Vayas donde vayas, alli estaras.* Or so they might say in Cuba.

In airports, on tour buses, in hotels, restaurants, in Havana, Matanzas, Varadero, Cienfuegos, Trinidad and back at the Copacabana in Havana, I was much the same human being I had been in San Francisco except for swollen feet and ankles. In past travel, I had relied on avoidance-strategies to cope with the strange or disorienting. But this time, bolstered by 55 Tara Brach meditation podcasts, and a budding meditation practice, I was present; I was really there for the pleasant and unpleasant.

I was confused and anxious as we milled around the American Airlines Charter Flight counter at the Miami-Dade airport eager to enter Cuba and whatever awaited us just 90 miles from Key West.

The trip, organized by Global Exchange, was to encourage cultural sharing through choral music. We were a group of 74—the UC Alumni Chorus, Unitarian Universalist choir, 18 or so young Berkeley singers and a few like me who came along for the ride. I could go to rehearsals and performances, encourage the singers, be an appreciative audience or I could stay in an air-conditioned hotel room and read “The Tiger’s Wife” by Tea Obreht or listen to any of my Tara Brach talks.

There I was, present with my “All About Me” syndrome as I faced Cuban customs in Havana. Would I be the one among us ordered to open her suitcases? Would I have to explain my reading material? My large assorted collection of generic pills? Would they look askance at a coat lugged into extreme heat and humidity? Would a Cuban TSA tear out the lining in search of contraband? What about the stack of unworn underwear I planned to leave in Cuba as a sign of my goodwill to the people? Could anything be judged nefarious? If I am questioned, will it hold up the tour buses that wait outside Jose Marti Airport?

In fact, one of our group did delay our departure from the airport because in the spirit of goodwill she brought bottles of expired veterinarian medicines into the country, and airport officials were not happy. Finally, after an hour of sitting in the buses, their motors running, the air conditioning spewing perfumed air, we saw a tour guide go back into the terminal to bring Spanish into her side of the discussion to see if that might help her. The rest of us proceeded to the restaurant. Later, when the two joined us, we clapped. From goat to hero in time for lunch.

Because we got back to San Francisco late Friday night and I slept through most of Saturday, this brief account written Sunday can’t explore all I felt, saw and did those 13 days. But let me cover a few experiences, some of which required mindfulness to remain equanimous if travel were not to devolve into travail. For one, toilet paper is a luxury, not to be expected. Sometimes a lady would sit at the opening of the bano and sell pads of toilet paper for a small amount.** One soon learned to be self-sufficient. In fact my roll of Cuban toilet paper continued to serve me even after we had landed back in Miami at the end of the trip. Irony of ironies, my particular airport bathroom stall lacked toilet paper. And with left-over equanimity, I tittered about it.

Present to the dilemma of unpotable local water supplies and the specter of my plastic bottles cluttering the land fills, I developed an emotional attachment to large plastic botellas de agua from which I poured into multiple little botellas for easier transport as I strolled about the various courtyards or hung out in small stifling rooms listening to Arturo or Eliseo, our guides, translate lectures about state-sponsored music education. Did I always care? Was I always hot? Often thirsty? No, yes, yes.

In other posts I want to tell you more about experiencing Cuba as a member of a large tour group. These experiences are too piled up to unpack now and share from a place of response rather than reaction. For now, let me say that old cars do exist in Cuba, but so do newer cars – Fiats, Kia, Hyundai, and I even saw a Prius and a Toyota Corolla or two. The state does own almost everything, but that too is changing.

At about 1 a.m., finally home after a long day in the Miami-Dade airport, a five plus hour flight, and a three-hour time difference, I tried the key to the front door of my building. As the friends who brought me home drove away, I discovered the lock to the building had been changed while I was gone and the key didn’t work. And just then a third-floor neighbor pushed open the door so his darling dog, Cooper, could make his late night foray. Such luck. And so I was home, exhausted but still present with an overwhelming gratitude, or as we say en espanol, gratitud.



*As spoken in English by actor Peter Weller in the 1984 film The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension: “Wherever you go, there you are.”

I have great respect for all who sit through worship hour on Sundays at my Unitarian Universalist church, even the ministers on the chancel waiting to address the diverse, sometimes contentious congregation. I am sitting too, with an open journal in my lap and a pen in hand.

I am not one to conceal the ear buds of my smart phone. I won’t listen to podcasts of dharma talks in service because I don’t want to miss Reiko at the organ, the choir, the bell chorus chiming out its melodies or the musicians we sometimes hire to play interesting or unfamiliar instruments.

Because I am about to complain, you have every right to wonder why I don’t just stay home that one hour on Sunday. I’m there many other days of the week with commitments and committees. 

Of course, like others, I go to service with my own needs, preferences and mindsets. Right now my mind is set on compassion, with seeing through duality to the interconnection between all beings, which I believe is not only possible, but already actual. Do I hope for too much if I wish to be challenged to try to be kinder, to try to see someone else’s point of view, in short, to move beyond us and them to “the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part?” For the rest of the week, I will be awash in rhetoric from the left and from the right, some subtle, some stupid, but always polarizing, always “us against them.”

I am not keen to hear my ministers congratulate me for being on the right side of some social issue. If there is a right side, there is a wrong side. And because every issue has to be espoused or defended by someone, we now have those who hold wrong beliefs as opposed to right beliefs, and if we congratulate ourselves for being right, where does that leave those others?

