When my husband and I contemplated having a child in our home, we naturally contemplated having a little copy of ourselves. Studious, quiet, intuitive, caring, introverted. Therefore, we did not ever imagine a weekly dungeons and dragon game in our dining room, with its raucous mix of personalities, gluttony, dice, and fantasy. But because nobody is a copy of anybody, our studious, quiet, intuitive, caring, introverted son is also a dedicated Game Master. His game has been going on for five years now with more or less the same crew, and shows every likelihood of going on until three of its four permanent players go off to college in (gulp!) two and a half years. His first game lead to a second; A couple of times a month, he and his girlfriend play with a group of adults from church, and what a gift that has been! Their affectionate guidance has mentored his adolescence in ways that parents just can't do.

D&D taught our introverted child to make phone calls, to organize activities, to be a leader, to deal with different personalities. The young people in his group have squabbled like the siblings that none of them have, but the game (almost always, especially in the last couple of years) goes on. We no longer hover in expectation of tears or tyranny; they've all matured nicely, and their game has smoothed out accordingly. I credit D&D with a lot of growth for my kid...it's been worth every spilled coke and every plate of cookies.

As a matter of fact, he was so much NOT a Unitarian that he punched our guy Bishop Arius in the nose during the council of Nicea. Oops.

Nice guy other than that; into helping the poor and all.

During my ministerial internship I lived with a family who celebrated St. Nicholas Day as the start of the Christmas festivities. I was given a pound bag of pecans with which to make Christmas cookies, and was charmed by the tradition. The next year I set up housekeeping for myself and began the tradition of celebrating St. Nicholas Day. I didn't know about his altercation with Bishop Arius, who championed Unitarian theology in the early church. A Husband and then a child later, we got into a Major Family Tradition. December 6th was the day for decorating the house, the kind of nice family dinner that we don't get on Christmas Eve, and it always happened that late in the evening, someone would hear the clop of St. Nicholas' horse and we'd pour out of the house. He always managed to get out of our subdivision sight unseen, but he did always leave a few presents to help us decorate and wait for Christmas.

My disappointment in discovering my holiday hero's indiscretion is keen, and my 16 year old is only affectionately tolerant of the holiday these days. His school's art show (mandatory for students in art classes) and a chess meet claimed his attention, and ours, so we were not home when the white horse clopped through and left his heretic fans a few presents to help us wait for Christmas.

A conversation erupted in my exercise class this morning, about "Happy Holidays," a controversy I heard about but didn't actually encounter last year. And frankly, I'm not absolutely sure that any of the others in the class were speaking from personal experience, either. The moment passed before I could get my two cents in, which is that the notion that wishing someone "Happy Holidays" is somehow denigrating of Christians and Christmas is flat out ignorant.

There are a multitude of Holy Days (that's what a holiday is...or was...a holy day) in December's Christian Calendar. Advent, St. Nicholas Day, the feast day of Guadalupe, Christmas Eve, the Feast of Stephen, the 12 days of Christmas (arguably secular), and Epiphany.

For this reason I intend to wish every Christian I meet this month "Happy Holidays".

The season of Advent begins today, the fourth Sunday before Christmas. In the Christian calendar, this is a season of preparation for the major holiday, and while popular culture celebrates it mostly with one-a-day treats for kids, grownup Christians sometimes honor this season in the same way that Lent is honored; by giving something up for the duration.

A very counter-cultural move, this is. No doubt about that. But I've found it useful in my life, and this year, it's computer games. It will be a great pleasure to return to my favorites on December 26; I'm looking forward to it already.

Why do I do this? There's the practical matter that during this busy time I can't afford the time I've been spending on games, and there's the spiritual matter that I want to focus on nature's beauty and family''s love in this season. But the major usefulness of this discipline is that it breaks habituations.

Habituations, the polite name for all the light-duty addictions that march through our lives, can be a problem. Although heroin or Alcohol or out of control sex can actually kill us, most of our hibituations merely lock us into be behaviors and bodily states which need some freedom.

A good cup of coffee in the morning is a wonderful treat, and relaxing with a few computer games is the same. But if I have trained my mind and body to ONLY wake up with a shot of caffeine, and ONLY relax with some mind-numbing computer games, I've lost a certain flexibility and freedom in my approach to life, and that's NOT such a good thing.

I aim to stay on my toes in the game of life, and that means not getting too set in my ways. Whether it's coffee or computer games, it's good to take a break and develop new strategies with regularity.

Crazy chess has been my game addiction of choice for a couple of weeks now. The basic point of it is to capture the army of relentlessly advancing pawns before your castle burns down. It's possible to get further in this game than in most such games by dint of intelligence rather than simply by click speed, so I, whose coordination computer runs slow, like this game.

It's the relentless part that fascinates me. Capture the last pawn and you've got to get in position for the next pawn. Capture a power up that temporarily slows or stops the onslaught, and you'd better clean up the board and keep capturing the coins which appear. Make a fantastic four-in-a-row pawn capture and you've got to just keep going.

Life is like this. Get your kid potty trained and you go right on to please and thank you, reading, driving, human relations. Get the new church building built and there's no pause before some new crisis has your attention. Figure out how to use DOS and they change to Windows and then to networks (which is where my castle burned to the ground and put me out of the game.)

The trick, I've found, to Crazy Chess, is to actually rest between levels. My natural inclination, when I've won a level, is to rush into the next challenge, but this is a mistake, because once you click the go on button, your launched to "relentless" again.

It's why I take some quiet time every morning. It's my pause before I click, "go on", and hit the relentless decks. It's also why I'm going to take a break from computer games. More on that, tomorrow.

My son left his D&D magazine open for me to an article on the Oversoul, the name of one of the many deities in the D&D world. The article contained the distinctive D&D art, and references to many things I only vaguely understand. ("Humans comprise the largest group of Oversoul followers, by a huge margin, but...Githzeari make up the second largest racial group among worshipers, followed by half giants, elan," etc.) However the purely theological parts of the article were remarkable, fleshing out, so to speak, a Process Theology deity, complete with creation story and comments about worship. The Oversoul has both developed with and guided creation and evolution, a process which is not completed. With each expression of the fragment of itself which is an infidels life, it learns.

The Oversoul looks like serenity. It's symbol is a set of concentric circles. Students of the Oversoul learn first the art of Meditation, then learn to seek the truth beyond the obvious and to question everything, especially himself (sic). Oversoul temples tend toward elegant simplicity, vary often incorporating natural surroundings. Birth and Death are marked by ritual, as they are believed to be the times when individual souls leave and return to the oversoul. The ritual at death involves the telling of the stories of the deceased, especially the sharing of stories by persons who knew the deceased in different parts of life.

It all sounds so eerily like the beliefs of many Unitarian Universalists that I wonder if the author (one Matthew J. Hanson) is one of us.

And it reminds me that I really do believe that our entire RE problem of what to do with our boys aged 12-19 in Sunday school could be solved by using the D&D world to teach philosophy, religion, our values, moral decision making. If someone did this, I think we could have very popular RE programs that kept kids engaged literally for hours and would teach them far more than they are learning now.

Someone?

My son tells me that I'd enjoy Second Life, a virtual reality game, a lot more if I had a fancier computer. A member of my congregation tells me that I'd enjoy it more if I was willing to collect and spend the small allowance that any user can have just for the giving up of one's credit card numbers. There's also the possibility of spending one's REAL money in second life, a proposition to which I'm opposed.

I 'd pretty much signed off of second life, much as I loved my animated paper doll who looked just like I fancy I look. But the, wonder of wonders, the UU Church of Second Life met for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, I was fully engaged in my first life that day and didn't know about the meeting until after it happened.

How's this for a post-modern blurring of the reality/fantasy distinction? Last Summer, in another one of these multi-player world games, but one where fighting gangs are more the normal activity (sex and shopping seem to be the normal activity of Second Life), one of the key players died. In real life. Her Virtual Reality friends were bereaved in reality, however, and decided to have an "in game" memorial service. (Some day, my minister friends, you might be asked to officiate at such a thing...will you be ready?) Since this popular player had friends in several gangs, a neutral territory was selected for the gathering and all players had to leave their weapons at the entrance. Then they were proceeding to have a real virtual memorial service, with the various (virtual) characters extolling the (actual) deceased's character when...you guessed it, one gang attacked and slaughtered the assembled (weaponless) crowd.

This (actually) happened last Summer, and some players have devoted their (virtual) energy ever since to exterminating the offending gang for continuing to play a game when an important piece of real life was going on. (This story courtesy of my son, who always knows what will pique my interest.)

Someday I'll get up early and try Second Life on his computer.

One of the best free flash games I've found is Crazy Chess, which you can have for your very own by clicking here .

Enrique has posted a sermon (here, in English) on the spirituality of computer games, and he got me to thinking about how the trick of winning lots of computer games is to figure out what is important at any moment.

In Crazy Chess, for instance, you've got to capture all the relentlessly progressing pawns (using the Knight's L-move) before they get to the bottom of the board and burn down your castle. That's enough of a trick, but in the end, you just can't move fast enough if you just capture pawns. You have to also be focusing on capturing various "power up" pieces which will slow down or freeze the pawns, blow them up, repair your castle, and give you an extra life.

In my first few days of addiction to this game, I focused on the pawns and on getting good at moving that pesky knight around. Eventually, I realized that this was a loosing proposition; I'd have to also work on capturing power ups before they disappeared. This is easy early in the game; later, when the pawns just keep coming, it is surprisingly hard to change one's focus to slowing the onslaught rather than capturing pawns.

In my calm weeks of ministry, I enjoy some quiet time each day, I do a little reading unrelated to the immediate demands of preaching, I have friends, craft projects and -yes- computer games which are a relaxing part of my day, and I therefore pride myself on taking care of myself. But then comes the onslaught; the sermon that takes twice as long to write as I had hoped it would, the memorial service, the computer crash, the staff crisis; then it is surprisingly hard to shift my focus from the immediate tasks and do something that would slow down the onslaught, repair the hurt places, or clear the deck.

That's what, in particular, my daily quiet time does for me, and I've learned over the years not to bow to the false economy of pawn-fighting and skip it. It powers me up.

This game started as a pencil and paper game, but it's wonderful for computers because the challenging levels of the game require a good deal of erasing. I've been playing GameHouse's version, here. It's the nicest interface; unfortunately the highest level is no longer particularly difficult for me, so I guess I'll have to go hunting again.

