Lee revisits one of the classics this week by talking about The Wizard of Oz. At its heart, this is a story about a girl who experiences trauma (literal head trauma, in her case) and spends much of the rest of the story trying to determine when and how things will feel safe again. This is very much what we\u2019ve experienced in the pandemic. She also talks about the meaning of the Arabic word \u201cInshallah\u201d and shares a poem contemplating its meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
START OF TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Speaker1
The following is a message from Wellspring’s congregation. Good morning, everybody. I’m so glad to be joining you again on a
Sunday morning. Hmm. Huh, and looks like there’s something different about my video today, huh? I can’t quite put my finger on it,
though. Do you do you notice something different? Uh, well, I guess we’ll figure it out later.
[00:00:34] Speaker2
Anyway, these last
[00:00:36] Speaker1
Few weeks here at Wellspring’s, we have been preaching in our Summer Spirit Flick’s message series, as we do each year, finding
the deeper meaning in movies and in the stories on our screens. And I’ve noticed a bit of a trend these last few weeks. We’ve had our
preachers revisiting some of their classic favorite stories on the screen. Last week, Rodney preached about the movie Grease. A few
weeks back, Reverend Ken preached about die hard spoiler alert. He does argue that it is a Christmas movie. And so maybe it was
me noticing that trend. But something about life these past few weeks got me thinking about the movie that inspired my message
today, a movie that is nearly as old as movies themselves. It’s almost 100 years since its release at this point, the 1939 classic film
The Wizard of Oz. Now, if you grew up, at least in America, but probably almost anywhere in the world at this point, I don’t think it’s
possible to not know this movie. It’s a story like Humpty Dumpty and Old MacDonald had a farm like it’s deep in there from childhood.
I could not tell you the first time I saw this movie. It’s a it’s a memory before memories, I think, for me. But I know intimately all the
characters, all the costumes, all the songs. And maybe you do, too. But I’ll remind you of the basic sketch of the plot of The Wizard of
Oz in the beginning of the film.
[00:02:16] Speaker1
Dorothy, a girl living in Kansas, gets swept away from her home by a tornado and she set down into the magical land of Oz. And so
she wants to try to find her way back home in this new place and she sets off with three new friends that she makes the Tin Man, the
Cowardly Lion and the scarecrow. They set off down the yellow brick road to see the wizard who all of the residents of Oz promise
can make. Whatever she and her friends are longing for real can make it come true. Oh, that’s what it was. Yeah, I see now. So I
always find it interesting to look back at classic childhood stories like this with adult eyes, because what really happens in this movie,
right, is Dorothy experiences head trauma. She gets hit on the head in the tornado with like a flying piece of wood or something. She
passes out and we all get to watch the massive hallucinations she has before she comes to the movie, points to it, right? The Tin
Man, the Cowardly Lion, the scarecrow. They are played by the same actors as three of the farmhands on her family’s farm. We
meet them early in the movie. And it’s the same with The Wizard of Oz himself.
[00:03:51] Speaker1
He’s a reconstruction in her subconscious of the little bit shifty but ultimately kind traveling fortune teller in her little Kansas town.
