"How's your incarnation doing?"

I was restored to rights (after getting all crunched up about church)
 by coming across this question:

 How's your incarnation doing?

That made me laugh, so I had to come up for air and look around.
Why, I'm doing just fine! aside from getting myself in a total snit about church. Worth thinking about... and getting in perspective.

The question is from Ram Dass's autobiography, Being Ram Dass (2021--he'd died in 2019). In his work with the dying, Ram Dass had asked the question of a man with AIDS.
[Boldface mine.]

"I was with several patients as they died. 
In particular, I remember one guy whose parents had rejected him. His finances were in ruins. He had sores all over his body. As I entered his room, I said something like, 'How's your incarnation doing?'

We both laughed, and I shared being stuck in my own incarnation. In that moment, we were souls, witnessing our incarnations.
...
"It's a delicate balance: 
wisdom and compassion, detachment and devotion. 
Detachment is giving up how it turns out,
and devotion is surrendering into love. 
...
Compassion and love are both from the soul. If my social action is not directed by the soul, it comes from the ego.

But even if I find myself afraid, or not feeling peaceful, or less than fully loving and compassionate, I must act. 
You can't wait around to be enlightened. 
There's no way not to act when you're in a physical form."

(It's Election Day today, and there's always that point to be made: 
NOT voting is voting.)
________________

So, I've calmed down about church. I woke up sad after resigning, as it were, and I thought, Well, I could go back if I want.

But I see that more than the theological differences (cross, no cross),  it was the psychology/spirituality behind their Land Acknowledgement that I could not stomach.
 
I've seen various forms of these, and the simplest is best--a tip of the hat to a complicated History. Like this one, from the U here:

"The University is built within the traditional homelands of the Dakota people." 

Fine. Good. That invites curiosity. 'What happened?'

But the church's acknowledgement went on and on (three back-and-forths between caller and congregation), specifically naming us and our ancestors,
 "we forced them from the land... our ancestors broke treaties," etc.

It is dialing up Fear & Ego... and to what end?
It's pointless, if not acted upon.
And it isn't even true, doesn't apply, for instance, to my Japanese neighbor I met at church. What in the world is she suppose to make of this mea culpa, and of being expected to enter into it?

I guess she could substitute "My ancestors bombed your country"???? 
Here's the thing: I expect everyone at church would find that barbaric, to ask her to say that, but they think it's Good to recite a chant of guilt themselves.

I think that only provides a perverse Self-satisfaction that comes from Self-laceration. Maybe that's from the church's Puritan roots!

If the church does anything about its sense of guilt, if it takes action, I haven't seen signs of it. 
They published a church calendar for the upcoming Thanksgiving season, and I didn't see anything about reparations, or education, or anything (best of all, in my eyes)--anything playful either--like... I don't know,
 a trip to the newly redesigned Native American Indian Center (NAIC) and its Two-Rivers Art Gallery (website)?

It was important for me to get clear about why I was so disappointed (sad and mad) at the church.

And now...
MOVE ON, Fresca.
There's lots of playful things to do to help me explore, restore, withstand this incarnation.
It's going swell!

Here's the genuinely weird Jonathan Winters on Creating Toys: