The most valuable thing you can do for the world is to create what you need.

What!? That sounds awfully selfish.

Maybe we need to go back to the distinction between what we want and what we need. [https://markleerobinson.substack.com/p/needs-and-wants]

Add to that the distinction between being self-centered and being centered in yourself.  “Put your own mask on first…” says the flight attendant because you can’t help others if you don’t have what you need.  Loss of cabin pressure will suck the oxygen out of your lungs and you will get very confused. 

When we begin with the dual assertion

• healthy organisms are ones that act to create or collect what they need, and
• you will be better able to act on behalf of others if you have what you need,

We are then left with a fundamental question. 

“What do you know about what you need?’

My students hate that question.  I am prompted to ask them this when they are presenting a problem and looking for a solution and I can’t tell what they need.  It is rare that they know.  If they did, the problem would look very different.  I am not asking because they don’t know, but because the beginning of the solution is determining the outcome they are longing to create.  Knowing what we need is crucial and often obscure.

But remember that what we need are not objects or events but qualities of being.

Pay attention to your longing.  You long for what you need.  But be careful that you are not distracted from your quest to find what you need by what you discover that you merely want.  The capacity to discern the difference between what you want and what you need is one of the most important distinctions we can make.

If it is finite, if you can lay hold of it, if it has a beginning and an end; then it is something you want.  Needs are infinite, they can never be fully grasped, they are not the thing itself but rather a quality of being.  I want a relationship; I need intimacy.  I want money; I need security.  I want a sandwich; I need nourishment.

Healthy organisms are those that move toward what they need.  The chance that I will move toward what I need is dramatically improved by knowing what I need… and that I am able to distinguish it from what I want.  This essay is meant to guide you in determining what you need.

We cannot clearly know what we need without accessing our own interior.  We have to be able to know our feelings… those aspects of our being and our awareness that are available only to ourselves.  These are such things as sensations, emotions, thoughts, wishes, intuitions, imaginations… and so on.  No one else can know these things about us until and unless we give voice to them in some way.

Most especially we must be able to notice our own interior discomfort.  Those things that bother us are indications or clues to discern what we need.  If we try not to notice things that bother us, we may miss a chance to discover what we need.

I am fascinated by the question that Corey posed to the Integral Community

John Dorhauer was the special guest at a gathering of the St. Louis Association Ministerium back in February of 2022. It was great to have a chance to hear from him and to absorb some of his enthusiasm. But I especially caught it when he announced what were then tentative plans for the Summit we are currently engaged in. I have been eager for years for us to have a conversation about the future of the church broadly and the UCC in particular.

But as the event approached I began to have concerns that the topic is framed too narrowly. Yes, the pandemic is ending [even though it is still virulent enough that plans to do the event in person were scrapped.] The transformations that the social distancing that Covid created are worthy of reflection. And the ways that we do church are sufficiently in flux that we do well to support each other in discovering where we are now.

But Covid is not the only pandemic, and social distancing is not the only dynamic that has brought stress to our local congregations. It is the health of our local congregations that concerns me the most.

I remember March 11, 2021 as the day the World Health Organization named the outbreak of the novel coronavirus to be a pandemic. I already had my boarding pass for a flight on the 12th. I cancelled. And I bought new computer equipment.

The virus was not the only, and in most respects for me, not the biggest pandemic. White supremacy, police violence against brown people, global warming, and the erosion of support for liberal democracies are all parts of a crisis of social collapse that has me very concerned about the future of human community and for the wellbeing of the planet itself. We are in deep shit here.

And my sense of what is needed is for the human community to very rapidly mature into ways of being that can care for each other and the planet. We need some radical and rapid initiatives to grow the hell up.

And there is really only one institution that I see as having any chance of making this happen, and that is our faith communities. I mean locally grown, face to face, spiritually oriented communities of care.

I am worried that at this Summit we are not thinking far enough outside the box. We have some huge questions to address. We can certainly assure ourselves that we are right and they are wrong and we can muster the courage to tell them that they are doing horrible and evil things… but that has virtually no chance of creating the transformation that we need.

But do we really want transformation? I have rarely been in a worship service in which there was not some indication that we wanted God to transform us. But in practical terms we are doing next to nothing to make it happen. We ask out loud for God to bring about transformation, and we say in our hearts that we really hope it will happen to someone else.

I found Rev. Dr. Jacqui’s sermon to be stirring. But I had to notice that the lies are all told by someone else. We have to call out the lies, but what of the lies that we are telling ourselves unaware. I am not worried about speaking the truth to “them.” My concern is about speaking the truth to “us.” If “they” don’t like it, so what. It is my tribe that concerns me. And I routinely experience those in my tribe saying things that I know are not true. Even in this context, I see us constructing divisive duality. We heal the world, not by chastising our enemies, but by turning them into allies.

We are able to worship in many time zones. But what is worship for? How do we know if it is effective? Because we get a good feeling? Or because we behave differently?

Rev. Dr. Mark Lee Robinson
St. Louis