Friday, August 1, 2025
A Compass and Map for this Authenticity Journey
“A Compass and Map for this Authenticity Journey”
Sermon delivered to Peoples UU Cedar Rapids, late November 2024
We’re all on journeys of some sort, individually, and collectively. Our individual journeys are a few decades long, the life of this congregation hopefully centuries long, and for humanity, hopefully to continue for several more millennia. One way or another, events will happen, people, organizations, and humanity will join into life on this planet, and then eventually leave it.
There was a time before every one of us joined this life, there is this time while we’re here journeying, and there will be a time after we’ve left. There was a time before Peoples UU, we are here now, and there will be time afterward. There was a time before the inception of UU and all current religions, and there will be a time after all of these have departed. A time before every nation on this planet began, and there will be time after each has returned to the dustbin of history. But while we’re here, we have an opportunity to choose how we navigate this journey.
We can be passive as external forces - perhaps set up even prior to our existence - forces beyond us would define or categorize who we are and what we can do, allowing any inborn potential identities to fade, with unexplored grief of what could’ve been as we live out our assigned roles and identities. Or we can listen closely to the universe, and to our passions and joys from within, then actively engage and determine our own authentic path through this life.
I’m non-binary, in more ways than one. I believe too often we see things as binary. “Either we passively accept our assigned roles, or we actively determine our path.” Nope, I think it’d be natural to be a bit of each. To only be passive would be living life as an extension of somebody else, this journey being a bus-ride driven by somebody else, and each of us likely has desires to find some means of self-determination and self-expression. But to doggedly determine and pursue one’s path at every turn could be exhausting for most of us, and there are many pre-existing paths that are acceptable to follow in others’ footsteps. But how shall we navigate?
Our first navigation tool is our faculties. Pay attention to the universe, to the people around you, and to your own thoughts and feelings. Two of our readings today were about listening - listen to the dialog between the divine within and the divine beyond. Listen to each child that’s born, singing its song to the universe - the cosmos rejoicing at who you authentically are. Sometimes that paying attention goes deep, to unearthing childhood dreams and memories, or to diligent study for years to better attend to the nuances of this world.
Sometimes the signals of the universe are more mundane, like the driver in front of me on the freeway doing weird things with their turn signals, until I finally figured out that their behavior was a cue to me that my own blinker has been on for miles, but I couldn’t hear it because loud music, and couldn’t see it because the steering wheel blocks my direct view of the dashboard indicators. The universe is dynamic, always speaking to us and showing us signs, and it’s up to us to get a lay of the land, and make sense of it
Our second tool is a clarified compass. The needle points toward north. The reason for this is the Earth’s magnetic field. But magnetic north does not match up exactly with the actual north pole. In fact, scientists have found that the magnetic north pole is moving as much as 40km/year! (In Iowa City, the offset is currently about 1-degree West. A century ago, it was 6-degrees East. In northern Maine, it’s now 16-degrees West, but was 22-degrees West in 1924).
In spiritual terms, the compass is our sense of what is right and wrong. Our conscience, that “still small voice within” pointing north. As a chaplain, I meet people across wide ranges of cultures, experiences, perspectives, and beliefs. I can tell you for certain that not everybody’s compass points in the same direction. And what if “north” for each of us shifts? What if humanity’s compass has a shifting declination, varying depending on our unique experiences and identities? This is vexing to me. I can say however, that our compass is more reliable when we acknowledge that each person’s conscience is shaped by unique life experiences and interpretations.
Our third tool for navigating this journey is the map. But, as Polish-American philosopher Alfred Korzybski tells us, “The map is not the territory.” The map is not the territory it represents, but it may have a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. The map only provides limited information, showing things like locations of roads, cities, campgrounds, and lakes, and maybe contour lines to show the altitude and hills. Nowadays with the real-time technology, maps can convey the weather, air-quality, traffic jams, and speed traps. But the map can never be the territory itself.