Dorothy gets hurt at the beginning of this movie. She’s injured in a natural disaster, something that’s nobody’s fault. She is just
vulnerable and in the wrong place at the wrong time. And in that state of being scared and under threat, her mind tries to make sense
of what’s going on, tries to find a way to feel safe again. You know, it’s a perfect plotline. Now, as an adult looking at this movie, it’s
perfect for a children’s movie developmentally. Right, because so many children’s stories are about this, something that is with us
from birth, that feeling of being scared and just trying to feel safe again. When you are a little person and you don’t know much, the
world can be a really big and scary place and learning how to feel safe and to find safety. That is one of our biggest tasks of
childhood learning how to assess risk, who to trust and how to keep ourselves. Well, it’s not just relevant when we are little, though. I
mean, what could be more relevant for us today, today, August 1st, 2021, more than a year into a life changing situation for so many
of us. The reason I am still talking to you on a screen right now,
[00:05:39] Speaker2
All
[00:05:40] Speaker1
Of us wondering after a big natural disaster,
[00:05:45] Speaker2
What
[00:05:45] Speaker1
Is safe and what’s not, who is safe and who’s not. Our world has become even more confusing in just the last week or two, we’re
watching headlines about breakthrough infections and the new Delta variant of the coronavirus. I actually got a covid test for the very
first time in the pandemic. Believe it or not. Earlier this week, it was negative,
[00:06:17] Speaker2
Fortunately, but
[00:06:20] Speaker1
I went and got tested because I felt sick. For the first time in a long time. I haven’t been going places and meeting many germs and I
hoped it was just a cold, but I had no idea. I wanted to know was that I didn’t put anyone else, didn’t put any of you at risk. What do we
do when we’re not sure anymore what’s up and what’s down and when it’s all so confusing and the world may be flush with colour
and excitement again, but now there’s also witches and flying monkeys and we don’t
[00:06:58] Speaker2
Know who we can trust in
[00:07:02] Speaker1
This new world. We found ourselves in
[00:07:05] Speaker2
More
[00:07:06] Speaker1
Than that. We don’t know how or whether we can even get back to that place,
[00:07:11] Speaker2
That home
[00:07:12] Speaker1
That we used to know. I think many of us are struggling with these questions right now. I know that I am. For me, it’s like a low grade
hum in the back of my mind, this feeling like we’ve made it through the worst of this experience. But things are still not on solid
ground. And my subconscious subconscious is humming. It feels like all the time still trying to find my footing. This is what collective
trauma does to people, to us, it reverberates over time, we’ve talked about this at Wellspring’s so many times, long before the
pandemic trauma happens, whenever something overwhelms our ability to cope and make sense of what’s going on, and it can be
collective, it lives alongside us as we start trying to find our way out or around or moving forward alongside
[00:08:29] Speaker2
What’s happened,
[00:08:31] Speaker1
Trying to formulate some new sense of the meaning of it
[00:08:35] Speaker2
All.
[00:08:38] Speaker1
And we’re all somewhere on that road right now. Like most roads, it takes time to travel. Especially when the trauma seems to be
ongoing or to revisit us in waves, but the good news, I think, is that really the only way we can screw up this journey is to pretend
we’re not on it at
[00:09:05] Speaker2
All, as
[00:09:07] Speaker1
Long as we are willing to pay attention
[00:09:12] Speaker2
To where our
[00:09:12] Speaker1
Feet are moving on this yellow brick road together,
[00:09:16] Speaker2
As long
[00:09:17] Speaker1
As we’re willing to tell stories and process our memories and notice our thoughts and feelings and allow ourselves
[00:09:26] Speaker2
To
[00:09:27] Speaker1
Slowly find and make this meaning from these experiences,
[00:09:33] Speaker2
Then we will get there.
[00:09:36] Speaker1
Or actually maybe a better way to say it is we will find enough safety and meaning
[00:09:44] Speaker2
Here,
[00:09:45] Speaker1
Not there, but wherever we are on the path by being honest with ourselves and each other
[00:09:55] Speaker2
About how
[00:09:56] Speaker1
We’re feeling. We’ve won more than half the battle, being honest, maybe half the battle. But the other half, of course, is found with
each other. It’s finding the soft places for those thoughts and those feelings as we make sense of this to land with someone else. And
that’s the part of this that we can do for each other as we travel. Not every person we meet and we know this is going to be caring or
understanding or see things the way we do or even be open to the way we see things. And that makes the people and the places
where we can really share it all so much more precious. I remember this week a story I read a little while back, another story actually
about a tornado in Kansas. It’s from the short story author Antonia Nelson, who wrote about something that happened to her back in
1966 when she was five years old. Antonia, as a little girl, her father, her mother, who was pregnant at the time, and her four older
siblings, this big family, were all packed into their station wagon one day
[00:11:20] Speaker2
When the
[00:11:20] Speaker1
Sky began to get cloudy and angry, and suddenly things got a little too quiet in the
[00:11:28] Speaker2
Air.
[00:11:30] Speaker1
And Tony’s father pulled into a shopping center parking lot because he saw the signs and he was hoping to get them all inside to take
cover. But he was too late. A tornado was cruising fast along the flat Kansas prairie and heading straight towards them. And before
they could run inside to safety, it roared right past the shopping center into the parking lot. And \u00c1ntonia remembers it, picked up the
family’s station wagon
[00:12:01] Speaker2
And it turned it over upside down
[00:12:07] Speaker1
And then set it back down onto the pavement. And the tornado blew off down the road. The family’s car, now upside down, had been
set back down on the ground almost gently. Now, the whole family was shaken up like hell on the inside. Right. But miraculously,
none of the children and adults, the seven people in that car were physically hurt. And Tony remembers going to the hospital
afterwards. They all went to get checked out and the doctors examined each child one by one, no broken bones, nobody needed
stitches, maybe a couple bruises. But, yeah, everybody was OK. Except there was one thing they didn’t know, you see in the 1960s,
the technology was not what it was today, and the family and Antonia’s mother all went home wondering
[00:13:09] Speaker2
For months
[00:13:11] Speaker1
Whether anything had happened to that baby growing inside of
[00:13:15] Speaker2
Her womb with the baby. All right. Would it not for months.
