paul, for Muhammad, not to mention Confucius, Lao-tzu, the Buddha”

Consider this passage of scripture Matthew 25:

“Then God will say, Come, you who are blessed; take your inheritance....For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,  I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ (34-36)

Too many mistake this passage for reality when in fact it is a metaphor for the transformative power of compassion. The question raised is not how will the end time come; the question the passage raises is how shall we respond to suffering - - whether it be ours, our neighbors or the larger communities?

“I can not breathe” is not simply a personal story of dust and singing maidens and a buffalo. The story is about the actions of the women and the lack of of empathy among the men. The words, "I can't breathe," were never Eric Garner’s alone. They were never Aiyana Stanley-Jones’ alone, or Yvette Smith’s alone, or Tamir Smith’s alone. With his last breath Eric Garner expressed the haunting reality of too many black lives. Neither, should the words, "I can't breathe, " be heard on the lips of Wenjian Liu and Raphael Ramos - the police assassinated in New York.

Forty seven years ago in his essay: "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" Martin Luther King Junior wrote:

“Freedom is not won by a passive acceptance of suffering. Freedom is won by a struggle against suffering.”

King is arguing that freedom from suffering is a reciprocal act of compassion. ~~~

Jeffery L. Ford

Where Do We Go From Here UUSIC pg �5 November 8, 2015

In early June of 2015 I was asked to visit a patient at the University of Iowa hospital. He was in the same unit on which I had spent much of my time recovering from septic shock. Sean (not his real name) had become septic after experiencing flue like symptoms. He had been at three different hospitals before making his way to the University of Iowa. The results were devastating. He lost his legs below the knees, his hands and most of his forearms, and his kidneys were severely damaged.

Prior to meeting Sean, I routinely demurred when people told me I was a hero or courageous or amazing. I quietly put away the superman costume I had been sent. I always turned the conversation to the love and support I had experienced from family, friends, and the medical staff. Sean upset that narrative. Overwhelmed with questions of why, Sean lay passively in pain. He languished in a maze of grief and questions of what might have been. Over several visits with Sean, I came realize I needed to re-examine and claim my own agency in my recovery.

I recall laying in the hospital around the time I lost my legs. It was a long night; in the early morning my thoughts turned to my kids, Michael and Katharine. As young adults they had been relatively sheltered from the set backs and the suffering that permeates life. I knew that someday they would come face to face with their own purgatory. I knew that I wanted them to know that questions of why are a dead end. I knew that I wanted them to know that suffering does not define us - I wanted them to know that our response to suffering defines us.

Interacting with Sean helped me realized that in making the decision to be an example for my kids, in reciprocating their compassion, I had committed to be fully engaged in my recovery. I had not simply been a drowning man whom modern medicine saved. I was not simply the recipient of love from family and friends. I had actively swum toward the life raft. I had grabbed hold of the rescue buoy. I came to realize that by setting an example for my kids - by expressing my love for them through my efforts each day - I found myself thriving.

Great suffering persist; at a personal level, at a societal level and at an global level. Freedom is not won by a passive acceptance of suffering. Freedom is won by a struggle against suffering. The fundamental element of that struggle insist King, and Armstrong and the prophets of old is compassion.

And so I ask you this morning: “Where do we go from here?”

Jeffery L. Ford

Where Do We Go From Here UUSIC pg �6 November 8, 2015

In the face of great tragedy and sustained evil, where are we to go? / Are we to be diminished by that which oppresses; / are we to delve into chaos? / Will we twaddle in denial and sentimentality? // Or will we rise up in compassion and effect transformation?

The world desperately needs our compassion; it is a need that demands both release from suffering and the pursuit of justice in all our relationships.

The question I ask you is this: Will you be simple observers of suffering, whether in your own life or in the lives of others?

Or — Will you sing, opening your hearts; extending yourselves; joining your voices together / that those who mourn might be comforted? Will you be transformational? ~~~ “Friend - - are you there? Will you touch when you pass?”

Jeffery L. Ford