Wedding Day at UUCA was a holy time. Together with other Atlanta-area Unitarian Universalist ministers, I officiated the marriage ceremony of six same-sex couples. What follows is the script that I wrote for the beautiful occasion.

OPENING WORDS Rev. Makar

It is written that the greatest of all things—the most wonderful experience in the world—is love. Into your lives has entered a deep and nurturing love, and you have asked us as Unitarian Universalist ministers to help you celebrate and affirm that love by joining you together in marriage.

The ceremony in which we are all now participating is a bold, even revolutionary act. Even as the Supreme Court has recognized the validity and worth of the marriages that we are today celebrating and affirming, many are still openly or covertly hostile to LGBTQ couples who decide to commit their lives to one another. We pray for their hearts. We pray that the same kind of love that brings us here today breaks open their hearts, and brings them to a greater sense of the possibilities of life.

The journey of true equality and justice is ongoing. More work is to be done. But we will not let the continuing need to save the world interfere with our purpose here and now of savoring this amazing, sweet moment.

With Melissa Etheridge, we say today:

Mother, tell your children
Be quick, you must be strong
Life is full of wonder
Love is never wrong
Remember how they taught you
How much of it was fear
Refuse to hand it down
The legacy stops here

Let us prepare our spirits for rejoicing! Let us do that with bubbles, and I’m going to ask the LGBTQ folks among us to blow some bubbles…. Just a little bit—-just a preview of the BIG bubble blast waiting for us at the end of the service, when we’ll all get to it…

[bubbles]

We give thanks for all those who have shared love and wisdom with us, and have renewed our faith in the power of love, which holds us and nurtures us and makes us one in spite of time, death, and the space between the stars.

We light this chalice with reverence for that spirit of love and wholeness.

CHALICE LIGHTING

Chalice to be lit by Joetta Prost and Kathy Shell

PRAYER Rev. Taddeo

Let us pray.

Spirit of Life, God of Love….

We pray for the couples in this room,
those whose marriage vows made elsewhere now have national recognition
and those who will be entering into sacred matrimony, in our midst.
May they live according to their promises, each to the other.
May they create a marriage that is filled with joy and tenderness.

Inspire them to enter into the deepest mysteries and wonders of love
and therein create a safe haven in their hearts for each other.
Strengthen them to know the peace
that comes from truly being received
and known and accepted by another.

May their love for each other
enrich them as individuals
and provide a safe and loving environment
for the family they are creating through this union.
We pray that they find the balance and harmony
of their individuality and their shared life.
Guide them and bless them, Beloved,
that they may know that there is nothing more priceless
than the gift of loving one another
as they journey through life side by side.

We also know that they do not love in a vacuum.
Let their love be strong in a world that can at times feel unsafe.
Soften the hearts of those who misunderstand, or lack compassion, or hate.
Be with this nation as it journeys towards greater equality and justice.
Let each of hearing these words find ways to be the change we wish to see….

Spirit of Life, God of Love, we feel your presence in this room, in our hearts.
Bless these couples to be married today.
We also ask for a blessing of renewal and devotion
for those already married or in committed relationships.
May we comfort each other with our love today and every day.

God bless us all.

Amen….

REMEMBRANCES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Rev. Teague

At this time, we honor the memory of all those leaders and heroes
who have made moments like this possible.
Heros like Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon
Harvey Milk
Sylvia Rivera
Bayard Rustin
Harry Hay—
Heros of the larger movement in quest of equality and justice
like the 200 courageous same-sex couples and their families – the plaintiffs in cases all over the country – who stood up for marriage equality and played a defining role in the historic Supreme Court decision on the freedom to marry.

We take a moment of silence now in honor of them….

[pause]

We also take this moment to remember and honor
The heros we have known close at hand,
Family and friends who have nurtured us
And helped bring us to this moment in time…
We take another moment of silence to honor them…

[pause]

These are the ones who have taught us how to love.
These are the ones who have planted a seed of courage, and hope, and faith.
We go forward in our lives with gratitude.

RESPONSIVE READING Rev. Keller

Minister: And now, please join me for the responsive reading in your order of service.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.

Congregation: And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and knowledge, and if I have faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.

Minister: If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Congregation: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in wrong doing, but rejoices in the truth.

Minister: It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Prophecies will come to an end. Tongues will cease. Knowledge will come to an end. We know in part, we prophesy in part. But when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

Congregation: When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child;

Minister: When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. Now, we see in a mirror, in a riddle.

Congregation: Then we will see face to face. Now I know in part. Then I will know fully.

Minister: Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love.

HYMN

“Standing on the Side of Love”

READING Rev. Davis

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has written:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.

It is so ordered.

It is so ordered, and therefore–we are here celebrating!

MUSIC

HOMILY Rev. Makar

Love is not some accident we fall into.
If we learn to grow in love, then there is the possibility
that our tomorrows will be even more joyous and more life-nourishing and inspiring.
Love has the capacity for that magic.
Perhaps only love has such capacity.

We are saying YES to love today, and as we do so,
we listen carefully to the wisdom of the Bible writer
who spoke about gifts of the spirit
in our responsive reading from a moment ago.
Faith, hope, and love.

Marriage is indeed an act of FAITH.
To enter into union with another requires trust and confidence,
in yourself, and in your beloved.
The risk is that of vulnerability.
The risk is letting the other glimpse you in your humanity.
There is no guarantee that being married will make your lives easier;
marriage is often very complicated,
and being married requires that you accept significant responsibilities.
There is no guarantee that marriage will make your lives happier;
when you open your heart to trust and love,
worries and sorrows may come in through the same door.

This is why the commitment to marriage must also be made in HOPE.
Hope is a great gift, if you don’t get it mixed up with romantic wishful thinking.
Hope has nothing to do with the romantic assumption
that once you are married, the two of you will live happily ever after.
A wise married couple once said:
“Marriage does not work automatically at all, it has to be learned.
Just as it is difficult to be civilized,
so it is difficult to be married.” (Muriel and A. Powell Davies)
And the poet Ranier Maria Rilke once wrote to a friend:
“To love is good too–love being difficult.
For one human being to love another,
that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks,
the ultimate, the last test and proof,
the work for which all other is but preparation.“

Hope is what encourages us to cheerfully take up this most difficult path,
because we believe in where it’s going,
and perhaps, because we value the challenge and the joy of the journey as well.
IF all the couples here today believe that life is inherently good,
that we experience life more deeply and fully
when we can share our experience and understanding of life
with a loved and trusted partner,
THEN it makes sense to open your heart and soul to another in love and trust.
You are carrying the kind of hope that can sustain a marriage.

LOVE is the third, and the greatest gift, that the Bible writer recommends to us.
The kind of love which sustains a marriage
is a way of purposefully responding to, and believing in,
the inherent and sacred goodness that is woven through all of life,
that is kindled in each human spirit,
and which you make accessible to your partner in marriage.
Such love is rooted in mutual respect,
for each of you is created in the image of God.

As spouses, you will each have, and will continue to have, different ideas,
different hopes, and interests, different strengths, different needs.
You are each enriched, not diminished, by the different insights and perspectives
you bring to one another.
The blessing and strength of your marriage will unfold
as you grow in understanding of yourselves and of each other,
so that you can nourish each other’s true growing.
Allow your love to stimulate and challenge each other
and enlarge each other’s world.
Attend to those things that nourish and sustain your love for one another
and for life.

So may your lives, ever nourished by the gifts of faith, hope, and love,
be a blessing to all others whose lives touch yours.

DECLARATION OF SUPPORT Rev. Thickstun

I ask those of you who have gathered here today this: do you who know and care for these couples give them your blessings now as they enter into marriage, and do you promise (in the days and years ahead) to give them your deepest love, understanding, and support during both good times and bad?

If so, say “We do.”

(Congregation responds in unison)

READING Rev. Rogers

A reading from Rabindranath Tagore:

It is for the union of you and me
that there is light in the sky.
It is for the union of you and me
that the earth is decked in dusky green.

It is for the union of you and me
that night sits motionless with the world in her
arms;
dawn appears opening the eastern door
with sweet murmurs in her voice.

The boat of hope sails along on the currents of
eternity towards that union,
flowers of the ages are being gathered together
for its welcoming ritual.

It is for the union of you and me
that this heart of mine, in the garb of a bride,
has proceeded from birth to birth
upon the surface of this ever-turning world
to choose the Beloved.

MARRIAGE VOWS Rev. Makar

And now it is time to say the vows that will affirm your love. Please take each other’s hands and face each other. Listen carefully, listen soulfully, and in the end, I will ask each of you separately to affirm your vows with a single YES.

Will you have each other as equal partners?
Will you share with each other your love, honesty, caring and trust?
Will you keep each other warm and close with affection and kindness?
Will you seek to make your marriage a committed relationship in which you can each grow independently at the same time you grow together as a couple and share the many adventures of life?
Will you promise each other your heart, your mind, and your body to honor and cherish each other from this day forward?

If so, then will one partner in the couple say clearly and proudly YES

And now, will the other partner in the couple say clearly and proudly YES

RINGS/TOKENS Rev. Makar

At this time, all our couples are invited to come down to the floor. A minister will join you as you exchange rings or tokens of love and affection with each other. the minister will also offer up a private blessing on your union.

DECLARATION Rev. Makar

And now, will the congregation stand:

By the authority of Life Itself
and the state of Georgia
and the Constitution of the United States of America

By the authority of the day given to us to live
and the cycle of seasons through which our lives must pass

By the authority of the love of friends that honors and supports this loving relationship and the hurts and pain through which your lives have passed alone,

By the authority of the long and sometimes lonely struggle of our people for the freedom to love,
and by the delight and hope you have found in each other

We declare you to be married and proclaim it holy and good.
In the eyes of God and of humanity.
let all respect the threshold of your home.

Let the congregation say, AMEN.

Please be seated…

BENEDICTION Rev. Makar

“Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter to the other. Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth to the other. Now there is no loneliness for you, now there is no more loneliness. Now you are two persons but there is only one life before you. Go now to your dwelling place, to enter into the days of your togetherness, and may your days be good and long upon the earth.” (Apache prayer)

KISS AND PRESENTATION Rev. Makar

May the couples now seal their unions with a kiss.

Let me read aloud the names of the couple, say final words, and then I will ask you to raise the roof with shouts of joy and cheer—and also EVERYONE blow your bubbles….

[Names]

Family and friends, we present to you the Spirit of Love and Wholeness. It shines in the faces and forms of these children of God you see before you.

[Blow bubbles and invite the congregation to join along!]

RECESSIONAL

So, it’s the eleven o’clock hour, and I’m at home. Late rising, some work around the house and — dang! after ten o’clock and unshowered, so I decided to stay home from church. And I wanted to go and intended to go. I feel bad because, for a number of reasons including travel, I’ve not been able to attend worship for the last few weeks. But I also don’t want to rush, and I have more work around the house I’d have to put off until two o’clock or so.

Not Attending Worship is high on the classic Bad Church Member list, so perhaps that’s what I’m feeling. But rather than ignoring the feeling, I’d rather own up to the feeling as a (probably) misplaced expectation.

Church life requires a measure of discipine, but using old rules and expectations will stifle those who haven’t committed to the discipline of “just knowing how to behave” in church, including attending, volunteering, giving and all the rest.

I’m thinking through “what is” and “what must be.” And how I’ll make it to church next Sunday.

Still not quite ready to resume blogging, so combing through my “I should post this” pile.

This is the Universalist denominational logo, undated here, but probably from the 1950s. Not used for many years, but I’ve seen it on signs, pamphlets and here on letterhead — always this shade of blue, too.

If we continue to believe that the goals of the modern industrial system and the public policies that serve these goals are coordinate with all of life, then all of our lives will be in the service of these goals. What is consistent with these ends we shall have or be allowed; all else will be off limits. Our wants will be managed in accordance with the needs of the industrial system; the state in civilian and military policy will be heavily influenced by industrial need; education will be adapted to similar need; the discipline required by the industrial system will be the conventional morality of the community. All other goals will be made to seem precious, unimportant, or antisocial. We will be the mentally indentured servants of the industrial system. This will be the benign servitude of the household retainer who is taught to love her master and mistress and believe that their interests are her own. But it is not exactly freedom.

If, on the other hand, the industrial system is seen to be only a part, and as we grow wealthier, a diminishing part, of life, there is much less occasion for concern. Aesthetic goals will have pride of place; those who serve them will not be subject to the goals of the industrial system; the industrial system itself will be subordinate to the claims of larger dimensions of life. Intellectual preparation will be for its own sake and not merely for the better service to the industrial system. Men will not be entrapped by the belief that apart from the production of goods and income by progressively more advanced technical methods there is nothing much in life...

The need is to subordinate economic to aesthetic goals —to sacrifice efficiency, including the efficiency of organization, to beauty. Nor must there be any nonsense about beauty paying in the long run. It need not pay...

Peter Boullata wrote an amazing post a few days ago about the families of the Charleston 9 and their act of forgiving the racist terrorist who killed their family members. Go. Read it. Now. But I’ve been very struck by how the conversation around taking down the Confederate flag and how South Carolina legislators are connecting these things.

Time and again, some South Carolina legislator (and the Governor) would say that the impetus for them to take the flag down and off of the capitol grounds was the families forgiving the racist terrorist; not the deaths of the Charleston 9 themselves (lest we forget that Rev. Pinckney’s casket had to process under that flag twice, and it–unlike the American and South Carolina state flags–was never lowered to half-staff) .

It makes me wonder what would have happened if the families of the Charleston 9 hadn’t forgiven the racist terrorist as fast as they did. Would the flag be coming down?

Taking down the Confederate flag is NOT the same type of grace that was shown by the families of the Charleston 9. And points to yet another example of African Americans being expected to show an extraordinary amount of compassion over outrageous acts and getting very little in return.

Don’t get me wrong…I am truly glad that the Confederate flag is coming down from the South Carolina capitol grounds. But let’s get this straight; it should have never been there in the first place. It was placed on the capitol dome as an act of defiance during the Civil Rights Movement of the late 1950s and 1960s. So to me this is not an act of grace. Or if it is, it is very cheap grace. And if you listened to the debate in the South Carolina House yesterday, it was gruelling and ugly.

At some point, the U.S. is going to have to recon with slavery the way that Germany has to (and continues to) recon with Nazism. Does it have the ability to do that? I don’t know.

I do know that what happened yesterday (and today) in South Carolina in no way compares to what the families of the Charleston 9 did. And that line of thinking needs to stop.

I delivered this sermon at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Peninsula in August 2012, and the statistics gathered by WordPress tell me that it’s been viewed more than anything else I’ve posted, often as a result of somebody searching the Web for a phrase like “cross in a circle”.  In that time, however, most of the links I had used for examples of flaming chalice symbols have stopped working, and this month the Fellowship is running a competition to create our own symbol, so I’m bringing back this post to show those examples.  (I believe that they’ve been shared on-line for general use, but if that’s not the case, or if I have mis-attributed any of them, please let me know.)