[00:13:25] Speaker1
All they could do was wonder and hope.
[00:13:29] Speaker2
There was nothing to do
[00:13:30] Speaker1
But wait and see. You know, any time we try to move forward, move on from something scary that happens to us, there’s always
some of that same kind of weighting.
[00:13:46] Speaker2
Will it be all right? Will it not?
[00:13:51] Speaker1
How will this affect us? How will this change us? We can do the things we can do. We can go to the hospital and get the scans. But
there’s some piece of what is to unfold that simply has to unfold and come on its own time. And yet the time
[00:14:15] Speaker2
While
[00:14:16] Speaker1
We may have to wait through it, we don’t have to be passive in the waiting. It can be a scary thing to go down the yellow brick
[00:14:27] Speaker2
Road, there
[00:14:30] Speaker1
Are flying monkeys and witches. There might be danger and there might be adventure ahead, but there can also be friends.
Companions and connections who travel with
[00:14:44] Speaker2
Us,
[00:14:46] Speaker1
Sticking together, linking arms, skipping down that road,
[00:14:52] Speaker2
Singing and listening
[00:14:56] Speaker1
And supporting each
[00:14:57] Speaker2
Other, being
[00:14:59] Speaker1
For each other, those soft places to land that help to keep us safe as we travel along the way, Dorothy finds herself in this bright and
vibrant and colorful place. She has survived what’s happened to her, but also the places new and scary and unfamiliar. All she wants
[00:15:23] Speaker2
Is to be home again, and her
[00:15:26] Speaker1
Little misfit crew wants things to a heart and a brain and courage, things that they have lost one way or another and are longing to
find again those things that they seek the way back
[00:15:40] Speaker2
Home.
[00:15:41] Speaker1
They all end up being things that they have to find along the journey. Things that they learn were always inside them. In Dorothy’s
case, magically the way home was literally on her
[00:15:55] Speaker2
Feet the whole time.
[00:16:00] Speaker1
But in traveling together, they are able to share what they are seeking and why they are seeking it, they are able to guard and protect
and love one another. And eventually that wizard cannot snap his fingers and make things happen. But he can lovingly point out to
them the gifts they’ve already been given and how maybe they can use them now in a new way to create a different kind of future.
[00:16:36] Speaker2
The poet Densha LYMErix
[00:16:40] Speaker1
Has a poem that everybody is sharing right now. I noticed online of small kindnesses, you may have heard of her. She grew up
speaking Arabic for a time. There were a few years that her family lived in Beirut and Lebanon. And Anusha Llamas has written a
number of poems about that experience and about the Arabic language itself, including one poem about a phrase you may have
heard. If you know or are an Arabic speaker yourself, it’s the phrase inshallah, inshallah. I remember first hearing it regularly from a
friend of my old you church in D.C., a white woman I knew who became a U. U. Muslim dual affiliated when she married a Muslim
man. And then again, I heard it years later from a classmate in divinity school, a black Muslim woman from Chicago. Both of them
peppered their speech all the
[00:17:46] Speaker2
Time with
[00:17:48] Speaker1
This word. It seemed to come up in so many conversations. They might say, this winter I’ll go back home to see my parents,
inshallah, or, yeah, I really think this new project I’m working on is going to turn out well, inshallah.