I suppose that everyone knows that Suduku requires that you put numbers on a grid such that each row, column, and square have the digits 1-9 in them with no repeats. With a variety of kinds of deductive logic, you can complete almost every grid without guessing.

As long as you don't make a single mistake. Suduku is one strike and you're out. Put the wrong number in a box and continue the puzzle and you'll never figure it out. Nor is it usually possible to figure out where that mistake was without starting over. Suduku teaches a person to be careful. The pencil and paper game teaches a person to be neat with tiny little trial numbers. My son taught me to use one of the nifty new mechanical pencils now on the market; they stay very sharp and come with the most amazing erasers. My, how times do change.

Being a Universalist, I object to "one strike and you're out." The thing that has most puzzled me over the years about Christian orthodoxy is how Christians can talk about God, the loving father in one sentence and "If you don't believe (not to mention, if you commit any number of sins) you're doomed to everlasting punishment." Everlasting! Everlasting is longer than any loving parent I know would punish their child.

But I do like Suduku, which is, after all, just a game.

After reading that there's a UU Church in "Second Life" a virtual reality video game which has hundreds of thousands of users who create objects and social relationships in a more or less unfettered way, I decided to give it a try.

I'm clearly not smart enough to play this game, and judging by the folks who appear in the welcome and orientation areas, neither are most other people. However I did manage to make myself an avitar(personal character who moves around and interacts with other virtual users) I could live with and I found the UU church of Second Life. I joined it immediately; it has fifty members. But then I couldn't find any of them, or any indication of what this virtual church does or where it meets.

After trying my hand at creating an object to sell and failing miserably, I returned to the UU church. Still no one there and no indiciation of what this virtual church does or where it meets.

It's totally clear that they need a minister to help them get organized.

Then some little angel whispered in my ear that I hardly needed a second life just like my first one. Right! Got it!

But in this confusing and complex game, I keep drifting back to the only thing I really understand, which is how to do church. It is such a comfort to know that in this strange society where mostly people won't talk to you because they've not yet figured out how, there's a UU church.

The coolest thing about Second Life so far is that it is remarkably easy to make an avitar who looks like you want her to look. The second coolest things is the set of rules of civil behavior in this virtual world. Live and Let Live, keep your hands to yourself, don't harass those who are enjoying their (virtual) lives. Very UU.

Continuing my theological reflections on the computer games I 'm addicted to, there's Arcade Lines, which you can preview here

Puzzle games like this one relentlessly load up the board with colored balls, and you have to move them into lines, after which they disappear. The nice thing about these games is that you play at your own pace, so you can play them while, say, while on hold waiting for tech support.

Learning to succeed at these games is a matter of learning to see patterns. Although it is easy at first to see where one can move balls to get four in a row, as the board fills up, it gets much harder.

You have to play this game with a certain flexibility of mind, being ready to change one's strategy as new balls appear. The "right" line of balls to complete on this turn keeps changing.

The spiritual quest is like this. Since that Mystery we call God never "appears", all findings of God are a matter of noticing the patterns of Grace that appear suddenly in one's life and following up on them. No strategy has ever worked for long for me. I found Zen style meditation to be very fruitful for about three years, fought with it another year, and finally gave up after another year. I'm a more flexible player of Arcade Lines than I am a spiritual seeker.

You can play this game for yourself, for free, here.

The basic deal is that you are presented with colored symbols which have to be placed on a board such that each one is touched only by others which are the same shape or color. It's a cinch at first, and it gets harder. The higher the level, the more symbols, colors, and the fewer erasers and wild cards you get.

Which is so like real life.

1. We're all given the same board, but some seem, from the beginning, to have a much harder time of it. (Skill is important in life, luck is crucial in life, but in many important ways, the game is easier for some than others. This is why compassion for self and others is a part of every spiritual outlook.)

2. "Winning" this game is a matter of thinking ahead and being careful. If you put symbols anywhere they happen to fit, you'll be stuck in the end. (It's hard work to be careful, to think ahead, and to see what needs to be seen. Slow down, reflect, watch the whole board.)

3. Unlike most puzzle games, you don't get to look ahead to see what's coming. You have to play blind. (We're blind to the future in our lives and must simply do the best we can.)

4. One key to managing the end game is to use the erase and wild cards to forgive yourself the plays that either were poor to begin with or turned out to be poor later on. (grace abides. Appreciate and give thanks.)

5. In the end, you have to wait to get the one symbol you need. While you are waiting, you have to manage what comes.

6. The symbols you can get off the board are as important as the ones you have on the board, but if you erase too much, you won't be able to play. (Simplicity is good. Poverty is problematic.)

This is too much fun. I can see that I'm going to soon be addicted to both computer games and reflections on computer games.

Work to do and miles to go....

I confess. I'm a bit of a computer game addict. No, actualy...

My Name is Christine and I'm addicted to computer games.

I use them to relax after difficult meetings or just hard days. I use them to forget my troubles when I'm troubled, to justify my agressions, and to indulge in the false sense that if I am clever enough I can control my world.

I play computer games when I should be going to the gym, cleaning the iguana cage, working in my yard, or even conversing with my family. ouch!

I hurry to my defense. If I watch a dozen hours of TV in a year, it's unusual. Shopping as a pastime has no appeal to me. My son and I trade games back and forth and talk about them.

I'm a hard core case. I'm such a hard core case that I'm going to shamelessly justify my addiction by reflecting on the theology of a variety of computer games which I enjoy. So there.

A reader has asked what books of poetry or other readings I would recommend to her as she renews her spiritual life. It's a hard question, as I don't know her, and all of this is so very individual. But I so applaud the impulse! It really is good to have texts at hand to mull over, memorize, and work with so that they can work in us.

I'm the sort of reader who has favorite poems more than favorite books of poetry, although I notice that my personal collection has a lot of Mary Oliver, Hafiz, and Wendell Berry. At one point in my life, I had a dozen poems by Edna St. Vincent Milley memorized; they were a lifeline through my late adolescence. I only remember that because as I walked yesterday, dissolved in sadness over the death of a 25 year old from my congregation, the words leaped on to my lips, "I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground." It's the first line of a poem by Millay, which I memorized, I think, when Robert Kennedy was murdered. I've rarely thought of it since, and there it was, ready for me when I needed it. Amazing. (you can find it and other poems by Millay, here)

Now as to sharing my favorite poems, I feel squeamish about copywrite, just enough that I don't want to copy my texts into this blog, but not so squeamish that I won't point my readers to people less squeamish than I who have. So here are 7 of my cherished poems which I found on line:


Phillip Booth's "First Lessons", which you can find here
Carl Sandburg's "Elephants" which you can find here
The Weighing by Jane Hirshfield, here
e.e.Cumming's i thank you god, here
Alistar Reid's Curiosity, here
martha Courtot's Crossing a Creek, here
and a poem about change and transition by Wendell Berry, here

It seems extremely odd to me, but many of these poems are found on UU sermon websites. Are we all thinking alike, we UU ministers? Probably. But is Google noticing my searches and tailoring it's results to me, or does everyone who searches for poetry keep getting UU ministers' sermons?

Enough for now! Prose tomorrow

The American people, born in opposition to absolute power used foolishly, repudiated absolute power used foolishly, in yesterday's election. We're back to a balance of power between the various branches of government, within governing chambers and even within the executive branch, as Republicans make more moderate demands on their president. Our nation has learned in the most embarrassing ways lately that absolute power has a corrupting effect and a detrimental effect on intelligent government. I'm glad that era is over.

Once the majority in the House was established, the world quit paying attention to little New Mexico, which has a hotly contested (less than 1,000 vote margin) race which now, they way, won't be decided for days. But I'm content either way. Our current Rebublican, Heather Wilson, is one of the better Republicans around; honest, helpful, and an independent thinker, something she stressed in her campaign. If she stays in Congress it will be ok.

And I was heartened that the voters of South Dakota, in the privacy of the voting booth, showed that they do understand something of the horror of unwanted pregnancy and moderated their leaders' absolute ban on abortion.

As for those who fought hard against bans on same gender marriage and lost, I salute your work as a foundation laid for the end game of a battle for LGBT rights which is being won in the smoky corners of people's hearts and minds. It takes a long time for the smoke to clear, but clear it finally does.

In my opinion, our nation and our world got a reprieve from unmitigated poor governance. We have an opportunity now to re-direct the nation's energy towards preventing the end of civil life on the planet. The hard work has just begun.

Last Sunday, we did a Loving Kindness meditation from the Buddhist tradition, first spoken and then sung. Several folks have asked about this; especially, if there is a recorded version of the sung meditation.

We did the Meditation from then new blue hymnal, and I don't know that that's been recorded anywhere, but Robert Gass's wonderful chant choir has recorded the Loving Kindness meditation with a different tune on this CD:


While you're exploring, there are several other wonderful CD's several of which are hour long chants from various religious traditions. It's wonderful music to exercise, meditate, or work to.

"I don't know exactly what a prayer is," Mary Oliver wrote, in her poem, "A Summer's Day." It's the one about the grasshopper that ends, "And what do you plan to do with your/one wild and precious life?" UU's like that poem; we like her reminder to appreciate nature, her affimation of our choices, and, frankly, lots of UU's like the fact that Mary didn't, at that time, know exactly what a prayer is. We like to think that our appreciative attentiveness to nature is a kind of prayer...which, of course, it is.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention...

Mary Oliver has moved on in her spiritual journey. Her latest book, 'Thirst', written after the death of her life partner, is a set of poems about grief and grieving, and about finding God. She says this in one poem:

Pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway
Into thanks, and a silence in which
Another voice may speak.

If prayer is communication with mystery, then there's a level on which not a one of us "knows" what a prayer is; it's all hints and guesses and an experience so interior that we can't bring it out of ourselves without changing it profoundly. But some folks make more guesses and take more hints than others, and it is clear that Mary Oliver has had a new kind of experience in prayer. I hope she will someday write more directly about it, in the meantime, we've these new, much more specifically theological poems to read.

We UU's have great difficulty with the transition from wordy appreciation into silent listening for a divine voice, still and small or any other way. It's not that UU's don't pray, it's that the default theology around here precludes "another voice" and the folks who are comfortable with that default too often tend to be derisive. And it takes almost no derisiveness to end most UU's willingness to risk attempting to bring their interior spirituality into words. And so the default remains.

We like Mary Oliver, I've heard her claimed as one of us, which she might have once been, but she's clearly now been drawn into a liturgical Christian denomination. May she be blessed in her journey. My thanksgiving this evening for her exquisite and continuing poetics of prayer.

Working this weekend on a sewing project and listening to downloaded radio shows from NPR, particularly Krista Tippet's Speaking of Faith. (you can access these shows here)

The mind-body connection discussed in an interview with a paraplegic yoga teacher, an interview with Karen Armstrong, the topic of Gay Marriage discussed by a liberal and a conservative Christian, and this last; an interview with a Chinese author who survived the cultural revolution and what she calls "The Religion of Mao", on Chinese culture and religion (which has been basically atheist for millennia) in general. It's been a rich morning.

From foot binding to the forced labor camps of the 1970's, this atheistic Chinese culture has certainly had it's terrible moments, I thought, and then it occurred to me that of all the people who have shaken their heads sadly over the harm traditional theism has done in the world in my hearing, I've never once heard anyone shake their head over the harm atheism has done in the world.

So I hereby do it. So sad, all the harm atheism has done in the world. Of course, some of my good friends are Atheists, so not all atheists are prone to misguided activity. But one does have to shake one's head over Communism, doesn't one? I wonder if Communism killed more people than the Crusades?

Driving home from the Minister's meeting in Colorado Springs, we've stopped for lunch in Raton, New Mexico. It's tucked up in a valley at the boarder of New Mexico and Colorado, at the foot of the Raton Pass. Since it snowed on us in Colorado Springs, we felt like we'd better make tracks for the Pass, since it sometimes closes after a winter storm.

No problems at all, but Albuquerque is still more than 3 hours away, so we stopped to breathe in Raton. We found a little cafe with wifi, and Ron was eager to check email. Around us, neighbors who clearly know each other are eating New Mexican food. My Green Chili stew is wonderful; the price of a bowl, $3.50. On the radio, they are reading obituaries. This is a very small town. Googling "Raton," on my wi-fi, I find that 7,282 souls live here. The internet guru of the town has already regailed us with his plans to make the entire town WiFi, including the homes three miles out. "They ask me why they need this," he says, "But they'll say they can't do without it." His sign next door proudly proclaims that video conferencing is available there. This seems to be a very fast internet connection....maybe I can even upload a picture of the place....

We speculate about the possibility of a branch of First Unitarian here in Raton. Statistics suggest that 7 or 8 people in this tiny town might be served by our message. That's way too few people for an independent congregation, but all things are possible with the branch project. If Raton, New Mexico has universal WiFi, can a UU congregation be far behind?

My newspaper reported this evening on the money coming into the Amish community from well-wishers. Some will go to pay for medical expenses and, it seems likely, rehabilitation care. The Amish self-insure their community, and this will be a massive expense. And, my newspaper reported, matter-of-factly, some will be set aside for the widow and children of the killer of five, likely six children from that small community.

Take a deep breath. Imagine someone coming into your church and killing five children. Would any UU anywhere comfort the widow of the killer or set up a fund for her children?

It reminds me of a song I learned during my adolescent dabbling with Evangelical Christianity, "They will know we are Christians by our love." At the time, I didn't get it, really. It was a nice enough group of kids and adults, but their God clearly didn'tseem to love a heretic like me very much and after a while, they kept their distance, too.

Now I get it. This is not about nice, and not about someone else's theology, this is about the discipline of keeping an open heart even for one's enemy, and practicing it in all the little things of life so that when 5 children are murdered in your community, even when you are hurt beyond all imagining, you can still do it.

Conservative Christians are getting a beating this week, and rightly so, and the media I watch doesn't seem to know what to do with these Amish except show their old fashioned clothes and horse drawn buggies. But I can tell that they are Christians by their love.

This morning's NY Times has a long article, complete with color picture, about how teens seem to be leaving Evangelical churches in droves...some say for a non-institutional Christian faith, others say, out of Evangelical belief altogether. The hype is that if trends continue, only 4% of the next generation will be "bible believing", which would be a big change from the Boomer 35% and the WWII Generation's 65%.

The statistics are, according to Evangelical experts, misunderstood or cooked up to make the situation seem "Apocolypitc" , which they regret. However, the article cites youth and youth leaders who say that it's just too hard to embrace Christian values against the culture of sex, materialism, and alcohol which is pervasive in our nation. The youth say that they feel pressured and dissed at school by non-Christian youth, although all of the examples actually given were not of conflict with non-Christian youth but of the disinterest of non-Christian youth.

Just a few thoughts about this.

The kids in my church, mostly non-Christians, feel that they are dissed and pressured at
school by the Evangelical Youth. It is certainly possible that both groups are correct but it's instructive to know that both feel the same from each other. It does seem that in a lot of middle and high schools, virtually all of the kids feel dissed and pressured by those who are different from them and this may be, in part, simply the nature of adolescence. (Although one of the things we love about our son's private school is the lengths they go to to minimize that kind of behavior. But they have access to tools public schools don't have. They select kids who will get along well in a diverse environment and they have things like lunch seating plans which require them to mix it up.)

I detected an understandable but in the end dangerous longing in the kids interviewed in this article, not to be simply respected and allowed to practice their Evangelical faith, but to be in a comfy cultural majority where lots of kids would naturally come to their Bible Studies. Although this could be simply a matter of what the writer selected for his article, it is reminiscent of the resistance their parents and grandparents have put up to change in this nation.

Finally, I would point out that teens are especially effected by hypocrisy. It is teens who are most likely to turn against leaders who preach abstinence until marriage but who themselves try to lure teenagers into sexual relationships, who tout cooked statistics, and who notice the many many things that Jesus said about (against!) wealth, materialism, and hypocrisy.

So if it is a foreign terrorist who kills people in our nation, we fly into action, willing to spend ourselves into bankruptcy, violate moral and international law, disrupt the lives of thousands of citizen soldiers, and ruin the lives of millions of innocent people by turning their nations into war zones, all so that this will never happen again. While at home, day after day, angry men and boys stalk our schools (not to mention streets, bars, homes, and highways), murdering innocents, and all we can think to do is bemoan their mental instability. We can't muster the political will to make a single move to protect ourselves from these home grown terrorists because we don't have the will to put any but the simplest and most ineffective controls on the right to own a gun....a weapon of singular destruction.

I pray for the Amish Community, and for us all.

Read an article today; there's a clear statistical correlation between the number of hours a mother works outside of the home and the fatness of a kid.

This is a relationship, not a cause and effect, you understand, but just the fact that the study was done this way says a lot about cultural assumptions.

I went out on my afternoon walk. On the way to my neighborhood park, in which few children play alone because parents don't think it's safe, I pass a sight that makes me grit my teeth; a man on a bike is shepherding his two very little children who are driving a battery operated car down the street. "Look ahead!" I hear him say, "Don't look at me!" he says, in a bit of a panic, as these two preschoolers steam into an intersection. "Stop!" he cries. The car slows. It doesn't have a brake, just an "on" petal. If I had a cell phone, I'd have called the cops. The father catches up and, thank God, they're in the relative safety of the park. Now its the other park users who have to be careful.

I tramp on, remembering that the big thrill of my first trip to Disneyland was the pretend freeway, complete with kid sized cars you could...more or less...drive yourself. A little bigger and a lot noisier than these battery-operated things, but not much faster. I was 10 at the time. What are these preschoolers going to do for thrills, I wonder, at age 10, 16, 32. (perhaps, should they survive so long, they'll get their thrills inviting their preschoolers to try to drive like a grownup in a toy car they can't control on a street full of real cars.)

Past the park is a school with a track, and I pound out my frustrations, work up that sweat that's supposed to be so healthy, and head back home, at peace with the world again. Just my luck, the preschoolers have headed out of the park and are back on the public thoroughfare in their toy car. Their father is sticking closer to them this time.

And I'm thinking that it would have been a lot healthier for everyone if that father had been chasing his kids around they'd all gotten some exercise. Maybe he just couldn't have done that. Probably his mother worked.

Our video cafe, a small group, video assisted, third service began today and was a rousing success in spite of a glitch in the video. (It worked beautifully at last week's rehearsal! This techy stuff is really hard....)

25 people sat in our social hall, enjoyed coffee and rolls as they sang, meditated to a creative audio/video piece, shared joys and sorrows, participated in the offering, and watched the sermon recorded at our first service. (well, they tell me, they listened with averted eyes, because audio and video wasn't together. Better luck next week!) Then, they got to discuss the sermon, which we never do in the sanctuary. That was a big hit!

In spite of the glitch, spirits were very high and our worry now is that our social hall isn't large enough to handle the number of people who would like to experience this informal worship service. The Worship Committee Meeting which followed was exciting, too. Now our experienced worship leaders have a new venue for their creativity and experience, and that's made room for newcomers to the committee to learn to lead worship in the more controlled environment of the "main" worship service.

There was a NYT article this morning about school districts which allow "paddling" of students. Mostly in the South and apparently all Mid and High schools, a last resort to create order in the schools. Paddling means, with a wooden paddle, maybe with holes drilled in it to increase the sting. "It can be abused," said one principal, "but it is very useful." but he gives himself away. He's got a kindergarten euphemism for the practice, "Giving pops." Doesn't that sound cheerful? There are schools where 15% of the kids (probably nearly 30% of the boys, since they get paddled much more than girls) have been "paddled" (another kindergarten euphemism) in a year's time. So let's call it like it is. If it's with a stick, it's a beating. If it leaves bruises, it's a beating. If such a large percentage of students "need" this to manage themselves in school, something is really wrong.

I wonder what beating kids is useful for, and what the unintended consequences are. It may keep order in school, but it's got to drive some kids to drop out. (so, just expel them, for pity's sake!) It may calm the halls temporarily, but it may also fuel rage over the long haul. It's probably used as a desperation tactic which really only covers over the problems. Which then go unsolved. And it can be abused. No doubt has been, will be, is being abused. No matter. Apparently, the practice is not outlawed everywhere and where it's not, it's being revived.

Beating school kids aims to teach kids a lesson about behaving or else the person in power will hurt you. Torture aims to get someone to talk or else the person in power will hurt you. It's having a comeback in our nation, too. It's unintended consequences are also problematic, but the powerful and desperate people who use it apparently don't care about that. Being powerful and having the right to really hurt someone...be it a kid in your school or a prisoner in your jail, is just too exciting. Lord have mercy on us all.