In today’s Unitarian Universalist congregations it’s not hard to find chalices.  They’re lit at the beginning of our Sunday services, just as we did this morning, but we also light chalices to open Religious Education classes, our Fellowship Circle sessions and even our committee meetings, where a chalice-lighting helps to remind us that we are not a social group or a debating club or a political party but a religious community.  You’ll find flaming chalice symbols in print, on websites and made into jewelry.  As shown in the gallery below, you’ll also find them in many different designs: enclosed in a circle or a sunburst; with a stylized flame or a realistic flame or a rainbow-colored flame; made up of letters that spell out a word or including a peace sign, a recycling logo or a question mark; recognizing the importance of reaching out to Unitarian Universalists who serve in our nation’s armed forces.  Not only is the flaming chalice ubiquitous, a widely loved symbol of Unitarian Universalism, but lighting it is the single-most recognized ritual our faith embraces.

Now while the flaming chalice symbol goes back over seventy years, it’s only become a widely accepted part of our congregational life in the last twenty or thirty years.  There were no chalice lightings in Hymns for the Celebration of Life, the 1964 hymn book.  The flaming chalice appeared for the first time on an official Unitarian Universalist Association document only in 1976.  And our current hymn book, Singing the Living Tradition published in 1993, has only nine chalice lightings, but there are many more than that in use today.  So, you can see that in the last couple of decades the flaming chalice has caught on in a really big way!

What’s more, as these various examples show, the chalice symbol is, more often than not, enclosed in some sort of circle, or sometimes two overlapping circles, which are usually taken to represent the coming together of Unitarianism and Universalism.  This morning I’m going to reflect on the origins of these symbols — the chalice from Unitarianism and the circle from Universalism — as well as a third symbol that dropped out along the way.

Many of you have probably heard the story of the flaming chalice, but it’s a good story that bears repeating from time to time.  This is how Unitarian Universalist minister Dan Hotchkiss tells that story:

The chalice and the flame were brought together to make a symbol for Unitarian use by an Austrian artist named Hans Deutsch.  Living in Paris during the 1930s, Deutsch drew political cartoons that were critical of Adolf Hitler, so when the Nazis invaded Paris in 1940, Deutsch abandoned all he had and fled.  That was probably the right move!  He went first to the south of France, and then he went to Spain.  Finally, with an altered passport, Deutsch made it into Portugal, where Lisbon was the only open port remaining in Europe.

In Portugal, Deutsch met the Reverend Charles Joy, commissioner for Europe of the newly founded Unitarian Service Committee.  The Service Committee — a forerunner of today’s Unitarian Universalist Service Committee — had been founded in Boston to assist Eastern Europeans, including Unitarians and Jews, as well as artists, intellectuals and dissidents, to escape Nazi persecution.  From his headquarters in Lisbon, Joy oversaw a secret network of couriers and agents, helping to provide identification papers and travel documents that would allow refugees to escape to freedom.

Now Deutsch was most impressed with the work of the Unitarian Service Committee and was soon working for Joy.  Deutsch had never seen a Unitarian — or, for that matter, a Universalist — church, but what he had seen was faith in action, with Joy and the other members of the Service Committee willing to risk everything for others in a time of urgent need.  Deutsch wanted to help.

In 1940, the Unitarian Service Committee was an unknown organization.  That put them at a disadvantage in the war-time environment, when establishing trust across barriers of language, nationality and faith would mean life instead of death. So Joy asked Deutsch to create a symbol for the papers issued by the Service Committee, to make them look official, dignifying them while also symbolizing the spirit of the work.  Joy wrote, “When a document may keep a man out of jail, give him standing with governments and police, it is important that it look important.”

Thus, Hans Deutsch made his lasting contribution to the Unitarian Service Committee and, as it turned out, to Unitarian Universalism.  With pencil and ink, he drew a chalice with a flame rising from it.  The design was made into a seal for papers and a badge for agents moving refugees to freedom.  Reporting to Boston, Charles Joy wrote:

“It represents, as you see, […] the kind of chalice which the Greeks and Romans put on their altars.  The holy oil burning in it is a symbol of helpfulness and sacrifice.  In ancient and medieval art this chalice is frequently found, and the design itself, modernized and stylized though it is, reminds one of the signs seen on the old monastic manuscripts.  This was in the mind of the artist.  The fact, however, that it remotely suggests a cross was not in his mind, but to me this also has its merit.  We do not limit our work to Christians.  Indeed, at the present moment, our work is nine-tenths for the Jews, yet we do stem from the Christian tradition, and the cross does symbolize Christianity and its central theme of sacrificial love.”

Let’s move from the Unitarian side of the story to the Universalist side.

Back in the United States in the 1940s, the Universalist Church of America was struggling with its religious identity.  At stake was whether Universalism was genuinely a Christian denomination or whether it was (or should be) something more, something larger, something truly universal.  In truth, the Universalist Church had struggled with its sense of identity for most of its existence, and had just been denied membership — twice — in the Federal Council of Churches: the council decided that the Universalists were, first, not sufficiently Christian and, second, too much like the Unitarians!

But into the mixture of voices calling, on the one hand, for a stronger Christian witness and, on the other, for a transformation of Universalism to a more truly universal religion, there came a new voice.  It came from a small group of recent graduates of the Crane Theological School at Tufts University, and it proved to be a major force pushing the Universalist Church beyond Christianity.

The graduates took their name from a medieval religious order, the Humiliati.  The name means “the humble ones”, though few people thought the members of this new order were particularly humble!  The group was originally formed so that its members could continue to enjoy the friendship, intellectual stimulation and spiritual growth they had enjoyed as seminarians; they held annual retreats during the 1940s and 50s at which they discussed theology, worship and liturgy.

Committing themselves to the renewal of their denomination as a universalized Universalism, the Humiliati adopted the symbol of a small, off-center cross enclosed by a larger circle.  The circle was intended to represent the all-embracing nature of Universalism; the off-center cross, of course, recognized Universalism’s Christian roots while at the same time implying that Christianity was no longer necessarily central to the faith.  When the symbol first appeared at the ordination of one of the Humiliati, it created something of a stir; then another member of the group caused a bigger dispute when he insisted on being ordained to the Universalist ministry rather than to the Christian ministry.  Although the Humiliati’s theological and liturgical innovations were by no means widely embraced, the idea of a universalized Universalism took hold and the symbol of the circle enclosing an off-center cross came to be widely used in Universalist churches.

It was at about the same time in the 1940s and 50s that the Universalist Church of America and the American Unitarian Association were once again talking about the possibility of combining their organizations and resources, a conversation that had been going, off and on, for almost a century.  The Unitarians had worked through the humanist–theist controversy of the 1920s and 30s and now, thanks in no small part to the Humiliati, the Universalists were moving beyond an exclusively Christian orientation.  The talks finally culminated, of course, in the legal consolidation that in 1961 formed the Unitarian Universalist Association.  And, a couple of years after that, the Unitarian Service Committee and the Universalist Service Committee merged to form the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, which continued to use the flaming chalice in its documents.

Like our faith itself, the flaming chalice symbol has evolved over time.  Some years ago the UUA changed its logo to convey the idea of illumination emanating from the flame; more recently the UUSC changed its logo to hold the chalice in a pair of hands.  More often, the placing of the Unitarian chalice within the Universalist circle is a starting point for all sorts of  variations in design.  As Charles Joy noted almost seventy years ago, the shape of the chalice can be suggestive of a cross, but in some designs the cross is more explicit.  One painting, commissioned by First Unitarian in Albuquerque from New Mexico artist Robert P. Hooton, features a cross within a circle to the left and a chalice within a circle to the right.  Here together are the three symbols we’ve been considering: the chalice, the circle and the cross.

sketch for painting by Robert P. Hooton

The flaming chalice combines two archetypes — a drinking cup and a flame — that have been used in religious symbolism for as long as there’s been such a thing as religion.  From the wine cup of the Passover seder to the Holy Grail of medieval legend, the chalice represents community, sustenance, fertility.  The flame is an even older symbol, of course, and soon we’ll be in that season featuring a number of holidays involving candles, in Advent wreaths, Hanukkah menorahs and Kwanzaa kinaras, where the flames represent hope, courage, witness.  With this wealth of meanings, it’s perhaps not surprising that the flaming chalice caught on within Unitarian Universalism and that it’s become so near and dear to our hearts.

Now there’s a joke that tells of a Catholic church, a Baptist church and a Unitarian Universalist church next to one another; one stormy night there’s a lightning strike and soon all three churches are on fire.  Some of the more dedicated church members risk their lives to save the church’s most prized possessions: the Catholics run in to save the communion host; the Baptists run in to save the Bible; and the UUs run in to save the coffee pot!  But the very next thing most UUs would try to save would be the chalice.

(Our own chalice has its own story, of course, which also involves a church fire, but that’s a story for another time.)

For me, the flaming chalice represents the relationship between the individual and the community.  The community holds the individual just as the chalice holds the flame, providing it with a home, a place to be, sheltering it from the winds that would extinguish it.  The individual, on the other hand, illuminates the community, just as the flame illuminates the chalice, shining its light, sharing its wisdom and warming with its love.  Last Sunday I introduced the word “autokoenony” from the Greek meaning “the self engaged in a group whose members have something in common”, and that describes what the flaming chalice represents to me.  In this interpretation, in fact, it teach us two simple lessons: without the community, there would be no place for the individual to stand; and without the individual, the community would go without illumination.

Another archetypal symbol is the circle.  With no beginning and no end, a circle goes on forever.  What most of us think of as the traditional wedding ceremony includes the custom of exchanging rings as a sign of our hope — even in this day and age — for everlasting love.  And yet a ring wouldn’t be a ring were it not for the empty space in the middle through which one’s finger passes, and a circle wouldn’t be a circle without the empty space in the center.  If the circle, in the symbology we inherit from the Universalists, represents the universe of existence, then perhaps the empty space in the center represents the mystery at the heart of existence.  We place our flaming chalice within the circle, but it doesn’t fill the circle: there’s still plenty of room for mystery.

design based on the Rehnberg Memorial Window at the UU Church of Rockford

And then we come to the cross.  Many Unitarian Universalists have some difficulty accepting the cross as one of our religious symbols, I’ve noticed.  Including it as just another symbol along with the Jewish Star of David, the Hindu Om, the Taoist Yin–Yang, and so on is okay, but most Unitarian Universalists would rather not focus on the cross, if we can help it.  We might object to it on the grounds that the cross was, after all, an instrument of torture and death used by the Roman Empire against those it particularly despised.  We might object to it on the grounds that the cross became a symbol justifying colonialism and oppression by Europeans against Africans and Native Americans.  We might object to it on the grounds that the whole emphasis on the crucifixion came, in any case, from the Apostle Paul and doesn’t really have anything to do with the ethical teachings of the human Jesus.

Well, those are valid objections.  However, there are two reasons why we ought to be okay with the cross as a symbol representing Christianity at its best.  First, both Unitarianism and Universalism evolved out of “traditional” Christianity.  As the Unitarian Universalist Association’s own Commission on Appraisal made clear:

“Unitarian Universalism is rooted in two religious heritages.  Both are grounded on thousands of years of Jewish and Christian teachings, traditions and experiences.  The Unitarian heritage has affirmed that we need not think alike to love alike and that God is one.  The Universalist heritage has preached not hell but hope and courage, and the kindness and love of God.  Contemporary Unitarian Universalists have reaped the benefits of a legacy of prophetic words and deeds.”

Second, given that heritage, we have a right to own the meanings of that heritage, to speak in favor of religion based on love rather than fear, to use the cross as a symbol for our purposes rather than let it be used against us.  We may not subscribe to the theology it is usually taken to represent and we may object to its history as a tool of conquest and subjugation, but strip away the distinctly un-Christian abuses of the cross and trim back the elaborate mystification surrounding it, and what we find is a simple call to love and to be loved.

The chalice, the circle and the cross, in fact, are reminders to us of those who went before us in our faith.  Let us remember those who were willing to risk everything, even their lives, to help others escape persecution.  Let us remember those who advocated for a larger faith, embracing freedom of belief and service to the whole.  And let us affirm our heritage in oneness and wholeness, carrying forward the symbols of our faith as we fill our lives with hope and courage, kindness and love.

So may it be.

I rely on two indicators for weather: my sinuses and Forecast.io.

When I’m already congested, a strong weather front will give me a blinding headache. (Like today.) But that’s not helpful for you, or Daisy, our bichon frise, who hates having a potty walk in the rain.

I recommend Forecast.io for amazingly accurate hyper-local, minute-by-minute weather forecasts, which sometimes (alas, not quite, today) gives the dog enough time outside to do what she must.

In his keynote address during Ministry Days Rob Hardies said (I’m paraphrasing) “I want Unitarian Universalism to be as open to my son as it was to me.” [if the UUMA is smart, they would put that keynote up on YouTube]

I didn’t get the chance to talk to Rob afterwards, and what I would have told him would have been very much Debbie Downer-ish.

I think it’s time for Unitarian Universalism (and Unitarian Universalists) to face a uncomfortable truth. That, unlike with LGBTQ issues, UUism and UUs have no sense of urgency about race issues because, for the most part, black (and brown) children are not a part of most UU families. Most UUs don’t live in non-majority white communities and the number of truly integrated UU congregations can be counted on–maybe–both hands. [and please, no comments that I’m being hard on UUs. I did not say that UUs think that racial justice is not important, I said there was no sense of urgency about it; mainly because in the lives of most UUs racial justice is an esoteric exercise.]

I’ve been ruminating over President Obama’s eulogy of Rev. Clementa Pinckney since I heard it. Mostly I’ve been thinking about the part where he talks about the black church and what it does for black children. And it connects to something another UU minister said about his black son while at GA. He said that he wouldn’t want his son to come back to a UU church because it’s not safe for him (not exact words, but you get the point).

Can UU churches be safe places for black (and brown) children when most UU churches are disconnected from the places where most black people live/work/go to school/play? Is there a way to make UU churches more safe for black (and brown) children in the way that UU churches are more safe for LGBTQ children?

When the accused killer of the nine martyrs of Emanuel AME in Charleston, South Carolina was arraigned in court, much was made in the mainstream media about how the loved ones of the murdered forgave him. This forgiveness was seen as marvelous, simplistic, premature, Christian—it garnered attention and commentary.

This narrative of African Americans forgiving a white murderer and terrorist fits neatly—too neatly—into a larger framework that diminishes the injustices inflicted upon Black people. Somehow the misdeeds of white people magically evaporate in the face of the wonderful “spiritual” and “soulful” presence of African Americans.

This isn’t right. And I mean by this not only that this narrative, and these assumptions, are morally wrong, they are also incorrect.

In confronting him, the loved ones of the slain worshippers did indeed forgive him and in the same breath told him this was his opportunity to repent.