[00:18:03] Speaker2
The phrase means if God wills it, if God wills, it is a
[00:18:10] Speaker1
Similar word for this in Spanish. You might know to ohala now to a Unitarian Universalist ear. Maybe you have a little bit of a head tilt
reaction to that idea of constantly peppering your speech with this phrase. If God wills it after all you use, don’t necessarily all believe
in God, let alone some sense of God’s will or plan. If there’s any consensus among Unitarian Universalist, maybe it’s that what is
divine and what is human work together, God’s will and our will sort of in a partnership on a seesaw of some kind. Right. But you can
ask too many Unitarian Universalist and get 20 different answers for how they would balance that particular seesaw. Is what
happens more up to us or to God something greater than us? I have my opinion, but of course, I don’t know the answer. And I’ve
always remembered how I felt hearing these two women I knew pepper this phrase into their speech, keeping it right on the tongue
Inshala. I felt safer somehow,
[00:19:41] Speaker2
I felt
[00:19:42] Speaker1
More at ease. Like it was a little linguistic reminder, a small practice of devotion to keep on the tongue at all times, to ask and hope
[00:19:57] Speaker2
For
[00:19:57] Speaker1
Things with a constant kind of humility, a way of remembering that what I do and what I plan for is always at least a little bit out of my
hands. That much is
[00:20:12] Speaker2
True for all of us right now.
[00:20:19] Speaker1
And while it can be scary,
[00:20:22] Speaker2
It’s also good because
[00:20:25] Speaker1
I don’t know about you, but I’m not qualified to be God. I don’t want everything that happens to be in my hands. And because
disasters strike often in this life, disasters of all kinds, losses and traumas and illness and grief, then I want gentle hands to strike
sometimes also to set my car down softly on a parking lot. I want colorful dreams to show up and companions to join
[00:21:00] Speaker2
Me, people who
[00:21:03] Speaker1
Show me all my own magic when I
[00:21:05] Speaker2
Forget it.
[00:21:09] Speaker1
People who can be with us while we find our way back to safe places. Places that may
[00:21:19] Speaker2
Look the
[00:21:21] Speaker1
Same as they did when we started, but because of the journey,
[00:21:26] Speaker2
We will be different. We will have grown. Hmm. To me,
[00:21:36] Speaker1
That is perhaps the most loving image
[00:21:40] Speaker2
Of God or of the divine, not the
[00:21:44] Speaker1
One who you pray to in the right way to make things turn out the way you want them, but a God who will stay with us no matter what
changes, a love that does not let go until we find our way back home. This is the new show, Mariss
[00:22:08] Speaker2
Poem about
[00:22:10] Speaker1
That beautiful Arabic
[00:22:11] Speaker2
Word,
[00:22:16] Speaker1
I don’t know when it slipped into my speech, that soft word, meaning if God
[00:22:23] Speaker2
Wills it and
[00:22:25] Speaker1
Shall I will see you next summer,
[00:22:29] Speaker2
The baby
[00:22:30] Speaker1
Will come in spring,
[00:22:31] Speaker2
Inshallah,
[00:22:34] Speaker1
Inshallah. This year we will have enough rain. So many plans I have laid have unraveled easily as braids beneath my mother’s quick
fingers. Every language must have a word for
[00:22:49] Speaker2
This, a
[00:22:51] Speaker1
Word our grandmothers uttered under their breath as they penned the whites soaked in lemon and hung them to dry in the
[00:22:58] Speaker2
Sun or peeled potatoes,
[00:23:02] Speaker1
Dropping the discarded skins into
[00:23:04] Speaker2
A bowl.
[00:23:06] Speaker1
Our sons will return next month. Inshallah, inshallah. This war will end soon. Inshallah. The rights will be enough
[00:23:18] Speaker2
To last through winter. How lightly we learn to hold hope
[00:23:28] Speaker1
As if it were an animal that could turn around and bite your
[00:23:31] Speaker2
Hand,
[00:23:33] Speaker1
And still we carry
[00:23:34] Speaker2
It the way a mother would carefully
[00:23:40] Speaker1
From one day to the next. That last stanza, I’ll read it again, how lightly we learn to
[00:23:54] Speaker2
Hold hope
[00:23:55] Speaker1
As if it were an animal that could turn around and bite your hand, and still we carry
[00:24:02] Speaker2
It the way a mother would carefully
[00:24:06] Speaker1
From one day to the next. May we carry it with love?
[00:24:16] Speaker2
May we carry it together into the next week, friends
[00:24:22] Speaker1
And all the way
[00:24:23] Speaker2
Down a long road ahead?
[00:24:28] Speaker1
Amen, and may you live in blessing. I invite you if you feel comfortable
[00:24:38] Speaker2
To close
[00:24:39] Speaker1
Your eyes, perhaps bow your head by your shoulders,
[00:24:43] Speaker2
Fall and
[00:24:45] Speaker1
Join me in the spirit of
[00:24:47] Speaker2
Prayer.