"What's GA?" a reader asks.
Oops...I've been speaking in tongues again. What's speaking in tongues? Some say it's a gift of the Spirit, but I say it's displaying one's special relationship with the divine in public and in a way which leaves others out. I find that off-putting. In this case, speaking in UU tongues is thoughtlessly displaying one's special knowledge of the goingings on of a church in ways which leave others out. As in using all our special code words without explanation. GA, MDD, YRUU, and Cluster, come immediately to mind.

GA is General Assembly, our yearly denominational delegate assembly. Thanks for asking. I know how off-putting it is when people around me start spouting terms, acronyms, and in-talk. I feel left out, dumb, and not invited in. Very unpleasant feeling.

And it happens all the time. Understandably, but unpleasantly. The folks who have been putting on a quarterly meal for the homeless in an interfaith effort for five years know what "Project Share" is. But the forget that many people don't have a clue when the announcement says, "Project Share is coming up this month! Please sign up to provide brownies, salad, beans..."

Not only does that "in group" announcement mean that some people who might feel very good about participating in this worthy project don't because they thought it was a church picnic, but they get the message, "You don't really belong. You don't know the lingo. You're not initiated."

It's not a good feeling. Leaving people clueless is not even marginally, much less radically hospitable. (We've been talking about radical hospitality in our denomination lately.) Speaking in UU tongues is something we should all be on the watch for.

There's rumor going around the UU blog world, that there will not be a worship service on Sunday morning at GA this year, but that that service will be "combined" with the closing ceremony on Sunday afternoon. I hope it is a rumor, but it's all too likely not. The GA folks have changed the GA schedule to make Sunday the last day, you have to have some kind of ceremonial closing, and to have that and a worship service means there's not much of a day left for meeting. It's easy for a GA planner to think that combining two utterly unlike events into one would solve the problem, but it won't.

In spite of the outrage of (ministerial) bloggers, I have to point out that we UU's are wont to cancel worship for any number of logistical inconveniences. We cancel worship to have a congregational meeting, because December 25 is a Sunday morning, because ministers of past centuries became accustomed to not preaching between mid June and early September and are loath to change their ways with changing times. Now, we'll skip worship because there's just not enough time for the denominational business to be done if we include it. It's all a pity, all reason that we don't attract as many people as we think we should to our life together.

It's not that there is something sacred about Sunday morning; I would venture a guess that there's not a soul among us who believes that God cares when we worship together. But there is something highly symbolic about Sunday morning worship; that's when the whole community gathers in its dispersed places. Sunday morning after Sunday morning, a great wave of chalice-lighting and voices raised in song works its way from east to west. Sunday morning worship is our most widely shared spiritual discipline. To ditch it in favor of a closing ceremony says a lot about the values of the people who are arranging GA. In particular, it says what lots of us have suspected; these are people who are more in tune with denominational work and social justice than they are with the work of the local congregation and the spiritual health of UU's. And that's a pity.

It's also out of tune with UU's who show with their feet in every church in the nation that they prefer worship to meetings! So, hold the service from 7 to 8 in the morning and you'll still have a huge crowd, I promise, and the rest of the day to get the work done. It will be better work for the fact that at least many of the delegates will have been reminded of their deep values and will have rested in the arms of the spirit for a few minutes. And such a service will continue to teach us important lessons about new ways to worship in local churches which closing ceremonies/worship service couldn't possibly do.

There's a movement gaining strength in my denomination that is pushing for a radical new way of doing worship. This is arising out of our Youth groups and the participatory , circle style worship that they do. There's a call for more voices and ways to get a message across (not just a sermon, but a dialogue, a discussion, a set of readings, a skit, or a combination thereof) And because it's basically a youth movement, there's more than a small tendency to not only push for something new but to be derisive about what is old. ("Corpse Cold Unitarianism" thundered the Transcendentalists, and our youth are almost as derisive about what they term "Sermon Sandwich Worship")

It seems reasonable on the surface that this multi-tasking, multi-media generation would crave or just assume the same variety in worship that they have embraced in their lives, and I'm all for their and our experimenting with this kind of worship to see how it develops. In Albuquerque, for instance, we've adopted the occasional practice of having all who wish come up to light a candle for some aspect of the morning theme as a meditation practice, and this seems to have worked well for us.

But I also note that churches like the Evangelical, multi-site mega-church I visited last Spring featured a 47 minute sermon by one person. I don't myself remember much of it. What I do remember is the lively singing that we engaged in before and after that sermon, and how much that singing "got me out of myself" and let me relax into my own center.

My experience in ministry tells me that every UU generation from boomers on, and including much of the female side of the silent, or pre-boomer generation, has asked for two things of it's worship leaders, a solid interpretation of our lives (as in, "good sermons"), and a sense of the holy in a worship service, a way to "get out of one's self", a place of quiet, an empty center, a deep connection to others present, and a break from the multi-tasking, multi-media world in which we all live, most of us uncomfortably.

Whether that interpretation, and that sense of the presence of the holy, and that space to find it in one's self is produced by lighting candles, a pastoral prayer, a hymn or a praise song, a well chosen set of readings, a skit, or even a sermon...what will be a matter of individual taste and experience. What we UU's have difficulty with is creating that sense of the Holy, and we're most likely to produce it, as if by accident, in our close knit groups, the tender moments of sharing Joys and Concerns, or in the enforced silence and inwardness of various ceremonies.

I'm all for continuing to see how we can use those elements in worship. But I maintain that we will not thrive as a religious movement until we learn to produce a sense of the Holy in readings, skits, prayers, sermons, singing, taking the offering, and greeting each other.

This week's Christian Century has an article about Faith and Aging, in which one study is quoted saying that, contrary to popular stereotype, persons tend to become less dogmatic as they age and express less interest in the specific theologies of the faiths of their younger years. They still believe in some kind of higher power, and they still experience having a spiritual life, but they tend to move away from organized religion, especially if they have sufficient social support in family and friends. (The "fortunate old").

They also become Unitarian Universalists.

I've long noted the unusual number of people who join us after retirement, often after a life in another church, or as a firm secularist. I had always assumed that this change was due to paying attention to their spiritual lives with their extra leisure time, and checked this out with a small group of interfaith colleagues, once. They were baffled. It's not common, in their experience, for people to join a Lutheran or Methodist church for the first time as 70 year olds. Their "new" older members are people who have newly moved to the city and were members of a similar church in their former city. But we get new, older members who are new to Unitarian Universalism all the time.

So...here's a new market, and new demographic whom we might serve; those who, as they age become less dogmatic, less interested in articles of faith, but who still have a spiritual life that they can tend, expand, and share, but who no longer feel at home with the creeds and dogmas of their earlier years and therefore, now leave congregations entirely. How many, I wonder, will never find us?

I've been in Washington DC for most of this week, participating in a meeting of the Clergy Advisory Group of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and in a ceremony at the National Holocaust Museum honoring Martha and Waitstill Sharp, founders of the Service Committee, for their work saving Jews from the Nazi's before and during WWII.

Now, those were heros.

Here's the article, which first appeared in the Washington Post. (Article Link)

Provdince RI Journal article

I've been following a blogging discussion which has been very disappointing, but kind of telling about the traps liberals and conservatives can fall into. It started when a UU sexuality educator of some fame posted a diatribe in her blog against an OBGYN practice which only deals with Natural Family Planning. (For those not in the know, NFP is a 30 year old scientific update of the old Rhythm method and is the only method approved by the Catholic church. For many women who have regular cycles and who (with are their partner) are willing to enjoy sex only at safe times of the month, it's quite effective...but it's a big commitment.)

It was sad to me to see someone who holds herself out as an expert be so reflexively negative and apparently ignorant about a very popular family planning method, which is used, not only by Catholic women but by 'whole wheat' women who don't care for other methods, and women who can't use other methods. And she really got an earful from many commentors extolling the virtues of their chosen menthod. She got some hate mail too vile to post, she said, which is an unfortunate tactic that conservatives resort to way too much, and quite a few proponents of NFP not only think it's their favorite birth control method, they think it should be the ONLY birth control method.

But it was even sadder to hear so many liberal proponents of the right of conscience in matters of abortion deny the right of conscience of physicians to limit their practice (with notice to patients) to a particular set of options. A shocking number of liberal commenters sounded their fury against the notion that someone would have to shop around for a congenial physician to get birth control prescriptions. Liberals can have such a reflexive attitude of privelege over some matters, and this is one.

Conscience is Sacred. I would no more be a slaveholder than a slave, said Abraham Lincoln, and I myself say, I would no more force a physician to offer medical care that violates her conscience than I would allow her to force me to accept medical care which violates mine.

The Debate is here

Over the years, I've been watching church members, relatives, and neighbors age gracefully...or not. I'm amassing my list of successful strategies. So...as I get old, please remind me...

1. to keep making new friends, especially friends who are younger than I am. Young friends make for a younger mind-set, an up-to-date set of technological skills (but please, may this IM phase pass), and people to come to my Memorial Service. Young friends...real friends...will tell me if my appearance has become eccentric or worse, and will lovingly warn me that I need to curtail my driving. And May I remember that the by the first time somebody works up the courage to bring up this subject, it will be time to stop driving.

2. to get rid of the things I don't need any more...my ladders when I don't climb, my car when I don't drive, my sewing machine (and my stash of fabric!) when I can't see. Remind me please, to do these things as they come along, when I can choose to whom I will give them and spare the ones who will have to help me pack up my home at last.

3. to give up the idea, right now, that I will live independently in my own, too-big house all my life. To be ready to make the change to Assisted housing in time that I'll have the energy to make new friends and enjoy new activities there.

4. to stay in touch with my relatives.

5. and to take care of my body. It's got to last as long as I do.

I'm stalling on writing an eulogy for tomorrow's memorial service, for a beloved man in the congregation. The service will include the musical group in which he sang for 45 years and the telling of how he and his wife lived next door to the forest rangers of Capitan, New Mexico, who rescued a baby bear from a forest fire and nursed it back to health to become the posterbear of the "Only YOU can prevent Forest Fires."

An injured orphan bear healed and became an inspiration to children and adults everywhere to take care of the forests we live around. Likewise, Frank's life story is one of facing great difficulty and pain and staging a recovery into happiness and productivity.

On Saturday, I'll be officiating at the marriage of a couple whose first spouses died at about five years ago. I presided at Janet's memorial service, and feel now so privileged to be a part of launching Charlie and Glorya's life together. (well into their 70's, they met on-line, and their love and joy is palpable.) And on Sunday morning, we'll dedicate and welcome the adopted second child of a church family whose profoundly handicapped first child we dedicated a year and a half ago.