It is this challenge to repent that deserves to be widely disseminated and discussed.

Demonstrating the powerful, all-inclusive mercy of God is the fruit of profound faith and spiritual discipline. God’s unrelenting and universal love is a core message of the Christian life as I understand it (steeped as I am in the Universalist witness).

The community of survivors that held and holds that killer in prayer, offering him forgiveness, demonstrating for him the nature of God, bathing him in the light of divine love are not weak. They are not meek and mild.

Forgiving him does not mean exonerating him. It doesn’t mean declaring him “not guilty.” It doesn’t mean not holding him accountable.

The point of bringing that murderer the light of God is to illuminate the evil he has done.

To make him see it. To make him acknowledge it. God’s light illumines the space where evil lurks, showing it to you. Making it visible to you. Being compelled to see what you have done—and to see it through the eyes of the ones who bear the consequences of what you did—is meant to awaken remorse, contrition, confession.

People have a tendency to cover up our mistakes, our missteps, our—let’s just say it—our sins through denial. We deny we have done anything wrong, or we deny that our actions were wrong, finding ways to justify or rationalize.

The unrelenting soul-force of those who would hold us accountable blow that all away. Look at what you’ve done, they say, see it here in the light. Acknowledge it.

And repent.

The humane response to being shown clearly the nature of our wrongs is to regret them, be sorry for them, to repent of them and ask forgiveness to those who we wronged.

The German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonheoffer speaks of “cheap grace,” like being given the “get out of jail free” card easily and quickly. Cheap grace is, in his words, “the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance.”

I don’t think what we’re seeing here is cheap grace. The Christian witness of forgiveness manifested by the loved ones of the nine martyrs of Charleston was one that required repentance.

And some kind of repentance is required if we are to ever have racial justice.

I have so few answers on what this might look like for all of us trying to live through the continuing legacy of slavery and colonialism on this continent. Except that the evil that white people have inflicted on Black and Native peoples will not magically evaporate.

And that without repentance, without the public confession of wrongdoing and without official apology, without a thorough examination of conscience by every person who benefits in the racial system of advantage and disadvantage, there can be no reconciliation, no justice, no peace.

I’ve heard babies cryin’.  I watch them grow.  They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know.  And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

I’ve only written one blog post since before General Assembly, and is was of a “what do you think” format. It’s been for a number of reasons:

1. There’s been lots of work at work, and sometimes writing this blog seems like added work.
2. This is my family’s season for birthday and anniversary celebrations, plus a family wedding this year. That’s more fun that blogging.
3. I’ve spent the last month “conquering” (their term) the Duolingo Esperanto course. Mi skribas kaj legas Esperante pli bona ol unu monato antaŭ, and the gamified process was quite fun and rewarding. I even got a certificate.
4. I didn’t have much to add to the discussion of the vital issues of the day, except that, at some points, I thought that writers were lost in delusional or self-serving arguments. And I decided to keep my own counsel.
5. Oh, and I think that Unitarian Universalism has a grim future — as bad or worse as the mainline — and that forward progress is likely to look like a salvage and reconstruction exercise.

So it’s a bit hard to get back into blogging.

Even though I didn’t go to General Assembly this year — there was a very nice family wedding the same time — I tried to keep up with the news as best I can.

And saying that, I’m glad I didn’t go. There seemed to be a lot of feeling there — and camaraderie — but (as I’ve suggested elsewhere) I can meet my friends elsewhere (online included) and the amount of forward motion the UUA generates doesn’t seem to justify the effort of GA. (Indeed, a lot of the work of the UUA seems to be solving problems of our own creation.) That and there seemed to be a good bit of grievance cultivating there. Enough.

But if you were there, perhaps you have other experiences. Better ones, worse ones. And perhaps you have a special way of actually participating in General Assembly. (I think the attend-every-possible-session approach is certain death.)

Feel free to share your thoughts.

And as of now, I do plan on attending the General Assembly in Columbus, Ohio next year.

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one” — John Lennon, lyrics to Imagine I’ve been quieter here, in this...

The post Only One appeared first on Christine Organ.

• Anything that smelled good to her would be hers. None of this waiting for someone to drop it.
• Speaking of smells, humans would have more appreciation for the unique cocktail of a dog's fur, and all that it takes to distill that fragrance.
• The entire world would be a dog park.
• Rainy days would be snuggle sleeping days. Required by law.
• Humans would have extra arms just for petting the dog. And use the other arms for petting, too.
• The vet would get down on the floor, instead of insisting on dogs coming up on the cold metal table.
• There would be a bed, couch, or fancy dog pillow in every sunbeam.
• Cheese and peanut butter would be available on their own, not just as pill camouflage.
• I would never blog sprawled across the bed. It takes up too much of her real estate.

Once upon a time there was a famous writer named Antoine de Saint-Exupery whose country was being devoured by war and he fled to America, and there he felt helpless and lonely. Besides this, he was struggling with his marriage and also with the memory of the near-fatal crash of his airplane years earlier in the Sahara desert. A friend of his noticed his unhappiness and the agitation that seemed to possess him entirely, and she suggested that perhaps he consider writing a children’s story. Maybe that would help.

And so:

Once upon a time there was a sweet little person—a little prince—who lived far away from our planet, on an asteroid. There, in the depths of space, he was very clear about several things. One of them was the quiet pleasure of looking at the sunset, which, given the size of his asteroid, he could enjoy as many times as he liked.

He was clear on that, and he was also very clear on the need for what might be called planetary hygiene. “They sleep deep in the heart of the earth’s darkness,” the little prince says of seeds, “and some one among them is seized with the desire to awaken. Then this little seed will stretch itself and begin—timidly at first—to push a charming little sprig inoffensively upward toward the sun. If it is only a sprout of radish or the sprig of a rose-bush, one would let it grow wherever it might wish. But when it is a bad plant, one must destroy it as soon as possible, the very first instant that one recognizes it.” Note the tone of urgency here. It’s because the bad plant he’s talking about is the baobab, which “is something you will never, never be able to get rid of if you attend to it too late. It spreads over the entire planet. It bores clear through it with its roots. And if the planet is too small, and the baobabs are too many, they split it in pieces…” It is “a question of discipline,” he says. “When you’ve finished your own toilet in the morning, then it is time to attend to the toilet of your planet, just so, with the greatest care.”

No wonder the issue of the sheep was so pressing to him. Sheep eat the shoots, sheep are part of the discipline….

The little prince was very clear on some things. But on other things: not so much. One day a seed sprouted and it was unlike any other small sprouts on his planet. At first he worried that perhaps it was a new kind of baobab, but it wasn’t. She was a rose. She was stunning in her loveliness. “Oh, how beautiful you are,” breathed the little prince when she bloomed. Her fragrance perfumed his entire planet. But she did not feel solid in herself. She did not feel her beauty as an intrinsic part of her. That insecurity led her to play games with the little prince, and it frustrated him. It disturbed him. He did not know how to love her, even though he wanted to, and he was so unhappy….

That is why he left his asteroid. That is what spurred him on to take a journey into the unknown…

And the first leg of it involved encounter after encounter with people he ended up not liking. At all.

One was a narcissist. Everybody else became an extension of his own self-centered personal drama. It was outrageous to him if people did things that he didn’t like, because how dare they spoil his plans? That other people have an actual independent existence—he just couldn’t imagine that.

Then there was the businessman, and the little prince disturbed his furious counting because naturally the little prince wanted to know exactly what it was he was counting so furiously but the businessman didn’t care, all that mattered was owning it, whatever it was, and knowing how many.

Then there was the lamplighter, whose life was reduced to utter absurdity because the orders he was given years before no longer made any sense to his radically changed world but he refused to deviate from them because “orders are orders.” It did not matter how miserable the orders made things. “Orders are orders.”

The little prince met these people and others as well, and every time, he went away saying something along the lines of “The grown-ups are very strange,” or “They always need to have things explained,” or “They are like that. One must not hold it against them.”

What this leg of the little prince’s journey did for him is add greater clarity to his life. He was already very clear about the value of sunsets and planetary hygiene, and now he was clear on the kind of person he couldn’t admire, which is the person whose life has been utterly taken over by some kind of narrow purpose. Something has taken firm root inside them, and what was once a whole round personality has been split into pieces and now compulsively mistakes what is inessential for what is essential.

They have become less-than-human, inhumane.

All of this is trying to shine a light into the shadow places of our lives. We know people who act exactly like narcissists and businessmen and lamplighters. We have been to their asteroids too.

There is a reason why The Little Prince story is the 3rd most-translated book in the world and one of the best-selling books ever published….

**
**

When The Little Prince was published in 1943, people didn’t get it. They were flummoxed. It was a children’s story they were expecting, which for them meant something sweet and simple addressed to a certain chronological age. Yet here was a story that spoke to the youth in adults, even as it spoke to children. It was multilayered and nuanced and disturbing at times and full of the struggle and pain Saint-Exupery was feeling….

Perhaps this is exactly parallel to the opening discussion of the book, where the narrator speaks of his Drawing Number One, which was that of a boa constrictor which had swallowed an elephant whole, and he’d show the picture to grown-ups, and all they’d see is what they were prepared to see, which was a picture of a big hat that tended to flop to one side.

The Little Prince is like Drawing Number One. The essential stuff is invisible to the naked eye. You have to read it with your imagination and your heart.

For example, the baobab seeds. “Children,” says the book, “Watch out for the baobabs!” “It spreads over the entire planet. It bores clear through it with its roots.”

Concern about this is what motivates the little prince’s very first words: “If you please—draw me a sheep…” Sheep eat the baobab shoots.

But why this intense and unrelenting insistence on planetary hygiene?

It’s Saint-Exupery’s way of touching on the great tragedy of his era. Nazism sweeping over Europe, and his beloved country of France falling so quickly in the form of the Vichy state and the Occupation. This sort of this happens because people are of a certain type. They are strange grown-ups. They are narcissists, or businessmen, or lamplighters. They have lost something essential that would cause them to resist evil. Instead, they don’t blink an eye at it. Something tragic has happened to their minds and hearts. A baobab seed has sprouted there. Not so much a physical seed as a spiritual one.

Consider Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi who was responsible for transporting millions of Jews to the death camps. He was a major organizer of the Holocaust and yet he was not fanatical, he was not bloodthirsty, his was not mentally ill, anti-Semitism was not a choice but just something that he grew up with and carried forward as a part of his heritage. He had little more on his mind than following orders. Orders are orders. Making the trains run on time was his priority and it didn’t matter whose lives he made miserable.

What a strange grown-up. Remarkably similar to the lamplighter character…

He didn’t pluck out the baobab seed sprouting in his heart. There was no sheep to chew it up. The sweet child he had once been: gone.

I think it can be safely said: every character that the little prince encounters on an asteroid can be seen as someone whose heart has been ripped apart.

Now, a quick side note: the final version of The Little Prince is miniscule compared to the initial draft which was hundreds of pages. If you go to the Morgan Library in Manhattan, you can see how the draft pages are covered with fine lines of handwriting, and much has been crossed out. There are pages where only a single sentence stands out because every other word has been scribbled through. Most of what he wrote never made the final cut.

When I came to learn this—and specifically, when I came to learn that Saint-Exupery had put many more asteroids and many more strange characters into the draft version of the story than we meet up with in the final, it got me thinking…. There’s a lot of people today that would make perfect asteroid inhabitants whose hearts are ripped up. And we are not so different from the little prince, in the way we might encounter them and then walk away, remarking on how strange the grown-ups are….

For example, the TV news anchor. On his asteroid, we encounter him wearing a shiny suit, sporting a $200 haircut, and he’s lily white. He’s reflecting on the shooting last week at Emanuel A.M.E. Church. “It’s more likely,” he says, “a matter of rising hostility against Christians in this country because of our biblical views. A sick act by someone who was mentally ill. That’s what we really have here. Why are people talking about a hate crime, or even terrorism? That’s crazy liberal talk. Besides,” the TV news anchor says, “no less than the entire Wall Street Journal editorial board agrees. Here’s what they had to say (and the news anchor pulls out the paper and reads): ‘Today the system and philosophy of institutionalized racism identified by Dr. King no longer exists. What causes young men such as Dylann Roof to erupt in homicidal rage is a problem that defies explanation beyond the reality that evil still stalks humanity. It is no small solace that in committing such an act today, he stands alone.’ That’s what the editorial says. It’s the act of a lone shooter, in other words. Not racism. Racism no longer exists.”

That’s the TV news anchor on his asteroid. How strange the grown-ups are.

Or consider yet another asteroid inhabitant. He is a Supreme Court Justice. We encounter him shrouded in his black justice robes, and he’s frowning. His colleagues—the majority of them—just did something that has changed the course of American history. A watershed moment in all our lives. Marriage equality. Love wins. But this is his rebuttal. He says, “[H]uman dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. […] The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.” This is what the Supreme Court Justice says.

And it is astonishing logic. Of course human dignity is innate, but it can most certainly be prevented from flourishing by inequitable policies. People are vulnerable; brutality gets underneath the skin. How possibly can the Supreme Court Justice, whose own personal heritage bears the scars of slavery, demonstrate such thorough tone-deafness towards another people who cry out against oppression?

So many baobab seeds sprouting, even in this time of triumph. So many strange, strange grown-ups.

Even as we celebrate, we must continue the work. Planetary hygiene. Spiritual hygiene.

Where is a sheep when you need one?

**
**

We are now at a critical point in The Little Prince story. He has encountered plenty of strange asteroid characters through his journey, and now he has come to our earth. There, he happens upon a garden full of roses. Listen:

“Who are you?” he demanded, thunderstruck.

“We are roses,” the roses said.

And he was overcome with sadness. His flower had told him that she was the only one of her kind in all the universe. And here were five thousand of them, all alike, in one single garden!

[To himself he said,]”I thought that I was rich, with a flower that was unique in all the world; and all I had was a common rose… that doesn’t make me a very great prince…”

And he lay down in the grass and cried.

This is when the story goes to an even deeper level. Because this is where it’s fully revealed: evidence of a baobab seed growing in the little prince’s own heart, growing towards the point where it would rip apart his capacity to love. Now, we have seen how great a critic he is towards the grown-ups, and why not? It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. So, how completely ironic that Saint-Exupery would reveal the little prince to be a kind of grown-up in his own right. The kind of grown-up who is overwhelmed by all the beautiful people in the world and can’t seem to rest in the love of one beautiful person. Or, to shift metaphors, the kind of grown-up who is homeless because gorgeous house after gorgeous house entrances them and they can’t commit to living in any one in particular.

Do you know grown-ups like this?

Saint-Exupery was certainly one of these, thus his struggles in his marriage. “I was too young to know how to love her,” the little prince says, and Saint-Exupery says it with him, and maybe we do as well. He had not yet learned the lesson that “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

This is the insight that no baobab seed can survive.