This relates to a concept in Buddhism, in which the world has two dynamic interwoven parts. On the one hand, there is “ultimate reality” - the actual physical events or happenings of the world - the actual particles, waves, and fields in motion. On the other hand, there is “conventional reality” - the words and communications we use to describe the events that are actually happening.
The stories we tell about ourselves, about others, and about the world take place in “conventional reality.” The stories are the map we use to convey something about an experience. By their nature, the words can project the experience into language, and that projection is rife with deletions and distortions, because the words are insufficient.
The map may show you roads and such, but it won’t help you experience the cool sunset over the lake between budding oak trees in mid-April. With the map, you won’t expect the glow of fireflies in the summer. With the map, you don't feel the thrill of sledding down the golf course hill in December.
The map is like “Poetry for Neanderthals” - a delightful game I highly recommend in which players must explain something with only one-syllable words. "Plain tale here. Road go this way. At end of crush stone path, find flat spot for tent. Make fire in round steel thing."
But we (and our experiences) are SO MUCH MORE than one syllable words, and more even, than ANY WORDS are capable of conveying. To get to that authenticity requires attention, bravery and also curiosity. As a chaplain, I rely on curiosity. I meet people who are grieving every day. Maybe they’re afraid, or angry, or in anguish. When they say they’re afraid, I could simply affirm their fear, that it makes sense in light of their situation. Or I could go deeper and explore: What about this makes you most afraid? What about it makes you most angry, or most sad? Tell me more.To truncate the conversation at “yes you’re afraid” means my understanding is based on my imagination of what their fear _might be_, but not based on what they’re really afraid of.
We tend to simplify each others’ stories into, “Plain tale here. Fear here. Mad girl. Sad boy,” which effectively bypasses most of the reality, filling in most of the blanks with our imagination. Instead, our map, our story is richer when we take the time to move closer, and discover the deeply complex beings we actually are.
Much of our pain and troubles arise when we allow ourselves to operate from our imagination of how things are - inside terse, concise stories that impede or prevent relationships to others, our world, and ourselves from their rich potential. The news or history books (in all their polarized narratives) name the protagonists and antagonists, the plot, the theme, and the conflict. We are each capable of doing the same, carelessly painting ourselves and others as flat characters to fit a compelling story.
In 2012, writer John Koenig coined the term “Sonder.” “Sonder” is the feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one encounters (including people in bomb shelters halfway across the world, the jerk at the grocery store, or the jerk who canceled out your vote at the polling booth) - every individual has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles. Sonder is a portmanteau of “sound” and “ponder” - to sound the depths of a person, and to ponder or wonder about their journey.
Every person’s life, and every experience is “complexifiable” in that we can recognize it for a multitude of the potential meanings, relationships, and connections. In doing so, we can help that life or experience contribute in meaningful ways, whether to clarify our magnetic north poles, or to better explore our own authenticity.
With some tools in hand, now I’ll invite you to reflect with me as I read excerpts from the authenticity journey of Angelle Eve Castro, who shared an account of her transformation, with many of its struggles and triumphs - in the current UU Common Read, Authentic Selves: Celebrating Trans and Nonbinary+ People and Their Families.
She writes, “I’ve known for as long as I can remember that I am trans. There’s one memory I always find myself returning to, probably my earliest recollection of anything relating to gender expression. I was very young—it must have been before even starting kindergarten. I was with my family and a family friend at an indoor gym where parents would bring their kids to play.
[Sifting through a chest full of all kinds of clothes], I was mostly unimpressed with its contents until I pulled out a long, flowy dress. I was captivated by it. I put it on and it fit perfectly. I can remember the joy that welled up in my heart. I loved who I was in that moment. I danced around that room and felt so free I could’ve sworn I was flying.
But there was something awry about that happiness I was feeling. Something forbidden, even. I was a boy, after all. I would eventually have to leave that place and leave that dress behind, leaving freedom behind with it. I couldn’t let that happen. The next thing I remember is hiding in a closet behind a wall of stuffed animals. In the darkness of that moment, I determined that this feeling was something to keep hidden. And so, I did, or at least I tried to.