It is touching and inspiring to me to see people through the ups and downs of their lives. May I remember, when it is my turn to suffer outrageous fortune, that as long as there is life there is potential for healing, learning, service, and joy.

Freedom isn't free, they say; it sometimes takes money, blood, and commitment to a long hard fight.

Only a few radical pacifists would not agree with that in the abstract, and Donald Rumsfeld takes aim at a straw dog when he argues as he did yesterday. Plenty of folks have pointed out that the issue at hand is not whether we should fight for our freedom or not but whether this particular war could reasonably be called a fight for our freedom, so I'm going to point out something else.

Freedom isn't just costly in terms of the need to fight for it, it is costly in terms of the need to protect truth and debate. It is not just soldiers who protect our freedom through courage and bloodshed, politicians, media, and ordinary people protect our freedom by having the courage to speak the truth and to be respectful of differing opinions. Only when the people know the truth and can debate their opinions does a nation have a democracy worth defending.

Here's a funny start to a Monday morning! Thanks, Vance!
(ok...it's hard to read. the gist of it is that the restless writer can't find anything to say, and when she walks off, her companion shrugs and says, "bloggers block.")

Today's NYT has an interesting, sad article about the state of women in Ministry. You can read it here , but the upshot is that in most denominations women's ministry is truncated; women can serve in small churches but not large ones, can teach but not preach, can serve as staff ministers but not as senior ministers, can be spiritual leaders to women, not men, and so on. That's in spite of more than 100 years of ordaining women by most Liberal Protestants. That letter to Timothy which says that women can't preach, and how it trumps Jesus' evident attitude towards women seems to be the cause, but we all know that the cause is much deeper than that, and that Timothy is only an excuse. It's a sad and depressing article.

The writer looked into the history of the ordination of women, so she must have come across the fact that the Universalists and the Unitarians paved that particular way in the 1880's and 90's, and seem to be thriving while having a vastly larger proportion of women in religious leadership, serving as senior ministers to women and to men, and in larger congregations than other liberal denominations. Our pioneering and our success don't figure into that article about Christian clergy, but I just want to say that I feel very lucky to be where I am. (But it does make me wonder what the percentage of women clergy in our larger congregations is. I know I'm not alone, but the review of large pulpits I just completed in my head suggests that I'm one of 10%. I will check on this matter and report.)

Of course, UU women, while we never get beaten with Timothy, get regularly beaten with the deeper issues that depress gender equality, so all is not well. There's a never absent static for women in ministry that just makes things a little harder all the time and hugely harder during storms. And it's all the worse for being invisible and forgotten.

For some reason lately I said in a group that my predecessor in this ministry was a man who, while he worked for the American Unitarian Association in the 1960's, refused to place the few women clergy in pulpits, and a bright and competent (male) student at an extremely progressive UU theological school overheard and expressed his shock that this could have happened in our always progressive denomination. Can it be that UU schools are teaching about systemic oppression without reference to women these days? (judging by my glance over our current intern's coursework, it seems to be all about race, class, sexual expression minorities and the third world now). That bodes ill for the next generation of women in ministry, who had better be prepared to deal with those deeper issues or they'll drop like flies in the bugspray. And those deeper issues don't just effect women and men who work with women, (that would be all of us) they are a bedrock of the human psyche and have everything to do with other kinds of oppression.

It would be sad and depressing, except that it also gives just a little extra boost of meaning to my own ministry, a visible success for women in larger churches, proof that it is possible, even if sometimes too hard.

Lizard Eater (here) comments that as proud as we are of our "elevator speeches" (short answers to the question, "what kind of a church is UU?") much more important and much more potentially transforming, is a testimony, which answers the question, "What has belonging to a UU church done for you?" She gives some guidelines for this sort of a speech which boil down to, keep it short and keep it personel and keep it focused. And she suggests that we write our speech down and memorize it.

An interesting Challenge...lets call it the Elevator testimony. Here's my first crack:

I've been a UU all my life, and belonged to five UU churches. They were very different, but all of them offered me the opportunity to grow in spirit while belonging to a religious community that encouraged and facilitated that growth. We believe that an infinite deity has many names, and no name, and honor religious diversity. That means that everyone is exposed to a variety of religious understandings and hears about many different kinds of religious experiences and practices. I've been an atheist, and I found a God I could believe in. I've been an agnostic, but when I had a mystical experience that began a relationship with God, I didn't have to change churches, because that kind of personal and spiritual growth is something we value as UU's. It's a very rich place to be a person of faith.

You try!

When we moved to New Mexico 18 years ago, we were told that "June is hot, then come the Monsoons, and it cools off." Coming from South Carolina, where it knows how to rain, we were bemused when "Monsoons" turned out to be mostly humidity punctuated by a few (very welcome) brief thundershowers, for a grand total of about 3 inches of rain in 6 weeks. In the desert, you enjoy every drop, but somehow, "monsoons" seemed over-descriptive.

Well, this year, we've had Monsoons. We're in our 8th week of nearly daily rain, downpoors, and floods. (and most trying of all, humidity levels topping 50%, which renders our evaporative coolers ineffective. We complain a lot about this.) My little rain gauge has logged over 7 inches, and it underreports. The last downpoor backed up the sewers at the church, so today all is in an uproar as carpets are replaced.

That would have been bad enough, but last week, we were hit with a wave of vandalism. Nearly 30 windows on our campus, most plate glass types which cost about $300 a piece to replace, were ruined with etched script. Not Really graffiti, we were told by the police; just kids. And then, on Saturday night, we were hit with a spatter of gunshots, cracking windows and damaging frames. The police assured us that we were probably not the target; if the shots had been aimed at us, they would have done far more damage.

We have insurance, of course, so our out of pocket expenses will probably only $2,000, but that's $2,000 that won't be available to paint walls or do the planting of cactus that the police recommend for the beds in front of our largest windows. It's enough to make one believe in bad Karma, making me wonder what we're not doing that we should be doing, and my Administrator to talk about bad energy, the cure of which, in her opinion, is banishing negative talk. She'd probably frown on my fantasies of catching a few kids red handed and sitting on them until the police came, but such is my anger about their vandalism. In the meantime, the staff is going to have lunch together on the back patio, far from the bad smells and chaos in the office. If, that is, it doesn't rain.

Time Magazine explains some reasons why (besides support for Israel and war on Iraq) there has been more terrorist activity in Britain than here in America. Why are British young Muslims more violent than American young Muslims?

Well among other things, American Muslims are, overall a smaller and better integrated part of the nation's population than anywhere in Europe, tending to be better educated and better off financially than the majority of Americans. In Great Britain and even more in other European nations, Moslems tend to be poor and live in enclaves. I tend to put a lot of stock in this first explanation, myself. There's nothing like few prospects of a good life to interest people in desperate measures, something that our society should be taking seriously as we move further and faster into this "winner take all' economy.

Another factor in "Muslim America" is that Muslims here tend to come from many nations and are, as someone commented yesterday, of different races, and include our homegrown Black Muslim brand. All that Moslem diversity makes it more likely that isolated groups will assimilate into the mainstream rather than clump with other Moslems.

Another factor Time mentions is that in Europe, religiousness of any kind is viewed with disdain, as a threat to secular values. Moslems there feel pervasively misunderstood and sneered at for what is most precious to them, their faith. Here in America, we have our disagreements about faith, but we're accustomed to a larger public square of tolerance about the issue, and Moslem faithfulness fits in better.

Sometimes Americans, especially those whose own values are secular, assume that their way is the peaceful way and "religion causes so much violence in the world." While there's no doubt that religion is one source of violence, it seems likely that appreciative tolerance of the variety of human religiousness has a calming effect.

Leaders of Islamic communities in England last week wrote an open letter pointing out that government policy and programs are infuriating young men and are in part, the cause of terrorism. British leaders responded that that was blackmail, and that governments couldn't possibly make decisions in order to prevent terrorist attacks.

So...let's just unpack that interesting statement.

First of all, blackmail happens when someone secretly threatens an illegal or immoral action unless the receiver accedes to a demand. (pay money being the classic demand). Blackmail by definition doesn't happen in public. It by definition is an illicit activity, a kind of bloodless terrorism. And it only happens between two parties. If I say to you that if you don't stop doing X, someone else will take revenge, that's not blackmail, that's a warning. Warnings may be unwelcome communication, but they are not blackmail.

So it was plain old racist of British leaders to respond to leaders of the Muslim community's letter by calling it blackmail; that was implying that those leaders were themselves responsible for the illegal and immoral activity of a few young men. Nor do I think that Christian leaders would have been called Blackmailers under similar circumstances; such nasty words are used only for the despised.

And as to the question of whether a nation should take into account the activity of terrorists in forming and executing its foreign policy... in the "new normal," they should, do, and will. Not necessarily give in, of course, but count the costs, in advance.

Caner patients are told, after the drama and difficulty of treatment is over, "Welcome to the new normal." During new normal, you adjust to your losses and to your heightened sense of mortality, you recover your strength, you cherish whatever gifts were given on the journey through illness. You take up your responsibilities again, and move on into all that is your life.

Some things will be different, many will be the same. You will be different, but also the same. Your future happiness and effectiveness in life depend on finishing grieving the "old normal" and adjusting to the "new normal".

We Americans have now had nearly 5 years to adjust to the post 9/11 "New Normal". By and large, the people of our nation have done pretty well at it. We learned a lot about Islam and about the Moslems amongst us. We started to travel again and put up with inconveniences that would have been intolerable 5 years ago with patience and good humor.

Our government, on the other hand, has not done so well. Like the person whose cancer treatment ended years ago but who works their medical history into every conversation, our leaders continue to insist that we are "at war," and that soldiers and military might can make us safe again.

But it's not a war, it's a new normal. We adjust to our losses, learn what we need to learn, put up with what we need to put up with, and get on with our lives, determined to be neither a whining victim nor a fool in denial. To keep on going to war and provoking war is to be like the impatient cancer patient (and physician) who keeps asking for exploratory surgery, further traumatizing what is hopefully healing, spending precious resources that are needed elsewhere, and doing true harm all around.

Our national, "new normal" includes the fact that there are terrorists and that we must be vigilant against them. It includes the fact that the only way to keep ourselves completely safe from terrorists would involve an intolerable trade off of rights we cherish, just as keeping ourselves safe from (the much more likely) traffic accident would be intolerable. We may not like this new normal, but it is a fact of our lives. The better our basic health, the quicker we adjust and get on with all that is our lives.