And this is the insight that the fox gives him. Sheep merely eat, but foxes are wise. Listen:

“Who are you?” asked the little prince, and added, “You are very pretty to look at.”

“I am a fox,” said the fox.

“Come and play with me,” proposed the little prince. “I am so unhappy.”

“I cannot play with you,” the fox said. “I am not tamed.”

“Ah! Please excuse me,” said the little prince.

But, after some thought, he added:

“What does that mean– ‘tame’?”

“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. It means to establish ties.”

“‘To establish ties’?”

“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world…”

“I am beginning to understand,” said the little prince. “There is a flower… I think that she has tamed me…”

Some time after this, the little prince returns to the garden of roses, and listen to what he has to say:

“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he [says to the roses]. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you– the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.”

The spiritual baobab seed wants to rip apart our capacity for love, but the medicine that the fox gives the little prince is the insight that establishing ties with another being—the taming process—changes everything. A concrete example: the proportion of Americans who reported knowing someone gay increased from 25 percent in 1985 to 74 percent in 2000, and the percentage is even higher today, and you have to know, this has been a major factor in our achievement of marriage equality in this nation. Knowing gay people strongly predicts support for gay rights. Knowing people of a different color and culture predicts support for antiracism and multiculturalism. Friendship makes for justice.

The result of taming and being tamed, at whatever level of life, cannot be overestimated. You know whose you are. There are people you really would die for. “My life is very monotonous,” says the fox:

“I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat…”

Listen to that: “I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat…” Everything serves to remind you of the one who’s tamed you. Whenever I eat pretzel M&M’s or make grilled cheese sandwiches, the presence of a loved one is summoned up for me, and it is wonderful, the sun has indeed come to shine in my life. The whole world carries signs of the ones you love. Monotony is replaced by richness. The whole world becomes personalized with the ones you love. It does not matter that passersby can’t see what you see. The richness of your life is still valid and real. You are seeing with the eyes of the heart. What is essential is invisible to the physical eye.

“Grown-ups are mushrooms,” says the little prince. Thanks to the fox, he will escape this fate. Now he knows what love means. Now he can return to his rose and he can do so with clarity. Now he is completely clear. Now he can go home.

And this is the children’s story that the famous writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote, once upon a time, when his country was being devoured by war, and he was an expat in America, feeling helpless and lonely. This is the story he wrote, once upon a time, to process his near-disastrous airplane crash in the Sahara and the way his marriage was also crashing. He took his friend’s advice. Write a children’s story.

Did it help? Does it help?

I think it did. I think it does.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has written:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.

It is so ordered.

It is so ordered, and therefore–let the “pop-up” weddings commence!

Here are some pictures of me on the Fulton County Courthouse Steps today, June 26, officiating at the wedding of people who love each other and want that love to be consecrated through marriage.

Note: This post was in response to a question posed by the TODAY Parenting Team, in which they asked members to share their summer...

The post The Expectation-Free Summer appeared first on Christine Organ.

I just got a pseudonymous email, informing me of the publication of a new edition of the satirical magazine, The Beacon. A magazine that proves that just because something’s not factual doesn’t mean it’s not true.

Here’s the link. (PDF)

Members from the CCCUUA are meeting with the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship at a dinner during General Assembly in Portland, Oregon.

The dinner will take place at McMenamins, at 5pm on Wednesday, June 24.

See the details at the UUCF Facebook page.

It’s summer – which means kids home from school, trips up to Wisconsin, last minute playdates, visits to the local public pool, and not...

The post Friday Summer Fun: 10 Things You Might Not Know About Me appeared first on Christine Organ.

• Cynthia Hurd was a librarian. Who kills a LIBRARIAN? They are among the very best members of a civilization.
• How come we only seem to call it terrorism when it disrupts the Powers That Be? 
• No, Houston, we don't need another gun show this weekend.

The grief and horror Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church must now be facing is hard to get my head around, but the killings are not themselves inconceivable.

Brother Roger, Oscar Romero, and the “troublesome priest” Thomas Becket were each murdered in worship. When I was in seminary (and just after) there was a spate of church killings. And we can’t forget the shootings at a Unitarian Universalist church in Tennessee, with one fatality two fatalities. Each one was a bit different, all devastating. I remembered not feeling personally safe when alone at church in my last pastorate. But Emanuel lost four ministers, including the senior pastor…

Churches are supposed to be welcoming and outward-facing, but that feeling makes them vulnerable, sometimes to malicious people, sometimes to predators, sometimes to the violent and murderous. It’s a tough balance between mission and safety. For nine people to die… I’ll just have to leave it there for the moment.

What then can we do? First, this is assumes there can do. I’m avoiding online commentaries that suggests that these murders can be addressed by study, or progressive action or better ideas. And I’m double-avoiding any notion that adds a burden to that church, Charleston or the increasingly beleaguered African American community. If you can’t help, take a pass. Words are nice, but contact is better and (since a casserole is impractical) a gift of money is better still. It adds heft to those nice ideas. Lots of gifts big and small reminds us — us Southerners particularly — of the outpouring of gifts to The Temple in Atlanta when it was bombed. (That was a plot point in the film Driving Miss Daisy, in case it sounds familiar.) Gifts of money will cover costs the church will have. Maybe help the survivors. But that’s for the church to decide; I have faith in them.

I got a little, unexpected windfall today. I thought it right to tithe it to Emanuel AME. You can give at their church website; it’s easy to do so.

If you don’t have the money to spare, that’s fine, too. But if all you have are ideas that make things harder, just keep them to yourself.

"They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. They have something to say to every Negro who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream."

Just a check in. And a roll call.

So, who’s going to General Assembly in Portland, Ore.? Who’s following from home? I’ll not be there in person, and I’m not sure how much I can watch: I may need to rely on bloggers and twitterers using #uuaga.

And a request for those who will be on-site: more photos. On Flickr, posted to Twitter or what-have-you. It helps those who can’t be there get a better sense of General Assembly.

The last thing I need is another holiday with its overinflated expectations and endless chores. So when Jackson suggested a new family holiday –...

The post Giving Day and Holidays Gone Awry appeared first on Christine Organ.

There has been some buzz, both associated with the #sustainministry theme and the fear of shortages in the ministry, that there should be some intermediate ministerial status. To which I noted to those within earshot that the Universalists once licensed ministers, and that we could consider doing so again.

There were licensed ministers — holdovers from before consolidation — within my time as a Unitarian Universalist. They even had their own section in the UUA directory, but year by year their numbers declined by death.

In time they were all gone; I don’t know who was the last. The right the UUA reserved (or at least claimed) to recognize such licensed ministers seem equally a dead letter, so it was cleaned out of the bylaws at a General Assembly.

When? More recently than you might think. The year 2000.

I was present at that GA and was both sad at the moment passing and thought that without a prior claim, any church was free to so license ministers. And I still feel this way.

Here’s how the bylaws read, just before the provision was removed, for those who want the details.

effective June 28, 1999
[…]
Section 11.4b
[…]
The Ministerial Fellowship Committee may also with the approval of the Board of Trustees make rules pertaining to the status of, and recognition by the Association of, lay preachers and the granting of licenses to them.

A year later, that was gone. The bylaws effective July 1, 2000.

People have been drawing me back to this blog with questions about their jaw joint disorder (known as TMJ, TMJD, or TMD). I love helping people and physical pain can deplete a person in more ways than one. It is hard to take care of your other needs when you're in pain, too.

Whether physical healthy or not, we also have emotional and spiritual pain. There's no scientific definition of spiritual pain, but it's more than the depression that can be helped by psychologists, psychiatrists, and drugs. It's something deeper that we can't quite put our finger on. Something some people can turn around to being lifted up by their spiritual joy - I think that's what spiritual health is. When the depth of your person is fulfilled, at ease, or even elated is a "health" that would be nice if everyone had as much as possible throughout their lives.

The news and documentaries and other shows tell of so much sadness and religion that does little in this lifetime. I know living a Unitarian Universalist faith doesn't do it for everyone, but I want people to know it's a choice that could help their spiritual health and their emotional health, too.

So, I was reading through the Unitarian Universalist Association Board packet for the June meeting — as one does — and see that All Souls Miami is (alone) scheduled to be voted upon for admission to the UUA.

I’ve never never seen an application go this far and not be accepted, so I’ll offer my confident (if premature) congratulations. I welcome all new members to the UUA of course, but All Souls Miami is special to me because it’s Christian: the first Christian church admitted since Epiphany Church, Fenton, Michigan, joined many years ago and has since disbanded.

So, again, congratulations to All Souls Miami. You can read their application packet here. (PDF)

Also thanks to the formerly emerging Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Austin, Texas, which has dissolved, as reported in the packet.

Dear Maya,

How strange it will seem to my hearers and readers that I am writing a letter to one who can never literally receive it. You died just a little over a year ago.

And yet, you seem very much alive to me. Once you said, “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” But you have always been frank about your changes, across a span of almost 90 years, and I have loved reading about them. So powerful and poignant. How deeply and frequently you’ve moved me to laughter and tears.

I do believe your spirit lives on—I do believe that the death of anyone’s body is best compared to a fatally damaged TV set which can no longer transmit the vital signal anymore, even though the vital signal is still around and in the air. Others in my Beloved Community will see things differently. But one thing we can all agree on is how the influence of your seven autobiographies and books of essays and poetry and plays and movies and TV shows (in addition to everything else!) has been nothing less than part of the world’s endless creation. You’ve set your mark upon us. Your immortality is your influence, and it goes on and on, like starshine.

It has reached straight into my heart, in ways small and large.

Here’s one of the small ways.

In your amazing book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, you remember the Rev. Howard Thomas who was the presiding church elder over an area of Arkansas which included the town you grew up in, Stamps. He’d come to Stamps every three months to stay in your home, and when your paternal grandmother (whom you called Momma because you grew up with her) opened the door to him, first thing he’d do was spread his arms and call out for you and your brother Bailey, saying “Suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” He wanted a hug.

Suffer the little children indeed. You thought he was ugly and fat, and that he “laughed like a hog with the colic.” You thought his arms were awful. You didn’t want a hug. But your Momma made you.

Just like my Baba made me. HIS name was Ivan, and I had no clue what he did or what his purpose was, just that he was a dear friend of the family from way back. He’d always come over when he’d heard that my family had made the long trek from Northern Alberta to spend time in Edmonton to visit. His face was shiny and flabby and his breath smelled like onions and he spoke very haltingly and, strangest of all, his forehead (near the scalp) featured a quarter-sized caved-in part that no one ever mentioned, ever, but it was so obvious something was wrong that I wanted to shout. He’d look at me with his bug eyes and hold out his octopus arms for a hug and I just wanted to run, but Baba made me go to him, sit on his lap, and he would squeeze me and go heh heh heh and I would laugh out of embarrassment and then finally it was over and he’d release me from his tentacles and I booked it out of there, to everyone’s vast amusement.

Adults think children are simpletons, tabula rasa, but Maya, you remind us that it’s completely otherwise. Children have their own thoughts to think, they are already complicated little worlds. And to them, the motives and behaviors of adults can be incomprehensible at times….

But the main point is that you have brought me back to the memory. It feels like something long lost in me has been found, and that feels so good, even if it but a small memory about a particularly weird moment.

On the other hand, you tell stories that find no echo in my own world, and they break my heart wide open….

Many of the stories are about the harshness of Southern life and the experience of blackness as told from the inside, and you were one of the first to ever share like this…

“Another day was over,” you say. “In the soft dark the cotton truck slipped the pickers out and roared out of the yard with a sound like a giant’s fart. The workers stepped around in circles for a few seconds as if they had found themselves unexpectedly in an unfamiliar place. Their minds sagged. In [my Momma’s merchandise store] the men’s faces were the most painful to watch, but I seemed to have no choice. When they tried to smile to carry off their tiredness as if it was nothing, the body [told a different story.] Their shoulders drooped even as they laughed, and when they put their hands on their hips in a show of jauntiness, the palms slipped the thighs as if the pants were waxed. […] The women’s feet had swollen the discarded men’s shoes they wore, and they washed their arms at the well to dislodge dirt and splinters that had accrued to them as part of the day’s pickings. I thought them all hateful to have allowed themselves to be worked like oxen, and even more shameful to try to pretend that things were not as bad as they were.”

You tell this story, and then you tell another. How your Momma, on pain of punishment, had taught you and your brother Bailey to be impeccable in the way you addressed your elders and your betters. Show respect. Don’t bring shame on your parents and your family. But as for what you have called “powhitetrash”: they’d call your Momma by her first name, despite the fact that she owned the very land they lived on! “If there was any justice in the world,” you say in Caged Bird, “God should strike them dumb at once!” But God never did. God just watched, when one time a group of these powhitetrash girls came to your front door and your strong proud Momma was there and they surrounded her with mocking laughter and tongues stuck out and crossed eyes and all your Momma did was hum church hymns, never looked at those girls, just kept humming tunes to Jesus. You were watching it all from inside the house, and you say, “I wanted to throw a handful of black pepper in their faces, to throw lye on them, to scream that they were dirty, scummy peckerwoods, but I knew I was as clearly imprisoned behind the scene as the actors outside were confined to their roles.”

You tell these stories, Maya, that break my heart wide open.

And this one too, which is not so much about Black Southern life as it is about the kind of personal tragedy that could happen to anyone, Black or white, poor or rich.

It happened when you were eight years old. Your biological mother, who had sent you to live with your grandmother, wanted you back. So you went to live with her in St. Louis, but it lasted only a short time because you were raped by your mom’s boyfriend and, when word got out, he was killed. “I thought I had caused his death,” you say, “because I told his name to the family. Out of guilt, I stopped talking to everyone except Bailey. I decided that my voice was so powerful that it could kill people, but it could not harm my brother because we loved each other so much.”

You stayed mute for almost five years.

Maya, Maya.

Several years ago, one of my colleagues (Rev. Wayne Robinson) was lucky enough to have met you at a writer’s conference in Santa Barbara. He says you were a powerful presence. Six feet tall, strong deep voice, a force to be reckoned with. There at the conference, you were sharing some of the same stories I’m bringing up here, stories of abuse, poverty, racism and sexism. When you finished, you opened the floor for questions and my colleague asked, “Ms. Angelou, how did you go through all of that without becoming bitter and angry?” And you answered, “Oh young man, you’ve confused two very different things. I’m still angry—very angry—at the kind of things that happened to me and are still happening to too many others. But my anger is part of the drive I have to change things. But I’m not bitter, for bitterness is corrosive. Bitterness doesn’t motivate you to try to do something to change the wrong. It causes you to sit and stew, and let the bitterness eat away at your soul. I’m not bitter,” you said. “But I’m angry, yes.”

“My mission in life,” you have said, “is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

And then in a poem, you sing,

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Maya, how did you learn to be phenomenal like this? When the harshness of your life constantly threatened to crush you, what gave you the reach in your arms, the span of your step, the curl of your lips?

Tell me about the changes that made you into a butterfly….