In a polarized society, those others will not be understood, at least not by us. We will be congratulating ourselves for being pro-choice or pro-recycling and composting. And while we call ourselves an embracing community, our arms are mostly open to those who think like us, vote like us, march where we march, occupy when we do, and support our values. Of course, we love strangers, at least in the abstract.

And we love each other, though sometimes just as abstractly. Often we bring that “us vs. them” mentality, which is human nature, into our congregation. And this is where my dissatisfaction feels strongest with sermons that seem to reinforce the spirit of contentiousness rather than create wholeness or holiness. We do not need to agree but we do need to learn to respect and respond to each other with kindness. Then this response-ability can lead us into action.

Most of us don’t need to have righteous indignation reinforced. We don’t need to be encouraged to ride our “hobby horses,” those favored social positions we believe in fervently, those truths we hold self-evident.

In truth I often arrive at Sunday service feeling constricted,  in pain, sorrow and fear, self-righteous and judgmental. What I want from the pulpit is not reassurance that my way is the right way but a reminder of my larger, kinder self.

The late Forrest Church said: “Universalism is an exacting gospel. Taken seriously, no theology is more challenging-morally, spiritually, or intellectually: to love your enemy as yourself; to see your tears in another's eyes; to respect and even embrace otherness, rather than merely to tolerate or, even worse, dismiss it. None of this comes naturally to us. We are weaned on the rational presumption that if two people disagree, only one can be right.”*

My idea of what I should do or be isn’t complicated. I think I should be open minded, open hearted and open to growing my capacity to love. And I do realize the ministers in my church are among those I need to “attend and befriend,” as Tara Brach puts it in a Buddhist teaching talk.

As I struggle to see beyond duality, I remember the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem, “Please Call Me by My True Names.” He challenges me to experience the allness of each as he writes: “I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks; and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

“I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate; and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.”

He ends by imploring: “Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion.”

Only one of my true names is Unitarian Universalist. Will I wake up somewhere else?  Church could be one place the door of my heart opens to all beings.



*From “Universalism: A Theology for the 21st Century,” UU World. Nov./Dec. 2001 (http://www.uuworld.org/2001/05/feature1.html)

It is practically blasphemy not to listen to another. Even so, here is a short-list of communications that are hard for me to hear with the ear of the heart, as Saint Benedict puts it. Preachy advice, budget reports, mixed messages, and lengthy recitals that begin in dialogue but drone on into monologue.

My one-word comeback in all cases used to be “Huh?” But more aware now that I live in a universe where so many things are speaking on so many levels, I’ve decided it is probably unwise to ignore voices, no matter how irksome, because they may bear wisdom.

According to Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, “Listening creates a holy silence.  When you listen generously to people, they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in
the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone,
the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.” **

In Small Group Ministry, at the San Francisco Unitarian Universalist church, I trained to listen in silence and to encourage new group members to listen the same way. At first I found paying silent attention difficult, for it went against a lifetime of habits I had learned to incorporate as a social being – nod, sigh, “oh” and “ah.” While not tempted to interrupt, I did want to ask questions. And being a “good person,” I would sometimes think I should offer help or advice. Although being a silent listener or being listened to in silence can feel hard, it is worth exploring because “cue-less” listening allows the speaker to go deeply into her own thoughts without watching for cues that her words are winning approval or causing disapproval. As I said, not easy at first, but at the heart of silent listening is trust that one is heard and courage to speak one’s truth.

As a Worship Associate in my church, I gave a four-minute reflection called “Listening with the Third Ear.” Eventually I expanded that talk into a sermon I gave at the Petaluma UU Fellowship. Speaking for more than four minutes allowed me to add more ears and call my talk  “Four More Ears.”

My third ear corresponds to “The Third Eye” – the ear of the heart that hears the heartfelt. It’s the third ear in which resonate Paul Tillich’s words: “The first duty of love is to listen.” And these words from David Oxberg: “Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people cannot tell the difference.”

As for the fourth ear, I am not sure all people need it. For me, it’s a cautionary ear because some information may be just that and not a clue to a deep truth. Thus the work of the fourth ear is to redirect information that is just information back to ears one and two.

My fifth ear turns inward and operates in the pause that allows a reaction to become a response. It listens for the sound of childhood pain that once would have been a cry but with language has turned into something else, usually cruel and instant. When I can hear my own pain and identify it as from the past, I can acknowledge it without reacting and continue to fully hear the other person.

My sixth ear is another ear turned inward. It listens for stories I’m telling myself about the other person and prevents speech I might regret later. One of the reasons I try not to listen from story is that I know how it feels to be responded to from the story rather than in that moment. Once, a friend decided that I suffered from low self-esteem. Thus whatever I said, she responded with words of reassurance. Rather than feeling better, I felt irritated, annoyed and alone. We’re no longer friends.

When I think about being fully present with others, all ears operational, I include the clerk at the DMV, the men and women I meet on the streets and, of course those closest to me, the ones it’s often really hard to listen to. Choosing to relate this way means accepting a total person, not picking and choosing aspects that suit me, hoping over time to change the parts I don’t like.

Listening to the whole person becomes a holy act. “Our listening creates sanctuary for
the homeless parts within the other person. That which has been denied,
unloved, devalued by themselves and others.  That which is hidden.”**



* “Music makes an altar out of our ears. A single struck tone, a note blown from a flute, can flush the body with goodness.” W. A. Mathieu, Sufi musician in The Musical Life.

** Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen is Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine and Director of the innovative UCSF course The Healer's Art, which was recently featured in US News & World Report. She is Founder and Director of the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness, a ten-year-old professional development program for graduate physicians. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal. Her newest book, My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge and Belonging is a national bestseller.