One of the great tragedies being played out on the international scene these days is the presumption that there exists an absolute right to "defend oneself." If there are terrorists in the world who are out to do damage to Americans, someone proclaims that we have a right to defend ourselves. If an extremist group in Lebanon kills Israeli Soldiers, Israel had a right to defend itself.

We're buying this because, to the person on the street, it feels right. If somebody tries to drag me into their car, I have a right to defend myself, to kick and scream and do them damage...even to kill, if necessary.

Not all ethical systems buy this; Jesus, for instance, was flat out against it. (remember, "turn the other cheek?") Judaism is only a bit more liberal; Jews are enjoined to take only an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and not a bit more. Taking an eye for an eyelash, which is what they are doing at the moment, is considered wrong by Biblical standards. But American law upholds the right of a person to defend themselves, even if they do considerable damage to the one trying to hurt them.

So if a guy is trying to abduct my child, I can hurt or even kill him. That's defending myself(my family actually, but that's ok, too.)

What I can't do is chase him out the back door and then shoot his wife who is waiting in the car on the street. Even is she's almost certainly a part of the plot, I can't do that. Nor can I chase him into my neighbor's house and set fire to the house. I can't even chase him into HIS house and set fire to the house. Why not? because for one thing, a house on fire is a danger to the entire neighborhood. And for another, because that goes way beyond defending myself. It moves into the terribly dangerous realms of revenge and taking the law into my own hands.

Nations are not persons, and the systems of international law which would make it unnecessary for a nation to take the law into its own hands are still in the development stage. Still, the national right to "defend itself" has to be limited for the same reasons the personal right to defend oneself has to be limited. It is not moral even by the most liberal standards of morality to wreak death and destruction on an entire nation of mostly innocent people because one feels, or even actually is threatened by a small subset of those people. To begin to address this problem, Catholic moralists developed a theory of Just War. It's one of the best things they've done for the world.

Even President Bush must know that the right of nations to defend themselves does have limits. That's why he brought out the "weapons of mass destruction card" at the beginning of the Iraq war. For if it really is not moral to burn down the neighbors house because a bad guy took refuge there, it might be ok to do that if the bad guy is about to blow up the entire neighborhood.

But we were duped on that one.

And now it is time to say to those who say, that we, or anybody else has a "right to defend ourselves, " some things like, "What about turning the other cheek?" "Is this a Just War? and "What about an eye for an eye (and no more?"

Or the neighborhood that is our world could go up in flames.

We held our second technical rehearsal of our video cafe this morning, for a small group that included a visiting ministerial colleague. Besides thinking that we have a viable service, (thanks, Kate!) she remarked that we had a better sense of picking good hymns for small group worship than most people, even ministerial colleagues, seem to.

Since I've just finished compiling a set of hymns for use in our Video Cafe and Branch locations, where we anticipate no piano, only possible guitar, and modest talent for group singing leadership, I offer it here for those organizing worship for retreats, small congregations, etc. My criteria are: the music has a limited range, a lot of repetition, short phrases, not too many words, simple melody.

From the Gray Book:

Come, Come, Whoever you Are
Circle Round for Freedom
May the Circle be Unbroken
Gathered Here
Spirit of Life (harder than the others but so many of us know it!)
Come Sing a Song With Me
One More Step
Peace is Flowing Like a River
Kum ba yah
Alleluia (11 minute accompaniment CD here:)

From the Turquoise Book: Simple Accompaniments to many of these hymns are available on the UUA website.

Where Do We Come From? 1003
Woyaya 1020
Return Again 1011 (lovely CD of this Here)

There is a Balm in Gilead 1045
Turn the World Around 1074

Only If you have a guitar:

Take up the Song (Etzler and Chambers, in Signature Songbook #3)
When Our Heart is in a Holy Place (Turquoise # 1008)
1031 Filled with Loving Kindness

Many of these songs would be enhanced by a simple shaker or drum accompaniment.

A group that learns this many songs is doing very well!

It's always discouraging when a woman's right to not share her body with an unwanted intruder is whittled away and when rich men play politics with the sacred matter of motherhood. But surely we've all gotten used to this, and we had another round of it last week when the Senate passed a bill making it a crime for anyone to take a pregnant girl across state lines so she could obtain an abortion without notifying her parents.

Nobody thinks this happens very often, so this bill has more symbolic effect than real. But the hand-wringing of the Pro-Choice side makes me almost sadder than the glee of the pro-lifers.

As I understand the law, every state that has parental notification laws has exceptions for rape and incest and a judicial bypass option. So when, god forbid, a child of 13 comes to me to ask for help getting her an out-of-state abortion because she's pregnant by her father and afraid to tell him, I don't want to just get her an abortion, I want to get her in front of a judge and get the abortion (which is required to be granted) and I want that judge to also set the wheels of justice in motion to get the kid out of that unsafe home. Simply taking her across state lines to get an abortion would be another kind of child abuse.

As for the more likely scenario, the sexually active 16 year old who's scared to talk to her parents, she's also old enough to get herself across state lines without physical assistance from me, and scared though she might be, she is, after all going to face their wrath if she stays pregnant, too.

I'm also skeptical of the pro-choice assumption that if teens have to go to their parents they'll be pressured against their best interests or abused. My somewhat limited experience as a Planned Parenthood clergy counselor and a minister is that moms are often more in favor of an abortion than daughters. Young women often have woefully romantic notions about motherhood, but their mothers have good reason to be more realistic. They know the sacrifice and sacredness of motherhood, and they know that their daughters are unprepared for both. As for abuse...Young people have recourse if they are being abused by their parents and the same adults who are available to help them get abortions are available to help them if parents fly out of control over their daughter's pregnancy.

Let this one go.

The original question on the UU Leaders chat was: "Does a minister's Freedom of the Pulpit extend to the right of first refusal over non-member weddings" If you're just joining this blog, scroll down three posts and read them over to catch up.

So. Freedom of the Pulpit has nothing to do with this.
Control of Sacred Space has to do with this question only if there's the possibility that the activity or leader would reflect badly on the church or be seen as sacrilegious.
Minister's covenants of relationship with each other govern some of this but lay folks don't need to worry about them.


The essence of this issue, however is economic. Ministers get paid for doing weddings. Ministers who like the extra income, and the many who need the extra income want all the opportunities to do these weddings they can have. Organists often feel the same way. Because both ministers and organists are often poorly paid, they are often indulged in this little bit of protective behavior. So, lay folks, if your minister is demanding a right of first refusal for non-member weddings, the first thing to wonder is if you are paying this person well enough that they don't have to work weekends and evenings doing weddings. Then you can start negotiating.

UU Ministers have a covenant with each other, as do ministers of many other denominations, to honor the relationships that others have with them and with their churches. So if someone calls me to say that they belong to the such and such church and can I do their wedding (actually, this most often happens with memorial services, in my experience), I tell them I'll think about it and I call the minister of that church. The reason for the request is often some past hurt or strain between the deceased or the deceased's family and the minister. Often the minister is relieved not to have to do that memorial service. However a memorial service is not really a private affair, and most ministers consider a memorial service of a member a ministry, not only to the grieving family, but to their grieving church. This creates a situation in whcih the best solution, in my experience, is for the two ministers to work together on the memoiral service, with the "host" minister welcoming the congregation and doing the "grief work" part of the service, and the "guest" minister doing eulogy and other personal parts of the service.

All of these arrangements are a part of ministerial protocol and covenants with fellow ministers.

The new issue on the ministerial block is the increasing number of free lance "ministers" around, who usually have little training, have had no vetting or substantive certification, and are accountable to no one. They mostly don't know anything about these protocols. My limited experiences with two such persons, both friends of deceased church members with whom I agreed to share a service, were quite negative, so I don't agree to that without careful planning any more.

The UU Leaders Chat has been covering the concept of "Freedom of the Pulpit" (see below) and its relationship to the sanctuary. My thoughts:


In this denomination often, and in other denominations, usually or always, ministers are given control of the congregation's sanctuary; its sacred space. This is not related to Freedom of the Pulpit, which is in essence a freedom from censorship. In our denomination, it us usually given by virtue of an unspoken set of assumptions which makes a minister the #1 keeper of the sacred for the congregation. A congregation which lets out its sanctuary to all comers to do whatever they like in as if it was commercial space is playing footsie with its sacred space, possibly because it doesn't want any. Which is their right, but a matter on which they should agree with their religious professional if they have one.

Most congregations do want some sacred space, and when issues come up (Shall we rent our sanctuary to a film company making a horror film? would be one, and "There is a couple who wants to rent our sanctuary for their wedding and they say that they are going to have their beloved dog be there in place of the officiant and say their vows to it, is this ok?") The minister is usually consulted and often has (and should have, in my opinion) considerable informal or formal authority in these decisions.

The UU Leaders email chat has been dealing with the relationship and meaning of "Freedom of the Pulpit" and how that extends to things like rental weddings. So I started thinking about the many issues this raises.

Freedom of the pulpit, in this minister's belief, is the freedom from advance censorship. It is extended to a minister because the minister and congregation have covenanted together; the minister to speak the truth in love and to mind the best interests of the church and the traditions of our free faith, and the congregation has agreed to hear that truth, love, and responsibility with an open mind. (Freedom of the Pulpit might not be extended to those who are not in covenant with the congregation. We don't extend it here in Albuquerque and regularly ask to review pulpit editorials and talks by guests and members in advance. We've actually never had to go back and ask people to make changes in content, but often ask them to shorten, tighten up, or otherwise do a better job with their writing. We came to this policy after some difficult experiences.)

A minister who, let's just speculate, got obsessed with polyamory and began to preach about it out of proportion to its importance to the members, who used the pulpit to scold those who disagreed, caused damage to the church's reputation in the community, and who did not speak responsibly about the pros and cons of openly accepting and welcoming this particular life style choice would probably be judged out of bounds of the covenant and could be asked to make changes in their preaching subject, manner, and priorities. If the covenant stayed broken for long, the congregation would probably dismiss the minister by it's democratic procedures.

It's not really true therefore, to say that "freedom of the pulpit means that the minister can say anything s/he wants to."

Here's a picture of our new family member. Those of your who followed Sabbatical Blogging will know that our beloved pet iguana died in May. A few weeks back, I traveled to Las Cruces to adopt a stray. We've named him Ninja because of his extraordinary atheletic abilities. He climbs everything; blinds, screens, wall hangings; anything to get to the "top". Although he's about three feet long, he's still pretty light and can get away with this behavior, but we're hoping he settles down before he puts on his next pound. A couple of days back he managed to topple a lamp, and it must have landed on him, because he played dead for a while, scaring us into realizing how fond we've gotten of him already. Presently, however, he revived and has been slowly going about his iggy business, acting sore but ok. Phew!

The one-legged Robin, (who is not only one legged but whose red breast has ...faded? aged? to gray and black speckles) we've decided, has a mate who is almost always in sight but not with her (?) disabled friend. It's taken us a while to put the two of them together, but we're sure now. I'm glad for (him?). It's no doubt hard to be a disabled Robin, and all of us need our friends.

A few days ago a new bird appeared in our yard; a one-legged robin. He flopped around, sat on the back step, looked exhausted, and flew with a wobble. Oh, boy, did we in the house feel sorry for him...so sorry that we went to the compost pile, dug some worms, and took them to the back step for him (or her...hard to know with robins.)

The Robin appeared at least once a day, and someone in the family would take note and alert the others. We speculated on the source of his tragedy, how he would manage his bird-life, and the general novelty of having a one-legged bird in our yard.

This afternoon, the one legged Robin appeared in the yard again, but he'd learned a new trick. He was standing upright and steady balancing between is one leg and his tail. And when he saw me creeping up to make sure my eyes didn't deceive me, he flew away with nary a wobble.

So it suddenly seems that this fellow's tragedy was not so long ago, and that he's adapting, learning, and getting along. And it seems suddenly possible that we've had one-legged birds in our yard before, but never noticed.

Today's sermon was shared between myself and a respected member of the congregation who has gone through several bouts of deep depression. He attended last Winter's "How to Write A Sermon" class clear about what he wanted his sermon to say and worked hard to craft a 10 minute sermon out of his experience. I added a few of my own thoughts. It was one of those mornings when all the pieces come together, as if by magic. Furthermore, both services were packed full, making ours surely the only church in the city at capacity on the third Sunday of July.

Some people came because some come every Sunday. Some came because they hadn't seen me in a while, and some came because they were being welcomed as new members. Some came because they knew Ron and wanted to support his "coming out" story. Some came because they, too, suffer from mental illnesses, and a bunch of members who had always seemed to me to get on perfectly well told me about their diagnoses and how wonderful it was to have this subject aired at church.

The thing is that there are one-legged robins around us all the time, doing pretty well most of the time, so well that you wouldn't notice if you didn't know, that there was extra effort being expended, a hurt healing, or major adjustment going on. One of the poignencies of ministry is that ministers often do know. We scan the congregation or greet worshippers at the door as one great prayer of thanksgiving and wonder for all that is our lives.

There's been a recent Blogger discussion about Growth Strategies for the UUA, and the fact that it would be good to get all of our eggs out of the large church rapid start model which, even if it was working well (it's been disappointing so far) is only one basket for all of our eggs.

We here in Albuquerque, which will never be a place for a rapid start congregation, since it's a city of less than a million people and already serves an unusually large number of UU's per capita (have you seen this?) have an idea which we think might be revolutionary, planting new churches as small community branches worshiping as lay led small groups and centering that worship around a video recording from our early service. We've worked out a lot of technical details, are poised to start our own on-campus video cafe worship service, and we would be ready to start forming small groups in towns 30-200 miles from us where we (yep!) have a few members already. The only problem is that it's going to take a staff person a year to get those small groups going, and we don't have the money for that staff person. We think that if we had about $45,000 for a staff person and start up costs, we could bring between 200 and 500 people into the UU fold in 6-9 locations around New Mexico within a few years. We could do this slowly, one group at a time, using volunteer effort, and since there is no obvious way to get more than a $20,000 grant for a project in this denomination (talk about how we think small!) that's what we will probably do. Unfortunate for several reasons, one of which is that bringing on three or four branches at one time will force us into the work of transformation from what we are now, into a "to the core" multi site church. That transformation is what other churches need to watch, so they can learn from our mistakes, and the sooner the better.

I like the foundation idea. It would be a place to go with big ideas. What we have now in the Funding Panel and Chalice Lighters and such are good places to go with small ideas. Of which we have plenty. But it's big ideas that we really need now.

Turtle Mountain comments that s'he does not think it appropriate for a non-creedal faith community to guide a person's faith development, only to encourage it.

This makes the assumption that our faith is like a flower bud, which will unfold in the fullness of time, if just given the encouragement of a little water.

I say that the development of faith is much more like the ability to swim. I suppose that it is possible to learn to swim (or at least to stay alive in the water) on one's own, but the parent who says to the child, "Just jump in. I don't want to guide you, just encourage you," well...it is unthinkable.

Now it is true that everyone has their own style of swimming, their own comfort level in the water, their own favorite strokes. What makes Unitarian Universalism nearly unique amongst western religions is that we enjoy a pool filled with folks who are swimming in their own sweet way and not insisting that everyone do the back stroke and only the back stroke.

But we still have to teach each other some of the basics of swimming, or we're just not doing our job.

We teach lots of strokes, we help people who have previously been afraid to learn to float. We support those who are learning and sometimes rescue those who are sinking.

One of the most important strokes we teach is "pay attention to your own experience, and make sure your world view and faith honor that experience."

We do best at honoring our own experiences if we have been given words to express them, if we feel safe in speaking of them, and if others are talking about their deep experiences, too. Those things don't happen as often as they should, even in clergy-led congregations and often don't happen at all in lay lead congregations. But faithng lessons is the job of a faith community, even a non-creedal one.

Someone told me lately that she was not a believer, nor was her (deceased) mother, although, she said, her mother might have believed in an afterlife and had told her some "creepy stories about about having "seen" her brother and father at the moment of their deaths."

In the whole context, it didn't seem appropriate to respond to that, but I was sad, and I keep being sad. I imagine that mom herself might have said, had she had the "churchy" words and spiritual support, that she believed in an afterlife, in part because she had been blessed with vivid experiences her father's and brother's non-physical presence after their deaths. But that's just a guess; maybe she herself thought her experiences were creepy, rather than numinous.

She might have said such words if she had belonged to a community which had allowed her to tell that story and had helped her to frame and understand and value her experience and base her beliefs on it. If, in short, she had belonged to a church, a covenant circle, a Sunday school class. If she had had such a community she might have come to realize that such experiences are not uncommon and are the very stuff on which belief is based.

She didn't avail herself of such support, in part over fury that a misguided pastor in her past had refused to allow an unbaptized baby to be burred in a church yard.

In this particular nutshell of a casual sentence, I'm slain by the weight of ministry, that our actions strike such deep notes in others, for good and for ill, the the communities we help to create and the vocabularies we help people hone,own, and share, really do change lives.

Periodically, I hear that some people in my church think that (a)I, or (b) the church service or (c) the UUA have become "too Christian." Try as I might to be a good minister, open to input from all, what this accusation elicits in me is exasperation.

Let me just remark that I'm not a Christian, and, while the denomination as a whole has more openly recognized that it has Christians in it since 1980 or, that's not a real change, only an attitude adjustment. But there's no doubt about it, the worship in our churches has changed.

I've asked people what, exactly bothers them, when they say, "This is too Christian," and what they seem to mostly mean by that is either that we take Christian Holidays too seriously (Christmas Pageant on Christmas Eve.) or that the church has become too devotional. They don't use that term, I hasten to say, but when given the opportunity to talk about what they don't like, they cite practices which are devotional rather than intellectual, which use a language of reverence rather than the language of academia, and which are liturgical (the work of the people) or ritualistic rather than pulpit or sermon-centered.

We celebrate a couple of Christian holidays, the Jewish High Holy Days, and at least one Pagan/Earth Centered day each year. We celebrate a couple of national holidays (Thanksgiving and Memorial Day), and three or four "Change the World" days, MLK's birthday. Earth Day, Gay Pride, and the UUSC's Justice Sunday. We publicize these special days in advance so that those who don't care for those themes or the traditions they come from can take a Sunday off. It's ok with us if people take days off. It's not so ok with me when people say we ought not to celebrate Christian themes on Christmas Eve or remember the sacrifices of war on Memorial Day. If you can't stand to hear the word resurrection, no matter how it is defined, just say, "I'm going on a walk this morning," when Easter rolls around. But please don't complain about the church being too "Christian" because we celebrate Easter once a year, among many other celebrations.

The devotional aspect of the service is a little harder to avoid, but neither does it last a long time. I know that some UU's don't pray, and that 20 years ago, the fact that some (most?) UU's didn't pray meant that there was never a public prayer offered in worship. That's certainly a change, and change is difficult, but we never pray "Christian" prayers, we never pray "in Jesus' name", so our practice of praying is simply not, "Christian." It could be called (broadly) theistic or simply devotional, but to call it Christian would be seen by Christians as ignorant, and by this minister as "reactive." The addition of prayers and other ritual and devotional practices to our worship has been, in my opinion and the opinion of the majority in the church, a good thing. Nobody has to believe it, nobody has to participate, and it's ok that a minority doesn't like it. Different strokes (and different parts of the service) for different folks. But please, don't call it "Christian".

I'm having a nostalgia attack for the Fourth of July's past...6 or 7 years past....when our son, born at the end of the Cold War and patriotic to his child's core, spent the mornings decorating his scooter with red white and blue ribbons for the neighborhood parade, the afternoon playing and singing patriotic songs (a fascination that went back to his preschool years,) and the evening hosting "his" fireworks party.

He taught his parents, flag-shy since their own Viet Nam-era coming of age, to enjoy being patriots. Oh, always patriots with a memory, but still, for a time patriots, cautiously optimistic for a nation which had (at least mostly) taken the broad straight road in the world towards peace, justice, and neighborliness. We hung our flag out with the rest of our neighbors for a decade there. It was delicious.

This year it appears that only one neighbor has a flag out. Most of our neighbors have become quite elderly. And I suppose that even many conservatives OD'ed on flags after we endured the red,white, and gray tattered items people insisted on flying from their cars for months after 9/11. And at least some I suppose, have, like us, become non-patriots on account of unjust war, torture, military atrocities, and the blindest-take-all approach our elected leaders and their cronies are taking to the ecological crisis which is looming for our world.