Perhaps we are back to the ancient nature vs. nurture question. How much of your resilience is something you were simply born with, and how much of it came from aspects of your environment… Definitely in Caged Bird you make the Ubuntu principle plain, that “I am because we are.”

Oh, you could have grown so bitter, but here’s something your grandmother would do for you, at least twice a year. She would see a whiner, a complainer come down the hill. And she would call you in to the store. She’d say, “Sister, Sister, come out here.” The man or woman would come into the store, and my grandmother would ask, “How you feel today?” “Ah, Sister Henderson, I tell you I just hate the winter. It makes my face crack and my shins burn.” And Momma’d just say, “Uh-huh,” and then look at you. And as soon as the person would leave, your grandmother would say, “Sister, come here.” You’d stand right in front of her. She’d say, “There are people all over the world who went to sleep last night who did not wake again. Their beds have become their cooling boards, their blankets have become their winding sheets. They would give anything for just five minutes of what she was complaining about.”

Maya, you could have grown so bitter. But people like your Momma didn’t want your soul to get lost. You were a phenomenal woman because they were phenomenal for you.

Same goes for your biological mom. Now, you would agree heartily she was a terrible mother for young children. She had abandoned you and your brother—simple as that. But you distinguish between two kinds of parents. “There is the person who can be a great parent of small children,” you say. “They dress the children in these sweet little things with bows in their hair and beads on their shoestrings and nice, lovely little socks. But when those same children get to be 14 or 15, the parents don’t know what to say to them as they grow breasts and testosterone hits the boy.”

That’s exactly when your mother stepped up. When you became a young adult. And she was phenomenal for you then. You tell the story of the time she found out you were pregnant. You were just 17. I can’t imagine a more vulnerable moment, where everything depends on what is said next. And what she said next was, “All right. Run me a bath, please.” In your family, that was really a very nice thing for somebody to ask you to do. And in all your life, she had asked this of you only two or three times. So you ran her a bath and then she invited you in the bathroom. She sat down in the bathtub. She asked you, “Do you love the boy?” You said no. “Does he love you?” You said no. “Well, there’s no point in ruining three lives. We’re going to have us a baby.”

Your mother—who was so bad in your early years—came through with flying colors in your later ones. You have said that throughout her life she liberated you. Liberated you constantly. Respected you, respected what you tried to do, believed in you.

Phenomenal woman.

And so you became phenomenal yourself. Beautiful butterfly. In a life of many high points, perhaps the highest was in 1993 when you recited your poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961. And this is part of what you said:

History despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.

Maya, we need these words now. So much going on to make us bitter. The harshness of life. The racism, the sexism, the poverty, the abuse which still goes on today. But help us face it all with courage. Help us be angry in a way that burns for a better world for all. Clean anger, not dirty with resentment.

Help us to be angry like that.

Lift up our eyes upon
The day breaking for us.
Give birth again
To the dream.

History despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Let our mission in life be yours: not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

For myself, I know I can’t be a phenomenal woman, but let me be a phenomenal man.

“Here on the pulse of this new day,” you write,

You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

Good morning to you Maya. Good morning, beautiful butterfly. Good morning, always, always…

Sincerely, and with much love,

Anthony

"Some districts, including many affluent suburban ones, reported little or no truancy. The Forest Hills schools outside Grand Rapids reported five truant students among 10,147 enrolled, and Bloomfield Hills in suburban Detroit just 32 out of 12,306. But Kentwood, another metropolitan Grand Rapids district, had 590 truant cases, representing 6.8 percent of its students, according to the data."

• Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and any people of non-Christian faiths
• Atheists, agnostics, and the unchurched
• Single parents and unwed couples

Before the #sustainmininstry thread fades (presumably to revive at General Assembly) I wanted to meditate on how our ancestors coped. In my last blog post, I opined that ministerial shortages were practically a tradition. So is coping with meagre funds. This theme cropped up continuously when I worked on my never-finished master’s thesis — golly — about a quarter century ago. But those lessons learned over microfilmed antebellum newspapers made an impression.

1. Have a sideline. Perhaps seasonal. Perhaps not farming.
2. Your sideline? Call it media production. There was a reason why there were so many Universalist newspapers. (Which inspired me to create my first websites.)
3. But don’t expect to get paid. Those minister-editors had a terrible time getting their subscribers to pay.
4. Seminary may not be in reach, but an apprenticeship may be.
5. If you can’t get a minister full time, perhaps you can be in a circuit. Some little societies only saw the minister every few months. But it was consistent. Ish.
6. Be ready to pool your resources to memorialize a dead minister, or to support surviving dependents. But people may still mumble and grumble about the expense…
7. Plant churches to make better use of public transportation. Who can afford a carriage, horsed or horseless?
8. And follow migration patterns. When church members move, start a church where they go.
9. Inactivate churches when there’s no minister, leadership or money. Call them dormant, but don’t lose contact with with a would-be reorganizer: it may be re-started.
10. Use home hospitality at conventions. Well, I guess that one never really went away.

It’s hard for me to get too wound up about the prospect of a perceived ministerial shortage in the parishes, as reported in the UUWorld. (“Demand for interim ministers outruns supply“)

Until a generation or so ago, ministerial shortages were common. Low pay, poor prospects and frequently harrowing conditions meant that ministerial supply has been less than demand, often leading churches to do without a minister, or share one. A broader view of ministry means you can’t limit faithful service to the parish, and the whims of those who dwell therein.

What’s different today is that there are more ministers, but evidently no more who are willing to face the parish. And with so many churches reputed to be “clergy killers” or otherwise dysfunctional, who can blame them? And even if the church is even-keeled, the pay may be far less than what one’s skills would fetch in another field. Is it the minister’s duty to bear the time and cost of preparation, and then effectively subsidize the church through lost income?

Ideally, the burden should be (at least) shared. And since I don’t recall the same measure of concern in that relatively brief period when there was an oversupply of ministers, I have to wonder if the ministerial college isn’t expected to sacrifice too much again. Having a rich pool of ministers for parishes to choose presents huge costs for those preparing for the ministry and a huge financial and professional cost for those who have to necessarily “sit out” this year or that, and take whatever other employment is available.

Good people have left parish ministry, but not the ministry itself. The ecosystem will have to adjust, and congregations seeking ministers will have step up, or adjust.

Judith Sargent Murray, Universalist author and catechist, died this day in 1820. Married to “Father” John Murray, Mother Murray was esteemed among the founders of Universalism, and — with the rediscovery of her letter books in the 1980s  — the subject of study in her own right.

I don’t write about my husband much. Today is an exception. Matt and I met nearly 16 years ago on a hot and muggy...

The post On Growing Up, Growing Old, and Being Stupid Together appeared first on Christine Organ.

If the pundits are to be believed, organized religion in North America is a losing proposition and leadership in religious institutions a fool’s errand.

Much has been made recently of the latest information from the Pew Trust Religion and Public Life survey. Religious affiliation in this country is in rapid decline, particularly among younger people. The number of people who respond “None of the Above” to the question, “What religion are you?” is increasing exponentially.

These latest findings, which are in line with similar surveys and studies that have been coming out over the last several years, have unsurprisingly increased the hand wringing among those of us who are not only affiliated with a religion, but care deeply about its future.

There was a time when religious institutions could depend on a stable population of volunteers and donors. Houses of worship could sit pretty on the town green or on the main street and expect people to come to them. Attendance at a house of worship was an expectation (if not an obligation) that most fulfilled, particularly in the period after the Second World War. Clergy were respected in the culture at large as leaders and moral guides. Religious institutions were trusted, and the charitable work they did was lauded and commended.

There’s been a dramatic shift over the last generation. People now are generally suspicious of institutions, and much less likely to join one or sustain it financially. Clergy sexual misconduct, and its cover-up, along with financial malfeasance among religious leaders, has dashed forever the automatic trust people might once have had in clergy. Faith communities compete with all kinds of enticements and regular attendance at worship has fallen.

The seismic shifts that are taking place beneath our feet are breaking centuries-old encrustations and tectonic plates. The religious institutions that once seemed rock solid are crumbling and the very foundations of church are shaking. Centuries of church establishment and Christendom are crumbling and falling away in this generation. For those inside its collapsing edifice, these changes are painful and frightening, to be sure.

Yet it is also an exciting time to be the church.

Without the culture and the state propping up religious observance, who and what will be left? Stripped of power, privilege and persuading influence, what role can organized religion play in our social order? If our neighbour isn’t knocking on the church door to be let in, how will we be sent to serve our neighbour?

The possibilities are endless and exciting. What will faith communities look like in the decades ahead?

We just can’t imagine the future. It’s hard to imagine a future when everything is up for grabs. Telling people that our pipe organs and meetinghouses and hymn books, our meeting for worship and our meeting for worship on Sunday mornings, may not be in the church’s future is met with the blankest of blank stares. What’s left? To say nothing of the change in basic assumptions—people are not coming to you, you need to go to them.

A year ago, I preached a sermon at the First Parish in Lexington, where it has been my honour to serve as their minister these last five years, which I think might become my lasting legacy. They continue to speak about “the phone booth sermon.” I began by asking the congregation, “How many of you remember telephone booths?” Most everybody raised their hands. Then I asked, “How many of you, at some time in your life, have used a public phone?” Again, just about everybody raised their hand. And then I asked, “How many of you have used a public phone in the past seven days?” There was laughter, and not a single hand in the air.

And yet, it’s not as if people don’t need to speak on the phone when they’re out in public. People still want to be able to reach others when they’re away from home. And we continue to do so. It’s just that how we do it has completely changed.

Nobody could have imagined, forty years ago, that we would all be walking around with little phones on our person, phones not tethered to the wall. We couldn’t have imagined this change. We had no way of knowing this is what “talking on the phone in public” would look like in the future.

When it comes to church, we only know how to ask for what we have always known.

We think maybe if we update our Web site, or use guitar in worship, or create a Facebook page, we will be well positioned for life in the twenty-first century. We cannot even imagine the entirely new, reinvented church of the future. So we keep asking for what we already know, only maybe with a few modifications when what we need is a complete, creative, innovative breakthrough.

Henry Ford once said, “If I gave my customers what they wanted, I would have invented a faster horse.”

Those whose hope is in institutions and habits, as they are, whose hope is in the ability of church people to change, those are the ones who are really panicking. Because our most enduring slogan is, “We’ve Never Done It That Way Before.”

But the good news is, there are powers greater than any human made institution, including the church. There’s a spiritual power moving in the world greater than our habits, including our religious habits.

I believe there are powers of regeneration and renewal alive in our world that are constantly calling us to be, and to become, and to be-in-relation. There is a power greater than ourselves that simultaneously invites, sustains, and constitutes mutual dependence and community, constantly drawing together disparate elements and people, eternally expressing itself as love. These forces within and among us are known by many names, including God or the Goddess.

God is doing a new thing. When something interesting or creative or new is afoot and church people are shocked or dismayed, I pay close attention. Because I think that if it upsets church people, it is probably of God. If it is overturning those intractable idols of “what we have always believed” or “the way things have always been,” I am certain God is in the midst of it. When a vibrant spiritual thing is happening on the margins, in the peripheral vision of the established religious institutions, I think, “Now that’s some Holy Spirit power right there.”

God is doing a new thing. That creative and creating power at the heart of the universe is doing a new thing. And a new thing sometimes means letting the old thing crumble away and fall apart.

The pathway to renewal and revival goes straight through defeat and decline. The pathway to resurrection goes straight through the shadowy valley of death. The church needs to die to the church in order for what comes next to come to life.

The trappings that our faith comes in are falling away. There may not be meetinghouses and churches and pipe organs and stained glass and hymnals a generation from now. We might not meet for worship on Sunday morning. But what is essential and at the core of our liberal way of being religious is timeless.

What is essential is the life-giving message that we were born to original blessing–

that there is a better way of being in relationship with each other, ourselves, our natural environment–

better ways of being a society together–

that forgiveness is better than anger–

that love and compassion and generosity and solidarity are better than fear and self-centeredness.

Yes, better.

And yes, life-saving and transformative.

This is at the heart of our liberal religious faith. What we offer as religious liberals is in fact sorely needed in our world today.

Now more than ever, our nation needs our witness. Now more than ever, our communities need our witness. Now more than ever, our planet needs our witness.

How we reach our nation and communities, and what our life together as communities of faith will look like, we are still figuring out.

What kind of a common life we will be inviting people in to, we are still figuring out.

What it all will look like, we’re still discerning.

The pipe organs and meetinghouses, the way we do worship and religious education and social action, our Web sites and Facebook pages, our newsletters and rummage sales and potlucks—these all may or may not any longer serve our purposes. They are all transient. They are all impermanent.

What is required of us in this historic moment is the faith that what is lasting will endure. And the courage and the staying power and the imagination to gracefully let go of what no longer suits us.

To gracefully let go of what is no longer of service to our ministry and mission.

To gracefully let go of what keeps us from reaching our full potential as a liberal religious movement in this time, this twenty first century.

Because it’s not change that we resist–it’s loss. We resist loss. And we are losing so much.

The good news is, the path of loss leads to new life.

The expressions of our faith have evolved over the decades and centuries, and so we evolve some more.

The restoration of God’s people that the prophet Isaiah envisions is radiant and triumphant. I believe our way way forward is through humility and modesty and accepting our marginalized position in the culture, accepting that what we are, and what we do, is countercultural.

We are going to get used to being on the margins of the social order, to inhabiting the “abandoned places of empire,” to living among the ruins of Christendom and established religion. And, with God’s help, liberated to do a new thing.

We whose work it is to bring us into our future as a vibrant, lively, faithful people need to have the imagination to stretch beyond what we have known, and what we think is the way church is supposed to be, the courage to try something new–to experiment, the imagination to invent something new around which our core is built and expressed.

What is required is attentiveness to the Spirit, to pay attention to the promptings and invitations of the Spirit, to discern the new thing God is doing, to get comfortable with failure as we experiment.

We don’t have to have it all figured out. This clinging to certainty only causes suffering. We don’t have to be in control. We can do our part for reimagining how to be church, the shape of how we are to be faithful together, but the work will always be a work in progress.

“The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.” (Ken Untener)

This does not allow us to take our hands off the steering wheel and say, “Okay Higher Power, you drive this thing!” We do what we are able to do. We play the part we know is ours to play. We answer the call to serve. And do our best. And let go of the outcome.

In the Talmud, we read: “It is not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are not free to desist from it either.” (Rabbi Tarfon, Pirke Avot 2:21)

The work continues. It is a work in progress.

Because just like people talk on the telephone in public without public pay phones, without telephone booths, we will continue our shared ministry whatever shape that it takes.

Because just as people still need to talk on the phone in public, people still need what we have to offer.

As long as people search for significance in their lives, we will be there.

As long as people long for meaning in life, we will be there.

As long as people, grieving the death of loved ones, want to celebrate life and bury their dead, we will be there.