[I’ll add that here we see her magnetic north, with joy welling up in her heart, loving who she was in that moment with the long, flowy dress. And I myself grieved to read that she felt she had to hide it from the dangers of an unkind world. Later she writes,]
In middle school, when puberty struck, my bubbling internal conflict reached a boiling point. [...] Desperate for answers, one day I scoured the internet searching for something to explain why I felt the way I did. Why do I feel like a girl on the inside? Am I a girl trapped in a boy’s body? I learned about gender dysphoria and finally was able to put a name to the uncomfortable feeling I’d experienced my entire life. But I knew little to nothing about transgender people. I knew that being transgender made me very different from everyone else, and it scared me. It just reinforced the idea that being trans was something to keep hidden.
[Here, she finds her identity on a map, with words to allow for a description of self, but due to fear of an unloving world, she is unready to explore, instead effectively writing, “here be dragons.”]
I started to see my transness as a curse. The way I saw it, being trans had only brought me suffering, and there was no reason to believe that anything would change. There were many nights I didn’t sleep at all. I would stay awake trying to figure out how to kill myself painlessly. I didn’t want to suffer the pain of death, I just wanted it all to end, to slip quietly into the night and never again deal with this curse. [Her closest friends helped her through this depression, but the core incongruity between her internal identity and external expression hadn’t changed…]I decided I wanted to keep living, even if I couldn’t reveal who I was inside.
I gave up trying to express my transness and instead just leaned into being the “me” that people expected. It was just bearable enough that I believed I could make a life that way. [...]. I was never happy about who I had become or who I was becoming.
I had people in my life who I loved and people who loved me. Still, it didn’t feel like I was receiving any love at all—only the person who I had become against my will.
Her ultimate reality, her lived experience and feelings, is still being shaped by an unkind conventional reality, of others’ expectations of how she should be. Her compass still pointing to others’ perceptions as more valuable than her own right to self-expression. Her true self, still not manifest, to receive the words to our upcoming song, “How Could Anyone?”
One invaluable outcome of moving away for college was that I had no shortage of time alone with my thoughts. Those long days and nights of pondering brought me to a point where I was finally able to consider my issues with my identity. Realization dawned on me that I was struggling so much because I had been repressing my true self. [...]
I had a choice to make. Would I continue trying to keep my identity a secret to protect myself? Or would I accept the fact that I was transgender and move forward in authenticity…? [...]
I accepted the fact that I was transgender and set my sights on taking whatever steps were necessary to relieve myself of dysphoria. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it was, without a doubt, the only path that would lead to true happiness.
I wasn’t ready to come out of the closet quite yet, but I started trying to prepare myself for that eventuality. An old but familiar uneasiness took root in my heart. Would the people in my life accept me for who I was and support me in my endeavor to become the person I had always kept hidden away inside of me?
[after her transition, she shares…] I am continuously learning new things about who I am as a person, things that I never had the chance to express before starting my transition. It’s incredibly liberating to be seen as the woman I’ve always been but wasn’t always able to express. The bonds I have with the people close to me are truly strong because they love me for me. And just as importantly, I love myself fully and authentically. I love who I am and who I am becoming.
My hope is that, in time, the world will come around to realize that transgender people are who they say they are. Full stop. [...]
I’m not quite sure what direction I want to go in life. What is wonderful, though, is that I have a life that’s entirely my own, and I get to decide what to do with it.”
Before I close with a brief blessing, I’d like to share this quote from writer Dorothy Allison, regarding authenticity: “Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I’d rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.”
And now, in this moment, and in the coming days, years, may each of us find an abundance of curiosity, strength, and bravery to bring into being our most authentic selves and relationships as we navigate this journey..