[00:24:54] Speaker1
God of our hearts own language,
[00:25:00] Speaker2
God who
[00:25:01] Speaker1
Knows and carries our hopes along with us.
[00:25:11] Speaker2
Holy Love force
[00:25:14] Speaker1
That holds us all in holding us, you know, how our communities and our families
[00:25:23] Speaker2
Are in
[00:25:24] Speaker1
Places of uncertainty
[00:25:27] Speaker2
And
[00:25:27] Speaker1
Doubt. How things seemed to shift and change for so many of us, how we live our lives always every day with these mixtures, turmoil
sometimes of excitement and joy and worry and gratitude and
[00:25:46] Speaker2
Loss, how many things we
[00:25:52] Speaker1
Experience in times like these when we have been shaken up and set back down? May we remember that there is nothing we can
feel that is not acceptable? There is nothing we can feel that we are not supposed to feel. And in fact, may we remember that
honoring how we are is what helps us move
[00:26:26] Speaker2
Forward
[00:26:29] Speaker1
With the consciousness to turn what we feel into something good, to transform our emotions and thoughts and experiences into
something that is in alignment with our hearts calling and our values and what you call us to. Which is love. Which is kindness and
care towards each other. As we walk that path together, as we experience that alchemy of transforming what we experience into
something that is good for the world, maybe we find comfort in our companions. And may we remember,
[00:27:20] Speaker2
Thanks to you, thanks to each other, that
[00:27:25] Speaker1
So far we have made it through and we can keep
[00:27:28] Speaker2
Moving
[00:27:30] Speaker1
With each step and breath
[00:27:33] Speaker2
One moment and one day at a time towards what we long for. For the
[00:27:42] Speaker1
Prayers that I have spoken this morning and for the prayers that everyone with us is carrying silently on their
[00:27:49] Speaker2
Hearts,
[00:27:50] Speaker1
We say Amen. If you enjoyed this message and would like to support the mission of Wellspring’s, go to our Web site.
WellspringUU.org. That’s Wellspring’s the letters UU dot ORG
END OF TRANSCRIPT
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Lee revisits one of the classics this week by talking about The Wizard of Oz. At its heart, this is a story about a girl who experiences trauma (literal head trauma, in her case) and spends much of the rest of the story trying to determine when and how things will feel safe again. This is very much what we\u2019ve experienced in the pandemic. She also talks about the meaning of the Arabic word \u201cInshallah\u201d and shares a poem contemplating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5053,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","ctc_sermon_topic":[145,146,143,144],"ctc_sermon_book":[],"ctc_sermon_series":[130],"ctc_sermon_speaker":[123],"ctc_sermon_tag":[],"class_list":["post-5178","ctc_sermon","type-ctc_sermon","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ctc_sermon_topic-belonging-connection","ctc_sermon_topic-change","ctc_sermon_topic-courage","ctc_sermon_topic-families","ctc_sermon_series-spiritflix","ctc_sermon_speaker-rev-lee-paczulla","ctfw-has-image"],"featured_image_urls":{"medium":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SpiritFlix-2021_1A_FACEBOOK-COVER-1-300x169.png","thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SpiritFlix-2021_1A_FACEBOOK-COVER-1-150x150.png","medium_large":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SpiritFlix-2021_1A_FACEBOOK-COVER-1-768x432.png","post-thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SpiritFlix-2021_1A_FACEBOOK-COVER-1-720x480.png","saved-banner":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SpiritFlix-2021_1A_FACEBOOK-COVER-1-920x400.png","saved-square":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SpiritFlix-2021_1A_FACEBOOK-COVER-1-720x720.png","saved-square-large":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SpiritFlix-2021_1A_FACEBOOK-COVER-1-1024x1024.png","saved-square-small":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SpiritFlix-2021_1A_FACEBOOK-COVER-1-160x160.png","saved-rect-medium":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SpiritFlix-2021_1A_FACEBOOK-COVER-1-480x320.png","saved-rect-small":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SpiritFlix-2021_1A_FACEBOOK-COVER-1-200x133.png"},"appp_media":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon\/5178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/ctc_sermon"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon\/5178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5181,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon\/5178\/revisions\/5181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_topic?post=5178"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_book","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_book?post=5178"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_series?post=5178"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_speaker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_speaker?post=5178"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_tag?post=5178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}