It's more than nostalgia attacking me this morning, actually. It's a deep sadness for a national road not taken, a fear for the future for a near military aged child, for a near bankrupt nation, and for a near crisis blue-green world. Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to thee.

It was by all accounts a great GA, but it was marred for some people because of that great demon, change. The change was that this year one needed to pay for a name badge to get in to all GA events except the Service of the Living tradition and the Sunday Service. In previous years, you could go to the exhibit hall and the Ware lecture without paying a registration fee. And because of past accusations of inconsistency in applying the nametag rules, in an apparently racist manner (white youth allowed to come to youth events without nametags but youth of color turned away...a painful story) the ushers were instructed to be absolutists on this matter. So some people who had left their name tags in their rooms were turned away from events.

Stories, furies, and disappointments were therefore a part of the GA experience of many. I turned my minister's badge over on my chest and rushed the ushers to get into the exhibit hall, I must confess, and I got away with it. In gratitude I spent a lot of money on books. But not everyone was so brazen or so lucky.

I'm with the planning committee on this one; we're too big to not require name badges, and consistency of enforcement is a good thing. I have just three little thoughts about polishing up next year's implementation. They are probably good general rules for making changes in general.

First, Publicize, publicize, publicize!

Change being hard and humans, even UU humans being dense, more publicity of the "We Really Mean This" aspect of name badge change needs to be a part of the registration experience, including the minister's registration experience. We ministers have been long accustomed to going to Ministry days and tucking ourselves in to the exhibit hall (to spend money) and going to a few early events without registering. If that's no longer going to be possible, that's fine (it may not be fine with the exhibitors, but that's another problem.) And we will all catch on eventually, but it will help with compliance if ministers (and everyone else) are told about this when they decide on registration. Not once, but three times. AND IN BOLD

Second, Take Human Failings Into Account

Because even UU's do silly things like leave their nametags in their rooms, there needs to be a publicized way for persons to slink into an office, confess their sin, and get a pass into the next event. Human nature being what it is, that's the only way to keep tender hearted ushers from unpleasant encounters and to keep at bay the human propensity to try to get favors through one's connections (a propensity that does not need to be confused with racism, as we seem to insist on doing.) If I forget my name badge and get to the Ware lecture without it, I'm sent to a corner to appeal to the head usher, who has a registration list to compare with the picture ID I will present, and will then escort me in. (And you can bet that tomorrow I remember my name badge.)

Third, You Can't Have Change without Changes.

I could rush the ushers at the doors of the exhibit hall not only because I worked to confuse them, but because they were trying to do the impossible; watch people's entry and exit in an uncontrolled space. If you are serious about checking name badges, you need to have entry-only and exit-only doors, you need roped-off lanes so that every person has to pass muster singly, and you need a sign that says, "Please show us your GA Badge!" All this can be done with efficiency and good humor; just go to Disneyland or your nearest airport for lessons. But as one with a soft spot for volunteers, I would also add that very difficult events such as, perhaps, youth evening parties which have a history of being crashed by outsiders probably need paid security.

How to do this? Go to the UUA Website, click on "Live webcast events." That will take you to a list. Pick what you'd like to watch, and select your media player (Windows Media Player comes with Windows, so you're likely to have it. Real Player can be downloaded for free. But if you have never done this before, start with the Windows Media file, and enjoy!

I'm sitting in Albuquerque, but I've spent the morning at GA. I watched the Sunday morning service via streaming media, and the Service of the living Tradition which was actually held on Thursday night, via a media file. There are lots of workshops and a few business meetings that will keep me here this afternoon, connected to the great gathering. It's not the same as being there, but it's a lot less expensive and in many ways more comfortable. And I can get a lump in my throat as "Rank by Rank" is sung even at a distance of half a continent. Mostly, I suppose, because I have been there, many years, and that tune, even when the singers and organ are two beats out of synch, as they will be in a very large room, reminds me of years past, triumphs of my own, and the mourning of lost colleagues and mentors.

The SLT, as it is called, is the service in which new ministers are welcomed, those who attain full credentials congratulated, those retiring thanked, and those deceased are mourned. The service has been done in essentially this form for 61 years, although it's middle-aged spread has made it totally unwieldly. Nearly 100 persons traipse across a large stage and shake hands with dignitaries, while the congregation sits captive to ministerial ego and nostalgia, for a half hour of naming and shaking. Naturally in their boredom and enthusiasm for the few names they recognize, they make a ruckus and have to be repeatedly told to please hold their noise, although no one tells them why this is so important.

(This problem has been getting worse for at least 10 years. The first time it happened was at the Yale GA, a comparatively small gathering and the last non-Convention Center GA. David Pohl was calling the names that year, and finally stopped, stepped out of role, and counseled the congregation that one thing that is important in this service is the democracy and equality of ministry. All are equal here, whether popular, illustrious, successful, or not. That some are wildly applauded and others are not destroys this essential equality, so please, don't. It was a gracious speech that has stayed with me.)

Once the SLT was the Big Event at GA, but it has been eclipsed by the far more appropriate (for the venue and size of crowd) Sunday Morning worship. The SLT is increasingly a dinosaur, evoking the good old days when the SLT was held in a big church and had crowds numbering in the hundreds rather than thousands. The processionals, hand shaking, and slow pace worked when 20-30 ministers walked across the chancel. It doesn't work now. Some changes have been made in the past few years to tighten things up, but the transforming change it would take to make this ritual work for everyone is seemingly not possible. Now, there's a commentary on ministry for you!

I still got a lump in my throat, enjoyed a good sermon, saw a few great shots of our Albuquerque MRE, Eva Ceskava, who was singing in the choir, and cheered on three people who have had a relationship with my church: Jim Zacharias, honored as he formally retires, Lora Kim Joiner (wife of our intern, Meredith Garmon), who attained Final Fellowship, and Myriam Renaud (once a church member) who has attained Preliminary Fellowship.


But after two worship services, each 90 minutes long, it is time for lunch!

GA is a huge family reunion, and that means that what you say most is, "How are you!' and "I'm great!". After that, what I heard most, however, was, "I hear your church is doing satellites, tell me about it. We're thinking of that."

Of course, we're not quite doing it yet. But we seem to be about a year further ahead in our thinking about this than anyone else is. But this amount of buzz about a project not yet started is kind of amazing to me. And it suggests not only that we should go ahead and do this but that we should share our inner workings as we do. The Board must vote next month to go ahead with this, as the next stage is fund raising and grant writing. I think we'll eventually set up a Blog; in the meantime, if you are interested in following the Satellite Church plan, leave a comment on this blog.

Why do I Blog?, they asked, at the UU Bloggers gathering at GA.

Well, I started to give my congregation a way to follow what I was learning and thinking about during my sabbatical. It was something of a shock to discover that more than half of my readers were not in my congregation. (How do I know that? That "hit counter" at the bottom of this page tells me not only how many people have visited, but the city their server lives in.) Many were from New England. This week, a batch are from St. Louis, where the GA is. This suggests to me that many of my readers are UU's from elsewhere.

Amongst the pleasures of the Sabbatical Blog were the pleasures of writing in a kind of "quick and dirty" way about the things going on around me, passing them not, perhaps through the "fire of thought", as Emerson said sermons must be, but at least through the smoke. I anticipate reaching back into my blog for sermon illustrations and such. Writing about things helps me to process and remember. Having a readership is a sort of astonishing side benefit of what is essentially keeping a journal.

Of course, there are many matters only appropriate for my private paper and pencil journal, Spiritual Director, or close friends.

The wonderful volunteer setting up our church's new website set up a blogging option for staff members; beautiful templates, a much better spell checker, (Blogger's spell checker, for instance, doesn't know the word "Blog") and other features. But after thinking about it, I rebelled. This venue is just removed enough from the church that I can write a bit more freely and with a few fewer constraints than I feel when writing "as the minister." How the Website blogs will shape up is yet to be seen. This blog is mine.

And the most common question I've gotten this week from my colleagues besides "how are you," is, "I hear you are starting satellite congregations, tell me everything!" So I think I'll set up a blog for that Multi-Site Multi Venue as a tool for sharing what we are doing and learning about this.

President Bill Sinkford spoke to the ministers yesterday, as he does each year. He talked about some of his pet projects and mostly answered questions. Most of the questions were fairly predictable and he had good and candid answers for them. One question that stumped him: What is our strategy to keep "birthright" UU's?

Ouch. Can it be that no one has thought much about that important question?

The first strategy might be to ditch that terrible phrase, "birthright." In a denomination which prides itself on helping people grow into and choose their faith, a phrase that suggests that it has not passed on this value to its children (who are UU's by right, not their own choice) is unfortunate.

Call us Cradle UU's, perhaps. Here's the way to keep us. Offer us something beyond the "walk away skepticism" which so often passes for legitimate faith questioning in our congregational life. We don't have the hurt, or as much of it, that our elders have. We are ready to explore in our depths, to claim words and ideas that work for us and use them with confidence. This denomination has very little to offer us (although our individual churches often do) by way of resources for this deeper faith journey. Providing these tools would not only keep cradle UU's, it would keep those who come to us in a period of faith transition after they are finished with their pain and their anger and are, themselves, ready to move on.

A cranky commenter asked about my ministry, "Do you have any documents singed by God?"

Dr. Freud would have smiled. And I smile, too. We who believe in God do have some nerve, to ask that the creator of the Universe show up in our lives and in our hearts...something like plugging our ipods into the 220 line behind the dryer and hoping to hear nice music. The miracle is that we are not singed more often.

Some cranky non-believers seem to think that those of us who believe in God are claiming to see God's signature unmistakably, as if God were an egotistical artist who signed his art with a huge flourish. But the best art, like the best universes, has only the most subtle signs of authorship, and it takes an art lover with some knowledge and experience to know "for sure."

God and I have had a mostly distant relationship, even on the days in which I wish it were otherwise. For better or for worse, most of my singings (singeings?) have been from living all that has been my life, and my experience has been that when those times have been the most painful, I have felt a consoling touch in my heart that I take to be God's comfort and strength. This one-to-one correspondence between catastrophe and spiritual experience makes my prayer for more spiritual experience a bit half-hearted, I'm afraid, but it adds to my serenity as I face all that my future will bring.

I learned to Blog during my sabbatical, and the resulting Sabbaticalblogging grew up over four months. And although the sabbatical, like all good things, has come to an end, Sabbaticalblogging as morphed into iMinister....a place where I can express some of the thoughts and opinions that don't fit neatly into the more public parts of my ministry.