.
lyrics:And in a moment of almost-unbearable vision, doubled over with the hunger of lions, Hold me close, cooed the dove, who was stuffed, now, with sawdust and diamonds.
https://joannanewsomlyrics.com/album/2-ys/15-sawdust-diamonds_as_sung/
colors:black, white, magenta
mood: weary.
chant/prayer/mantra:
shabbat shalom
pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel
Sermon delivered to Peoples UU Cedar Rapids, late November 2024
We’re all on journeys of some sort, individually, and collectively. Our individual journeys are a few decades long, the life of this congregation hopefully centuries long, and for humanity, hopefully to continue for several more millennia. One way or another, events will happen, people, organizations, and humanity will join into life on this planet, and then eventually leave it.
There was a time before every one of us joined this life, there is this time while we’re here journeying, and there will be a time after we’ve left. There was a time before Peoples UU, we are here now, and there will be time afterward. There was a time before the inception of UU and all current religions, and there will be a time after all of these have departed. A time before every nation on this planet began, and there will be time after each has returned to the dustbin of history. But while we’re here, we have an opportunity to choose how we navigate this journey.
We can be passive as external forces - perhaps set up even prior to our existence - forces beyond us would define or categorize who we are and what we can do, allowing any inborn potential identities to fade, with unexplored grief of what could’ve been as we live out our assigned roles and identities. Or we can listen closely to the universe, and to our passions and joys from within, then actively engage and determine our own authentic path through this life.
I’m non-binary, in more ways than one. I believe too often we see things as binary. “Either we passively accept our assigned roles, or we actively determine our path.” Nope, I think it’d be natural to be a bit of each. To only be passive would be living life as an extension of somebody else, this journey being a bus-ride driven by somebody else, and each of us likely has desires to find some means of self-determination and self-expression. But to doggedly determine and pursue one’s path at every turn could be exhausting for most of us, and there are many pre-existing paths that are acceptable to follow in others’ footsteps. But how shall we navigate?
Our first navigation tool is our faculties. Pay attention to the universe, to the people around you, and to your own thoughts and feelings. Two of our readings today were about listening - listen to the dialog between the divine within and the divine beyond. Listen to each child that’s born, singing its song to the universe - the cosmos rejoicing at who you authentically are. Sometimes that paying attention goes deep, to unearthing childhood dreams and memories, or to diligent study for years to better attend to the nuances of this world.
Sometimes the signals of the universe are more mundane, like the driver in front of me on the freeway doing weird things with their turn signals, until I finally figured out that their behavior was a cue to me that my own blinker has been on for miles, but I couldn’t hear it because loud music, and couldn’t see it because the steering wheel blocks my direct view of the dashboard indicators. The universe is dynamic, always speaking to us and showing us signs, and it’s up to us to get a lay of the land, and make sense of it
Our second tool is a clarified compass. The needle points toward north. The reason for this is the Earth’s magnetic field. But magnetic north does not match up exactly with the actual north pole. In fact, scientists have found that the magnetic north pole is moving as much as 40km/year! (In Iowa City, the offset is currently about 1-degree West. A century ago, it was 6-degrees East. In northern Maine, it’s now 16-degrees West, but was 22-degrees West in 1924).
In spiritual terms, the compass is our sense of what is right and wrong. Our conscience, that “still small voice within” pointing north. As a chaplain, I meet people across wide ranges of cultures, experiences, perspectives, and beliefs. I can tell you for certain that not everybody’s compass points in the same direction. And what if “north” for each of us shifts? What if humanity’s compass has a shifting declination, varying depending on our unique experiences and identities? This is vexing to me. I can say however, that our compass is more reliable when we acknowledge that each person’s conscience is shaped by unique life experiences and interpretations.
Our third tool for navigating this journey is the map. But, as Polish-American philosopher Alfred Korzybski tells us, “The map is not the territory.” The map is not the territory it represents, but it may have a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. The map only provides limited information, showing things like locations of roads, cities, campgrounds, and lakes, and maybe contour lines to show the altitude and hills. Nowadays with the real-time technology, maps can convey the weather, air-quality, traffic jams, and speed traps. But the map can never be the territory itself.
This relates to a concept in Buddhism, in which the world has two dynamic interwoven parts. On the one hand, there is “ultimate reality” - the actual physical events or happenings of the world - the actual particles, waves, and fields in motion. On the other hand, there is “conventional reality” - the words and communications we use to describe the events that are actually happening.
The stories we tell about ourselves, about others, and about the world take place in “conventional reality.” The stories are the map we use to convey something about an experience. By their nature, the words can project the experience into language, and that projection is rife with deletions and distortions, because the words are insufficient.
The map may show you roads and such, but it won’t help you experience the cool sunset over the lake between budding oak trees in mid-April. With the map, you won’t expect the glow of fireflies in the summer. With the map, you don't feel the thrill of sledding down the golf course hill in December.
The map is like “Poetry for Neanderthals” - a delightful game I highly recommend in which players must explain something with only one-syllable words. "Plain tale here. Road go this way. At end of crush stone path, find flat spot for tent. Make fire in round steel thing."
But we (and our experiences) are SO MUCH MORE than one syllable words, and more even, than ANY WORDS are capable of conveying. To get to that authenticity requires attention, bravery and also curiosity. As a chaplain, I rely on curiosity. I meet people who are grieving every day. Maybe they’re afraid, or angry, or in anguish. When they say they’re afraid, I could simply affirm their fear, that it makes sense in light of their situation. Or I could go deeper and explore: What about this makes you most afraid? What about it makes you most angry, or most sad? Tell me more.To truncate the conversation at “yes you’re afraid” means my understanding is based on my imagination of what their fear _might be_, but not based on what they’re really afraid of.
We tend to simplify each others’ stories into, “Plain tale here. Fear here. Mad girl. Sad boy,” which effectively bypasses most of the reality, filling in most of the blanks with our imagination. Instead, our map, our story is richer when we take the time to move closer, and discover the deeply complex beings we actually are.
Much of our pain and troubles arise when we allow ourselves to operate from our imagination of how things are - inside terse, concise stories that impede or prevent relationships to others, our world, and ourselves from their rich potential. The news or history books (in all their polarized narratives) name the protagonists and antagonists, the plot, the theme, and the conflict. We are each capable of doing the same, carelessly painting ourselves and others as flat characters to fit a compelling story.
In 2012, writer John Koenig coined the term “Sonder.” “Sonder” is the feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one encounters (including people in bomb shelters halfway across the world, the jerk at the grocery store, or the jerk who canceled out your vote at the polling booth) - every individual has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles. Sonder is a portmanteau of “sound” and “ponder” - to sound the depths of a person, and to ponder or wonder about their journey.
Every person’s life, and every experience is “complexifiable” in that we can recognize it for a multitude of the potential meanings, relationships, and connections. In doing so, we can help that life or experience contribute in meaningful ways, whether to clarify our magnetic north poles, or to better explore our own authenticity.
With some tools in hand, now I’ll invite you to reflect with me as I read excerpts from the authenticity journey of Angelle Eve Castro, who shared an account of her transformation, with many of its struggles and triumphs - in the current UU Common Read, Authentic Selves: Celebrating Trans and Nonbinary+ People and Their Families.
She writes, “I’ve known for as long as I can remember that I am trans. There’s one memory I always find myself returning to, probably my earliest recollection of anything relating to gender expression. I was very young—it must have been before even starting kindergarten. I was with my family and a family friend at an indoor gym where parents would bring their kids to play.
[Sifting through a chest full of all kinds of clothes], I was mostly unimpressed with its contents until I pulled out a long, flowy dress. I was captivated by it. I put it on and it fit perfectly. I can remember the joy that welled up in my heart. I loved who I was in that moment. I danced around that room and felt so free I could’ve sworn I was flying.
But there was something awry about that happiness I was feeling. Something forbidden, even. I was a boy, after all. I would eventually have to leave that place and leave that dress behind, leaving freedom behind with it. I couldn’t let that happen. The next thing I remember is hiding in a closet behind a wall of stuffed animals. In the darkness of that moment, I determined that this feeling was something to keep hidden. And so, I did, or at least I tried to.