We will be there as long as people ask Why?

As long as people want to make a difference in the life of others, as long as the need to serve others arises in human hearts, as long as people ask How? when it comes to living a life of compassion, generosity and gratitude, we will be there.

We will be there.

We whose task it is to love the hell out of the world–

whose task it is to bind up the broken–

to provide salve to the wounded, to heal the hurt–

to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, and, yes, raise the dead–

we whose task it is to minister will not shrink from the work.

Aligning ourselves with the divine will, paying attention to the direction of Spirit, with God’s help, we will be there.

This post is the sermon delivered at the ordination of the Rev. Aaron Stockwell by the First Parish Church in Groton, Massachusetts on 6 June 2015. The readings were Isaiah 65:17-25 and “A Step Along the Way” by Bishop Ken Untener.

A quick #sustainministry follow-on. Is it little wonder that there’s so much wishful and whistful thinking about having monasteries “somewhere”? It’s easy to picture some small, leafy town. Easier certainly that imagining the same in a leafy stretch of Greenwich Village.

Considering the high cost of living and property — purchased or rental — and the cultural and community alternatives found in the large coastal cities, and the high rates of practical secularism, what kind of future is there for churches?

I once read (not long ago) that once a church or synagogue is demolished in New York it is almost impossible to replace it elsewhere. That is, the peak number of houses of worship has past. I would believe the same is true for the District of Columbia. Perhaps that’s fine. But does it imply that we have as many churches as we will ever have in these same coastal cities. And that’s remembering that much of the denominational growth was in the post-WWII housing boom outside those cities. Even with alternative modes of ministry, it’s not hard to imagine that cities will be a special challenge.

Just getting that off my chest.

Last week I’m driving on 285 towards my home in Dunwoody and I see a police car on the far right flash on its strobe lights, launch itself into the stream of traffic, hone in on a car, lock on. The unhappy car slows to a stop, and just as I’m passing by (thanking my lucky stars I’m not him), I see that the driver is a young black man, maybe 25 years old. Instantly: surge of anger. Anger towards a country in which I really can’t be sure why that man was stopped—whether it was for a truly legitimate reason or just because he was driving while black. Anger, too, because the rest of us just kept to our lanes, eyes forward, minds focused on our private destinations and oblivious to the common good and how injustice to one never fails to be injustice to all…

It’s the poem by William Butler Yeats coming alive:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Obviously on 285 all of us in our cars were going too fast to stop; to stop on a dime would be disastrous. But it struck me as a symbol of general disengagement while things are falling part and the center’s not holding. People keeping to their lanes and nothing else matters. People keeping to their narrow lives and no one else matters.

We need passionate intensity not from the worst but from the best.

We need that passionate intensity right now, in the face of injustices of all kinds.

The ceremony of innocence is being drowned.

**

There is a word that comes from the Akan people of Ghana: SANKOFA. Often it is symbolized by a bird that turns around and reaches for the egg on its back, so as to bring it forward. Sankofa means we take what’s good from the past and bring it into our present, because it will heal us. It will show us the way.

And so today we reach back to the Transcendentalists. In our spiritual tradition, passionate intensity comes from them, who were instigators of what historians call the American Renaissance. People like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, Bronson Alcott, James Freeman Clarke, Theodore Parker, and, of course, Henry David Thoreau. It was the 1830s and 1840s, and they too felt that the ceremony of innocence was being drowned. In their day it was the full-blown institution of slavery, despite the unequivocal human rights affirmation of the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal: that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” America declared this against England, saw itself as taking the moral high ground, but guess which one of them would abolish slavery first? England, in 1834. As for America? In the 1840s, it would find itself fighting an illegal war—the Mexican-American War—in order to EXPAND slavery.

Shameful.

To our Transcendentalist ancestors, it really did feel like the center wasn’t holding and things were falling apart. Economic meltdown that rivals our more recent Great Recession frayed the fabric of society, and so did the radical changes spurred on by technological and economic innovation. Before 1830, everything had been primarily local, from one’s sense of identity to working conditions and the manufacture of goods. It took time for messages to go from point A to point B. It took time to get anywhere. But all this came to an end. The invention of the telegraph allowed for news to cross far distances instantly. Then there was the railroad, newly built tracks crisscrossing the land, bringing with it a new sense of national identity. Also new economic opportunity, allowing sons and daughters to leave home to find wage-earning jobs in the cities or in the also new textile mills of New England. Leading to the transient population in cities rising at an alarming rate. Unregulated working conditions becoming worse and worse, even as more and more money was being made. Old ways lost, one by one. Old traditions and comforts and securities lost, and new ways needed to be found…

Transcendentalism comes out chaos like this. THIS is the reason for their passionate intensity. Everything was at stake.

And so: “Only that day dawns to which we are awake.” Thoreau said that. Unless the sleeper wakes up, there can be no morning, just a perpetual midnight of ethical schizophrenia and materialism and social confusion. The sleeper must awaken to the abundant truths and powers of the soul. This is how we become free in our minds and hearts even if we find ourselves surrounded with unfreedom on all sides. This is what powers us to do the right thing in an unethical age of slavery and warmongering; this is what keeps us poised and flowing when everything around us feels disorienting and strange. There is a dawning day that we can experience here and now—we can join the sun in its new morning—but only if the sleeper wakes up.

**

Another way of saying this is, Only if a person learns how to live deliberately. “I wished to live deliberately,” says Thoreau, in language that sings, “to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear….” In an immoral, confusing age, he had to get clear on who he was, and whose he was. Identity was the solution. And to achieve that, on July 4, 1845, he went to Walden Pond to more fully immerse himself in the cycles and rhythms of the natural world. “I feel,” he says, “that I draw nearest to understanding the great secret of my life in my closest intercourse with nature.” But Walden was just on the edge of the town of Concord, meaning that Thoreau wasn’t completely isolated and immersed in wilderness. So an equally important part of his Walden experience was conversation with folks back in Concord like Emerson, which would allow him to share and integrate his discoveries in nature—put the pieces together, see what is implied about his sense of self and identity, his relationships, and larger social conditions. The Transcendentalism of our spiritual ancestors was never isolationism. Retreats to nature were always preludes to rich conversations with soul friends, and always, the aim was getting clear on WHO we are and WHOSE we are.

One thing Thoreau learned from his Walden experience was to simplify. “Simplify, simplify,” he says. Part of this means refusing to fill yourself up with things that feel urgent but are in fact draining and demoralizing, so that you end up having no room for that which truly vitalizes. Refuse to endlessly ruminate on experiences of futility and cruelty and loneliness and disappointment so that there’s no room for anything else. Refuse to be like the shortsighted man in a museum who studies Van Gogh’s Starry Night or some other take-your-breath-away painting from two inches away, and intellectually he has clearly and accurately identified 12 different kinds of blobs of color and 7 different shapes, but he can’t see the whole thing, he misses out on the big picture, he is starving for meaning and purpose. Our lives, says Thoreau, are “frittered away by detail.” We live too up-close to things, shortsighted, and this is a form of spiritual sleepwalking. But to simplify is to make room for abundance. It is to empty ourselves of the nonessential, so that we can be filled with the essential.

Walden taught him this, and it also taught him to aspire. “We must,” Thoreau says, “learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.” “That man,” he says, “who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way.” As I think on what this means, a story comes to mind from the work of Abraham Maslow, founder of humanistic psychology and one of the founders of transpersonal psychology. I’ve shared this story before but it’s provocative enough to share again and again and again. Maslow’s focus was on self-actualization or, as we Unitarian Universalists might say, people giving full expression to the worth and dignity that is inherently theirs. In the course of his studies, he determined that self-actualizing people very naturally have spiritual experiences—profound moments of love, understanding, happiness, or rapture, during which a person feels more whole, alive, self-sufficient and yet a part of the world; more aware of truth, justice, harmony, and goodness. But now here is the story. When Maslow’s students began to talk to each other about their peak experiences, they began having them all the time. It was as if the simple act of being reminded of their existence was enough to make them happen. Talking and thinking about moments of people being saved every day makes it more likely that we will have such moments ourselves. Conversely, if we do not talk and think about such things, we may block their happening.

Thus we are to aspire, says Thoreau. Talking about God evokes God energy. Talking about heaven brings heaven closer. Hold fast to an infinite expectation of the dawn, hold it close, since (as he says), it “does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.” It goes with us, even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. When facing some kind of scarcity in life, you say to yourself like a mantra, over and over, “I trust that everything I need is inside me and near me, and it will become available to me as I need it.” If our lives are frittered away by detail, this will seem like a load of baloney, and nonsense. But in reality it is the largest thing imaginable, a hope, a peace, a vision of Life Abundant, and it requires us to prepare tremendous room in our hearts. We must prepare the way to receive it.

Simplify, so we can aspire.

**

I want to go back to 285, my experience on that road last week. Back to my anger as I passed that young man and wondered if this was yet another instance of driving while black. Back to my anger as I saw all the other cars speeding forward in their narrow lanes towards self-centered ends, uncaring towards what was happening in plain sight. Back to my horrible vision which is so well captured by the words of the poet:

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

I am grateful to say that this was not the whole story. Because I was in one of those other cars speeding forward, and I saw what was happening, and I cared. I proved the poet wrong. I had conviction. I was full of passionate intensity.

And this was so because I belonged to a Beloved Community that would allow nothing less from me.

It wasn’t always so. Unitarian Universalism used to be something that I left behind when my car exited the church parking lot. I had grown up isolationist and it was a hard habit to break. A sad habit, because it’s what made me and makes so many of us lonely. The words of Carl Jung come to mind: “Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself….” I was unable to communicate what was important to me, and therefore I was unknown to others and unknown to myself. I was lonely.

But Unitarian Universalism has always been persistent. It wanted only one thing from me, and it wants only one thing from all of us: to live into the truth of who we are. To be ourselves, to live deliberately.

All the sermons, all the music, all the service groups and projects, all the fun and fellowship, all the special events: all of it is like Walden to our souls. A 21st century version.

Especially when it asks us to give.

I realized this the other day when I was preparing a talk for the volunteers who are part of our Year-Round Stewardship process. By now you have all received a snail mail letter describing the details. The congregation divided up into twelve “Generosity Circles,” one for each month of the year. Folks in each generosity circle being informed about what’s going on at UUCA and what our aspirations are, and also being thanked for greening this place with their dollars. But what I said to the volunteers was not so much about technical details but about the why, the meaning behind it all. I talked about how problems in the larger world are problems here in our midst. Our UUCA community is not hermetically sealed off. So what makes this place so valuable is that here in Beloved Community we seek to be the change we wish to see in the world. If we can’t find solutions in Beloved Community, then where?

That’s why we aspire to be an anti-racist, anti-oppressive, multicultural institution. If Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America, well, we need to turn that right around and it starts here. Healing starts here, and we can take that healing everywhere else we go.

Another problem in the larger world is that of too many alternatives, too many choices, too many ways to spend our money, too many things to give to. It’s confusing, it’s disorienting, and in fact way too often we are dupes of the merely good enough. We choose or we buy the merely mediocre and that’s what takes up room in our lives. That’s what it looks like for a life to be frittered away…

But Beloved Community, I said to those stewardship volunteers, is part of the solution. Don’t feel bad about calling people and reminding them that it’s their month to review their pledge. Don’t feel bad about sharing the awesome things going on at UUCA and asking people to consider upping their pledge. Don’t feel bad! Because what you’re doing is helping people solve the problem of too many choices. The only way to solve that is people getting clear on who they are. That’s what stewardship conversations are fundamentally about. Who am I? Whose am I? Do we see ourselves as the inheritors of what others, like Thoreau, have built up? Are we committed to passing this on to our friends and family and children and grandchildren? Are we committed to building the world be dream about?

What we have right here are some of the basics of Transcendentalism. Conversation helping us to simplify, to get down to the essentials. Simplifying so that there’s room to aspire. So don’t feel bad about making the call. And I’m saying this to all of us: don’t be taken aback when you receive such a call. Of course talking about money is uncomfortable, but that’s because we’re not necessarily clear on our values, and the effort to get clear feels like struggling through muck, mud threatening to suck our boots off. That doesn’t feel good. But understand what’s trying to happen. Beloved Community is doing a good thing. Beloved Community is trying to help you get clear on who you are and what really counts for you, and this clarity will help you everywhere you go, way beyond the walls of this place.

We are being the change we wish to see in the world.

We need the best people to have convictions.

We need the best people passionately intense.

It happens here, in this 21st century version of Walden, which will never settle for less. Through the power of our combined efforts, we need to make sure we live in a country where, if someone is pulled over by the police, we can know with confidence it’s for reasonable cause, and reasonable cause only.

Future generations rely on the good we accomplish now, even as, like the Sakofa bird, we reach back to our spiritual ancestors and receive from them a blessing for the present.

Let’s build the world we dream about, starting right here!

You are the best, so be passionately intense!

Be passionately intense!

So I’ve been thinking about the Sustainable Ministry summit that happened here in St. Louis during this last week. And one thought keeps staying at the forefront of my mind…..

Why the he** was this summit in St. Louis?

Reading through the twitter-feed it looks like this summit could have taken place in Boston at 24 (especially since there is all this talk of the UUA being in financial straits). Other than the local ministers who did a worship service for the participants, there doesn’t seem to have been any local input.

There was no “field trip” to Ferguson.

There was no talk to the local clergy like Rev. Traci Blackmon or Rev. Starsky Wilson or Rev. Osagyefo Sekou or Rabbi Susan Talve about how they are doing the balance of internal congregational work and being in the community and money. (I’m guessing that any of these people would have loved to talk about that, if not all of them)

The consultant was not local; and on top of that was not a UU. (any particular reason Rev. Ron Robinson–who is doing exactly a “new ministry” that is so talked about–couldn’t have been asked to speak?)

So let’s take a minute to look at this……the UUA comes to St. Louis less than a year after things get set off here; within a month of the #BlackLivesMatter banner being stolen from First Unitarian-St. Louis’ fence facing a major city street; and within days of peaceful protestors being tased by St. Louis city police officers while the chief looked on.

Can the UUA talk about sustainable ministry when it ignores what is happening on the ground in the place where they decide to have this summit?

So I’ll ask again….why the he** was this summit in St. Louis?

This is not to begrudge the conversation/focus of the summit. It is something valuable. Yet I’m thoroughly confused by the place aspect of it. Why come to St. Louis and not talk about what’s going on here?

I normally write blog posts in the evening for morning publication, but I wanted to sleep another night before writing about the Economics of Ministry Summit, sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Association, and hosted this week in St. Louis. So far as I know, its only live presence was by Twitter, with the hashtag #sustainministry, so you should revisit those tweets for context.

This isn’t about that meeting’s outcomes, but how I want to approach the enterprise. I’m not going to start by being appreciative, by saying how wonderful the opportunity is and how talented and dedicated the participants. This has been a norm of communication among Unitarian Universalists, often repeated, for several years now and a response to our long-cultivated habit of minute criticism. An over-correction, I think, because it telegraphs an unwholesome cheeriness, softball responses and lowered expectations. That’s hardly respectful, or useful. It’s as if adults can’t be trusted with the truth. So I won’t question the sincerity, intelligence or diligence of the parties of this or any similar conference, but you can have all of these and still end poorly.

At root, the would-be leadership of the UUA has a trust problem with the would-be follower-ship. With each passing year, the UUA does less to justify its existence. What are the high marks for the last few years? Board governance? A property shift? These are internal matters, not missional ones. Are we building or redeveloping churches? No. But worse, we still have a model of ministerial formation that treats people like expensive, yet disposable, liabilities. And a raft of churches — and few will speak of this — that chew up and ruin the ministers they get with impunity. As for our external, missional successes, these come in the form of partnerships, formal and informal. Easy enough to ask, “why not affiliate with whomever’s leading?” If there are successes, they’re in local settings and perhaps informal networks. Again, a challenge to a national body. Unitarian Universalist structures have historically been hard to use, with little money offered. Sluggish, a bit haughty. You learn not to ask for much, and expect less.

At the risk of being cheerful, let me hold out some hope. When you look at the summit in tandem with the emerging communities pilot, I do see a willingness to entertain options and lower the opportunity costs of working within the UUA, and that’s good.

No: it’s better than good. It’s essential, because this work will take place somewhere, and without some structural change it will take place elsewhere.

Universalist minister Hosea Ballou died this day in 1852.

(Well, this Universalist saints feature I planned isn’t going as I hoped. Think about Hosea anyway.)

I got an aside from a Well-Respected Minister who liked “that little book video insert piece” in my last blog post. It’s the BookReader of Internet Archive, the source of the book.

I think it’s the best desktop or laptop interface for reading books, and since the Internet Archives has a large number of public-domain Universalist and other works, I will sometimes read books this way, even if I have the actual book. But you can’t just drop other books into it.

Now, here’s how to share the books they do have on your site. First, of course you find one, like this 2003 Massachusetts Conference of the UCC directory.

When you click on the page, not only does it become larger, but you get added controls. I’ve pointed out the “share” link, which looks a bit like a sideways V. Click that.

Now you have links for sharing and embedding. The fault imbed is one page at a time, and the first page. I usually want it to look like a book open to the title page, so I select that, as in this example.

Now you might say, surely that directory isn’t it the public domain? True. Some libraries and collections have contributed their own works with permission. And many of them are religious. (And Boston-based for that matter.)

Wouldn’t it be helpful and useful if the Unitarian Universalist Association could host its old Commission on Appraisal reports, Board minutes, classic guides, and pre-consolidation AUA and UCA directories the same way. Our twentieth-century history is hard to access first hand, unless you’re old enough or well-connected enough — or close enough to Boston — to get paper copies of what you want.

How could we make that happen?

The prospect of job automation is more than a bit scary. Everyone likes a bit of help, provided that bit doesn’t help them out of a job. NPR ran a feature (“Will Your Job Be Done by a Machine?,” May 21)

While some professions will almost certainly be automated to some degree, there’s only a 0.8% chance that the clergy will be automated.

This made me think of a particularly odd episode in Universalist history where it wasn’t the clergy that was to be automated, but the works of divinity.

To be fair, John Murray Spear had left the Universalist ministry in 1852 for Spiritualism, which was intensely popular (and controversial) among Universalists.

In Lynn, Massachusetts, he gathered a group of followers to “[create] the ‘New Motive Power’, a mechanical Messiah which was intended to herald a new era of Utopia.” [citation] Like made of machinery.

It didn’t work. But it is an intensely weird and wonderful episode that deserves a read. (One version of the story.) But in re-reading the story today I discovered that Spear channelled Universalist founder (and namesake) John Murray, and published his revelations in Messages from the superior state: communicated by John Murray.

“Important instruction to the inhabitants of the earth”? That’s something I’ll have to read!

So it seems I’m not alone among our colleagues. This year, there are fewer available ministers than there are Unitarian Universalist congregations seeking interim ministers. The reasons cited for this situation include a bumper crop of retirees and a fair number of ministers who are leaving the parish.

And I am one of them.

There was a time when celebrity clergy were publishing memoirs about “leaving church” and we both rolled our eyes at that. Thanks for the vote of confidence, friend, and for dissing the institution we are pouring our lives out for.

And yet here I am reflecting publicly on my reasons for leaving my current parish ministry as I move on into something else. Not leaving ministry, and certainly not “leaving church,” just going back to school to get what I need to do ministry in a different setting.

Part of it, for me, is being spooked by all of the doomsday predictions and catastrophic forecasts about declining religious affiliation and its ramification for local faith communities. I experience, like many ordained ministers, equal parts excitement and terror at the reality that congregational life as we know it is going to be very different in the decades ahead.

We’re not going to be able to count on a regular paycheque from a local church–indeed, many of us currently do not. Seminarians are now being prepared for a “bi-vocational” career in ministry, which in a way is what I am doing. I may or may not take up part time parish ministry in the future. I do love it very much.

I love congregational life, and I love the work I get to do in the parish. Reinventing the local church to thrive in organized religion’s reduced circumstances is the kind of creative opportunity I might be invigorated by.

What can I tell you? I’m tired.

I became an aspirant and candidate for ministry in my twenties. Remember what that was like—ready to conquer the evils of the world, transform our religious movement while proclaiming its gospel to churches we were growing to twice their size by our astounding feats of preaching and public witness!

When I was in my twenties and thirties, this was fine. I had the energy and ego strength to do all this and go out dancing afterwards. In my late forties, it takes greater effort.

In entering the second half of life, I’m more sensible about my abilities and interests, more realistic about my limitations. I’m more clear on which values and needs and desires I want to shape my life around, the settings in which I feel most at home.

I find that I’m becoming more and more introverted the older I get. This hasn’t meant withdrawing, only that it costs my spirit more, especially without adequate time replenished by solitude.

Obviously, I still engage in all the public aspects of ministry—the social hours and potlucks, the Memorial Day ceremonies and clergy meetings—it takes more out of me. As do the usual visits and calls, staff meetings and board meetings, and all the other assemblies in which I find myself.

There is never enough time. It seems like just as I am catching my breath it is time to start running again. The moment I feel rested is followed by the moment of heading back to work. Not much time for relationships, for family, for exercise, for cooking myself nutritious meals. Everything is on the go. I thank God for my ministerial colleagues, with whom I spend more time than any other kind of friend.

Am I burned out? I don’t think so. I have long maintained good boundaries, taken Sabbath time consistently, and on some days chose self-care over an unfinished to-do list.

It’s not enough for me.

What I need is a slower pace, a more spacious schedule (as I told my congregation, pronouncing it the American way), a better balance between work, rest, and play, a ministry in which I am not the constant moving target. The twelve hour days are not sustainable to my spirit, especially as they come back to back.

My congregation has been superb at encouraging me to rest and study, to take the time off allotted to me. Lay leaders have reminded me to say No when I might have said Yes, to let a congregant’s unmet responsibility drop rather than catch it.

No, the fatigue I experience is harder to pin down, its remedy more than time off.

We hold the presence of the church on our person, the mantle of spirit around our shoulders. When we show up in the operating recovery room at the hospital, it is the church that shows up. When we drive over to the bereaved family’s home after the death of loved one, it is the church that is showing up for them. That is a huge responsibility that we would always remember when we don our stoles before leading worship. L’église c’est moi, as Louis XIV might have said.

That stole, that weighty mantle, is often very, very heavy to carry day in and day out.

What is exhausting, and perhaps something lay people aren’t aware of, is the psychic energy that goes in to being the screen for their projections and desires. A good minister is constantly discerning: Is this really about me? Or is this member of my congregation actually interacting with their parent or spouse or boss? What is really happening here?

Graciously being that screen for their fantasies and expectations and aggression without getting hooked and reeled in to the drama they want to act out with you takes a lot of soul power.

To say nothing about when it actually is about us, and having to remain open and non-defensive.

Skillful ministers do this well, but even the most self-differentiated clergy person, once exhausted by the effort, will have “one of those days.” And then one finds oneself apologizing and making amends for actions (or inaction) that most people take for granted and let slip by. It is the cost of the pastoral relationship, of right-relation, and our calling is to model it.

That can feel deceitful when on the inside we are heaping curses on the person we are asking to forgive us. It’s really more artful than artifice, but that divide feels more and more dishonest to me. Skillful self-differentiation is an art, but I don’t believe true authenticity is ever available to us as parish ministers. (Nor should it be. We both know emotionally unintelligent colleagues who wish to share everything with their congregation. And how that turns out).

The lesser burden is to listen with forbearance to a tiresome and uninformed parishioner drone on and on about some religious topic, or some church matter, some thing that you and I studied in depth at graduate school, in seminary. Our expertise takes second place to making this person feel heard.

It is our burden to carry all of the truths that are unable to be enunciated publicly, all of what is confessed to us in the minister’s study, often without any hope of absolution.

But we also hold the organization’s truths, truths that, for the sake of the congregation, are never told by us—even when it would vindicate or excuse or explain some action taken.

You and I know that the church is an employer as well as a faith community, but that is not so obvious to our people. As chief of staff, it is up to us to hire, evaluate, manage and sometime dismiss church employees. The process, by necessity private and confidential, is lost on most parishioners. To such folks, church staff are members of the family, treated like a fellow member, and are to be treated the way parishioners are.

Although lay leaders certainly provide detailed feedback for evaluations, even the evaluation process is lost on the average parishioner. So when the time comes to dismiss an employee—for not performing their duties, for not following an improvement plan, for being unwilling to learn needed skills, or, as you certainly know, for some other egregious misconduct—all the congregation sees is a beloved “friend” being “forced” to leave the church.

And we have to sit there, with our lay leaders, silently, while aggrieved members of our congregations make a big noise. Knowing we will never break confidentiality, knowing we can never share the true story of why that staff person was dismissed. We have to grin and bear it, no doubt making our Puritan ancestors proud.

We have to die to ourselves, so that the congregation might live.

It is the art of skillful self-differentiation, a burden I gladly took on at ordination, that now costs me more than I have left to spend. I’m spent.

I love congregational life, and I love my congregation. Good ministers are always “in” the congregation, but never really “of” it. It is the tragic irony of our role. We love religious community so much we dedicate our lives to its health and prosperity, only to find we no longer can belong fully to a church the way we did before becoming ministers.

I miss that.

I miss being at worship regularly and not being at work. I miss singing in the choir and teaching in the religious education program for children. I miss having my soul tended to by a gathering of imperfect, loving, genuine people—among whom I am most authentically myself, my undivided, wholehearted self.

This nostalgia is a kind of homesickness for church life at its best.

What can I say? I want to go home.

When I first moved to Chicago 13 years ago, one of the things that intimated me most was the CTA train system, commonly known...

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[those of you familiar with Quaker practice know what I mean by query. for those of you with less Quaker experience, queries are questions that members are asked to consider during their silent worship period. if they are being used during a monthly meeting, they are typically concerning subjects that will be coming before the meeting]

Now that we are about 3 weeks away from the start of General Assembly, I thought I would pose some queries that are related to my activities during GA.

So query #1……

Would #BlackLivesMatter to Unitarian Universalists without the protests?

(don’t give me your knee-jerk reaction to the question, really think about it)

Here’s why I ask…
Before the “county brown” [St. Louis County police] decided to mess with reporters here in Ferguson, most Unitarian Universalists had virtually ignored the extrajudicial killings of African Americans by those in law enforcement and the treatment of communities of color by law enforcement in general. One doesn’t have to look at too many of these cases to see the almost universal silence from our end of the liberal religion spectrum.

Having been around Unitarian Universalism for more than a few days, I’ve seen and heard UU talk about issues of law enforcement/criminal justice and race that would make Calvin feel proud.

Then Ferguson happens. (and NYC and Cleveland and Baltimore and N. Charleston and…)

I just published the 1925 “A Joint Statement on Interchurch Relations from the Commissions of the Congregational and Universalist Churches” but didn’t want to clutter that document with thoughts. Indeed, I’ll want to review some of the standard denomination histories to see why the Universalists aren’t a part of the United Church of Christ today. Partnering with the Unitarians wasn’t the foregone conclusion so described today.

Union was in the air, then. Indeed, contemporaneously, the Congregationalists were making overtures to the Christian Church, leading to a merger. Most of the Congregational Christians then merged with the Evangelical and Reformed Church (itself merged) to create the United Church of Christ. The Universalists were also talking to the Unitarians; years ago I published a Universalist report from the same commission in 1927. And now I want to see what else they reported out.

Some loose thoughts:

1. I’ve heard it suggested that the relative size of the Congregationalists would have made organic union an absorption, rather than a merger.
2. It makes the later, if minor, Universalist participation with the “continuing” Congregationalists make more sense.
3. There are words the joint statement that echo in the 1935 Universalist Washington Declaration, namely in the second paragraph. “The kingdom for which he lived and died” for instance.

I hope this sparks interest in the history of Universalist polity…

Printed in Christian Union Quarterly (1925), p. 431ff.

A Joint Statement on Interchurch Relations from the Commissions of the Congregational and Universalist Churches

The National Council of Congregational Churches and the Universalist General Convention, at their sessions held in October, 1925, referred to the Congregational Commission on Interchurch Relations and to the Universalist Commission on Christian Comity and Unity certain proposals looking toward closer fellowship. The members of these commissions, after fraternal conference and discussion, join in issuing the following statement:

We believe that the basis of vital Christian unity is a common acceptance of Christianity as primarily a way of life. It is faith in Christ expressed in a supreme purpose to do the will of God as revealed in Him and to co-operate as servants of the Kingdom for which He lived and died. Assent to an official creed is not essential. Within the circle of fellowship created by loyalty to the common Master, there may exist differences of theological opinion. With that primary loyalty affirmed, such differences need not separate; rather, indeed, if the mind of the Master controls, they may enrich the content of faith and experience; and if it does not control, theological agreements will not advance the Christian cause. “Religion to-day does not grow in the soil of creeds.”

The unity of a common loyalty to the Christian way of life is already a fact, to which the high task in which we are now engaged is witness. Not only Congregationalists and Universalists, but multitudes of other forward-looking Christians, share this unity of faith and endeavour. It is not something to be artificially formed, but a growing relationship to be recognized and afforded ways of practical expression. None of us would advocate, as none of us could enter, a fellowship that would compromise loyalty to the truth as any one of us may see it, or would stifle freedom to bear testimony to its worth and power. What appeals to us is the challenge of a great adventure to prove that a common purpose to share the faith of Christ is a power strong enough to break the fetters of custom and timidity and sectarian jealousy that hitherto have put asunder Christian brethren who at heart are one, and who can better serve the Kingdom of God together than apart.

The Protestant churches of America are learning to work together. By so doing they honour their heritage and fulfil their mission. The Congregational and Universalist Churches are branches of the same parent stock. They grew out of the same soil and are bearing the same kind of fruit. The historic reasons for their separation have practically disappeared and new and stronger reasons for union have arisen. In statement of faith, in form of worship, in organization for work, and in standards of life, these two branches of Protestantism differ now in no essential respects. They can accordingly begin at once to co-operate in the heartiest way. If the prayer of our Lord is ever to be fulfilled, the beginning will be made by the mutual approach of denominations between which there is no longer any reason for separation.

In the judgment of the commissions, the time has arrived for the Congregational and Universalist Churches to seek the closest practicable fellowship. Their activities are proceeding already along lines closely parallel. They can do many things together to advantage which they are now doing separately. Each church will be quickened through this free fellowship.

We therefore recommend:

First: That the ministers and representatives of each denomination be invited to sit as corresponding members in the local, state, and national associations of the other denomination and to participate in their deliberations.

Second: That the agencies of each denomination in the realms of religious education, social service, evangelism, rural church development, and similar problems, be urged to arrange for joint programmes for promotion as far as practicable.

Third: That in each community where churches of both denominations are found they be urged to study what they can do together with mutual profit by way of union services, the interchange of pulpits, and the promotion of common enterprises.

Fourth: That there be a mutual interchange of representative speakers at national, state, and local gatherings.

Fifth: That the denominational journals be urged to make the largest practicable interchange of editorials and of printed matter of common interest, in order that each constituency may be kept fully informed regarding the other and of the progress made in the direction of closer fellowship.

Sixth: That, in order to secure more thoroughly co-ordinated movements, no actual steps toward the organization of local Congregational and Universalist churches be made without consulting their respective commissions.

Seventh: Wherever the problem of an adequate church constituency presses for solution, and in any community where denominational divisions work for wastefulness, those responsible are urged to co-operate in organizing for more effective service.

We believe that from these and similar joint undertakings increased effectiveness in common tasks and even more will result. Comradeship in a common faith and loyalty will be its finest and most prophetic grace. That quickened sense of comradeship will fashion its own ecclesiastical instrumentalities. None of us can yet foresee clearly what sort of organized fellowship will arise to give form and coherence to the spiritual unity that Christians of the open mind gladly confess. We are convinced that it will be something larger and more inclusive than anything that now exists. What we do see, with a profound feeling of gratitude and responsibility, is that, in the providence of God, these communions which we represent have been led by their respective historic traditions and spiritual development to a common faith in the Christian way of life as their supreme concern. They would travel it not only as friends but as allies, with a spirit as inclusive as the mind of the Master.

In such a larger fellowship Congregationalists and Universalists alike, both as churches and individuals, may find fresh incentive to service and sacrifice. The Kingdom of God requires the uttermost loyalty and devotion of both and the mutual recognition of what each may contribute to the common endeavour. The stirring challenge to forward-looking Christians of whatever name to-day is to make their churches vitalizing centers of the Christianity that is in Christ, and so to promote the broader fellowship through which alone the mighty task of winning the world by the Master shall be accomplished. To that we commit ourselves. The event is in the hand of God.

[From The Congregationalist, Boston, Mass.]

One set of people suggests liberal religion, and Unitarian Universalism particularly, is easy, insincere and a mental or spiritual plaything because of its inherent looseness and high regard for personal autonomy.

Another set of people — that’s us — seems to take that that as a challenge, rather than opportunity to correct our behavior or refute the premise. (Or not care about the challenge.) The conventional answer is that Unitarian Universalism is the most difficult religion (because of all the decisions and so forth) and thus very sincere and serious and so forth. There’s a mountain of sermons like that. Cue the rueful laughter in the background.

This approach should die a quick death. It makes our religion look like a crashing bore, and without the payoff of grand institutions, a mass movement or a corps of spiritually exhalted leaders. It’s all the burden of our Puritan heritage with none of the value.

One of the things that makes religion appealing is its capacity for joy — sometimes spiritual, sometimes material, often unseen or unappreciated by outsiders.  The grinding, scolding earnestness that you so commonly find when two or three Unitarian Universalists are gathered makes me want to hide. Usually hide with friends at General Assembly.

Last night, reading the program guide for this month’s General Assembly was the proximate cause of this blog post. Reading it to stay informed, as I’ll not be there. (For the reduced number of workshop slots, don’t some people show up over and over?) Family comes first; see you in Columbus in 2016. I’m sure there will be good parts, but the earnestness leaps off the page. Even the fun doesn’t sound so fun.

I spent the rest of my evening improving my Esperanto skills. Now, Esperantists are a people who have the earnest-fun balance down pat. A group created well-game-ified lessons on the Duolingo site. I spent the evening taking little game-like tests, tracking my progress, and earning immaterial rewards. The subtext was “this is fun, this is possible, you can do it.” And so I kept doing it.

There’s a lesson in that.

Follow my progress in my Esperanto studies on Duolingo, if you like. And join in.

I only had time to scan a ton of Universalist polity documents when I was at the Harvard-Andover archive last year, and I’ve still not transcribed them. And it would be nice to have in an easy to read and search format some of the rules and procedures of how Universalists operated — hints of which, and sometimes more — are still in use today. Here’s a taste.

I’m no Tom Sawyer, but Universalist polity documents aren’t whitewash, either. Can anyone commit to typing or editing for an hour? Seminarians, especially, who might find a tidbit for unexplored research.

So, I was talking with a couple of people: what would we do if the Unitarian Universalist Association ceased to exist? Not a death wish, but contingency planning. And a way of identifying what’s a must-have and not just a might-want.

Someone mulled, “what does the NACCC do?” That’s the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, made up of churches that did not join the United Church of Christ on polity grounds. I’ve been long interested in them, as some of the Universalist churches that didn’t join the UUA “went NA”. Also, First Parish, Plymouth, and Universalist National Memorial Church, both members of the UUA have honorary membership. And the Council of Christian Churches in the UUA has — I believe — “fraternal relations.” In short, they’re close to us. Sorta.

And famous (or infamous) for having a lean administration. The kind that the UUA might back into, or be replaced-by.

So I was just browsing their site and noticed they have a single easy-to-find page with helpful handbooks ready to download.

That just made my day. Something to emulate.

Source: Handbooks (NACCC)

So, my dear Unitarian Universalist Christians, see if this sounds familiar. You let your Christian faith be known at church or fellowship or what-have-you and someone asks “how does that work?” or “have you considered the United Church of Christ?” — or something actively negative, suggesting that you shouldn’t be there at all, as if Unitarian Universalism was a refuge for a mix of non-Christians. I thought about all of these after reading “More than just a starter church” at The Widow’s Mite-y Blog. Like her, I became a Christian when a Unitarian Universalist.

Anecdotally. there’s less of the overt hostility out there than there once was. Whether that’s true or not, and if so, whether that’s due to fewer hostile non-Christians, fewer Christians to be hostile to, or a real change of attitude is for others to discern. Plus, I’m a member of one of a handful of Christian churches in the Unitarian Universalist Association, so it’s not really a problem anymore.

But what remains isn’t acceptable. And it starts with the questions that together can but put under the heading, “Demonstrate that you really exist.” Unitarian Universalist Christians are a small part of a small denomination, and particularly outside New England you may not meet one in person. And there is decades of preaching and identity formation — again, especially outside of New England — that liberal religion was becoming something greater than Christianity, first incorporating it, and later transcending it. The actual reference to Christianity in the UUA Principles and Purposes was a political process — and a bit before my time — and not a given. Some people really, honestly believe that Christianity is beyond the pale.

Mix this with a “question everything (that’s convenient)” ethos and it’s no wonder that that people, both the kind and unkind, can ask some terribly corrosive questions.

When I was younger, I felt a responsibility to spread the word and be a patient, agreeable, non-threatening, cheerful ambassador.  When this did nothing than embolden the passive-aggressive, I stopped being apologetic, and started to enjoy my faith, stopping only to challenge side-lining, red-lining comments however made. (Unitarian Universalist rhetoric still distinguishes between good and bad Christians in a way that other religions aren’t.)

About ten or fifteen years ago, the zeitgeist turned from defense and apology to joy, communication and personal representation. My friends and I chuckled about rueful complaints — overheard at General Assembly and online — about “the Christians taking over” and “the Christians being everywhere.”

This change of self-conception means that  I won’t be told I’m welcome, but only if I act in a way others aren’t expected to keep. Or if I tone it down. Or if it means answering petty, barb-filled, conspiracy-seeking questions.

I won’t leave. I just won’t comply. And, my dear Unitarian Universalist Christian friends, you need not comply — or leave — either.

General Assembly: PSC private meetings were set for Thursday morning and Saturday morning during the plenary sessions.

We are also arranging times when persons who are considering applying may meet with some of the PSC to ask questions to help in their discernment. The purpose of these meetings is solely to answer questions of potential applicants; as such, it is not necessary for every PSC member to be there. We will attempt to have at least 3 PSC members present for each meeting.

We will have a booth in the exhibit hall. There, we will have information cards giving the links to information about the application process. Additionally, those interested in meeting with members of the PSC as part of their discernment will be able to sign up for meeting times.

The PSC will present a report at Plenary. Michael Tino and Elandria Williams will send out a draft to PSC members. Report will focus on where we are in the process and making sure people apply.

Timeline: Discussion was held around potentially changing our timeline to accommodate the fact that ministers will need time to tell their congregations if they are nominated. We expect to make a decision by December that will be made public on Feb. 1.

We also discussed moving our Sept 30-Oct 2 meeting to a more central location for interviews, and perhaps expanding the length of time. We deferred a final decision until all PSC members have reviewed this new information.

Applications and Interest: No formal applications have yet been received (nor were expected.) Several people have indicated an interest in talking to us at General Assembly.

Rubric: A rubric document outlining the job description was sent out by Matthew Johnson. At GA, we will assign primary responsibilities for each area of attention.

Social Media: Joanna Crawford will post a link to the proposed interview questions and invite readers to suggest additional questions for applicants.

Budget: Budgets were cut mid-year. We are projected to slightly exceed our budget this year; members were requested to try to keep GA expenses limited.

Having non-biblical readings has become such a canon among mainline Unitarian Universalists that Unitarian Universalist Christians face a crisis on the subject of readings. Is it proper to have non-biblical readings in worship?

The question of authority isn’t clear-cut. My home library has several works of daily readings: selected sections meant to be read regularly to enrich one’s faith, and not just in private reflection. Robert Atwell, the compiler of one such work (Celebrating the Seasons) notes in the introduction (page iii.) that

In monastic custom… the Scriptural reading at Vigils was supplemented by a non-Biblical lection. In the words of St. Benedict’s Rule: ‘In addition to the inspired words of the Old and New Testaments, the works read at Vigils should include explanations of Scripture by reputable and orthodox writers.’ The reading of commentaries (presumably on what had just been read) enabled the monk not only to engage with Scripture more intelligently, but also to place his personal meditation within the context of those of other Christians from different ages and traditions.

We’re not monks praying Vigils, but in our liberal-Reformed tradition we insist on the considered and thoughtful expounding on the lessons in the sermon. The lesson does not disclose itself, and we rely on the preacher to unfold its meaning.

In this sense, the non-biblical reading acts — or could act — as a replacement for the sermon, not the revealed word. But current Unitarian Universalist practice is far removed from this. When — about a century ago — Unitarian and (to a lesser degree) Universalist ministers cast abroad for non-biblical preaching texts, they drew from weighty stuff: often the classics, or a work of philosophy, or — as a standby — a bit of Shakespeare.

But today, it’s not uncommon for a liturgical element from the back of the gray hymnal, or a segment from a ministerial contemporary to be pressed into the role of scripture. It an odd thought that a minister might visit a church and hear her or his words — not unjustly quoted within the sermon — elevated to the role scripture once held. It’s hard to shake off our flippant and shallow reputation if that’s the norm.

So, there may be a place for non-biblical readings in Christian worship, but to help us hear and understand the word of God: not to become it.

A cautionary tale. I’ve worshipped with Micah here in D.C. so I sawa little of what he described but I’m certainly no Quaker, and (happily) have since gone back to my old church. But the critical mass issue is one that Unitarian and Universalist Christians are going to have to grapple with, in part because we’re probably too radioactive to attract ecumenical partners. Which is its own shame.

If Quakers don’t have the strength or inclination to seed new congregations, perhaps it’s time to partner with those who do.

Source: Are Quakers Capable of Planting Churches?

At the risk of austerity-mongering,  it’s worth asking what a small, or new, or fragile church can do without in its worship to make worship sustainable, and to free up money and energy for other parts of church life.

Some things come to mind; here I’m thinking of middle-of-the-road mainline Protestantism. You could have worship

• without a meeting-place you own
• even without a fixed meeting-place
• without a full-time or resident minister
• without a sermon, or at least a long, originally-composed sermon every week
• without an organ, and probably without a piano
• without a choir
• without hymns

The list goes on, but you may already have experienced one or more of these “deprivations” in your own church. You might not even consider it a deprivation.

I’ll be looking at some of these options on and off for the next few weeks under the banner of “doing what you can, but doing it well.”

Burnout is a real risk under diminishing resources and opportunities. Burning out the leadership, leaving them hopeless, is not an option. Or else you’ll be

• without a church

This is a blog-beg for preachers and ministers of any denomination who preach or have preached in churches that meet less than weekly, and who use a lectionary or observe a traditional church calendar. I appreciate your sharing this with anyone who has experience.

In short, how do you make it work? Do you use the lessons or propers of the day however it may fall? Do you pick from one of the Sunday lessons since the last worship service? Or before the next? And what about major holidays?

For a church that meets once a month or so, do you transfer Easter and Christmas (and Pentecost, today) to the nearest service, or rely on members worshipping with another congregation at the proper time? And if you do transfer the holiday, is it a kind of Lent-Easter/Advent-Christmas service? And how does that work?

Churches that meet infrequently probably aren’t high on anyone’s list, so it would be a great help to share ideas and resources. I’d appreciate details in the comments.

Submitted without comment. An unlikely circumstance, given the fact there are far more ministers in Unitarian Universalist Association fellowship than settlements. But there you are.

We are in an unprecedented situation with regards to the interim ministerial search this year, one that has not occurred in the recent history of Unitarian Universalism.  In the broadest description, the issue is that there are significantly more congregations this year looking for interim ministries than there are ministers available to fulfill those interim ministries.  Not Interim Ministers… ministers.

Source: Important Information about Interim Minister Searches This Year

A little lunchtime Googling led me to this page, which has a large selection of United Methodist worship resources.

Welcome to the collection of resources from The United Methodist Book of Worship (1992) owned by The United Methodist Publishing House.  These are offered on our website by written agreement between The United Methodist Publishing House and Discipleship Ministries.  Congregations and other worshiping or church-related educational communities are free…

Source: Book of Worship – umcdiscipleship.org