[I’ll add that here we see her magnetic north, with joy welling up in her heart, loving who she was in that moment with the long, flowy dress. And I myself grieved to read that she felt she had to hide it from the dangers of an unkind world. Later she writes,]
In middle school, when puberty struck, my bubbling internal conflict reached a boiling point. [...] Desperate for answers, one day I scoured the internet searching for something to explain why I felt the way I did. Why do I feel like a girl on the inside? Am I a girl trapped in a boy’s body? I learned about gender dysphoria and finally was able to put a name to the uncomfortable feeling I’d experienced my entire life. But I knew little to nothing about transgender people. I knew that being transgender made me very different from everyone else, and it scared me. It just reinforced the idea that being trans was something to keep hidden.
[Here, she finds her identity on a map, with words to allow for a description of self, but due to fear of an unloving world, she is unready to explore, instead effectively writing, “here be dragons.”]
I started to see my transness as a curse. The way I saw it, being trans had only brought me suffering, and there was no reason to believe that anything would change. There were many nights I didn’t sleep at all. I would stay awake trying to figure out how to kill myself painlessly. I didn’t want to suffer the pain of death, I just wanted it all to end, to slip quietly into the night and never again deal with this curse. [Her closest friends helped her through this depression, but the core incongruity between her internal identity and external expression hadn’t changed…]I decided I wanted to keep living, even if I couldn’t reveal who I was inside.
I gave up trying to express my transness and instead just leaned into being the “me” that people expected. It was just bearable enough that I believed I could make a life that way. [...]. I was never happy about who I had become or who I was becoming.
I had people in my life who I loved and people who loved me. Still, it didn’t feel like I was receiving any love at all—only the person who I had become against my will.
Her ultimate reality, her lived experience and feelings, is still being shaped by an unkind conventional reality, of others’ expectations of how she should be. Her compass still pointing to others’ perceptions as more valuable than her own right to self-expression. Her true self, still not manifest, to receive the words to our upcoming song, “How Could Anyone?”
One invaluable outcome of moving away for college was that I had no shortage of time alone with my thoughts. Those long days and nights of pondering brought me to a point where I was finally able to consider my issues with my identity. Realization dawned on me that I was struggling so much because I had been repressing my true self. [...]
I had a choice to make. Would I continue trying to keep my identity a secret to protect myself? Or would I accept the fact that I was transgender and move forward in authenticity…? [...]
I accepted the fact that I was transgender and set my sights on taking whatever steps were necessary to relieve myself of dysphoria. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it was, without a doubt, the only path that would lead to true happiness.
I wasn’t ready to come out of the closet quite yet, but I started trying to prepare myself for that eventuality. An old but familiar uneasiness took root in my heart. Would the people in my life accept me for who I was and support me in my endeavor to become the person I had always kept hidden away inside of me?
[after her transition, she shares…] I am continuously learning new things about who I am as a person, things that I never had the chance to express before starting my transition. It’s incredibly liberating to be seen as the woman I’ve always been but wasn’t always able to express. The bonds I have with the people close to me are truly strong because they love me for me. And just as importantly, I love myself fully and authentically. I love who I am and who I am becoming.
My hope is that, in time, the world will come around to realize that transgender people are who they say they are. Full stop. [...]
I’m not quite sure what direction I want to go in life. What is wonderful, though, is that I have a life that’s entirely my own, and I get to decide what to do with it.”
Before I close with a brief blessing, I’d like to share this quote from writer Dorothy Allison, regarding authenticity: “Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I’d rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.”
And now, in this moment, and in the coming days, years, may each of us find an abundance of curiosity, strength, and bravery to bring into being our most authentic selves and relationships as we navigate this journey.
lyrics:And in a moment of almost-unbearable vision, doubled over with the hunger of lions, Hold me close, cooed the dove, who was stuffed, now, with sawdust and diamonds.
https://joannanewsomlyrics.com/album/2-ys/15-sawdust-diamonds_as_sung/
colors:black, white, magenta
mood: weary.
chant/prayer/mantra:
shabbat shalom
pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel
