I was casting around on the website of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. My home church was once an honorary member of it, and the Jersey Universalist Church in the header image was once a full member. I was looking for inspiration and resources; I’ll roll out what I find as I analyze them.

One of the things I found was this statement of ministerial ethics (“Personal Code of Professional Practice“) subscription to which is required for ministers using the NACCC for settlement (placement) services. I thought, “this looks familiar.”

Then, at the bottom

NACCC Division for Ministry, 2009, originally adapted from the Code of Professional Practice of the Unitarian-Universalist Ministers’ Association, 1985 version

Revised 11/2010

Of course, a lot has changed for the UUMA since then, but it’s interesting to see the influences. I would be fun to see what that UUMA 1985 version was, and how it developed since. Fun might not be the right word. No other thought or subtext to add.

I’m watching the development of the Universalist Orthodox Church with a lot of admiration and a little bit of envy. In about a year it has grown to four parishes and two emerging missions. (Their site has a new page that better explains their approach and what they mean by Universalism.)

Are any of these parishes large? No. Do any have a building that they own for worship? No. Are their clergy compensated for their labor? Doubtful. But do they exist and grow? Yes. Do they ordain or receive new clergy? Yes. Do they have regular, public services of worship (liturgies)? Yes. I’ll take what they have over the unrealized plans for a large institutional church any day.

What what would it take for us on liberal Reformed end of Universalism to have four parishes and two emerging missions? That’s behind so many of the articles I write here. I’m fortunate to live in a city with a Universalist Christian church, where I am a member and preach occasionally. There’s one in Providence, and Tokyo. You might find others, historically related to the Universalist denomination or not. If I were in a city with a Universalist Orthodox church, I’d probably attend liturgies, at least occasionally. But people in most places don’t have the option.

I’m not going to build a church where one’s not needed but you may need to do so. A monthly service of morning and evening prayer led by a lay person for a congregation of three is a hundred times better than wishing that there was a church.

What would it take for the Universalists to have four new churches? A hundred? Even one? Most of all: desire to have one, even if there’s no institution “out there” to help. (That said, I’d gladly do what I could to help a new church. I bet others would as well.)

I got caught in a YouTube hole and just watched the first of four episodes of the 2012 BBC Wales (“We’re more than Doctor Who“) series Vicar Academy. It is a look into the formation of priests in the Church in Wales.

Even though I went to seminary a quarter-century ago, in a Disciples of Christ school and in Texas, the scenes seemed familiar. (Certainly that first time in the collar was harrowing.) I was also impressed with the practical training.

Worth a watch, and I look forward to the other three episodes.

I’ve twice lately tried to not to make too much of the way Universalists distinguished between the parish (or society) and church, but it’s an important distinction to understand the polity and institutional processes. So dang if I didn’t run into this again as the reason a 1850 committee of seventeen ministers north of Boston presented in 1855 an alternative and resource to what they saw, namely:

1. As a general rule, our societies are organized merely so far as to give them a legal existence, and enable them to hold property, and perform, according to law, the business necessary for the maintenance of public worship.

2. Connected with most of our societies, there are churches, having an organization about as meagre as can well be imagined, in any body claiming to have a corporate existence. These churches meet, at stated periods, at the communion table, and for the reception of members, or the election of officers ; and beyond this, there is little that they attempt to do.

3. While our societies are, for the most part, in a flourishing condition, so far as pecuniary support and attendance upon public worship are concerned, a general apathy prevails in regard to our churches; many of our most active and zealous, as well as worthy and respectable men, not being, even nominally, members thereof.

4. Beyond the mere support of public worship, there is little that either our societies or churches have attempted to perform; that object being attained by the former, the latter have few claims to present, for countenance or support. For this cause, it is apprehended, our churches languish, and are asleep — simply because they have nothing to do, or rather because they have never set themselves, unitedly and systematically, about the great work that they ought to do. The fault is not so much in the men, as in the system of their organization. Our churches are not thus languishing, inactive and neglected, because of a general lack of zeal, or Christian benevolence and charity, among our people. But they do next to nothing, for the simple reason that their organization does not propose to do anything of importance, beyond what could be done by any society having a legal existence. The result is, that the church is looked upon as an extra affair altogether; a thing to bind men’s consciences, rather than engage their hearts and hands in works of charity and love.

The rest of the introduction from which this comes defends the propriety of using modern technology and culture to advance the church, and that the church’s mission needs adequate structures. This anticipated (or prepared) the post-Civil War institutionalization of Universalism, but perhaps conditions did not change so much even then.

Merrimack River Ministerial Circle, The Universalist Church Companion, 10-12.

Writing as briefly and clearly as possible is best for teaching and explaining.

My mouth feels better so I could write a long article, but three, unrelated recent comments have reminded me how much most people appreciate a short and direct message. Unitarian Universalists, as Protestants, make a value of heaping up words, but to what end? As alternatives, there’s the BLUF model, and the inverted pyramid, of course.

It takes time and effort to write briefly, but it respects your readers, who then benefit from quicker, clearer understanding. Your reputation as a truth-teller grows, too. How many word salads add nothing but frustration and papers to the trash? Additionally, this plain language guide has helped me limit jargon, and this typography guide (I cited it yesterday, too) helps make printed works more enticing to read.

My face is still a bit sore from dental work, so another shortish article.

Back in 2015, I shared my workflow for printing out pages of a sermon or service that can be put in an attractive binder using half-size pace protectors. It’s neat and professional looking and not hard to assemble.

Here am I bringing that up to date. I use LibreOffice, which you can download and use for free. I’ve used it for years at home and in my day job, and can attest that it makes a good replacement for Microsoft Office. Since 2015, LibreOffice has added new features. In particular, it supports OpenType features, including the much desired small caps and old-style numerals, if they’re embedded in the font. This is a good tutorial for using this feature, and this is a good reason why you shouldn’t use your word processor’s “small caps” feature, in so far as they’re not true small caps and not good replacements. The Libertine (formerly Linux Libertine) font has those features, and you can now make use them in the standard release, rather than the Graphite text features I wrote about in 2015. Very few fonts support Graphite, so I won’t labor the subject.

I’ve also been modifying the template I use. Here it is to download. Or copy it to your own Google Drive and try it out with one of their available fonts.

I’m writing this after three and a half hours in a dentist’s chair; it will not be exhaustive.

As I’ve written before, I often use published prayers, particularly older ones and mostly the form known as the collect (accent on the first syllable). But I rarely use them untouched.

Here are three ways to modify a prayer you might find.

First, give in an introduction. If it’s not clear why you are using a topical prayer, introduce it and bid the congregation to pray. Second, to make the prayer more fitting to the occasion, insert petitions. Third, if the prayer has phrasing that broadly impedes prayer, modify it, but try to keep the rhythm intact.  This one is, I think, abused as license to do what you want, no matter how it flows thereafter. I’ll retain some male language for God, but will smooth out excesses; I’ll also remove generic male language where men means human beings. More about inclusion in prayer some time when my mouth doesn’t throb so much.

Here’s a worked example, from the section “Prayers for Family; Parents and Children; Children’s Sunday” in Additional Prayers and Collects from Hymns of the Spirit.

Here is how it originally appears:

Almighty Father of all, who dost set the children of men in families, enable us, we pray thee, so to guide the children committed to our care that they may love the ways of truth and of righteousness, of peace and of goodwill. Fulfill in them our divinest dreams, and through them carry forward the coming of thy kingdom upon earth. Amen.

Here is how I might change it.

Let us pray for children in the church :

Our One Parent, universal and gracious, who dost set children in families, enable us, we pray thee, so to guide those children committed to our care, especially Andrea, Bartholomew and Chiana, that they may love the ways of truth and of righteousness, of peace and of goodwill. Fulfill in them our divinest dreams, and through them carry forward the coming of thy kingdom upon earth. Amen.

These are all straight-forward, common-sense changes… unless you’ve never done it. Using prayer resources is more than pulling them out of the book.

Apart from clearing out half-started old draft articles and making some progress on the Independent Sacramental Movement, this month I’ll write on:

• Adapting liturgical elements
• Finding themes in the Revised Common Lectionary
• Revisiting free and open source tools for their church use
• Preparing for Universalist “Memorial Day”
• Perfecting the communion loaf

I take requests, too. Is there anything you, dear readers, would like me to research and write about?

Saturday afternoon, I got a short email from the editor of a site called Тринитарный библейский универсализм (Trinitarian Biblical Universalism) at universalist.org.ua. It’s all in Ukrainian, of course.

It would be a lie to say I didn’t weep a little. It’s gratifying to know that time and time again, God speaks to the people and calls them to a complete Gospel. Note the reference to Paul Dean, one of the last of the leading squarely Trinitarian Universalists (though they never completely disappeared, or should I say we?) and Edward Mitchell, who led an independent stream of New York-based Universalists early in the nineteenth century. Google Translate got me a little ways (it’s not so good for theology) but the other Ukrainian books the editor publishes are beyond me; perhaps they’ve been translated.

I’ve been enjoying “WW2 in Real Time“, a YouTube-based week-by-week documentary wrap up events in the war 79 years ago. (Go, and subscribe if that’s your kind of thing.) That means we’re in 1940, during the Battle of Britain.

I’ve thought about reading the Radio Times in tandem since they’re available, to get a better sense of the nature of the religious broadcasting. So, “today” Sunday, September 1, 1940 I see on the Forces radio schedule a variety of short religious programs, lasting from about five to thirty minutes, and ranging from talks, to hymn sings, to services. Smart: serving people who might not be able to break for a local, organized service or to listen to a fifty minute “full” service on the Home service. Serving people as they are is good ministry. I look forward to other insights.

Also, I note on that day an early show for the Forces featuring that epitome of World War Two home-fires entertainment, Vera Lynn. She is still living, aged 102. This is the past, but not ancient history.

We’re approaching our annual Ingathering celebration once again, and I’m looking forward to sharing a new year of worship, learning, and growth with all of you. There are some changes ahead, and I want to make sure you’re fully aware of the shape of things to come here at the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos.

First and foremost, we’ll begin a new worship and RE schedule on September 8 when we celebrate our Ingathering. The worship service will remain at 10:00 am (the same time as our summer schedule). Religious Education for children and adults will now follow the service at 11:15 am (allowing 15 minutes to move from worship to classes). Coffee and fellowship will be available both before and after the service, parallel to the RE hour. This change allows us to have an earlier start time to worship without pushing RE back too early. In addition, it relieves some of the time and traffic conflicts that can arise with RE and worship preparation happening concurrently. And, it will allow us to free up the sanctuary for some larger adult RE programming as needed.

Secondly, we will continue with the weekly all ages worship that we kicked off in August. The intention table will remain in the sanctuary, along with the young worshippers space and the quiet space in the library.

Next, you’ll notice some variations in our order of service and worship content from week-to-week. This year, we’re engaging more of the congregation through our new Worship Arts Teams to create worship that engages people across multiple senses and ways of knowing. We hope that together we are presenting worship that is even more meaningful and memorable to our church family.

Finally, we’ll be continuing our monthly themed ministry explorations with our Soul Matters program. This year, our children’s RE will integrate with the Soul Matters themes more directly, so that between worship and RE we will be sharing subject matter across all ages, creating opportunities for cross-generational learning and connection.

Now . . .

I know change can be uncomfortable, but don’t let these program adjustments scare you off. Some of what we’re doing you’ve already experienced (10:00 am service, all ages worship). Some of it is just leaning more into programming we’ve already dipped our toes into (Soul Matters). All of it, we’re sure, will only serve to strengthen our connections as a faithful people and as members of a community.

I look forward to being with you and leading you into this new church year. I can’t wait to see what we discover together.

~~~~~

At our Ingathering, you’ll also have a chance to say “Bon Voyage” to our Partner Church delegation. Seven of us, including Jess and myself, will travel to Romania on September 10 on a Transylvanian pilgrimage. We’ll be touring from Bucharest to Cluj/Kolosvar, visiting sites of significance to our Unitarian history in that country, and spending 4 days with our partner church in Fenyokut as they celebrate the 450th (!) anniversary of their congregation. We’re excited for the journey, and I can’t wait to tell you all about our adventures when we return.

Rev. Christine Robinson and Dan Lillie will return to the pulpit in my absence to lead worship. Please give them a warm, returning welcome.

~~~~~

I mentioned our Worship Arts Teams above. If you’d like to learn more about those teams, or about any of our other committees and opportunities for service, be sure to join us after worship on September 29 for our annual Committee Fair.

See you in church!

Rev. John Cullinan

I’m going through and cleaning up parts of the site, adding text where text is missing, moving links from the old Boyinthebands.com site and the like. The categories list is now a dropdown menu, and there’s a search bar in the site panel (desktop view).

The obvious change is the header image; it was time for something new. This is the Jersey Universalist Church, Jersey, Ohio, not so far from Columbus. I found the image at Wikimedia Commons, and although it was committed to the public domain, I want to thank user Nyttend for taking and sharing it.

I first learned of the Jersey church back in the 1990s but it wasn’t a member of the UUA but the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. Here it is in the 1998 NACCC yearbook, under Pataskala, Ohio. Several Universalist churches became members of the NACCC instead of the UUA, but none with the word Universalist in their names remain today, Jersey included. But guessing by the sign there was some activity as late as 2010.  Perhaps only a burial, as there is a cemetery next door. I wonder if they’re still going.

You can find it today on this Google map.

One fine day in San Francisco, nearly 35 years ago now, I found myself down on Mission Street, standing in line at the unemployment office. Not too many years earlier, as an attorney for the Legal Services Corporation, I had regularly represented people in their disputes with the unemployment office. And just days earlier, I had been the director of legal writing and research at Golden Gate University School of Law.

None of that changed what it felt like to stand in that line. And nobody in the whole place cared a hoot that I had just moved out of a very nice office on almost no notice when the Dean of the Law School decided to solve his financial problem by not having a director of writing and research any more.

When a workaholic is suddenly out of work, when somebody who has measured the value of life mainly by accomplishments suddenly has nothing to do, this is quite an experience. Now I think perhaps my six-month stint of unemployment was some of the best education I ever had. And so a decade later, when I was
studying at Starr King School, our Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, exploring whether I might be called to the ministry, I decided to have a hard look at the meaning of work—what makes work good or not, and what not working means.

I have been revisiting those times here lately, as I think of those who are going through a variety of transitions in their working lives, some on purpose, some not at all on purpose, and as I find myself revisiting my own ambivalences about retirement.

When I lived in Berkeley, California, the streets were filled with homeless people with no work. I wanted to know what their lives were really like, so I spent one morning a week for about a year at the Berkeley Jobs Consortium. Each week I helped some homeless, jobless person compose a resume to get work. They shared with me the memoirs of their working lives.

There is, of course, work that’s so hard that almost anyone would welcome not working as a rest from it. There’s work that, as the song by Sweet Honey in the Rock says, brings you more than a pay check—work that brings you asbestosis, perhaps, or carpal tunnel or back injury, or the possibility that you may be shot in the line of duty.

There’s work that does greater injury to the spirit than to the body. I think of the people on the assembly line who become extensions of the machines they operate, who aren’t even allowed to stop their numbing motion long enough to go to the bathroom.

But I also think of how differently people approach the same work. Studs Terkel’s classic book called Working is a collection of interviews of people in nearly every line of work you can think of. Side by side, we see the check-out clerk who hates the job and the one who loves it. We see the woman who waits tables in a restaurant with aching feet and heart hardened by too many encounters with nasty customers—and the waitress who thinks of herself gliding among the restaurant tables as if she were ballet dancing.

When I lived in Tampa, Florida, I learned the history of the cigar factories in the section of town called Ybor City. The people who sat in long rows rolling cigars saw their work as an art. Many could not read, but they listened all day to a highly revered “lector” (reader) who sat on a high platform and read to them not only the newspapers but also the literary classics. The lector was among the highest esteemed personages in the community, and the factory owners, who didn’t speak Spanish, wiped out the system when they caught on that the lectors were reading from communist newspapers and organizing the workers.

You may know the story of the three stone masons. Someone asks them what they are doing. The first one scowls and says: “I am laboring to break up this unbreakable rock.” The second smiles and says: “I am earning a living for my family.” The third stands up and puffs out his chest. “I am building a great cathedral for the glory of God,” he says. We had better beware of hastily condemning some work as demeaning and lifting up other work as honorable.

For good or for ill, many of us regard work as a kind of self-definition. Dorothee Sölle says that joblessness is a form of excommunication—being prevented from the communication that matters. Made solitary when we are not made to be solitary. It isn’t true only of people who are fired or laid off. It may be true of people who retire as well.

My father worked for Goodyear Tire and Rubber for forty years before he retired. He knew nothing but his work and golf. He lived twenty more years, and golf became increasingly less fun for his aging body. He spent more and more time in front of the television set. I urged him to write his memoirs. Young business people could learn so much from his stories of corporate life. But he never did it. Sometimes I wish he had found himself in the unemployment line in his mid-40s.

But I hasten to say that retirement need not be like his. Not working, for whatever reason, need not be like it was for him. I also have in my memory’s eye my partner Alan, in the years when he was no longer able to work but before Agent Orange and PTSD finally took their toll on him.

Alan had been a salesman after he returned from Vietnam. He could sell anything, and over the years just about did—pole barns, jewelry, advertising, shark jaws, pistols, pieces of eight. I believe he could have sold the Brooklyn Bridge if he had tried. I used to
listen to him on the phone, taking care of business. Never hurried, never out of sorts, no matter how he was feeling, no matter what kind of day it had been.

That was his “working.” His “not working” was sitting on the dock, fishing, or not fishing. Or taking the canoe up the Santa Fe River before the sun went down. Maybe checking for the manatee at the mouth of the Ichetucknee River. Or having a ride in the old blue pick-up to Pope’s Store, checking on the neighborhood. “Come on,” he would say, “I want to show you something.” And up at the corner, we would sit in the darkness and watch hundreds of lightning bugs. There was very little talking. Alan, those last years at the river, was able to just be.

Ram Dass says if you focus on doing instead of being, you burn out. It isn’t the nature of the work that burns you out. If you regard your work as an experiment in truth, you do not burn out. Ram Dass also says you can work on yourself anywhere. You can work on yourself as easily at the phone com-pany as at the ashram.

When I finally got a job after my six months of unemployment, I wrote about tax law for a legal publishing company. For the first time in my working life, I didn’t take any work home. I started at 8:00 a.m. and left at 4:00 p.m., and I got to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge twice a day—in the opposite direction from all the traffic. If anybody ever tells you this life doesn’t put temptation in our paths, don’t you believe it. You understand—I abhor tax law, and I was making what felt like about five cents a month. But what did that matter?

It turned out to matter a great deal that the work didn’t give me any obstacles to overcome. It didn’t give me any resistance so that I could feel the strength of my being push against anything. It didn’t bring me forth.

I compared my working life with that of my friend David, living on his old boat in the Sausalito harbor. He really did make very little money in his landscaping business. He would say when he got into somebody’s yard, he felt like a musician getting ready to perform. He always wanted to get to know the people, to find out what col-
ors and textures would reflect their style. David died a few years ago, but my memories of him are still fresh. I can still picture him there, spending hours every day engaging people in conversation over coffee at the Café Trieste, walking along the docks and speaking to people as he went. He was one of the happiest people I ever knew.

The Book of Genesis would have us believe that work is our punishment for disobeying God, and that when we were banished from Eden we were doomed to labor. But some contem-porary theologians say no, not so. Rather, the creation of the world is not finished, but continues day by day, and we are co-creators with God. Well, I don’t know about either theory. But I know that my father was cursed in his not working, and my friend David was blessed in both his working and his not working.

And I know that some of the most
important work we do nobody pays us a penny for. All the volunteering. All the work of the church. I know that the hard work we do on ourselves does not burn us out—the work to know ourselves, to make our relationships healthy, the grief work, the work to free ourselves from phobia or addiction. “It may be,” as Wendell Berry says, “that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.”

It doesn’t matter whether we are working or not working, or not working any more. There is work for us all to do that is worthy, and we are all worthy of the work.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110044217/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_09/01.mp3

Brian La Doone is a musher—a sled dog racer—in far northern Canada, which is polar bear country. He says he keeps a working distance of about 70 feet from the bears. His Canadian Eskimo sled dogs don’t always do likewise. On one occasion La Doone warily witnessed a polar bear loping toward one of his sled dogs. The dog wagged his tail and bowed. This happened during a time when the polar bears were particularly hungry. The sea hadn’t yet frozen and the bears couldn’t reach the seals they typically hunted on the ice.

To La Doone’s surprise, the two began to play, to frolic. They rolled around and wrestled in the snow. They embraced and nipped at each other. The dog knew something La Doone didn’t know. The bear had signaled its playful intent while it approached. The dog in turn had signaled its playful intent. The bear actually returned every day for the next week to romp with the dog. And then, when the ice finally thickened enough, the bear headed off for its hunting ground.

What possessed the polar bear to want to play with the dog rather than making a meal of him? Why did the dog take the risk? Why did these two unlikely creatures become playmates? Why?

Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughn relate this story in their book Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul. The title of the book pretty much tells the story on play, which is as vital to true aliveness as breath is to being alive. Children and animals know this. They engage in play naturally. If left to their own devices, they play. That’s what they do. They intuitively and instinctively play. For adults, play too often comes to be seen as a waste of time, goofing off, or something to do in our spare time. At best, we set aside time for play—times of the day or week or year. The Protestant work ethic, our culture of busyness and drive for achievement, keep a tight grip on us. Many of us are frantically trying to keep up with the day-to-day demands of work, family and household. There is a constant urge and encouragement to demonstrate our worthiness and productivity. We need to get things done. And church can sometimes feel that way too. “Go for a walk” or “take a vacation” get added to the bottom of a to-do list.

The lack of play is no longer just an adult concern. There’s increasing evidence that children are becoming play deprived. Parents are often the ones most aware of this. Ironically, research suggests that the adults most worried about their children’s lack of play are also the ones most likely to lack play in their own lives. Parents, take note. The solution is obvious. Start playing more yourself.

The greatest danger in play deprivation may not be obvious at first. It may just seem like life is a little less fun and a little more serious. But observing those who have stopped playing makes it clear that there are more troublesome repercussions. A person or animal that stops playing becomes disinterested in new activities. When play stops, it becomes hard to find pleasure in the world. When play stops, our creativity, adaptability and intelligence get thwarted.

The opposite also occurs. When animals and people stop finding pleasure in the world, they stop playing. Anyone who has a pet has witnessed this behavior. One of my cats was recently unwell. He was having what looked like seizures and overall lacked his usual pep. A vet visit and blood work revealed a urinary tract infection. He got an antibiotic shot. After only one day, he was bouncing around like he had springs in his feet, livelier than ever at age 14. Play puts an added bounce into our step. Brown and Vaughn point out that play also animates the mind and has physical, social, intellectual, and psychological benefits. Play aids in survival. It makes us smarter and more adaptable. It makes us more creative and innovative. It fosters empathy and enables us to form complex social relationships and groups.

So it might be a good time to take a personal inventory of how exactly your play life is going. How much are you playing? Are you bringing a playful spirit to your work life, to your relationships, to worship? Is there a particular form of play you might engage in more often?

I’ve been reading a lot about play, and trying to practice it more. There are many benefits and attributes. I want to highlight just three that aren’t immediately obvious.

For one thing, the point of play is that it doesn’t have a point. People who study play consistently name purposelessness as a central quality of play. In other words, play isn’t goal-driven. You do it for the sake of the activity itself. Margaret Guenther, an Episcopal priest and spiritual director, says, “Play exists for its own sake. Play is for the moment; it is not hurried.”  During play, there’s a sense of timelessness.

As a child I loved anything artsy-craftsy—coloring, drawing, making things. At Sunday School and in regular school I got so absorbed in my projects that I lost track of time. I struggled with the time limits on arts and crafts projects. I wanted to keep on practicing “holy uselessness.” That’s a phrase Guenther uses to describe this sense of purposelessness. She says in her book Toward Holy Ground:

When we play, we also celebrate holy uselessness. Like the calf frolicking in the meadow, we need no pretense or excuses. Work is productive; play, in its disinterestedness and self-forgetting, can be fruitful.

Similarly, Stuart Brown says, “[Play] doesn’t have a particular purpose, and that’s what’s great about play. If its purpose is more important than the act of doing it, it’s probably not play.” That’s a great distinction. I can’t tell you how often I have tried to multitask my play time. If I go running to lose weight or be healthy, that’s great. But it’s probably not play. It’s possible it will become play while I’m running, but maybe not. On the other hand, if I run just for the sheer sake of running, for its own sake, for the pleasure of it, that’s play.

A second, striking, aspect of play is that it is deep. Soul level deep. It has its own reality. It runs counter to cultural norms, rules, and expectations. Maybe that’s part of what scares and thrills us about it. In her book Deep Play, author and poet Diane Ackerman says:

One sheds much of one’s culture, with its countless technical and moral demands, as one draws on a wholly new and sense-ravishing way of life…. We can lay aside our sense of self, shed time’s continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world’s ordinary miracles…. When it happens we experience a sense of revelation and gratitude.

Deep play invites us to give up control, give up certainty, and give up our preconceived ideas and rules. That’s because play arises from deep within us, not from the world’s standards for us. It is an authentic expression of self. Play taps into our own creativity and innovation. Special equipment and fancy toys can actually get in the way. They can suppress the inner expression of self, rather than cultivating it.

Religion is the third quality of play I want to talk about. Diane Ackerman writes that: “Deep play … reveals our need to seek a special brand of transcendence, with a passion that makes thrill-seeking [understandable], creativity possible, and religion inevitable.” Religion may seem an unlikely playground. So often we think of religion as being stiff, boring, structured, dogmatic, and serious. That has a lot to do with the kind of religious upbringing and experiences we’ve had. I don’t think of our Unitarian Universalist religion as stiff or boring. And we certainly aren’t dogmatic. But too much focus sometimes gets placed on church “work” rather than church “play.”

UUs can be a driven group of people who want to save the world. That’s part of the reason for religion. But we do well to remember that play helps us do that even better. Play helps build the beloved community we long for. It deepens relationships, builds bridges across our differences, promotes belonging, grows our souls, and cultivates harmony and love.

Our Unitarian Universalist principles and sources don’t mention play. Not explicitly, anyway. But the first and sixth sources of our faith are suggestive of play. The first source draws on the “direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and openness to forces that create and uphold life.” Play and wonder go hand in hand. Play renews the spirit. Play opens us to creative forces. The sixth source draws on “earth-centered teachings which celebrate the sacred circle of life.” To celebrate the circle of life is to sing, play musical instruments, tell stories, enact pageants, share in rituals, share our joys and our sorrows, hear poetry, pray, and meditate. Through these and other forms of play, Unitarian Universalism calls us back to ourselves, to holy uselessness, to the spontaneous expression of true self where creativity, joy, and gratitude abound.

What would it hurt if we were to be more playful in all we do—whether at church, at home, at work? Perhaps if we let go of a bit of our usefulness and purpose we could step into another realm that was more creative, more joyful, more deeply and truly religious. Which might turn out to be our life’s purpose after all.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110044154/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_09/03.mp3

Psychologist David Elkind, in his book The Power of Play, identifies several characteristics of play, including:

1. No worry of failure—whether you win or lose doesn’t matter.
2. Balance between challenge and skill—some risk heightens the experience, but not so much that known talents can’t be relied upon.
3. Action and awareness merge—you’re so involved you’re on autopilot.
4. Self-consciousness disappears—you don’t worry about how you look, if you’re good enough, etc.
5. The activity is an end in and of itself—the doing is what matters, not any reward you get for it.

This experience of delight in the task itself is not just a luxury, it is a need.

We need the lightness of being that play creates to better face the fact that our lives will end in death—and what could be more absurd?

We need the lightness of being that play affords when we do the serious work of relieving, in whatever way we can, the hundreds of thousands around the world who are dying from disease, malnutrition, abuse, neglect, and war.

We need the lightness of being that play offers when bringing groups in conflict together so that bonds can be forged and new hope for peace and healing encouraged.

We need the lightness of being that play brings to young Black men feeling hopeless, police officers feeling under attack and undocumented immigrants fearfully hiding.

We need play to face the work of the world.

We need play to maintain our emotional, spiritual, and physical balance so that we can do the work that desperately needs doing.

Come, let us play, even as we work.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110044133/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_09/04.mp3

Last year my therapist started asking me at every visit, “You having any fun?”

I’d laugh, and say, “Nope.”

Eventually, I realized that I just wasn’t any good at fun. Either I’d never learned, or I’d forgotten how to let loose, kick back, and have a blast doing something.

So I did what we do these days: I asked Facebook. My friends gave me all kinds of suggestions, and some of them actually sounded like things I might enjoy. In the time since then, I have had more fun. But lately, I’ve been thinking that question is a hard one for parents of young children.

Do you remember that Nyquil ad? The one that said, “Moms don’t take sick days”? (And yes, there was a dads version of that commercial. No non-binary parent commercial though.)

For the default parent, there are no sick days. There is no end to the work of child-tending, and every precious hour of respite care, should we be lucky enough to have that, is measured out carefully. We always ask ourselves, “Is this a good use of babysitter time?” There are always dishes and laundry, deadlines and past-due projects—so many things that seem more urgent than self-care of any kind, let alone play.

After five-plus years in the trenches, I’ve decided that there are only two ways that parents get to have fun.

Option one: convince yourself that fun belongs on your to-do list. That it’s not optional. That the well-being of your children depends on your ability to have fun. The oxygen-mask metaphor is so old that we roll our eyes at it, but it’s true. Play is as important as air and water and food and shelter. Without it, parts of us die.

Which leads us to option two: play with your children. I’m not just talking about getting down on the floor with them and making elaborate racetracks. I’m not just talking about doing whatever the things are that your kids think are fun. Find the places where your joy and their joy overlap. For my partner Liesl, that’s the racetracks. For me, it’s art. It’s liberating to do kid art. The kids and I will sit at a table with a big piece of paper, a bin of crayons, and a timer. Every time the timer rings, we switch chairs, and color there. It’s so much fun—free of the constraints of needing to make “real art.”

Last weekend the kids and I went to something billed as a “Clay Extravaganza.” My daughter and I both tried our hands at a pottery wheel—and loved it. Then we watched skilled potters compete—competitions that were silly and serious at the same time. In the first one, a team of three potters worked together—one operating the pedal controlling the speed, and the other two each using one hand only, working cooperatively to draw the clay evenly upward. In the second one, seven potters sat at wheels—with paper bags over their heads, a silly face drawn on each bag. The timer started, and all but one created beautiful pieces. One potter, when she removed the paper bag, said, “That’s not at all what I was imagining!” The crowd’s favorite was the potter whose piece collapsed. I think he actually won.

Had I been alone, I would have loved to stay and watch more of the competitions. I would have taken longer to explore the exquisite works of art for sale.

But it was time for my son’s nap, so we packed up and went home. He had a snack, then went down easily for a long nap.

Did I want more? Maybe. But if I’d been alone, I would have missed seeing my daughter’s delight and mastery. If I’d been alone, I would have missed a lesson in saying, “It is enough. My heart is full.” And if I’d been alone I might have been drawn into judgements of good art and bad, or comparisons between my creations and those of the talented artists I was watching. But my children and I were able to stay with the spirit of art as play, and each of us and our relationships   together came out stronger for it.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110044111/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_09/05.mp3

In my article about the Western Unitarians, I mentioned my doubts about the UUA effectively starting new churches. And yes, you can correctly read into any number of my articles the suggestion that new churches will be independent, small and boot-strapped. But what has been created? (And surely, this isn’t to suggest they were air-dropped from Boston.)

In 2010, I made up a chart of the 33 congregations that joined the UUA in the seven years since 2003; joined, not formed. (At least three have long histories.) I’ll bring that up to date.

So all those churches since 2003

As before, these are congregations that have been admitted to the UUA, whether or not they had a prior existence. The ones from before 2010 are in the first group. The membership then and now are in parentheses, separated by a slash.

The congregations admitted since are in the second group, with the current membership at the end. The “cite” is a link back to my article about their admission.

1. Adirondack Unitarian Universalist Community: Saranac Lake, NY (40/38)
2. Aiken Unitarian Universalist Church: Aiken, SC (68/80)
3. All Souls Free Religious Fellowship (All Souls UU Society): Chicago: IL, (14/14)
4. Florence UU Fellowship: Florence, OR (23/43)
5. Foothills Unitarian Universalist Fellowship: Maryville, TN (72/80)
6. Ginger Hill Unitarian Universalist Congregation: Slippery Rock, PA (32/15)
7. Heartland Unitarian Universalist Church: Indianapolis, IN (25/55)
8. Mosaic Unitarian Universalist Congregation: Orange City, FL (34/22)
9. New Hope Congregation: New Hudson, MI (30/29)
10. Northeast Iowa Unitarian Universalist Fellowship: Decorah, IA (57/47)
11. Northwoods/Chequamegon Unitarian Universalist Fellowship: Ashland, WI (31/84)
12. Open Circle Unitarian Universalist Fellowship: Fond du Lac, WI (52/70)
13. Open Circle UU: Boulder, CO (15/disbanded)
14. Pathways Church: Southlake, TX (90/80)
15. Prairie Circle Unitarian Universalist Congregation: Grayslake, IL (72/93)
16. Seward Unitarian Universalist of Seward: Seward, AK (9/disbanded)
17. The Unitarian Universalists of Central Delaware: Dover, DE (51/53)
18. Unitarian Church of Hubbardstown: Hubbardstown, MA (13/13)
19. Unitarian Universalist Church of Blanchard Valley: Findlay, OH (26/20)
20. Unitarian Universalist Church of Hot Springs: Hot Springs, AR (43/102)
21. Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Chesapeake: California/Barstow, MD (43/30)
22. Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Tupelo: Tupelo, MS (36/34)
23. Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Rocky Mount: Rocky Mount, NC (40/28)
24. Unitarian Universalist of Petaluma: Petaluma, CA (71/89)
25. Unitarian Universalist of Santa Clarita: Santa Clarita, CA (59/57)
26. Unitarian Universalist Peace Fellowship: Raleigh, NC (44/57)
27. Unitarian Universalists of Fallston, MD: Bel Air, MD (41/25)
28. Unitarian Universalists of Gettysburg: Gettysburg, PA (53/55)
29. Unitarian Universalists of the Big Bend, TX: Big Bend, TX (31/39)
30. Washington Ethical Society: Washington, DC (150/166)
31. WellSprings Congregation: Chester Springs, PA (143/271)
32. Wildflower Church: Austin, TX (181/123)

And joining in the nine years since. I think you can see the difference.

1. All Faiths Unitarian Congregation: Fort Myers, FL cite (139)
2. All Souls: Miami, FL cite (84)
3. Iowa Lakes Unitarian Universalist Fellowship: Okoboji, IA cite (39)
4. Original Blessing: Brooklyn, NY cite (since disbanded)
5. Tapestry UU: Houston, TX (withdrew from multi-site congregation) cite (32)
6. Unitarian Universalist Fellowship: Lake Norman/Davidson, NC cite (45)
7. Unitarian Universalists of Blue Ridge: Rappahannock/Washington, VA cite (55)
8. UU Congregation: Petoskey, Michigan cite (26)

As for the matching list of congregations that disbanded or merged: well, only if there’s time. Not nearly so pleasant.

Last year I wrote a series of articles on two service books, New Every Morning and Each Returning Day, used by the BBC during (and after) World War Two in their fifteen-minute Daily Service. My goal was to see if there were any lessons to be learned for conducting worship today, and I think there are at least hints. Particularly how much you can simplify worship, and how you can identify themes for worship. (I may pick up this series later.) The series begins here:

“New Every Morning” for radio worshipers

The other articles are here, here, and here.

So, what’s changed? Last year, I used the BBC Genome to read schedules from the Radio Times, which had a little blurb for the Daily Service and longer outlines for the longer weekly services. Unfortunately, when I was writing the series, only the Radio Times issues for 1939 were online. So only the opening months of the war. The BBC’s schedule was still being retooled for wartime (all of the local services were merged into a single Home Service, and later one for the Forces) and Each Returning Day hadn’t been published yet.

Glancing back to that series, I was prompted to look again at the BBC Genome, and lo! the many years of issues filled in! (Which you probably guessed if you saw the title.) Now I have more data to get a sense of the services.

Here is the service for June 5, 1944, the day before D-Day.

from page 61 of ‘ New Every Morning,’ and page 38 of ‘ Each Returning Day.’ Jesu thy mercies are untold ; Psalm 32 ; Help us to help each other, Lord

That is New Every Morning service 14, “Suffered under Pontius Pilate.” The alternate Psalm is 16; I suspect Psalm 32 was the Coverdale version. There is a touching prayer for “the afflictions of thy people.”  I would like to think it was used. Besides “Jesus, thy mercies are untold,” there are five other suggested hymns, but “Help us to help each other, Lord” isn’t one. The service continues at some point with Day 17 in Each Returning Day, “For the gift of sympathy.”

Amen to that.

I’ve been writing at this site (and earlier, at boyinthebands.org) since 2003, and it amazes me that I’ve written so little about “Western Unitarianism” or “the Unity Men”: those Unitarians of the Western Unitarian Conference who promoted a theistic moral religion, in contrast to the Unitarian Christianity of New England.

This is all I found of mine in 16 years of writing:

A fiddle-and-lecture order of service

To be honest, it’s not my thing. But it is an honest expression of religious faith, has a genuine appeal and is a honorable part of the Unitarian tradition.

And more: I worry that they’re not going to be any new Unitarian or Universalist congregations. The UUA seems to have gone out of the church planting business. Perhaps this is just as well since there’s been noted tendency, even among the Christians, to encourage congregations to have an all-inclusive Unitarian Universalist identity, rather than being true to a particular vision. It never made sense to me, either on theological or polity grounds. This kind of society (and it probably would be called a society) might be very desirable today.

Without banging my “parish and church” drum too hard, the Theist church looks to me to be the perfect modernist parish without a church. By which I mean it’s a public service body, dedicated to education and morals though worship and service. Its “sacrament” is the pulpit. The (missing) church is that body of believers who seek (to keep it brief) closeness to God through profession of faith, and the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It is specific in much the same way the parish is general. Can you guess which side the Unitarians have defaulted to? (And most, but far from all, of the Universalists.)

Of course, the Western Unitarians had a particular focus and context: public morals, personal development and a calm sense of awe and devotion. I’ll defer to those who know it better to describe it in depth. It was progressive in a way that might make us roll our eyes, but what doesn’t these days? Revivals, if anyone wants one, require interpretation.

Looking back to when they Western Unitarians were at their strength, you can also see a parallel movement in Reform Judaism. With its emphasis on the prophetic and universal, and a strong reduction in the use of Hebrew, Classic Reform offer something of a similar liturgical experience to the Western Unitarians. At least you could be excused if you stumbled into either service and confuse it for the other. Classic Reform at its most Classic Reformist had organs in worship, some used hymnals, might refer their pulpit-gowned rabbis as “The Rev.” and some even met on Sundays. I would love to visit one of the remaining Classic Reform congregations, though watching the livestream of services from Temple Emanu-el (New York) or reading the Union Prayer Book, Sinai Edition, Revised puts me close to the tone if not the text of the Western Unitarians.  I think the clearest “bridge” is the hymn “Praise to the Living God,” a traditional Jewish synagogue song, translated into English by a Unitarian minister. It was found both in the Union Hymnal (Reform Jewish, 1897) and Unity Hymns and Chorales (Western Unitarian, 1911). This is the same hymn that would open Hymns of the Spirit, and a version is found in Singing the Living Tradition.

Of course,  Unity Hymns and Chorales is where you go for a words, if you wanted it as a period piece. (Or perhaps from the Hymns of the Spirit, the fourth, fifth, sixth and eleventh services.) It’s lovely, but a new Theist society, eastern or western, will need to find its own voice and its own take on that vital if emotionally constrained approach to speak in this anxious age, beset by demons.

I don’t travel as much as I like, or I think I’d like, so I let my mind wander instead. As a child, I occupied myself with atlases and encyclopedia. In college, I heard the Iron Curtain fall by shortwave and met strangers by Usenet. Since the early 1990s, I’ve trekked down the back alleys of the internet. Today, I remembered a site I once enjoyed about the pipe organs of Greenland. I could have picked something else as a window into Greenland; indeed, I also look at sales flyers. (Frozen pizza, anyone?) But with pipe organs, I not only get something of obvious ecclesiastic interest — I know nothing of organs but I do like to snoop around a church — but also a slice of what Greenlanders value in music, architecture and religion.

Pipe Organs of Greenland (randallharlow.net)

I’ve written about churches in Greenland before, but not for ten years or so.

• The church at the end of the earth
• Thule, part two
• More churches in Greenland

The site has been nicely updated since I last looked it up. Be sure to click on the photos, which cycle you through the images for the town or village. The dramatic landscapes! Both the spare Nordic modernism of the larger towns, and the colorful historic churches. The lighting fixtures!

I think I prefer the more homespun choices. For example, I rather like what appear to be metal house numbers used in lieu of cards on hymnboards. (I’ve seen something like this before, at the now-demolished Third Church of Christ, Scientist, here in D.C.)

That little church in Nutaarmiut (2010 population, 36) is simple but endearing, and I might harbor wistful, romantic notions of the hamlet if it hadn’t been the scene of a triple murder in 2012. (I think that was about the time I stopped looking at Greenlandic churches.) Which, I suppose, is the value of travel — in fact, or by armchair — namely, the appreciation of what is, and not you would imagine to be.

I’ve gotten a lot of interesting messages lately and some requests to share the articles that I’ve written. I wish I could say it’s about my reviews of prayer resources or research into Universalist polity. No, it’s almost always about the UUA, the UUMA or their action against Todd Eklof. There’s a lot of anger towards the signers of that letter out there.

Sure, share my articles. I post them in public to be read. (And if I said no, how would I stop you?)

But if the point of sharing the article is to stir up trouble in your church, please consider speaking directly and clearly to whom you have the conflict instead. Use the systems of accountability you have at hand, rather than relying on gossip and back-channel. While sometimes effective in the short run, gossip and back-channel are intensely corrosive to a church and that way nobody wins anything.

Following some fan mail yesterday, I think I’m going to continue this thread of prayer resources for a couple of days more at least.

These days, I rarely write my own prayers. There are so many established prayers with deep and sensitive wordings, and written in the rhythm of human speech, that it makes sense to use those and take what time I have for worship preparation and put it into the sermon. These are not usually new published prayers, which too often look and read like free verse, are breathy in their self-satisfactions and stumble into cliche. I’d rather take something old and tweak it; say, if there are too many generic men or fathers.

One of the reasons I set up hymnsofthespirit.org was so that I could share the liturgical elements I scanned for easier searching. (Despite it being dedicated to the hymnal, the site now is really for the associated Services of Religion.)

I’m looking for other similar resources, and I think I found one: Morgan Phelps Noyes’s 1934 Prayers For Services: A Manual For Leaders Of Worship.

This work obviously isn’t a denominational work, but comes out of that thought-filled mainline Protestant stream, which included Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Unitarians. Several prayers from the then-standard Unitarian hymn-service book and James Martineau, with Anglo-Catholic Pearcy Dearmer and the evangelical-tinged YMCA being the other bounding limits.  I think it has promise, even if I might not think every prayer is appropriate.

Plus, it’s large and well-organized. The table of contents and index are useful alone for inspiring sermon themes. The selection of opening words is well-chosen, and includes occasions outside the liturgical church year, like Children’s Sunday.

There are, of course, many prayers. But one feature I look forward to using are “addresses to deity.” Fundamentally, collects are modular. You might remove the first part where you address God and replace it with something appropriate. Each section of the book (“The Prayer of Invocation,” “The Prayer of Thanksgiving,” “…Petition,” “…Intercession,” “…for Special Days and Seasons,” “… for the Funeral Service”) starts with these open-ended addresses. This can also be useful for prompting prayers that would be better for you to write or heavily adapt.

Lastly, the prayers are well-cited and the bibliography seems ripe for further exploration. I know I will.

So, the last prayer choice under “Close of Worship” in the Additional Prayers and Collects, in the 1937 joint Unitarian and Universalist Hymns of the Spirit is cited in the index as coming from “Liturgy of Malabar, adapted.”

Grant, O Lord, that the ears which have heard the voice of thy songs may be closed to the voice of clamor and dispute; that the eyes which have seen thy great love may also behold thy blessed hope; that the tongues which have sung thy praise may speak the truth; that the feet which have walked in thy courts may walk in the region of light; and that the souls of all who here receive thy blessed Spirit may be restored to newness of life. Glory be to thee for thine unspeakable gift. Amen.

I think it’s lovely.

Loveliness aside, you may ask, how did a prayer from fifth-century India get into something as New England-bound as the old red hymnal?

My first suspicion is that a Unitarian member of the committee recommended it rather than a Universalist member. I keep finding traces of early twentieth-century interest in antiquarian liturgy among Unitarians: an attempt to find the earliest, most authentic and most lowercase-c catholic strata on which to base liturgical devotion.  What keeps this from being simple primitivism is looking past the apostolic age and outside the New Testament. The Liturgy of Malabar is very old, but is the work of a developed church, and one that would have been very foreign to American Protestants. (And provides an link between the Unitarians and their later though brief interest in what we would call the Independent Sacramental Movement. More about that some other time.) Let’s put a pin in that curiousity: we will see this interest in a more universal Christian liturgical expression among the Unitarians again, and those influences on the Universalists.

While the prayer appears in different works before the red hymnal and since, its inclusion in W. E. Orchard’s The Order of Divine Service for Public Worship is the likely source, as the red hymnal also includes one of his own prayers. (Again, for another time.) This prayer is noted in that index as “(? 5th cent.) Neale and Littledale’s Translation.” John Mason Neale, better known as a translator of hymns, also translated liturgies. His translation of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” perhaps his best known.

But their translation of what? The Liturgies of SS. Mark, James, Clement, Chrysostom, and Basil, and the Church of Malabar. Is this Malabar liturgy the original East Syriac rite of the St. Thomas Christians, the restored East Syriac rite of the Eastern Catholics or the adopted West Syriac rite of the indiginizing church? There have been Christians in South India from antiquity, and the traditional founder of these churches was St. Thomas. Today the St. Thomas Christians range in theology and jurisdiction from the Nestorian to Eastern Catholic to Anglican. I ask all this with huge caveats: this is not my field, is centuries old and in languages I don’t read. Any clarification from readers would be well appreciated. Neale, in his introduction, isn’t clear about the source of the text he translated, but presumably from the Eastern Catholics with noted and obvious changes removed.

So what was the prayer originally? One given by a deacon, at the communion of the faithful. You can read it here.

The prayer has appeared in the Armed Forces Hymnal (1950); also here, here (for use after communion), and this textbook on worship.

It’s use as a post-communion prayer fits will with a liberal-Reformed use; I’ll use it at my next opportunity.

Responding to Tuesday’s post, Demas asked in the comments:

I’d be interested in reading your thoughts on what modern churches with less-than-optimal resources could do about the sacraments, and what your underlying beliefs about those are, if you wish to share them.

Dear Readers: You know I live for this, so I’ll reply as much as makes sense in one post, with a Universalist hook, of course.

First, what do I mean by the sacraments?

I’ll speak out of my belief and tradition, and even there only in brief. Sacramental theology is the kind of thing that could take up a lifetime so I’m not even going to pretend to scratch the surface. I hold two sacraments, or ordinances if you prefer: baptism, and the communion of the Lord’s Supper, as commended and ordained by Jesus Christ. I group all other actions, like confirmation, marriage and funerals as pastoral acts, though in practical terms providing them probably requires the same solutions in small and liminal communities.

And yet the sacraments derive not only their origin but their authority from Jesus Christ. He is the great and eternal High Priest, and we have, with boldness, a hope through those who gather in his name. The sacraments are valid and effective because they fulfill his promises. These promises include being known, being present and drawing us towards him. Which is to say the sacraments encourage, revive and sanctify us. They do not contort us into a state of being better or apart from other people, but throw us both morally and mysteriously into a greater likeness to God. Which is hardly a Zwinglian interpretation of the sacraments, though that’s probably more typical among denominational Universalists historically.

And the liminal communities?

While I’ve read about religious services in submarines and on Tristan da Cuhna, communities can be isolated in other, more ordinary ways. Dying towns, linguistic minorities, or cultural minorities — say a predominately gay church — might have a hard time getting a minister for the sacraments, even as an occasional visiting supply, to give three examples. I’d think the greatest isolator would be poverty, which might also rob a church of a pastor, or subject them to bad options out of necessity.

Two typical solutions are lay presidency and local ordination, which are likely to become more common in time. But there are risks. The former rejects officiating the sacraments as proper to, or necessarily from, the clergy, while the later tends to create different classes of clergy. I suppose neither is ideal, but being without the sacraments is worse. King’s Chapel in Boston, not Universalist but Unitarian, pivoted away from the Church of England when, denied the sacraments for years because of the Revolution, ordained their reader whom the Bishop of London wouldn’t. Thus a local ordination by the laity!

Back to the present. I would think that either a lay president or local minister would need training, perhaps something practical under the mentorship of a minister or (better) a group or association of ministers. That will depend on the setting. But even more, I would hope there would be plural presidents or ordinands as a practical matter, and to ease the responsibility of a single person being the last of last options for each and every service. Indeed, plural eldership (if coming from a low Reformed tradition) might be better still.

Universalist notes

As with most theological points apart from the final salvation of the world, Universalists held a variety of opinions and usually didn’t let those opinions get away of the essentials, of which the sacraments were not included. Yet there was tolerance. So while some ministers would not abide communion, it would always be found at meetings of the conventions, for instance. An open table was a condition of ministerial and parochial fellowship for generations, not being removed from the Laws of Fellowship well into the 1950s. In short, the sacraments were recognized, even if there wasn’t agreement about what they were or that they were necessary. There was this one point of agreement though: with two particular exceptions, their administration was the province of the clergy.

The first exception came very early on. Delegates at the 1790 convention at Philadelphia passed:

Whereas a great diversity of opinions has prevailed in all ages of the Church upon the subjects of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper; as also upon the subject of Confirmation, the Washing of Feet, Love Feasts, and the anointing the Sick with oil, &c. and as this diversity of opinions has often been the means of dividing Christians, who were united by the same spirit in more essential articles, we agree to admit all such persons who hold the articles of our faith, and maintain good works, into membership, whatever their opinion may be as to the nature, form, obligation of any or all of the above named ordinances. If it shall so happen that an application shall be made to a Minister to perform any of the said of ordinances, who does not believe in the present obligations of Christians to submit to them; or if he shall be applied to to perform them at a time, or in a way that is contrary to his conscience, in such a case a Neighbouring minister, who shall hold like principles respecting the ordinance or ordinances required by any member, shall be invited to perform them; or, if it be thought more expedient, each Church may appoint or Ordain one of their own members to administer the ordinances in such a way as to each Church may seem proper.

In other words, don’t get into fights about the ordinances. If your minister doesn’t agree, he (women weren’t ordained yet) should invite another minister who does to fill in. Or you can “appoint or Ordain” a member to do it. Appoint suggests a lay role within a church. A friend once pointed out to me that the resolutions at this convention were never repealed or repudiated.

The other example came late before the 1961 consolidation with the Unitarians. By that point, the ministerial shortage had become acute. Universalists had long had licensure: originally a probationary year before ordination where a lay person could preach and pastor a church, but could not “administer Christian ordinances.” Licensure was also a way to induct ministers from other denominations, and later became a status in its own right. (I think the last of the Universalist licensed ministers lived into the 1990s, and the rule allowing for them was quietly removed shortly thereafter.) By no later than 1946, licensed ministers were permitted “to administer Christian ordinances” “with the approval of the Central Committee of Fellowship,” a concession to the ministerial shortage.

But it’s worth noting that in both cases, this is an extension of church authority to a lay person to meet a particular need. Which is to say, there is a solution where people do not have access to the sacraments, but not one that individuals can confect in the presence of an orderly church.

Which is not to make it entirely about the Universalists, of course. At least in the United States, and perhaps anywhere Protestant missionaries (foreign or domestic) served: a shortage of ministers and a can-do spirit tends to make exceptions, and consider new options. Distance (literal or social) from seats of power intensifies the process.

And what if there’s not an orderly process? In such cases, God provides and ecclesiastical authority yields.

Start with the thirst
the deep well you have been forgetting,
ancient and ready to be soaked
without shame
the well your grandmothers dug for you
the reservoir carved and cared for
by the people your ancestors
betrayed
your thirst is their faithfulness
undeterred from believing
there are no strangers here
in the same thirst
we are made and unmade
born and born again

Thirst is the thing
that remembers
who you are
before the land, the hard rock, your
body stiff and unyielding –
hungry for canyons, mountains,
oxbow lakes, whole oceans of whales
and sea lions, and even
the bitter stories of slave ships and refugees
refused at the shore –

The thirst can hold it all,
untellable tales of
water coming before the ground is ready
water rising without recourse
stories also of creation and construction
the pot boiling for tea, and dinner,
warm washcloths, and
the first starts of a seedling in the spring
the thirst tastes the air,
knows the sky, and the
rain before it comes, and
sets in motion
the leap off the ledge
of the dock
freedom bound
into the startling cold, and the way the
breath leaves, and returns
like the sense that you are small
and also not unlike
late summer monsoons
always on the verge of
danger, and undoing it all

The thirst says
we are soft in these bodies
part river, flowing with the browns, the cuttbows, the
immigrant geese, sometimes too much, and
risk ready, part creek trickling
for miles underground,
the thirst knows there is a way
to turn every breaking thing
into beauty, to flush the wound clean
and begin the healing
again, thirst is what is possible
when we tend to the wanting
of all the world, the generations, the stars
starting with
your one, dry mouth
and the reaching for the glass,
the pouring, and the filling
the lifting to your tongue, and the
drinking in until you are
drenched in
life

Because of the controversy around the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association’s public censure of Todd Eklof, there’s been talk of heresy trials. Of course, there’s no trial yet, just the censure and waves of accusation, though some formal action could happen. (I wonder what the euphemism will be?)

There was a trial of a Universalist minister, Herman Bisbee, that’s widely regarded as a heresy trial — and a mistake. Naturally, it’s come up in the Facebook conversations (with Michael Servetus, whom I’ll leave for someone else to write about) so good to give some context to those unfamiliar with the situation. I’m going to pull together what I’ve written about it plus any original documents I can scare up.

But Charles Howe’s article at the Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography is detailed, and rather than re-write one, I’ll point to his.

Now that I found the world of Universalist Christians outside the Unitarian Universalist Association, I’m having to come to terms with the other theologies and ecclesiologies they have. Some are squarely catholic, a few mainliners or mystics, though most are evangelical or possibly charismatic. Some things that are valuable to me are not valuable to them, and vice versa. Among the things that many of these other Universalists appreciate that I don’t is apologetics.

Apologetics is an approach to theology that defends Christian theological propositions through reasoning and argument, with the goal of refuting opponents or convincing potential converts. If you went back a hundred and fifty or more years, mainline, denominational Universalists relied on apologetics, and particularly the public theological debate, to defend their positions and attract new members, so it could be a part of my inherited tradition. But it died by the 1920s and I’m not looking for it to return.

The problem with apologetics is that once people make up their minds it’s hard to convince them to change. Universalism is counter-cultural, and therefore suspect. If people suspect you, they’ll also suspect you’re trying to deceive them. Perversely, the more clever you are, the less effective you become. As for those Universalists of old, I think too many of them liked the fight more than being right, or being right more than being joyful in God. That’s no way to live.

An apologetic tact is also difficult for Universalists (then and now) because of our numbers. We’ve never been numerous, and so it’s been important to overcome differences, including serious differences, in order to have a critical mass to form congregations to share in common work. The question of whether or not there would be future punishment (the so-called Restorationist Controversy) led to a split, but I think it healed from organizations being too small as much from changing opinions among Universalists. And life’s too short to get caught up in the mechanics of God’s activity when it’s impossible to prove any of it.

I take the tack that Universalism is the kind of Christianity that most people would imagine God would want for us. It’s implausibility is really a reflection on the world we live in, not a reflection of the God who made us. Perhaps that’s what gives it a perverse moral strength, even while those who get sniffy claim that would allow its believers get away with anything. Do you think I ignore the goodness shown me? I didn’t earn that. Universalism isn’t for the haughty.

I’ve been a Universalist long enough to let its truth guide my decisions. I think it’s made me less fearful and perhaps kinder. I’m less impressed by political appeals that lift up the United States over other countries, for instance. That — with the clear profession of faith, not seeking contention — is  how I hope to promote the faith. Let your behavior and mode of living be your argument.

[Typos cleaned up from the original.]

I know it sounds naive, but I swear at the start, I thought it was a one-time thing.

Granted, they were everywhere, so I knew it wasn’t going to be simple, or short term.

But, still, I thought if I was thorough, attentive.  If I got to the roots.  If I spent enough time – in what I came to think of as both my penance, and pleasure – sweating in the often blistering sun – if I was sufficiently dutiful – I would eventually be able to move forward. All the weeds would be eradicated, and my garden would become safe, and regulated – without having to return again, and again, and again.

Before I knew to call it “bindweed,” I saw its ropes wrapped around every little thing in my garden just trying to break free, and survive.  There were others, too – what I later learned to call crabgrass, goatsbeard, thistle (mostly Canadian variety), spotted surge, and the wayward starts born of nearby trees, confused about worthy ground.

All of them, a flourishing, interdependent ecosystem of garden colonizers – and we know, no colonizer gives up their territory too easily.

Still, it was beautiful.  All of this unruly growth, when you stood back – my garden was robust, alive, with the weeds indistinguishable from intentional plants.   Wild, unruly, beautiful.

It had been like that for such a long time, I confess it had started to feel like destiny. Like that was the plan all along. Two full seasons since we moved in, probably many before that. And for each of these seasons, the wild beauty was enough. 

I’d even say that sometimes, when I looked out at the great green wall of everything mixed up and running free – it was exquisite.

Wild, exquisite, free.  And perfectly low-effort – exactly aligned with what I had time to wish for.

As sabbatical began, I decided I should take a good walk through the garden. Get a closer-up sense of what was actually going on, start to imagine something else, a bigger wish.

It was the first week of May, before anything was in bloom, but already swelling with spring rain, and newly bright sun – the garden was already loud, or really, mostly, the weeds were loud, and pronounced.  And the trees, too, pronounced with huge bundles of dead branches weighing down new growth.  And in every corner, fallen leaves and peach pits decomposing, and weeds on top of leaves, and rocks in all the wrong places.

So I set out, on a mission.  To bring order, clarity, new life.  Beginning with understanding what that life would even mean – to learn about each plant on its own terms, with its own impulse towards life, and to see – what is this intending to be, to do? which parts here are plant that we want to save, and which is the invader?

I took many walks through local gardens with handy labels – CSU, Spring Creek – and I googled often.

Once I had a sense, I moved on to the work of liberation – unwind the bindweed, extract the thistles, remove the leaves, move in new rocks, settle everything in, bless it with water, and then, step away to see what would happen.

Although it’s true, there’s a lot of labor at a number of points along the way, equally, gardening is an act of just paying attention – with occasional pep talks, laments, and praise.  This is how I ended up with poems like the one that begins, “I found myself apologizing to the peaches again today….” 

I bought two pairs of sturdy gloves early in the summer and I used them regularly, and there’s even a couple of well-earned holes in the fingers), but still I mostly preferred to meet the weeds with my bare hands.  (Except the thistles.  I mean, ouch.)

Which means, I am returning from sabbatical with calloused hands. Calloused, and still dirty-looking, despite many regular and thorough washings.

Sometimes, at the end of the day I would look at my hands and imagine my paternal grandfather, Gus – the smell of his tomato plants, the rhubarb he’d complain was out of control, and the way he pulled the carrots out of the ground and I thought it was a miracle.

Or, my father’s hands after a day in the raspberry bush, or the potatoes, or the annual planters on our deck.  The way I learned, not with words exactly, just in the living – how the garden can turn a bad day, or bad week, or bad year of work, or a fight at home, or a checkbook that won’t balance or reveal the money for all the bills that need to be paid – all of these, after a few hours of watering, weeding, re-arranging, witnesssing – can be transformed into joy, and release, and even, purpose.

I know it’s probably too obvious, but it’s still true to say that weeds are a lesson in power.  The power to choose what has the right to keep on, to flourish, the power to understand what was worth saving.  Or, the power to remain careless and haphazard, to pull up something someone had sometime earlier planted with some great intention.

Even just today I pulled on a particularly interesting weed only to realize from the black well-balanced dirt that came bursting out – it was something I’d planted early in the summer, and had forgotten.

We are always all making this choice – what is worth saving, what matters, what belongs, what we want to feed, what we will leave behind.  Some of us have a greater chance to decide, a wider span of control, autonomy, privilege.  And still, all of our lives are attempts at this power – in the garden, our homes, our cities, our lives.

For example, for a long time, in the early summer, I decided to let the goatsbeard thrive as part of the garden.  The yellow flowers were so tall, proud – it gave some height to an otherwise ground-cover-heavy yard.  They asserted their place so particularly, not appearing at all like invaders.  And still, when I looked at them, I knew, their time would come – and little by little, they came to look more and more like dandelions, and so I reached down at their base, and dug my fingers into the dirt around them, and pulled them each up, one after another.  Like a massacre, or a liberation.

I’m sure not everyone experiences their garden as if a battle – but I could not help, over the season, to begin to know myself as the defender of the plants that were intended to flourish – battling all those that were constantly attempting to squelch this flourishing.

Not just weeds, but hail – late, and devastating.

And squirrels, especially in the late season as the peaches swelled.

Bugs came earlier – i.e. the hungry caterpillars trying to turn into the butterflies who will later pollinate flowers in all the right ways are first a threat to the leaves of those same flowers.

My well-intentioned but still careless dog is both a danger and defender, though probably, in balance, an extremely-well-disguised enemy.  And still, his company makes it worth his betrayals: the ways he displaces the rocks on top of the fragile new plant while chasing down a squirrel, or decides the just-cleared out area with a new tall-reaching flower is just the place for an afternoon nap.  Mostly, his company, especially attentive when I’m digging, or sitting and staring at it all at the end of the day overrides all of this.  Net positive, I swear.

More questionable are my thoughtless and only-occasionally-well-intentioned children -who travel up and down and around my garden without thinking twice. They forgot to notice there’s been a change since the weeds covered it all, forgot to adapt their behavior to find the newly installed steps around either side.  I shout at them, plead to be careful of the flowers and they look down and shout out, sheepishly, sorry mom, and then by the next day, forget again.

All this – not to mention the news coming from the border, the President, and the dual massacres in Ohio and El Paso – all had me thinking all summer about danger, and what we do to protect the things we love.  This is what happens with such a huge expanse of time, and the chance to listen to all the news, and the brain space to worry about your children and all they may be getting themselves into, and to think back on all that life has brought, and all that has been lost along the way.  You can’t help but contend with the fact that danger is everywhere, and grief.  No matter how dutiful we may be, how thorough, hard-working well-intentioned, how diligent – there is so much at risk, all the time, everywhere.  Not everything can be saved, and barely anything – especially people – can be protected from danger.

To decide to care about something means to decide you’re going to have your heart broken, sooner or later.

I kept thinking – it would be so much easier if I just let the weeds keep on with their takeover. If I cared less, paid less attention.

But then, I would look over at the trees, freed from all their dead branches that had been for so long holding them back, now flourishing – and the path I’d made after all the weeds were cleared that we could walk up to survey it all, and sit under the shade, while the neighbors’ chickens make their daily plea for food or attention –  and the phlox offers itself in bright pink, and purple, and white – I didn’t even know those flowers existed before all this began, and yet their potential was there the whole time. The whole time, there was always so much here than I even knew to hope for.

Only this that can keep us from letting the danger take hold – this seeing something beyond what we thought was possible, this stunning surprise of life, this faith in what remains not yet.  Only the clearing everything out, the caring for something before you even know what it is, that risk to care, to tend, to feel a part – only this decision to love keeps us going.

I kept on with my plan for much of the first few weeks.  Working slowly, dilligently, whole days would pass and I’d hardly made it through a small plot of land.  And with each hour, the filling of buckets and buckets of weeds, alternated with re-distributed rocks.  And then, throughout the day, I would empty the weeds into the yard waste bins, that over the week would fill, until each Wednesday they would again be full, or over-full, to place on the street – and another week would begin, with hope, and intention.

Weeds, and rocks – these were the truest story of my sabbatical.

It continued like this until early June when I took a trip with my family to the northwest, which meant I left it all behind for nearly three weeks.  There was water on it, that wasn’t a worry, I decided it could survive a couple of weeks in early summer, and then I would get back on mission.

The good news was that, it all survived – water does make sure of that.  The bad news, or really, just the lesson, was that the water also fed the weeds, and even more so.  In fact, the weeds, while I was away, decided it was their time to party / take over.  A full resurgence, over every little area that I had considered conquered.

I had no right to believe that one pass would tame all that had been running free for years – but I did believe it, and seeing everything I had so carefully cleared all grown over again, I was devastated.  I wondered if I had been wasting my time, or if I would ever move beyond this 20 square foot plot into the rest of the yard- or if I would keep at this one section over, and over, and over.

Every thought I had about danger being everywhere intensified – and instead of just thinking about danger, I started to wonder about nihilism.  But then, there was still about 8 weeks left in sabbatical – I had all this time to just, go back, try again.  So I did.

Pulling, and moving, and assessing, and blessing.  This time it all went much faster, as I realized I knew some things about how the plants should fall, and because I’d been there recently, the soil was quicker to give way when I came for the weeds.  Before long, I was moving along to the next section, and the next, and the next.

Along the way, I kept circling back to the prior places, watering the new plants I’d added, reshuffling displaced rocks, finding the bindweed that was so insidious, persistent – sometimes even having the nerve to flower – conceding the impossibility of really ever getting it all.

One particularly problematic section I’d done over three or four times, I finally decided to clear out all the rocks and dig it all up, spread out weed-preventer, and then put down a weed barrer, and then the rocks again, along with a few new plants.  We have to vary our strategies, I reminded myself. Keep trying new ways to tend to all this life and these dreams for more.

It’s a set up, you know that, right?

This was the response the minister who led my life review retreat in July asked me when I told her about my work in the garden, and my hope to get it stable – finished – before I would feel ready to go back to work.

It’s a set up, what you’re doing to yourself. 

And then we took a walk to the garden right below the window we had been sitting beside.

She and her husband had been gone from home for the first 6 weeks of summer.  They returned to find their garden looking like this on all sides.  Wildflowers aka weeds had fully interspersed with every flower they’d previously intentionally planted.

Sometimes life looks like this, she said.  And sometimes it looks like something more orderly.  The work is not to make it all look orderly, and it’s not to give it all up either.  The work is to discover in all of it, where the beauty is at any given moment, the joy, and what will be, good enough.

Good enough is not a concept I’ve let myself entertain much – like ever – and even though I wrote it down when she said it,  and even agreed to give such an idea a try – I’ve had to turn it around and around since then to begin to understand what she was getting at.

Which is – I think – about coming to terms with our place in life, which is not nothing, and also, not everything. To accept that there are seasons in life, as in the garden, and rhythms.  I think good enough means coming to make friends with time – rather than, as I have always done – thinking of time as a problem to be solved.

Good enough means coming to terms with what we can do in day, an hour – or a lifetime.  Calling that offering a blessing – whether it turns out to be a garden abundant with weeds and wildflowers (as mine was as well – and it was, in its own way exquisite), or one governed with intention that yields peaches, phlox, hydrangeas, wisteria, sage, daisies, columbines, lilacs and so many others – and fends off any creeping invaders with diligence and fidelity.

Good enough is not to surrender to the danger that threatens all that we love, or pretending it does not exist, but only to know that our best defense must include knowing our own limits, and even our helplessness in a bigger sense – to continue to do our part, regardless, and to give the rest to those who will come next, to the earth, to God.

Good enough feels like a discipline to me, a scary one, sometimes, and a liberating gift most of the time. And, it is a practice I am trying out each day far beyond my garden, far past sabbatical – as my attempt to feel less compelled to hold it all, to refuse to concede to the danger, or to stop noticing them – or the grief – but to stay connected to the beauty, and all that keeps growing, and thriving in my garden – and in this life – far beyond what I ever could have imagined.

 

This is more of a process note than anything.

Ever since General Assembly this year, I’ve made it a point to reduce my interaction related to the Unitarian Universalist Association. I’ve gone off of mailing lists and have cut down (nearly to zero) my interactions on social media. I skim the magazine but discard the fundraising pieces. I will, for the time being, maintain my fellowship and any interest in things that have value to me, like my retirement plan. (So I’ll read the board minutes, say, to defend those interests if need be.)

But it’s clear that there’s not enough left in Unitarian Universalism on an institutional level to justify the downsides. OK, that’s not news. But the fact the messages have gone from “Scott, don’t leave” to “I understand” to “I’m getting out” is new. And those are people I trust and respect.

Since programmatic work has ground to nothing, there’s nothing to miss.  The work of the UUA has been replaced with taking care of its own sins, real or imagined. Why support that? Worse, some people who I would normally call colleagues are so embarrassing, caustic or bullying that I wouldn’t want to be seen in public with them much less the identify professionally with them.  And I’m a Universalist Christian, which should mean this is a natural home. But that’s not been regarded as a good thing in Unitarian Universalist circles in decades. Universalist Christianity is having a theological renaissance but Universalist Christians in the rest of the world make a point of distinguishing themselves from the kind of religion practiced in the UUA. So the UUA’s not only not helping, but it’s actually hurting my religious life.

And I know I’m not alone in believing this. Some of you have been kind enough to write and express your frustrations and reservations, and even ask my advice. The most I can suggest is double your effort in your own local church, if you can, and leave the national body to its own devices.

Once I decided that, my mood improved. I can figure out what’s coming next, and who I can work with instead. Save your money for something you love. Time to cut the ties that bind and chafe. Time to stop worrying.

Elmo Arnold Robinson, who wrote the newly-in-the-public-domain The Universalist Church in Ohio also wrote a two-part article (published in 1917) about the Universalists in Indiana.

Both the Indiana and Ohio works are interesting reads, and doesn’t hide the warts about what didn’t go well, including serious conflict between the ministers. Conflict, I should add, which didn’t kill them.

• part one
• part two

I’ve fallen down an internet research hole and found 280 complete issues of Chicago-published The Universalist at the Illinois Digital Newspapers Collection, ranging from 1886 to 1887.

And yes! the preview issue for the 1897 Universalist General Convention, held at Chicago with pictures of St. Paul’s Church, where it was held, and a defense of “the creed,” meaning the Winchester Profession. It was at the 1897 convention that the “Five Points” were proposed, and adopted at the 1899 convention.

What does it mean to meet again?

After months, or years, or decades, to encounter another that we have not seen, or kept fully in touch with, especially one we once knew well, one we were close to, who knew us, who still carry in them, our secrets and our stories, our once-articulated dreams – memory offers us an almost-automatic familiarity, a nostalgic trust.  We feel at once close, and connected, like time travelers sent back, as if nothing could overcome the strength of love (or whatever it was) caught in history.

But then, time descends, stubborn, we notice changed skin, hair, the crack in the voice that was not there before, a new love hovering nearby, a certain bitterness or grief glimpsed in otherwise casual conversation – and suddenly we realize that we do not really know each other any more, that we are strangers, that we need to start at the beginning, learning each other’s names, dreams, preferred beverage, the ways we spend our days, the questions we wake wondering, the fears that we push away.

Or at least we do, if we want the reunion to be real, for the connection to be real, to be alive.

I am just past mid-way through my 44th year – which, if I’m lucky, could be something approximating the midpoint of my life.  I have lived long enough to have accumulated many stories – losses, and disappointments, betryals and terrors, and also joys, and breathtaking beauty, and even things I would call miracles.  I have left behind so many things I once loved, or struggled with, and people – some I have left, some have left me –  sometimes with relief, sometimes with regret, most often both of these, indistinguishable.  And also, places I have moved from, homes and communities and whole worlds I no longer inhabit – and within myself – whole worlds I have forgotten to remember in the process of building a life.  Picking up, settting down, sorting out, begining again, marching on.

It started in the garden, in early May, moving from tree to tree, tracing the branches that needed to fall, discovering buried perennials I never knew were there, finding order and light. There, I remembered myself before seminary, before children, in our little house on Santa Fe, where the neighbors blasted polka every Saturday, finding long-neglected and grown over-irises that would end up making big shows a few months later – and planting Pye-weed that I thought I’d killed before it turned up a few feet away strong as ever, and writing about it all in what would become a reflection I’d read in church one Sunday. The Sunday where the nice church ladies asked me after how far along I was in seminary – even though seminary wasn’t even in my view of the possible, but then, I started to wonder, and dream.

I met this part of myself again – in the sun, and the dirt, before the kids were even yet out done with school – with curiosity and an abundance of time, and a capacity to keep showing up each day to learn what this person I am today knows still about the one I was then, how or if we connect, what wisdom we each have to offer the other.  Reunions are never just a matter of meeting another again, but always include an encounter with ourselves from another time, to see ourselves then as whole, without giving in to the temptation of regret, or sentimentality.

To make it past giddy nostalgia, to the real meeting again, reunions must release all assumptions of what growth should look like, or what life should mean, could mean, and withhold all judgments of how time has served, or failed us.  We must open ourselves only to the real stories of who we have become, how we have changed, what we have lost, and gained, the choices we have made, and why.  It takes work to make this much space for the familiar to become also, at once, entirely new.

I remembered myself without children, without sermons to write, without theology. I remembered what it felt like to have dreams disconnected from community, and whole days, and weeks, and months that would pass without ever once finding my voice.  I remembered time, and choice, and solitude that is only sometimes loneliness.

This early experience in my sabbatical gave me some good groundwork for a trip in early June, when my family and I drove all the way west, stopping for a few days with my sister in Portland, and then eventually heading north to Olympia, Washington, where my sisters, neices, and parents live, and for what would become home base for an actual reunion at my undergraduate university in Tacoma.

Officially, it was for Reunion Weekend at the University of Puget Sound.  But what drew theatre majors to the campus that weekend in June was not actually some generic idea of reunion.  It was instead, the retirement of a beloved teacher and mentor, a teacher who started my sophomore year.  Which meant that we didn’t just have a students who graduated from a single year, but classmates spanning from the mid-nineties to current students – which makes more sense I think for how we should always do class reunions, because you never really just make relationships with the students graduating in the same year.

I haven’t ever been to a class reunion – college, or high school – and I was anxious/skeptical/dreading headed into the first night.  But….it didn’t take long for all of that to drop away.  Walking in, I saw the faces of so many beloveds – some of them looking as if no time had gone by at all – and felt immediately, wholly, at home.

It helped that we were in our theatre, the space where we fell in love – or tried not to, built sets, quick-changed, found and lost and found props, learned to focus lights, watched each other grow up – or tried not to.  Meeting a beloved place again is less complicated than meeting a person, though barely.  Sometimes in church we say that the walls hold the stories of all those who have ever come in to this community, and that immediately, when you enter, the stories begin to find their way to you.  Walking into the theatre, I thought the same thing – all the stories held in these walls, all the late night tech runs and the Sunday matinee duds, all the anxious auditions, and the mystery of when everything, suddenly works, and comes alive.

On the way in, my dear friend and I stopped in at the green room, and I flashed on a thousand formative moments that happened right there, and really, a few in particular.  Love notes passed.  Questions – big and life-changing, or petty and coy – all shared between two, or ten, or twenty joined in intimacy and the deadline of a show going up, at least until strike comes 8 weeks later.

We didn’t have cell phones, or social media, everything happened in the time it took to trek across campus to retrieve a note someone left for you. Which could mean hours, or even days, before you knew that your whole life had shifted. Life that could’ve gone one way, but instead went another.

 

When he looked at me from inside the green room, I flashed his face 22 years ago, scared and strident and sad and filled with so much longing.

Some moments in life feel like they are so big, there’s no way that anything after could live up to them – that was what a lot of our time in the theatre department felt like.  To return, to see us all at mid-life with children, and wrinkles and gray hair, and regular-life jobs with regular hours – some part of me had an instinct to call it a let down.  But instead, I leaned into the sense of this huge relief, and amazement.  To see that we went on, and survived. That we had the audacity to believe we deserved life’s most regular, and daily joy.  It turns out, the stories we thought we were in when we were 19, and 20, and 21 were not, for the most part, the stories we were meant for.  Which does not undo the righteousness of our dreams, the glory of who we were, then.  It was – and we were – glorious together.  And also, there is such a sweetness to knowing how wrong we were, and what other thing was brewing that was the life we would come to call our own.

 

Click to view slideshow.

After UPS, things got even more reuniony, as I traveled with my daughter and my mother to my hometown – Port Angeles, Washington, on the way to a few days in Victoria, British Columbia.  Because my parents moved from my hometown my freshman year in college, I haven’t been back too often as a grown up, especially with my mom, and maybe never with my daughter, who is now old enough to understand what it means to go see her mom’s hometown.

Having Gracie with me allowed me to return to my hometown with a little more strangeness, and generosity- a little more openness to its beauty, which is, I realized, incredible.  I showed her the house I grew up in, a house my dad designed, as well as the field my sisters and I played in, and the route we took from our school to our grandparents’ house.   Here is the place where I tried to teach my sister to ride a bike.  Here’s where we rented our very first video.  Here are the county fair grounds where we learned about roller coasters and rodeos. Here is the swimming pool I swam in morning and night for most of my life, and here is the cemetery where my grandparents are buried.  

We also had the chance to spend some time with my uncle and aunt, whose house I spent many hours in growing up as their daughter was my same age, and a good friend.  My uncle showed Gracie Victoria and the ferry through his telescope, and I sat in his living room remembering the hours of dos-based games I’d played there.

Before our trip I had downplayed our visit to BC, where I had grown up going often given its proximity just 17 miles across the water.  But then, going there with Gracie, with the new passport requirement, and the sometimes-strange vocabulary and the gorgeous harbor with the houseboats and water taxis – I was amazed again, and grateful in new ways.  To know this place so well, and also to realize how much I did not know it, to learn it all over again as the person I am now, and to see how we had each changed, and also how we had not, to make space for meeting again, to be fully in this time, here, now.

Click to view slideshow.

Most of all, it left me feeling really grateful.

I carried all of these memories from my trip home with me as I traveled to the north shore of Lake Superior in mid-July for a life review retreat with the Rev. Karen Gustafson.  Another reunion – this time by way of telling the story of my life, and to be heard telling it.  To see what is familiar there, and then to encounter it anew.  To find ways to tell the story differently, to notice patterns, to imagine what is differently possible from this encounter-  both in how we understand what has been, and how we can build our lives into the future.

In telling the story of my life, I met again the major (and some minor) characters and tried to see them not only from the perspective of the person I was when I knew them – which was, sometimes a child, or a young adult – but as the person I am now.  Sometimes this meant that I forgave them more fully, sometimes I saw that they needed to be held more accountable, sometimes I came to see that I still could not save them – and that had to be, and was, ok.

Real reunion allows for this sort of shifting to take place, this re-telling of the story, this unlodging of too-long-stuck feelings, this freedom into creation rather than destruction, an opening into possibility.  As Karen reminded me, life is not arrival, it is constant becoming.  And I would add – it’s not just becoming, it’s also constant ending, and also the constant attempts at reconciling these, making sense and pulling the pieces together – which is really still, becoming, and ending –  and then reconciling.

We always talk about reunion as a matter of meeting those we knew a long, long time ago.  But in this way, reunions are not just encounters after long spans of time apart, but are also the chance we are given each day, to meet ourselves again, to meet each other, to meet this life again – and to hold in these encounters both the trust we grant the familiar, as well as the space to discover the entirely new.

Imagining life as reunion has helped me to imagine the ways that my life is both ancient, and newborn.  That I carry with me a deep well of history – choices that I have made, people I have loved, places that have formed me – and all of these connected with other histories, other choices, beloveds, places.  This history is steady, and strong, and trust-building.  Which means it is good, and fine, and possible to believe that I know some things now, that I have traveled to this place with some intention.

And equally, that these companions of history, people, geography – all of these are living companions that can and will keep changing in the daily meeting again.  Just like the stories we thought we were in as undergraduates – everything we know now may turn out to be wrong, and something else entirely may be at work.  That there is an alternative world just waiting for us to discover it, to create it, to become it – together.

In so many ways, reunion has been the story of my sabbatical.  And, as sabbatical ends, the theme continues as I prepare for the reunion with the church, with the people of the church, with my colleagues, and with ministry.  It is a gift to remember that in this meeting again, we can both lean into the easy trust of familiarity and history, as well as make space for what has shifted – for growth, and change, and new life.  Not just in these first few weeks, but as a daily practice, and a gift we can give to ourselves, and to each other, and to the worlds that are just waiting for our willingness to become.

While I was noodling through the 1939 records of the Universalist General Convention, I saw a description in the Directory (under New York) to the Prescott Neighborhood House, sponsored by the Church of the Divine Paternity, Manhattan, New York, now known by its parish name, Fourth Universalist.

I didn’t know there was Universalist settlement work that late — and indeed, it wouldn’t last much longer. But remarkably for Manhattan, the building is still there and this article gives the highlights of the mission, the building and the controversy over its closure.

 

 

Could well-mobilized lay preaching have helped the Universalists in their toughest days?

By 1939, deep into the Great Depression, Universalist institutions — conventions and parishes — were disintegrating. General Superintendent Robert Cummins prodded the Universalist General Convention and the affiliated units for women, Sunday School, publications, young adults and men (in about that order of vitality) towards more effective and coordinated work. And work that got past simply having preaching services in otherwise dormant parishes. Ministers were in short supply; money to pay them even shorter.  He reserved his pique for the support of churches that couldn’t ween themselves off mission support, to free up that money for new work. (I wonder if that experience poisoned later mission support of new churches.) How bad was the situation? (Link to the original)

Of our 544 churches, 71 are receiving the services of a resident minister, supporting themselves and contributing to denominational programs; 171 are supporting resident ministers and carrying on independently of outside help, but are lending no support to the Church’s program beyond that sector of it presided over by their own local parishes; 99 are not aided, yet are unable to support a resident minister or the larger work; 100 are receiving aid from some source or sources; and 97 are dormant, although 14 of these make some contribution to the program of the denomination. One of the most serious problems facing us is the large number of our small parishes. 99 are without ministers, 97 are dormant. Populations have shifted. Transportation has altered conditions. Either these parishes have to be put on “circuits” with ministers serving them only part-time (73 are already operating on this basis), or be satisfied with “occasional” preaching (there are 33 of these and 43 holding summer services only), or be persuaded to use a mail-order variety of service such as might go to them in the form of “canned” sermons wrapped in celophane and devised for use by the laity, or the properties should be sold for whatever they will bring and the money used to re-locate the movement….

I pull this out to say that the problems with the Universalist long predate their flirtation and later consolidation with the Unitarians.  (Allowance of dual ministerial fellowship with the better-paying Unitarians was surely devastating, but that was a Universalist problem.)  Population, economic and transportation changes never stopped, of course. As for transportation, I’m sure he means discontinued rail lines, which killed towns as well as churches. A foretaste of the Interstate Highway System. There will never be enough money or labor to do everything. And I have doubts about the seven-day church in a secular era when people have well packed-seven day lives.

The line that really popped for me was that bit about the celophane (Cummins’s spelling) and the role of the laity in worship. Universalists had, at best, an ambivalent view of lay preaching. If your church was on a circuit, it simply wouldn’t meet for worship when the preacher wasn’t in town. (That’s why the railroads were so important.) As early as the 1850s, Universalist leaders recognized that having laypersons leading morning or evening prayer from a published liturgy, plus perhaps one of those canned sermons, was better than doing without services ― but I don’t get a sense that it made much impact.

As a society, far broader than the Universalists who may stand as an object lesson, if we want religious services, we will either have to change how we treat ordination (a nod to my Independent Sacramental Movement series) or have more lay liturgical leadership. Some denominations do this very well. And there are lay preachers who are very good. Besides, I think there’s a lot to be said for a church with a college of clergy and lay preachers, as opposed to “our pastor.” I’d even be willing to hear something carefully pulled out of cellophane.

Every time I find this tension in Universalist sources, I’ll mark it with the tag lay-led-liturgy.

I trace my love affair with TV to Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd.

Moonlighting ran from when I was 10 to 14, a time when I had a super small TV in my room.  Before I even knew it was a thing, Moonlighting taught me to go all in on the will-they-or-won’t-they.  I can still remember – without any googling….

You can see how this might get lodged in a 13 year old’s brain.

I also remember the nights I’d decide to watch it – no DVR or catching-up-when-it-hits-netflix back then – without having finished my homework.  And the staying up way too late afterwards to slog through Grapes of Wrath or Spanish III vocab.

It’s a pattern I really never unlearned, despite today’s on-demand-culture. I’m still willing to sacrifice sleep and good sense for a good ‘shipping.  (I mean, I can basically attribute my whole marriage to another will-they-or-won’t-they story…but I suppose that’s another post entirely…..)

Which is to say, even when I’m not on sabbatical, I love shows.* But it’s only on sabbatical that I get to follow that love without guilt, and without (too much) lost sleep. 

My best guess is I watched about 22 shows in the last 14 weeks, some of them spanning multiple seasons.  I have a pretty-close cataloguing at the end of this post, but before that I want to highlight just 5 (ok, 6)- which I picked not only because they are shows I’d recommend to most anyone, but also because I think they do a good job of telling the story of my sabbatical.

1. Better Call Saul – Carri was late to the Breaking Bad party – despite my urging, she kept getting stuck on how dark it all is, and how Walter is just such a selfish whiner. And, I mean, she’s not wrong.  But this last year she went all-in, and immediately dove into this pre-quel spinoff.  On the other hand, I’d resisted going any further into the dark world, and we role-reversed, and she was the one now constantly confused as to why I wouldn’t just give in and enjoy all this brilliance.  Sabbatical gave me the head space to finally imagine doing that, and I quickly realized what she’d been telling me: Saul is even better than Breaking Bad.  Dark in more tolerable ways, but still with characters just as problematic, yet even more lovable – making choices that have you cringing in advance for what will inevitably – maybe 3 or 5 episodes or even whole seasons later – lead to their ruin.  And still the acting, writing, and filming is just stunning.  Also, if you are like Carri and just cannot with Breaking Bad, I don’t think it matters.  I think it works on its own, and it’s just a bonus if you happen to already know the later-tragedies of these characters.

2. Pose – The whole of the first Season I was pinching myself that this show – about trans and gay folx of color in NYC in the late 80s and early 90s – exists on TV.  I loved (and cried through) every single episode – it even made me love Ryan Murphy again.  Which is why I was both obsessing over / dreading Season 2 – I figured there was no way to keep up all that brilliance.  But then, at least as far as I’ve watched, I was happily, fully, proven wrong.  The characters and stories remain fierce, and queer, and complicated, and beautiful.  The actors blow my mind.  Billy Porter.  MJ Rodriguez.  Indya Moore.  I thought a lot during sabbatical about queer identity, and how queerness is (or is not) compatible with church life, and ministry.  I wrote some on queer relationships, and queer love (which hasn’t yet been ready for sharing), and what especially gets me about this show is how well it manages to get at the fragility and the fidelity of the queer community.  The family that is created by choice by those who know everyday of their lives – as Audre Lorde said – we were never meant to survive.  

 

3. Fleabag – About half-way through my sabbatical I got to spend some time with my friend Kelly Dignan, who was just a few weeks from concluding her ministry at the UU Church of Boulder.  Kelly and I get along for so many reasons, but one of those is our mutual drive and ambition, and our relentless work ethic.  Which is why it was especially fun to spend some time with her in the middle of my time-away, and a couple weeks from her quitting her job to leap into a great unknown.  We took a hike in the foothills of Boulder, marveled at the wildflowers, and each expressed a lot of gratitude for where we have been, and for the chance to re-group, and to make choices for our lives that are more fully aligned with our call – rather than a need to prove ourselves and our worth through our to-do lists.  While I was there, Kelly told me that of all the shows I could watch on sabbatical, I had to be sure to watch Fleabag.  I hadn’t heard of it, but came home and started immediately – and loved it. It’s a show about grief, and friendship, and family, and regret.  It’s witty, tragic (though, like the main character, it hides it well), funny, and smart.  And it’s a great length for such a powerful show.   The second season is a world unto itself, probably even better than the first, but totally different.  Especially fun (and again, tragic) to watch as a clergy person who has spent a lot of time thinking about boundaries, intimacy, and power in the church.

4. Marcella / Broadchurch – I’m cheating a bit by putting these as one – but I watched them quickly and sequentially so I experienced them as all one.  I’m including them here because they represent my “British TV” phase of sabbatical.  They are – fair warning – extremely dark.  Especially season 2 of Marcella and pretty much all seasons of Broadchurch.  Still, the characters are so compelling – and it was so mesmerizing to live in the British police world for a while – how few guns they all have! How little worry there seems to be about their makeup, or love interests, or especially perfect looks by any of them, or tying up all the leads they threw our way.  I thought a lot about betrayal, and how we decide to believe what people tell us – even ourselves – during sabbatical – and these were themes played out in both of these shows.

5. Dear White People – Through my sabbatical I had the chance to participate in a series of conversations with community leaders and activisits from across Fort Collins (facilitaed by the Colorado Trust) – many of whom are people of color.  And in these conversations we talked a lot about who feels at home in our city, and why – and whose story is told when we talk about Fort Collins.  I’ve been wrestling with the questions of how change happens for our city, and if it’s even possible – and how to listen more, and support the leadership of those whose stories have not been told, or told as centrally.  I thought about all of this watching Dear White People – both seasons 2 & 3 – as the main character, Sam, moves out of sheer idealistic and righteous activism, into a more active heartbreak and disillusionment.  Especially in today’s polarized and white-supremacy-normalizing world – do we counter racism in ourselves, and in the world?  Bonus: one of my conversations this summer introduced me to the term “hotep,” and despite a shallow googling, I wasn’t quite getting it.  Until one of the episodes of Dear White People featured a dude getting called out as hotep, and it all became clear.

 

I toyed a lot over sabbatical with starting up a whole new blog just dedicated to reviews and reccomendations of shows (with a splash of podcasts and music for variety). Afterall, Carri often tells me she can’t keep up with / remember every show I tell her she should watch – and also that recommending shows to watch is one of my love languages.  Which made me like: she sees me….

But I decided that one of my favorite things about shows is that they are almost always an experience entirely related to my own pleasure.  Without justification, explanation, or work product.  Hardly ever do shows translate well into sermons in any setting – but especially in a UU setting, there’s a longstanding too-good-for-TV orientation so it’s rare to find congregants – or even colleagues – who can speak this language with me.  If I was an avid book reader, I could more easily bring up the books I’d read (even fluffy novels find an easier conversation in after-church coffee time than the latest netflix binge).

Instead, shows are like my little mini-rebellion in the middle of life always oriented towards producing, and efficiency, outcomes, and utility.

We all need these things in our lives, these things we choose for no other purpose than joy, and relief, and the remembering of entirely other worlds, other stories than our own, and the ones we carry.

And it was this personal, private joy that was the story of my sabbatical.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Below you’ll find my full list of shows I watched (I think) from May through August  – feel free to ask me about any of them if you’re curious. Or tell me what you thought about something – though I don’t want to write (more than the occasional) blog posts about shows, I do love talking about them.

1. Jessica Jones – Season 3
2. Catastrophe – all Seasons
3. Big Little Lies – Season 1 and half of Season 2
4.  Workin’ Moms – Season 2
5. Handmaid’s Tale – current Season
6. Pose – current Season
7. Dear White People – Seasons 2 and 3
8.  Shrill – Season 1
9. Better Caul Saul – all Seasons
10. Younger – current Season
11. Queer Eye – current Season
12. Cooked – all episodes
13. Marcella – all Seasons
14. Broadchurch – all Seasons
15. Bodyguard – Season 1
16. Dead to Me – Season 1
17. Bonding – Season 1
18. Insatiable – Season 1
19. Fleabag – all Seasons
20. The Defenders – all episodes
21. The OA – Season 2
22. Pen15 – Season 1

*Since today, a lot of watching TV shows doesn’t happen on an actual TV, I’ve taken to just calling them simply “shows.”

Many years ago a friend and colleague invited me to join him in an ecumenical prayer breakfast with communion. I alluded to it in a 2012 article when I described the communion ware they used.

The prayer breakfast looks like one of those observances that was once more centrist and mainline but has become identified with conservatives today. Or maybe it’s that I’m in too secular an urban center. Or that I don’t like waking up early enough to have a prayer breakfast before work. Or that I’m not in the military or the Chamber of Commerce. Take your pick.

But I enjoyed that one years ago: there was an earnest, retro quality to it and the piety was sincere. I got to visit with new people. It was more of a men’s space than you normally find in devotional life, and I doubt that was accidental. (Butching up devotion has a long and mixed history.) The format can be adapted to many constituencies though, and some I’ve found online are all-women. Let your imagination roam. Church picnics or camps? It might be good for mission church starts that first meet in restaurant party rooms, even.

Surveying the prayer breakfast landscape, I don’t see communion offered as much as I would have thought, but then again eucharistic fellowship is that bridge too far, when simple prayer and singing doesn’t aggravate ecclesiastic sensibilities. Catholics might have one following a mass.

But when I found this from W. E. Orchard’s 1921 The Order of Divine Service for Public Worship I knew I had a winner because it solved the “problem” of distributing the emblems (a commonly-used term among Universalists of yore for the  bread and wine; I love it and will keep it) though you might think it creates new problems for the consecration.

The service is interesting for its simplicity, not the least because Orchard later “crossed the Tiber” and became a Roman Catholic priest. But perhaps he meant, in his developing view of the sacraments, the simplest that was appropriate and effective. Certainly the bare recitation of the Institution from St. Paul would be simpler, and you see that in the “lower” Reformed Churches, ours included, but it’s also wanting in form and piety. I do.

I’d love some feedback and (even better) links to any prayer breakfasts you’ve attended or conducted.

A SIMPLE OBSERVANCE OF THE LORD’S SUPPER

This Order provides for the simplest possible Observance of the Lord’s Supper, giving the words of Scripture to be read by the President, indicating (in brackets) the appropriate actions, and suggesting (in italics) the subjects for silent prayer and private devotion.

The President shall commence by saying.
The disciples did as Jesus appointed them; and they made ready the Passover.

(Here the elements maybe distributed, and those who are to partake may prepare themselves by prayer.)
Now when even was come, he was sitting at meat with the twelve disciples ; and as they were eating, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me. And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began to say unto him every one, Is it I, Lord?

Self-examination and Confession.
And as they were eating, Jesus took bread,

(Here the President may take the bread into his hands.)
and blessed.

Here the Holy Spirit should be silently invoked.
and brake it ;

(Here the President may break the bread.)
and he gave to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body which is broken for you.

Adoration.
This do in remembrance of me.
(Here all partake of the bread.)

After the same manner also, he took a cup,
(Here the President may take the cup into his hands.)
and gave thanks,

Thanksgiving.
and gave to them saying, Drink ye all of it ; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many unto remission of sins.

Adoration.
This do as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.
(Here all partake of the cup.)

For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come.

Prayer pleading the sacrifice of Christ and making offering
of self to God.

(The offerings for the Poor may now be collected, the President
saying: Brethren, ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich.)

THE HIGH PRIESTLY PRAYER

Jesus, lifting up his eyes unto heaven, said, Father, I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me; for they are thine and I am glorified in them.

Remembrance of the saints and the departed.
Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word;

Remembrance of the living.
That they may all be one ; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee:

Prayer for the unity of the Church.
That the world may believe that thou didst send me.

Prayer for the conversion of the world and the coming
of the Kingdom.

(Here the President may announce a Hymn, saying. And when they had sung a hymn they went out.)

[HYMN]

BENEDICTION

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

I sometimes find nice Universalist bits in local histories, but in this history of Sutton, New Hampshire, you get an extended passage on the long-extinct Universalist society (think: parish) there, with organizing documents and a profession of faith.

The history of Sutton, New Hampshire: consisting of the historical collections of Erastus Wadleigh, Esq., and A. H. Worthen (1890)

And speaking of extinct, there is on page 175 this chilling note in the chapter “Casualties and Sudden Deaths”:

Rev. Thompson Barron, a Universalist minister of Newport, N.H., was found dead at the home of Jacob Nelson, about twenty years ago.

That’s all it says. What a mystery!
And that chapter. Gotta love local history.

(His 1871 obituary, reprinted at uudb.orc, is more detailed but still harrowing. Perhaps a heart attack or stroke?)

I’ve always loved writing – especially poetry – which I started experimenting with in middle school when all things feel like they should go in a poem.  By the time I was in high school,  my journal was filled with lots of poetry (and math proofs), with a somewhat hilarious and hubristic variety of subjects, most of which I had no right to have an opinion about.  Bullying and domestic violence, racism, love, loneliness, and trying to grow up.  Some of these I knew some things about.

Regardless of all this writing, I never really thought of myself as a writer, let alone a poet, which seemed a term reserved for people like Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allen Poe, Shakespeare, or my 10th grade favorite, Sylvia Plath.

Around the same the time I read The Bell Jar, I overheard a friend of mine talking about a poem she wrote with one of her friends.  I had showed her a little of my writing, after she’d shown me hers, but we hadn’t really talked about it.  I just figured, she too was shy about sharing.

Which was why I was especially surprised when I heard her say my name, and that I wrote poems too.  Yeah, Gretchen also writes poems.  Really cheesy ones.  You should read them – they are all so sweet. 

I basically died.  It was literally the worst thing I’d ever want said about something I’d written, let alone a global characterization of my writing to a random guy.  It hit me so hard.

While I didn’t decide to stop writing, I did start thinking that whatever I wrote would have to be like Emily Dickinson.  As in, discovered after I die, for the world to evaluate long after I wouldn’t have to hear anything about it.

Obviously, given the fact that a major part of my job involves writing, and then sharing what I’ve written, I mostly got over it.  But still I’ve remained hesistant to take my writing, in and of itself, as something serious, or worthy.  Something to share as writing.  What I write for Sunday is spoken into the context of community, and relationship, and then by Monday, set aside for the next Sunday.  I write calls to worship, and prayers, and sermons – but I am not a writer, per se.  Especially not of poetry.

Which is one big reason that I came into sabbatical with an intention to write everyday, as a discipline.  To free myself of some of these old stories, and to remember the joy of writing just for writing.  To experiment and learn about different practices of writing, to remember different forms – and to relish in the freedom of being unrestrained by the practical needs of an upcoming theme and persistent deadlines, or the expectations of what is appropriate for church, or the worry of how my words would be taken, if they would matter, and in what way.

And then, sabbatical actually began.  And it turned out, I wanted nothing do with writing.  I found myself exhausted of introspection, and of meaning-making entirely. 

I wanted only to be quiet, work in my garden and in my home, to watch netflix, to go on walks and to have nothing to say about most anything.  And as the days and weeks passed, I could feel the weight of Sundays lifting, the push to produce a certain number of words (not too few, or too many), with a well-crafted bottom line, and a tidy message of hope and meaning – all fall further and further away.

I loved the relief of it all so much that not quite half-way through sabbatical, I confessed to my spiritual director I was worried that I had nothing to say about anything anymore, except maybe about moving rocks from one part of the garden to another, or the mystery of still having Uggs boots in our shoe bin two months into summer.

She said, isn’t it interesting how reality doesn’t come with meaning attached to it? Reality isn’t a story.  Reality is just – what is.  You’re experiencing reality.

We’d talked about this, she reminded me – that this would happen.

This is life, she said.  How does it feel?

We are asked and ask ourselves to process our lives so quickly today, to move from experience, to story, to meaning, (and often to reporting it out on social media) – so fast – we start to take the story-making, and the meaning, as the reality itself.  Especially when a main part of your job is getting up in front of people and trying to weave meaning out of the preceding days, or weeks, or years – all in the span of 20 minutes for a crowd whose attention is already veering towards the grocery list, or the text they just got, or the week ahead.

So that to step away from the cycle feels – terrifying, disorienting, groundless.  And also, if you let it, glorious.

In place of story-weaving and meaning making of my own, I found a hunger to listen to new words, and new ideas.  Another story of sabbatical I’ll tell soon will be about “my summer of infinite podcasts,” as podcasts were how I began to feed that hunger.

On my own for most hours of the day, in the hot summer sun, I’d alternate between listening to the trees, and the next-door neighbor’s chickens, and the windchimes sounding from every direction- and then hitting play on another random podcast while kneeling in the dirt, amending the soil, noticing all the small changes of summer.

Along the way, I kept my my journal near, and would write small and unfinished notes to myself that when I look back at them now appear like little pep talks I was giving myself….or maybe, I see now, like aphorisms, or psalms….here are a few of the more intelligible ones….

• It takes a long time to dig up such a small amount of ground. Often, whole days.
• Time is not a problem to be solved. But I keep trying anyway.
• There is nothing extraordinary about betrayal, or grief. It’s regular.
• There are right and wrong ways to love.  Love is not actually always love.
• Weeds are a way to remember we have the power to choose.
• To pick up is to begin setting down.

I’d get a line like this written, and then – nothing else would be there.  I’d want to go back to moving rocks, pulling weeds, listening to podcasts, or the wind, making dinner, watching netflix.  It was sometimes terrifying, annoying – sometimes just – perfect.  Who needs meaning anyway?

Along the way, I discovered two podcasts that began to shift things in me.

One was an interview with the poet Maggie Smith, who wrote what became a “viral poem” in 2016…..

The conversation with Maggie Smith had her talking about coming to believe that her life, in the every day, would be a worthy topic for poetry.  Motherhood, and meal making, laundry and car pools.   She talked about a moment in her life when she realized she didn’t have to write about things that “poets write about,” she just had to write about life as she saw it, and that still she was just as much a poet.

Second, I discovered a podcast from poet Tracy K. Smith, called The Slowdown.  It’s a poem-a-day type thing, except with curation and most-often commentary from Smith.  Most episodes are five minutes or less.  For a while, I just let the back episodes play one-after-another, with only a short breath between – like I was gulping it all down.

But eventually, I fell into a rhythm of each day waking to hear the new episode, to let that be my poem of the day – without any real need to make my own meaning or application.  Just to take the time to really hear the words, the ideas, and the sound of Tracy Smith’s voice which basically feels like a lullaby to me.

These two podcasts opened up even more curiosity, so that I went looking for more books of poetry – I got Maggie Smith’s book, and a few books from the library – Sharon Olds and Lucille Clifton and Christian Wiman.

And then more poetry podcasts, including an interview with Camille Dungy where she talked about form in poetry, and about the need to study and practice different forms.  Which led me to Mary Oliver’s two books on poetry – A Poetry Handbook and Rules for the Dance – where she talks about why it’s good to emulate other writers, that it’s a critical way to gain skill and eventually, to develop your own voice.

In mid-July, about 10 weeks into sabbatical, I flew to the north shore of Lake Superior – an area of the country I have never been, but that immediately felt familiar. (I learned later that my great grandparents had settled there for a time, with the other Scandanavians.)

I was there for a retreat with a senior colleague, an individualized retreat meant for looking back on the story (stories) of your life, and considering the story ahead.  In my room there were shelves of even more poetry, that I sat for hours late into the night reading – Wendell Berry, May Sarton, Audre Lorde, Marge Percy…

And another book, a guide of contemplation and prayer grounded in poetry. It invited a three part practice – a question to contemplate, and then write about, a verbal prayer of poetry or scripture, and then centering prayer for increasing amounts of time – eventually 40 minutes a day.  I began right away, and have been continuing every day, ever since. I have found an especially beautiful collection of poems that I highly recommend – called Poetry of Presence – that, in addition to Tracy K. Smith’s daily poem, have been part of my daily scripture.

And somewhere – through all of this – everything changed. Slowly, and also suddenly.  Like going to the gym for weeks and weeks – and just at the moment when you feel like maybe you just aren’t the sort of body that makes muscles – you look in the mirror and it’s happened.  That it was happening the whole time.

Since then I have written every day, including four completed poems and three sabbatical reflections – with another three poems and ten or so reflections in the works.  You can find all the poems posted here.

I don’t know that I have yet come to peace about calling myself a writer, but I do have clarity that I want and need to keep writing, and to take writing – including poetry – in and of itself as a serious and worthy part of my life, and what I am called to do.  Which also means that I have to continue to find ways, even as I return to church – and meetings, and email, and the march of Sundays coming again, and again – to make space for the experience of Reality.  Unstoried, unfiltered, without any meaning around it, at all.

Which is maybe what scares me most about returning to work.

Because what I have learned during sabbatical about Reality, is that it takes a really long, long, long time.  It cannot be forced to comply with our deadlines, not if we really mean to contend with it rather than our ideas and stories of it.

That is, it takes a long, long time – until one day, it feels sudden and simple.  Relentlessly available, and abundant.  That there is no way to make it feel available and abundant by rushing it, but only by giving over to its slow and invisible and mysterious workings.  That it is random, and unpredictable, and that somehow, this makes it all the more beautiful, and trustworthy.  Because we cannot make sense of it, not really, cannot contain it, certainly, cannot force good news to come on our terms – we can only pay attention and let the world and life work on us, and then – maybe, something will come through.  Something some call spirit, or grace, or maybe just Life, for real.

This is what it means to be a grown up, my spiritual director tells me, when I express my fear that I will not be able to continue to pay attention like this, with the emails and the meetings and the march of time.  She says the challenge becomes not whether or not you will continue your spiritual practices, or lose these new insights and connections – the challenge is only how many emails or meetings will you be able to add in to your life, while maintaining these things.  Growing up means being able to choose to keep going, to not lose yourself, or Reality, along the way.

This is the story, and the prayer of my sabbatical.  To keep choosing to pay attention to Life – and to trust that the meaning, and the story – and even, the emails – will find a way to come through.

Stop changing
I tell the peaches,
pluots, and
plums, as I pull them
from the sack
and line them up straight
Stay as you
are, sufficiently
fragile and
alive for ripening
to remain
ready, with sweetness
to drip when
my teeth break the skin
and the juice
finds my lips, hungry

Last night I
watched my daughter sleep
with her hands
raised over her head
she filled the
bed with her body,
teenaged, and
fearlessly unfurled
I saw her
infant arms, surrendered
and the prayers
in my mouth,
habits equally
impossible –

We can’t save
anyone, life goes
too far, too
much beyond what can
be held in
our hands, stayed by our
plans – life is
ruthless, and rarely
ripe at the
right amount given
the mess, and
the need to spill not
despair but

light

Despite memory
and betrayal
and my daughter’s arms,
teenaged, and
brown, up above her
head, also
I fear sudden shifts
from life, to
death, and the wish not
to stop, but
hurry, and to keep
living – the
summer is filled with
stories of
juice bursting from flesh
perfectly
sweet, and my children
looking at
me, too late to catch
the swell of
stickiness, we laugh
at the rush
of everything on
their mouths, and
mine, and careless joy,
dangerous and true
believing
if only long enough
to taste life,
uncontained,
radical, and free

At a certain point in the summer, I figured that I’d peeled, and sliced, and cooked up more shallots in the past few months than I’d probably cooked in my whole life.  Shallots are, I realized, one funny but true way to tell the story of my sabbatical.  

It’s not like I hadn’t ever made anything with shallots before. But I confess that a lot of the time when I’ve seen “shallot” in a recipe I just substitute whatever onion I have on hand. 

But sabbatical means: time to shop, and cook, and consider our meals carefully.  And it means: the meals can include peeling, and chopping, and food processing, special dressings and marinades that must be remembered and executed well-in-advance. 

Which means, during sabbatical, shallots can become regular.  

So much so, I start to wonder about shallots – why does a recipe want a shallot instead of a red, or white, or yellow onion? What’s special about shallots?

And because sabbatical means I can follow such random curiosities into actual knowledge, I learned that shallots are more subtle than those other onions, and are more akin to garlic, so add a little extra and different, but subtle flavor.  Many of the recipes I’ve tried this summer have some sort of complex dressing, many served without cooking – for which shallots are the perfect, interesting flavor.

And because sabbatical also means indulging even beyond the intial site of inquiry, I reveled in the fun facts about all the onions offered on one of my new favorite podcasts, The Splendid Table, in their interview with onion-expert Kate Winslow.  

I have tried so many new recipes in the past 14 weeks – some that took hours and then were pretty so-so…some that were fast and then turned out to be so delicious and satisfying.  What my kids call – keepers.  As in, this ones a keeper, mom.  My kids are adventurous, and discerning when it comes to food – so it’s not a shallow compliment. Some of the keepers included portabella tacos, beef fried rice, broccoli chicken tikka masala, and just this week, a leek and sausage gnocchi and a killer greek salad.

I’ve learned that effort and time does not always correlate to a good product.  Instead, a good read of the full recipe, and the flavors, and the care to get all the elements fresh or fully defrosted – this goes a long ways.  I’ve learned what a difference it makes to not multi-task while cooking. As in, not read emails, or catch up on facebook, or talk on the phone, or even think about an upcoming sermon – while cooking.   It is a gift to be able to focus on one thing, and to give ourselves to it, to just pay attention and to learn what is there.

My spiritual director told me, before sabbatical – this is your chance to learn more fully about the reality of your life.  Without the chance for distractions – like, send an email, call a meeting, write an email.  This is your life – is it funny, irritating, boring, sweet, scary, fascinating, confusing, endearing, joyful….maybe all of these, and more? Sabbatical, she said, is your chance to find out.  And as with most things my spiritual director says to me, she was horribly, wonderfully, right.

When we learned to cook, we became fully human – Michael Pollan says in his netflix documentary, Cooked. (Based on his book, I’d imagine, though I haven’t read his book.)

It’s a big statement that a lot of the times I’ll admit was hard to keep in mind when the kids would look at me after hours of chopping and sweating and mixing – and say, this one is not a keeper, mom.  Or, when the garden was calling, and my mom was calling, and laundry was still not done (the laundry became not even a tiny bit easier to conquer during sabbatical, why is that?!?), and I was drudging through one of my well-researched, well-considered “interesting” recipes, likely with shallots.

Pollan’s big push is for us all to cook more – to resist the rush of corporatized food, the outsourcing of food, the glamorizing of covenience – to slow down, and to sit down – to cook, and to eat, together.  He says it doesn’t really matter what we cook, but only that we really take and pay attention to the experience of cooking, and eating, and being.  Especially in these times, in these days.  His is a cooking as resistance, as counter-cultural.  Cooking as community, and care.  He says that preparing something delicious and nourishing for the people you love – despite what our culture wants to teach us – there is no time less wasted than when we do this.

This is the story of my sabbatical.  These hours of each day spent learning, and mixing, and hoping the timing works out.  This begging my children to get their drinks so that we could sit down together.  This remembering to pull the meat out of the freezer, or this carefully placing the summer fruit in a row so to slow down the spoiling.  This race to get all that has been bought each week, to be eaten, before it goes bad.

Every minute of it a love note.  Felt then, and if not, maybe later.  Years, or decades even.  So that when the day comes when I cannot always be there to chop shallots, or peppers, or mushrooms, or thyme – when that first Board meeting – which is already scheduled – runs fully through the dinner hour – that they will, and I will, remember the smell of garlic, and ginger, and the sprinkled sesame seeds or parmesan cheese, and feel still connected, and together, and loved.

At my home church there is an abandoned copy of Leadbeater’s The Science of the Sacraments on a shelf in the pastor’s office. It’s with a deacon’s stole, a gospel book, and a box of hosts which must be so old as to be unusable now. These are evidence of an Independent Sacramental community that once worshipped in the church but is long gone and either precipitously disbanded or moved.

What kind of Independent Sacramental community? The book is a tell. Charles Leadbeater was an early bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church, and devised its liturgy. Today, it has broken up into a number of jurisdictions which I’ll get to in a moment. Also, don’t confuse them with politically or theologically progressive Catholics.

The Liberal Catholics is one of the reasons I became interested in the Independent Sacramental Movement in the first place. It would be a lie to say I understand the ins-and-outs of the Liberal Catholics, particularly what distinguishes their various jurisdictions, except to say that they are philosophically and historically dependent on Theosophy, which is also a blurry area for me, as my faith isn’t what you’d call esoteric. None of that is so important here as that the Liberal Catholics are theologically universalist.

The first Liberal Catholics I met — this was in 1994 and I don’t know which jurisdiction —were in a storefront church near my little house in Tulsa, Oklahoma. One of the bishops described (if I can recall back a quarter century) his church as being liberal in the interpretation of belief, provided that the liturgy is observed properly. We were standing at the back of the church at the time, surrounded by the largest collection of antique vestments I have ever seen, so I took him at his word about the liturgy

Here’s the Creed or Act of Faith used in Liberal Catholic rite jurisdictions, or some of them. It exists in variant forms, sometimes tweaking the sons and brothers to something that includes women:

We believe that God is Love and Power and Truth and Light; that perfect justice rules the world; that all His sons shall one day reach His Feet, however far they stray. We hold the Fatherhood of God,  the Brotherhood of man; we know that we do serve Him best when best we serve our brother man. So shall His blessing rest upon us and peace for evermore. Amen.

I’ve noticed that Liberal Catholic jurisdictions vary on particular parts: is Theosophy optional? Likewise vegetarianism? So I assume some are more forthrightly universalist (as I understand it) than others. But the Catholic Universalist Church just puts it out there. And look at that mid-century Off-Center Cross. (I had the pleasure to worship with their parish in Queens a few years ago.)  Of note, they don’t use the Act of Faith on their site. Even more of note, some of the language in their theses are used by the Christian Universalist Association (or vice versa).

And also there’s the Liberal Catholic Universalist Church, based in the northeast of England. I wonder if there are others? Well, there was that vanished community. Were they drawn to a Universalist church? In any case, and no matter how small they may be, it does my heart good. What vanishes quickly can also reappear as fast.

July saw a new wave of action from Extinction Rebellion, after the successful rebellion that happened in London in April. The idea was that the action in London would “mushroom” in four other cities as well as more action happening in London (this time concentrated on the Royal Courts of Justice). So the Summer Uprising broke out in Cardiff, Bristol, Leeds, and Glasgow as well. I've been

By the time we sat in the room
where life turned

from what was, to what would be
I had barely begun to believe

there was a game, and
we were players

there was a strategy, and
you intended to win

you’d been making already so many moves
it was all I could do, to decide the sorrow

I could swallow, and survive
the waves I could take

without staying under
too long – we like to believe

there is perpetually some perfect
calculus, a thing called right, and wrong

we will know when the time comes
but the right choice does not always arrive without regret

even Moses marched
toward the Red Sea, in liberation

even he could not stop wanting the land he had known
or the quiet of the past

not long after his freedom was declared
he grew weary of justice

loud, and plague-filled, whiny, and the sea
refused to release its threats of drownings, or hypothermia

and the walls of water, majestic, still failed to disclose
the way of dreams, or comfort

after we have walked so long and left behind
so many, carrying with us the voices of the unbelievers

sometimes wrathful, just as often wanting
I still have an idea of the promised land

and an aim past this impossible choosing
where there is no pass, only play

a willingness to have been the one to respond, to see
past the lighthouse, and the whales, and the oceans

rising, our daughters becoming mothers
uncoerced, ready to clear the board, and begin again

 

I found myself apologizing to the peaches again today,
the green ones I found on the ground,
near the coneflower that could never make it to bud
After the hail, and the late snow, and my
intermittent neglect, somehow they had found their way to
midsummer, and hope –
but the neighbor’s
baby would not stop crying,
and Charlie, clumsy and filled with slobbering love
was rightfully concerned,
bolted and shook the branch
with his worry –
you tried so hard, I told them,
holding their soft skin for a moment,
like a blessing –
before tossing them into the bin of weeds, and grass, and rocks –
You have to be tough to make it here, and stubborn
to know how to be stepped on by children, choked by
weeds, to absorb the falling stones shot loose when it’s not just
babies crying, but the infuriating squirrel, or bunny –
and not forget who you are, or
lose sight of the life you have come to make –
or, when my son, overcome by hormones and
well-earned resentment,
slices clean off all the parts
you had hoped to offer
to butterflies, and hummingbirds, and the sky
the orange parts, the yellow, the red,
when there is nothing impressive left,
you have to be ready to take that heartbreak
and keep going, patient and undeterred
There can be no pride here, no attachment,
only survival, which is to give everything away,
except your roots, and the earth
which holds you, and everything else,
in what cannot be seen, or undone
the promise to persist,
forgetting even grief, though earned,
to be determined to go on
inhaling, and exhaling
equal, and enough.

I’d known for some time that the run of printed Unitarian Universalist Association directories were available to be read online from Harvard Library’s site, so I wondered if any of the hard-to-get and not-public-domain (1924 on) Universalist directories and records, prior to the 1961 consolidation, were available there.

Indeed, there are. Here’s what I found in chronological order, and I’ll add more if I find any. Note that except were stated, the resources were published on a biennial basis.

• Universalist Year Book, 1922-1936 (annual)
• Minutes of the Universalist General Convention, 1935
• Universalist Biennial Reports and Directory, 1937-38
• Report of the biennial session, Minutes of the Universalist General Convention, 1937-1941
• Universalist Biennial Reports and Directory, 1939-40 including 1941 biennial session
• Report of the biennial session, Minutes of the Universalist Church of America, 1943
• Minutes of the General Assembly of the Universalist Church of America, 1951-1953
• Universalist Handbook and Directory, 1959-60

markers with lids half-on, coloring books

set out with pages like butterflies, half-beautiful;

my hands covered in raw meat, dripping and

dangerous – or dirt, with the torch lilly barely out of

the pot, ready to be surrounded and

held by something familiar, to take root;

my hand caught on their other

mother’s hip, before the crash of the

front screen door, and the request

for referee, score-keeper, coach;

their adolescent bodies, nearly my

size, and the words that come

out of their lazy lips

unpurposefully, except the

sting, and the way they will bring me

from my world into theirs with a bang and a

burst, interrupting whatever unimportant

tale I’d been running, with the sort of

ferocious love they know

how to bump up against,

to feel a part of something already

in motion. They tell me to pray here, to place

my knees at the altar of

dandelions, and mud, and nerf bullets leftover

from my son’s last birthday party, not

as an act of giving up

on beauty, or to stop seeing all that is possible,

but because the holy is also here, the

wholeness of something wild, and unbalanced,

something not easily told, or shared, or explained

when my mother comes to visit –

but to believe that this is

enough, this incomplete world, in the middle

of the day, the summer, my life,

the story of the earth, this planet, life itself;

they come offering only themselves,

like the poem I’ve been writing, waiting still for

the beginning, the ending, and edits,

wanting to be made sense of,

to feel resolved, at least for a

breath, before the next movement; to be loved

not for what will be but

for every unfinished part, now.

I want to tell them, of course,

to gobble them up in my arms

like when they were infants,

to agree with ease, life is not

arrival, but becoming –

I want to turn the prayers into hymns,

to say amen and to ready it all

for Sunday, but they tell me this one’s not

for sale, and besides,

no one’s buying I’ve been well-

taught. They send me back for tutoring, and

summer school, loads of laundry, and the kitchen

sink filled again, and their urgent need

for a clean spoon,

remedial lessons for a stubborn

student, still secretly drafting

a happy ending.

 

 

Describes my principles pretty well too: 

I believe this firmly—that we are sacred beings in a sacred world.

No part of our living is divorced from that reality; this life and all that surrounds it is holy, from beginning to end.Every human being—whatever category or description they might belong to—is a sacred being.

I believe this firmly—that the world we inhabit, from the primordial slime that gave rise to the air we breathe to the American chestnut trees in my backyard, from the thistles and groundhogs, also in my backyard, that will not go away, to the grass that grows through the cracks of crumbling pavement, and even the pavement itself, is sacred. All of it is. All of life is wondrous, and we are part of life. With our very breath, we are witness to wonder.

But we forget. It’s easy to do. I suppose on some level that’s a good thing. We probably wouldn’t get much done if we spent every moment staring in rapturous wonder at dandelions, appreciating the miracle of sneezes even as we breathe in the ragweed. And perhaps that too is a miracle of sorts, as the author Terry Pratchett once commented. “Human beings,” he said, “make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom?”

When I think about things that way it astonishes me that any of us can manage to be bored, but we do. It is in such moments, when I become aware of them, that I try to rise from the sleepwalking of day-to-day getting by and look around me. It is in such moments that I might pick up an instrument and practice that miraculous art which is music, or I might listen to someone else practice that art. Perhaps I will step outdoors for a few moments and walk under leaf and sky. Maybe I’ll pick up the telephone—another miracle—and call someone I love, with whom I have not spoken in too long a time. Maybe I will play with my son. Or perhaps I will simply soldier through, getting done what needs to get done, and wait until later to be grateful for the sacredness of life.

It is common, these days, for people to say that even if they are not religious, they are spiritual, or that they are seeking a deeper spiritual life. Sometimes it’s not exactly clear what we mean when we talk about spirituality. But if by that word we mean a sense of connectedness with something greater than ourselves, or a feeling of wonder and gratitude, or a motivation to step out from familiar patterns of thought and view ourselves and everything around us in a different way, we could do far worse than pay attention to this world as it is.

Then, perhaps, together we can all learn to love this world, this life, this sacred existence into which we were born and in which we will live until the end of our days, and after which the tissues of our bodies will slowly transform back into soil and nourish new life, new wonder, new experiences, new marvels.  Perhaps we can learn to do more than live well in this world—we can also learn to praise it.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110030655/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_08/03.mp3

This week I went to a climate action meeting. Over fifty people gathered and there was an organised conversation for two hours about the climate crisis and environmental issues. The discussion covered so many different things: food waste, recycling, vegetarianism, nuclear weapons, education. But what does it add up to? A list of things that "we" could do, or that "someone" could do. The trouble

Because this site is mainly directed to Protestants in congregational polity churches, I should talk about the church itself a bit before talking about the Independent Sacramental Movement (ISM), to identify differences of focus that might otherwise turn into a confusing blur. I’m also working out of my comfort zone here and in future, so there’s probably going to be mistakes, or at least phrasings that those in the ISM wouldn’t use. If so, please comment.

(Since the ISM attracts a certain kind of viscous internet troll, I will be applying a heavier than usual editorial hand in approving comments. If you’re here to stir up trouble about the ISM, don’t bother. This series is not for you.)

The Cambridge Platform of 1648 was a New England response to the Westminster Confession; the main differences were with polity, or the system of church governance, and persists (often in wildly modified forms) in the inheriting churches of New England Congregationalism, which includes the Unitarians and Universalists. So even in these late days, we respect it and go back to its understanding. Chapter two of the platform starts “[t]he catholic church is the whole company of those elected, redeemed, and in time effectively called from the state of sin and death, unto a state of grace and salvation in Jesus Christ.” But that’s a spiritual state: it doesn’t distinguish between the living and the dead; or the past, present or future. A series of no, not that clauses follow leading to the proposition that there is no Church — that is, a single visible organization of living Christians around the world — but churches, particular instances that keep communion (both access to the Lord’s table and the disciplines of church cooperation) with one another.  Explicitly, “we deny a universal visible church.” (chapter 2.4)

Section 6 lays out what a church is: “A Congregational church is by the institution of Christ a part of the militant visible church, consisting of a company of saints by calling, united into one body by a holy covenant, for the public worship of God, and the mutual edification of one another, in the fellowship of the Lord Jesus.”

In short, Christ’s promise of the life-giving promise of the Holy Spirit leaps the generations and is present in the gathered church. To follow the thought, a group of wholly isolated persons could individually have experience of salvation (I’ll leave what that means for now), baptize one another, establish a covenant, elect and ordain “officers” (the elders or ministers, and deacons) and be a fully-formed church. Sounds good to me, as unlikely as that might be.

Among the diversity of the ISM, this certainly stands out: there are three orders of ministry (deacon, priest and bishop) and that these orders are transmitted as a sacrament from generation to generation in a succession of bishops in a line of consecration back to Christ’s apostles. Without bishops, there is no access to the other six (maybe more) sacraments, which mediate grace. No doubt the Holy Spirit empowers the consecrations, but even without wading into the ISM views of the constitution of the church, there’s a basic difference in concept. In the congregational view, the “faith once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 1:3) is held by the faithful, while in the ISM (as with other churches with apostolic succession) there is a personal continuity. (Which is not to suggest that the laity are optional in the ISM, but that’s an issue of the constitution of the church that I’m not qualified to speak about. I would be interested how the Vatican II document, Lumen Gentium has been received.) In congregationalism, at least in its “purest ” form, the deacons and ministers fill a role more than experiencing the basic, ontological change of nature as expressed in the ordinations of the ISM. Of course, what’s so pure any more? Ideas about the ministry have developed over time, including what might be called (but never is in this way) its mystical constitution. Perhaps I should ask how Lumen Gentium has influenced the Unitarian Universalists, if perhaps through the side door. After all, James Luther Adams was an observer at Vatican II.

Next time, a bit about who the ISM are in the context of the churches in apostolic succession.

 

This is the first of an open-ended series about the Independent Sacramental Movement (ISM); in it, I plan on exploring what it is, how it distinguishes itself in the ecumenical landscape, what diversity it contains, how it functions as a community and how it challenges and adapts concepts of “the right way” to do church. I’ll also explore the unexpected ways it crosses paths with Unitarian Universalism, and Universalism specifically. I think we in the mainline have plenty to learn and appreciate in the ISM.

Unless you are in it, know someone who is, or study British or American religious history, you likely have never heard of the ISM. I first learned of it in the late 1980s or very early 1990s when I was a student in the religion department at the University of Georgia. A classmate friend and I would scan Melton’s Guide to American Religion, which lists and describes religious institutions, for the unusual and exotic including what I’m sure was then more commonly called “Independent Catholicism.” His quest would lead him into the more interesting and esoteric back roads; mine, by comparison, is institutional and conventional. But my respect for this constellation of believers continues to this day, and I’ve been happy to be a friend and neighbor of the movement — which also includes forms of Orthodoxy and Anglicanism, depending on whom you ask — rather than a member or priest.

But I’m getting ahead of myself: a special welcome to those associated with the ISM. Feel free to comment if I get something wrong or right, or send a message through this form. I’d also love to hear your stories, and take requests for themes to develop.

I don’t want to make this controversy my full-time job, so this post and done (if I can help it.) Here are my earlier articles the subject: introduction and part one.

My first instinct was correct; this is a work of controversy and while there are parts I do agree with, its style and form wouldn’t have convinced me.  That and it’s so blisteringly Unitarian, which is a pet complaint. The biggest plus is directing me to the work of Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, whom I’ll add to my reading list.

I’m imagining where the harm claims are coming from. I see forms of argument that could remind people of other arguments that were abusive. Some terms Eklof uses, such as political correctness  and safetyism, are used by other authors to dismiss or belittle critics, and the fact they show up in the title of the first essay (“The Coddling of the Unitarian Universalist Mind: How the Emerging Culture of Safetyism, Identitarianism, and Political Correctness is Reshaping America’s Most Liberal Religion”) surely put examiners into high alert. I also see discussions of controversy — in particular, the district executive hiring crisis of 2017 ― that could be embarrassing to those who had thought the narrative was conclusively set. The tension around the publication itself (General Assembly is a strange time) could inflame old trauma. I still don’t see the viciousness (“vitriolic rhetoric” introduction to reposted white ministers letter;”aligned with alt-right ideology” Allies for Racial Equity letter; “dissemination of racism, ableism, and the affirmation of other forms of oppression, including classism and homo- and transphobia” UUMA POCI chapter letter; “toxic history and theologies” DRUUMM letter) its denouncers claim.  And fiat isn’t good enough; you have to show your work, if not to me, then to the laity commenting online, who seem to be at a different place.

Some writers, mainly on Facebook, speak of portions floating around, or selections that confirm their decision to condemn. I think this is a mistake, not only because that’s the oldest rhetorical trick in the book, but because Eklof has a theme that’s woven through his book that gets lost with excerpting: an ecclesiology of the free church based on universal human experience. That’s important because he doesn’t condemn those who would condemn him, but tries to re-direct the discussion to what we might have together.  It’s a basis for unity because we need one, and this necessity is what the rest of the book relies on. (His ecclesiology leave me cold, but that’s besides the point.)

The less said about the second essay the better. The “divorce” in the title is a call to redivide the Unitarians and Universalists so they could be their true selves. I’m not sure if that’s Swiftian fancy, or simply romantic misreading. But his examples ignored the economic reasons, not to mention the social realities, that lead to consolidation.  I think you can make a good case for breaking up or restructuring the UUA. For one, it’s too small to be efficient but too big to be nimble. Also, without another similar peer organization, when people leave, they’re gone. UUA1 and UUA2 could specialize, develop their own styles and volley ministers and churches back and forth, and I bet it would be bigger in aggregate than the UUA today. A little competition is good, too. But that’s not what Eklof suggests.

Yet I think both Eklof and his accusers suffer that common affliction of wanting to be right more than being successful. It might surprise non-readers that he has ideas for dismantling racism, and to continue to work on not being racist, and talks about his bona-fides at in the epilogue.  You might think them hogwash (or wonderful) but they’re there. That is, if you can make it through his argumentation, especially the extended section on logic. God help me, but he might have been a graduate of the Vulcan School for Exquisite Logic and that still would have been the wrong approach. An appeal to rhetoric (a personal favorite) wouldn’t have been any better. Where he’s sermonic, he’s stronger. So third and largest essay was a convoluted slog, and if I had been anxious or angry or good ol’ loaded-for-bear going into the book, it would have amplified my feelings greatly.

I finally finished the book, but half-way through started taking notes in earnest, and so details from the front third aren’t as fresh in mind. Plus my blasted Kindle copy resists cutting-and-pasting. But I have to put this down. I’ll keep the comments open for a while; so far everyone has been civil, which makes me happy.

If you are interested in reading the book to understand Eklof’s points, read the epilogue first, the beginning and end of the third essay and then the first. You can skim the second essay for the ecclesiological themes.

After I wrap up this series on “The Gadfly Papers” I’ll turn to writing what I had intended this week: an exploration of the Independent Sacramental Movement.

What it is; what distinguishes its approach(es) to Christianity; the unexpected ways it overlaps with Unitarian Universalism; and what we have to learn and appreciate from them.

I am a slow reader with a day job. So I am less than a third of the way done reading The Gadfly Papers, but do have some general observations both of the book and the three letters denouncing it.

First, I never intended to read it. My very first instinct was “not again.” Itchy political analysis of the UUA was common fifteen to twenty years ago, created “more heat than light” and inspired me to be more strategic and analytic whenever I met something in the UUA that seemed like a bad idea. I spiked a lot of my own stories. The table of contents reminded me of the old days. It was the denouncing letters that prompted me to buy and read the book.

Why? The letters were sure of their reasons, were very confident but gave no examples. (The UUMA POCI letter cited an Christina Rivera as an injured party, but not what in the book caused the injury.)  And the lists grew so fast, that I thought “surely they didn’t read it yet,” which raised a red flag. So whatever the motives of the signatories — which I trust as a matter of principle was based on conscience, duty or both — the letters read to me as a pile-on. For example, does being “intentionally provocative” (white ministers letter) merit hundreds of signatures against a single colleague?

I took it both as a matter of conscience and duty to not be swayed by numbers and see for myself. And for this I was criticized and chided for buying the book. By ministers. It is currently the #1 and #2 books (Kindle and paperback respectively) about Unitarian Universalism on Amazon, despite an attempt to displace it by strategic purchasing of another book. Clearly, others want to read it, too.

You can quietly ask someone to stop writing. You can make a reasoned, convincing argument why someone is wrong. You cannot make forceful, public demands, and then expect people to not start Google-ing.

As for the book, so far it’s not great literature. It could use a copy editor and is a bit self-conscious of its place in history and the weight of criticism that did, in fact, come. Even the “white ministers letter” calls it a treatise, and I think that’s the right genre. The interpretation of Unitarian history, in my opinion, is not good. But it is exactly the kind of folk-history, transmitted through sermons and pamphlets, that built the long dominant idea that Unitarianism is the “faith of the free.”

I will provide examples of some recent embarrassing Unitarian Universalist episodes  later, but again I’m a slow reader trying to read for comprehension and the meaning of the controversy. So far, I do not see in Eklof’s book a narrative equal to the outrage.

Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Other translations

Like others who look to the Bible for a revelation of God’s character, and sure of God’s nature, which is Love, this is my witness: the migrant concentration camps cannot stand.

Christians ought to band with whomever seeks the just treatment of migrants and demand of civil authorities the immediate relief of all who suffer inhumane conditions (especially children and vulnerable adults) and a prompt investigation in the cause of this cruel and unnecessary crisis.

Just to close the loop. The measure passed with the friendly amendment and now goes to the UUMA membership for a year of study.  I’ll keep the documents up for the record, since I’ve heard some rather outrageous interpretations of them and of the motives of those who signed.

I still stand by them, but the moment has passed, so moving on….

while i was away the weeds decided to stage a coup

across the rocks   and plants   and trees

where i’d spent whole days meticulously     

digging out the thistle    unwinding the bindweed

  moving the rocks aside    to get at each piece

        of cheatgrass    conspiring with

the rain the sun and my apparent negligence

they made an unruly revolution

like you   they have never been good   

at boundaries    an abundance of green brazenly

draped itself over gray and white stones meant

to mark space   for breath and   steps   

tiny tendrils stroked the sedum and

whole stalks of goatsbeard turned up

between the columbines    danger

can be so beautiful

as i knelt in the wet grass and cut my fingernails

into the dirt pulling on every last one  

less meticulous this time  more furious  as if

it was not their nature   to go into forbidden places

while the rain returned and the

mosquitos swarmed   i remembered your face

when you saw   i wasn’t going to save you  

this time   as if i was the one   who had betrayed    you

my hands grew raw and numb as night took hold  

i worked to unbury the secrets   the roots   the radically selfish intentions  

the memory of what it felt like   to be for a time   wild and   uncaught  

the hope i know they still harbor   to try again  i tried

to kill every last seed so i could return safely  

to only the good of my garden  

to see unblemished the new blooms of deep blue on the salvia  

the baby peaches  swaying in the gray sky  untouched

by the ground assault   my son’s fledgling oak tree  promising

a far-out future  by the eighth bucket filled   i had emptied every corner

of the invaders   my fingers ached i surveyed the carnage

and cried   it all looked so battered  and bare  just three hours

after you confessed what you had done    i led the memorial

where   the daughter     moaned perfectly   from the front   row 

the whole service   from her gut   

wailing  her grief    while i kept    my tears     in check    and whispered

under my breath              amen.  

I want to write about how it's possible to know the reality of God's love. I find this challenging as for a long as I can remember I have had a relationship with God. Growing up going to church I discovered God amidst the music, the hymns, the ritual. I talked to God and I always felt God was there. This is not to say that it's always been plain sailing and there's not been times of doubt

Let’s take a moment a pray for safe travels for those heading to Spokane for Ministry Days and General Assembly, for productive meetings and good-spirited companionship.

The Rev. Sarah Stewart has written a proposed amendment to the UUMA guidelines proposal. I hope this helps shape the discussion in conjuction with A UUMA Guidelines Proposal Response which I posted earlier. Further, she is in conversation with UUMA leaders about the best way to bring it forward.

Reprinted with permission.

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Proposed amendment to the Code of Conduct revisions

UUMA Annual meeting
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Brought by Sarah Stewart

Whereas the current Code of Conduct of the UUMA does not recognize differences of identity and social location among ministers, and whereas UU ministers have engaged in conduct unbecoming of a minister which our current guidelines have not been adequate to address,

Be it resolved that the membership of the UUMA shall study the proposed changes to the UUMA Code of Conduct published on May 1, 2019;

Be it further resolved that the following process shall be observed for the study period:

• • The UUMA executive committee shall ensure that study materials are available to chapters no later than September 15, 2019. Study undertaken by chapters will be eligible for continuing education units;
  • Edits and revisions to the current text shall be sent by chapters or individuals to the UUMA exec no later than March 15, 2020;
  • Alternative proposals to the current text shall be signed by no fewer than 100 UUMA members and submitted to the UUMA exec no later than March 15, 2020;
  • The various options which emerge from this process shall be published to UUMA members by April 15, 2020 for a straw vote at Ministry Days 2020. The UUMA exec may combine very similar proposals into one for the purposes of this vote;
  • If no substantial revisions or alternative proposals have been received, a final vote on the above changes to the Code of Conduct shall be in order at Ministry Days 2020;
  • If there is more than one proposal, a vote shall be held among them at Ministry Days 2020, to choose a final draft for a year of study.

The UUMA exec shall provide a process for the 2020-21 year of study. A final vote to adopt or not adopt the final draft changes shall be in order at Ministry Days 2021;

And be it further resolved that while major revisions to the Code of Conduct are under consideration for the study period of one or two years, the UUMA shall not recommend any changes on the connection between fellowship and membership in the UUMA.

I am a signatory to this letter, issued yesterday. You can read the document referenced here.

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A UUMA GUIDELINES PROPOSAL RESPONSE

I. Executive Summary

Ministry occurs in a complex landscape of diverse perspectives. We applaud all who are engaged in the vital work of articulating professional ethical standards, including collegial relations; we understand that our polity makes holding each other accountable to those standards particularly challenging. That said, having read and studied the current proposed revisions to the UUMA guidelines, we are moved to respond.

There are several problems we see with the proposed changes to the UUMA guidelines. We are concerned with the subjectivity of what constitutes “harm,” and the entirety of the “accountability” section. Perhaps most significantly: we, the undersigned, believe there should be a clear boundary between the important work of the UUMA to serve as a resource for improving our skills in ministry, and the important work of the community of congregations (otherwise known as the UUA), which credentials ministers through fellowship.

We know that credentialing serves important purposes. It vets people for psychological wellbeing. It assesses quality of connection and commitment to tradition. It provides external confirmation of vocational call. It assesses potential for spiritual maturity. Credentialing requires people to articulate the call and why they want to pursue leadership. It requires instruction and training in a particular body of knowledge (ie. ethics, scripture, etc.) Credentialing carries accountability to an authorizing body and is the basis for consequences. It carries endorsement from the community of congregations through the UUA, and it allows for portability of professional standing from one community to another. The UUMA does not relate materially to any of these processes.

The UUA is in the process of trying to create a single path for ethical complaints against ministers (and possibly other religious professionals). We would like to see that work continue and develop without the UUMA’s intervention. We would also like congregations to get more training on their responsibilities as employers, including non-discrimination and non-harassment.

The UUMA is not charged with saving congregations from their own weaknesses, but rather with upholding and supporting the standards of excellence of our professional ministry so that we may effectively and responsibly serve congregations and communities.

II. Principles

Here are the principles we see as vital to uphold:

1. Congregational independence and authority are core values of Unitarian Universalist congregations and have been since our traditions’ founding.

2. Congregational interdependence is equally ancient and is now most clearly expressed through membership in the UUA.

3. Every UU, including every minister, has a responsibility to serve the sacred as they understand it.

4. Every minister has a responsibility to speak the truth, in covenant with the congregation or community they serve.

5. The congregation has the sole authority to affirm or reject the call of a particular minister in that location;

6. Ordination is the acknowledgment and solemnization of an individual’s sacred call to ministry, performed by a congregation. Fellowship is the affirmation by tasked and trusted representatives of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, including but not limited to ministers, that an individual is deemed ready and acceptable for ordination, and for serving a call to professional ministry.

In summary: The UUA is an association of congregations. The UUMA is an association of ministers. The UUA advocates for congregations and the UUMA for ministers.

III. Areas of Agreement (with Gratitude)

• We believe that misconduct should be actionable.
• We agree strongly that we need to consistently clarify and strengthen our professional standards against behaviors that perpetuate white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and other systems and structures of oppression.
• We agree that bullying is a form of misconduct.
• We agree that it is important to add language about emotional needs as one of the ways a misconducting minister could exploit others.
• We agree that it is good to clarify the expectation to refrain from contact for two years if a minister wants to begin a sexual relationship with someone they have encountered as a minister.
• We agree that even then, the burden would be on the minister to demonstrate that they weren’t exploiting the partner.

IV. Areas of Disagreement

CONFLICT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

While recognizing that ministers have engaged and will engage in acts of gross or criminal misconduct, the vast majority of ministers are doing good, ethical work. The accountability language in the proposed guidelines is so broad as to make ethical colleagues wary of ordinary behavior and communication.

In order to fulfill their call, ministers must be free to speak the truth as they understand it, in covenant with the congregation or community they serve. Sometimes this will involve unskillful communication. Sometimes folks will need to work through their own biases or failings and be called back into covenant.

Many of the missteps of ministry are easily resolved in healthy systems by simply engaging in good-faith conversation or seeking and offering apology or reconciliation as a matter of course. The breadth of the proposed language threatens to override this healthy form of accountability and replace it with a much more dramatic and anxiety-driven process than is necessary.

We believe that in most circumstances, colleagues are able to work out disagreements between themselves as they see fit. In the vast majority of cases, a minister should be required to speak directly with a colleague with whom they have a disagreement as a first step toward resolving the conflict.

We appreciate the caveat in Footnote 2 regarding egregious misconduct. However, much of the language in this section is confusing at best, and seems to indicate a breathtaking level of overreach. Lines 122-196 outline a process that includes deliberate triangulation with regional staff, congregational staff members and lay leaders, clusters, and “accountabila-buddies.” That such a right relations process can be forced on a colleague for conduct as broad as covenant that is “broken, violated or even bent” is punitive and unreasonable.

CONCERNING LEGAL COUNSEL

We are concerned that this section of the proposal is not only problematic, but possibly illegal:

185 14. “The restoration of our covenant is a collegial process, not a legal one. Using legal counsel, insurance

186 agents, or similar outside bodies to prevent repair or frustrate accountability is itself a violation of this code.12

187 If a member employs these tactics to avoid accountability and healing the RRG may refer the

188 matter to the Common Ethics Panel for review and appropriate action, which may include removal or

189 suspension from membership and/or fellowship.”

In many union contracts there is an agreement to work through legally binding arbitration, or to pursue mediation as a first course. But those are both within legal practices. What we find deeply problematic about this section is surrendering our legal rights, and signing ourselves over to volunteer-run processes that have no established codes.

STAFF SUPERVISION AND CONGREGATIONAL POLITY

Many ministers are called by the congregations they serve to be staff supervisors within their congregational structure. It is wholly possible for these organizational models to express healthy collaboration while not exactly reflecting the UUMA’s preferred culture. We are concerned that the proposed guidelines would put an undue burden on ministers to serve a UUMA culture that may be in direct opposition to congregational expectations and established employment practices.

If a minister is unable to function as a collaborative, respectful, good supervisor then the onus is on the congregation, not the UUMA, to address the minister’s professional deficiencies and to deal with any fall-out from their bad behaviors — just as it is the congregational leadership’s role to address any fall-out from other staff’s misconduct or professional failures.

RIGHT RELATIONS GUIDES

The Right Relations Guides, as conceived, are a large group (“we may need 25-50 of these RRGs”, Accountability Guidelines Team Report, page 16) and a significant change in the collegial ecosystem. At first glance, they appear to hold a parallel role to the long-existing Good Officer program, which already helps mediate conflicts between colleagues as well as between our colleagues and other religious professionals and congregations. Good Officers often help their colleagues discern whether a conflict with a colleague needs one-to-one conversation, a mediated conversation, or if the conflict rises to the level of a formal complaint.

However, unlike Good Officers, Right Relations Guides would hold considerable power to recommend the suspension of UUMA membership which, if required for fellowship, presents a credible and predictable risk of abuse. This has the potential to create within the ministerial college an atmosphere of suspicion, effectively chilling relationships between colleagues.

We have witnessed colleagues and non-colleagues in social media settings, often in mixed groups, attempt to insert themselves into what we see as simple differences of opinions between adults. With this proposal, if these interlocutors were RRGs, they would be empowered to initiate processes that are disproportionately strong, even coercive, and threatening to the professional standing and livelihoods of colleagues.

Compelling participation in a process under threat of loss of professional standing by definition takes away the possibility of it being voluntary. Instead, it will likely bring some participants to the table with resentment, under duress, and utterly lacking the kind of goodwill upon which an effective reconciliation process must depend.

COMMON ETHICS PANEL

We appreciate the reasons why the guidelines committee has proposed a common ethics panel. But we submit that the UUA already has a common ethics panel: the Ministerial Fellowship Committee. The MFC has members appointed by the UUA and UUMA. It has lay people, UUA staff, ministers, DREs, psychological professionals and student liaisons. The MFC is accountable to the UUA board, and staffed by the Department of Ministry and Professional Leadership.

The MFC should be supported with additional staffing and resources to do effective work, rather than creating a new group to do their work for them. The UUMA can offer volunteers, ideas, and encouragement to the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, but we should not create a separate team that decides who is accountable to whom while being accountable to no one.

V. Proposal/Action Plan

Complaints against all religious professionals for egregious misconduct should continue to go through the appropriate UUA channels (which definitely can be improved). There should also be a way for religious professionals to report egregiously misconducting congregations to hold them accountable and let it be known to ministers and others that they have a record of abusive treatment of religious professionals.

We understand that these guidelines are partly proposed to mitigate situations in which a colleague offends against another colleague, and is therefore out of the bounds of the congregation’s reach and scope. A mature resolution would look like the offended and offender talking one-on-one to each other, and/or offer options for supporting engagement with one another with a skilled facilitator if needed, allowing for an outcome that acknowledged the complexity of the situation, and responsibility all around. If egregious misconduct has occurred, it should be referred to the Ministerial Fellowship Committee.

A professional association expects its members to nurture a growing awareness of complex interpersonal dynamics; the ability to listen and speak openly and mindfully; and the regulation of one’s anxiety. These practices promote the ability to make thoughtful, principled choices. These expectations are expressed through equally clear and principled guidelines that depend on its members’ robust support.

The history of Unitarian, Universalist, and Unitarian Universalist ministry is replete with stories of fierce disagreements between colleagues. With a modern eye, we look back at some of these disagreements with disdain for opinions that no longer would be considered acceptable. But we always are in a present position of seeing through a glass dimly. Those who were most reviled in their time by their colleagues are often the ones whom time has shown to be most prescient and wise. We dare not silence the prophetic voices of those in our time, it is through their uncomfortable (and even painful) conversations that we may grow. A humility is needed for us to listen to each other, and bear the difficulties of withstanding opinions which we may most vehemently disagree with, affirming that freedom of conscience is still a supreme value of our ministry association.

We appreciate the hard, painful work of our dear colleagues on the guidelines proposal team, but we cannot support the proposed UUMA guidelines as written.

Yours in faith,

Rev. Neal Anderson, Senior Minister Elect, UU Church of Greater Lansing, MI

Rev. Robin W. Bartlett, Senior Pastor, The First Church in Sterling, MA

Rev. Chris Bell, Senior Minister, Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Santa Rosa

Rev. Wendy L. Bell, Interim Minister, Unitarian Church of Sharon, MA

Rev. Peter Boullata, Unitarian Fellowship of London, London, ON

Rev. Tricia Brennan, Interim Minister, First Parish Dorchester, MA

Rev. John A. Buehrens, retired, San Francisco, CA

Rev. Dr. Andy Burnette, Senior Minister, Valley Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Chandler, AZ

Rev. Roger Butts, Staff Chaplain, Penrose St Francis Health Services, Colorado Springs, CO

Rev. Cynthia Cain, in transition, Mackville, KY

Rev. Frank Clarkson, Minister, Universalist Unitarian Church of Haverhill, MA

Rev. Dr. Leon Dunkley, Minister, North Chapel, Woodstock, VT

Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof, Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane, WA

Rev. Joanna Fontaine Crawford, Minister, Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church, Cedar Park, TX

Rev. John T. Crestwell, Jr., Minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis, MD

Rev. Gregory DuBow, Captain, Chaplain Corps, United States Air Force

Rev. Claire Feingold Thoryn, Minister, Follen Church, Lexington, MA

Rev. Emily Gage, Minister of Faith Development, Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Oak Park, Illinois

Rev. Daniel Gregoire, Minister, Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton & Upton, MA

Rev. Michael F. Hall, Minister, Keene Unitarian Universalist Church, Keene, NH

Rev. Lara Hoke, Minister, First Church Unitarian, Littleton, MA

Rev. Richard Hoyt-McDaniels, Interim Minister, Long Beach, CA

Rev. Stefan M. Jonasson, Gimli Unitarian Church, Gimli, MB

Rev. Cynthia L. G. Kane, Commander, Chaplain Corps, United States Navy

Rev. Dr. Daniel C. Kanter, Senior Minister/CEO, First Unitarian Church of Dallas, TX

Rev. Elea Kemler, Minister, First Parish Church of Groton, MA

Rev. Dr. Maureen Killoran, Minister Emerita, Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Asheville, NC

Rev. Tera Klein, Pastor, Throop Unitarian Universalist, Pasadena, CA

Rev. Sadie Lansdale, Minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Greensboro, NC

Rev. Gerald E. “Jay” Libby, Melrose, MA

Rev. Anthony F. Lorenzen, Hopedale Unitarian Parish

Rev. Brian Mason, Minister, First Universalist Unitarian Church of Wausau, WI

Rev. Dr. Kelly Murphy Mason, Senior Minister, Unitarian Universalist Society of Wellesley Hills, Wellesley, MA

Rev. Robert W. McKetchnie, Minister, First Parish in Cohasset, MA

Rev. Diane Miller, Minister Emerita, First Church in Belmont, MA. Retired, Salina KS

Rev. Mary Katherine Morn, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee

Rev. Craig Moro, Minister, Wy’east UU Congregation, Portland, OR

Rev. Jake Morrill, Lead Minister, Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church, Oak Ridge, TN

Rev. Janet Newton, Minister, First Parish Church of Berlin, MA

Rev. Dr. John H. Nichols, Minister Emeritus, Unitarian Universalist Society of Wellesley Hills, MA

Rev. Parisa Parsa, Cortico Local Voices Network, Arlington, MA

Rev. Carolyn Patierno, Sr. Minister, All Souls UU Congregation, New London, CT

Rev. Hank Peirce, Minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading, MA

Rev. Sue Phillips, How We Gather/Harvard Divinity School, Tacoma, WA

Rev. Oscar Sinclair, Minister, Unitarian Church of Lincoln, Lincoln NE

Rev. Erin Splaine, Minister, First Unitarian Universalist Society in Newton, MA

Rev. Ellen Spero, Minister, First Parish of Chelmsford, MA

Rev. Sarah Stewart, Minister, First Unitarian Church in Worcester, MA

Rev. Dr. Adam Tierney-Eliot, Pastor, The Eliot Church (UUA/UCC), Natick, MA

Chaplain (Major) George Tyger, United States Army, Fort Bragg, NC

Rev. Rali M. Weaver, Minister, First Church and Parish, Dedham, MA

Rev. Dr. Victoria Weinstein, Minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lynn, Swampscott, MA

Rev. Margaret L. Weis, Minister, First Unitarian Society of Ithaca, NY

Rev. Scott Wells, Washington, DC

Rev. Aaron White, Associate Minister, First Unitarian Church of Dallas, TX

One thing I didn’t get into today was Zamenhof’s ideas about an neutral auxiliary religion, which he first called Hilelismo (after the Jewish sage, Hillel) and later called Homaranismo: a philosophy of humanity. I mentioned this to a minister friend this afternoon and regretted that there’s so little about it in English. Now that my Esperanto reading is getting better, I can at least survey what’s available.

Have you watched any of those shows on PBS that trace the genealogies and DNA of famous people? They take whatever stories and records the person might have, get a DNA sample, and then do the research. At the end they sit down with the person and show them what they’ve found. The names, the ship manifests, the marriage certificates, the little bit of genetic code that points to a specific branch of human migration.

I love those shows. And I especially love the one with Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., because he really addresses the complexities of families, secrets, and the history of race in this country.

A year or so back, my family got up our courage and money and started that line of investigation. We were hoping to sift out fact from fiction, because our family holds a lot of dubious tales from less than reliable narrators. We wanted to find out if a great-great aunt really came from Damascus, or if our great-grandfather came from India, or if our great-great grandmother was full-blooded Mayan. We were curious and hoped our DNA would fill in the incomplete stories. It might answer some questions. But in the end I knew what it would show: I’m a post-colonial mutt in 21^st century America.

As a multi-racial person, I am supremely ill-suited to speak on the experience of white or black or brown. I am all and none of these. But I can speak from my own experience—and I’ve had some interesting experiences! And I can speak as a person whose family contains the whole palette of human coloring. Mine is a calico family with blonde and brown and black hair, hair that is smooth and curly and frizzy. Brown and green and blue eyes, freckles, dimples, and when we grin our cheeks rise high. We have broad shoulders and wide feet. Our complexions range from fair to deep and our babies are especially beautiful.

Some of us identify as white, and some of us identify as people of color. While you’d think that we would be completely comfortable talking about race and identity, we don’t do it. We can—we have—but in general, we don’t. Recently I tugged on one of those loose strings and realized that we don’t talk about race and identity because some of us are still struggling with passing. Passing as white. Passing as not colored. Passing as acceptable.

So, here’s where I can speak from—from the experience of passing, becoming acceptable, striving to be measured by my conduct and brilliance while wearing an indeterminate skin. I can speak from the weird place of holding white privilege and being seen as not-one-of-us. It is a strange place, indeed.

Here’s the awfulness of passing: knowing that your father, your grandmother, your ancestors, sacrificed some of their own identity to make it easier for you to go forward. Now, plenty of our ancestors sacrificed for us to be successful. But denying one’s own identity tends to leave odd scars on the family tree.

As a mutt I’m already used to complexity, and find the white/black racial labels to be both woefully limiting and dangerous. Because those labels allow for convenient boxes, and people don’t live in boxes. There will be many ways we will dismantle the systems of racial oppression, but we’re not going to do it all rationally, or all at once.

This is our work. To start this work I’ll invite you to journey with me a while. I can’t ask you to fully understand the weird place that is my identity, but if you would accept my invitation, as we journey together we might begin to see where you are weird too. I’m going to be bold and suggest that there are plenty of us who are quietly passing in different ways.

Perhaps there are parts of your family that were not acceptable, not spoken of, not included in the family’s history—oral or written. In the work of becoming acceptable, our families routinely edit these histories—sometimes consciously, sometimes out of fear.

Maybe the family name was changed to make it acceptable to English ears. Maybe alcohol or drug addiction twisted limbs of the family tree. Mental illness, violence, poverty, illegitimacy, abandonment or adoption can all get filtered out of the stories we tell.

For some immigrants to this country, the upheaval and culture shock left them weak and unstable. I know that my own immigrant grandmother never quite got used to being colored, and it warped her life in America. I know that my other grandmother was fiercely intelligent and had to slide sideways through a world where women’s lives were circumscribed by domesticity.

As part of this journey together, I would then invite you to go back into your own family and look closely at any gaps in the story—pull on those loose threads and see what knots tighten or come undone with gentle tugging. Was there a time when any part of your family was unacceptable? How did you manage to finally pass? And what was the cost to your grandfather, your mother, your aunts?

What stories did they finally tell you to show that they had succeeded? In those stories are also the quiet warnings not to go back, not to ask, not to undo their work and sacrifice. In those stories you are reminded that being unacceptable is dangerous. And they love you too much to see you go back there.

Now, take those stories, take those fears, and wear them. Breathe into the danger and tension and feel the complexity of benefiting from those sacrifices. Spend time getting used to the complexity.

Did your family benefit from oppressing other people? Go examine that possibility. It’s okay to be objective at first. Before we can learn to hold full empathy for another who seems different, we need to resolve the shame or discomfort that we might still be carrying from our own families. By looking at the compromises and sacrifices made in the past, we can better honor them and honor the struggles of others.

Then, once we’ve looked back at our heritage, the next step is to look at our own selves. There are other ways we might be silently passing, hoping we won’t be looked at too closely, or judged too harshly.

Too often I hear that UU congregations are too homogeneous—too white, too affluent, over-educated—and that’s an easy stereotype to bemoan. But it’s too easy, too simple. And it’s wrong. We’re more complicated than that.

Just like our families may have been shaped by adversity, all of us have struggled somehow. And some of us are still struggling to be acceptable. We’re still struggling to pass by not acknowledging our whole selves, our complicated identities or situations.

Some of us are grappling with economic insecurity—just getting by, and having to make tough choices between medicine and car payments. But we come to church and smile and don’t mention these hard choices. Some of us are grieving terrible losses. And the rest of the world seems to think that we should be upright and optimistic. So we come to church and look thoughtful and don’t mention that our hearts might not ever be done being undone. Maybe it’s hard staying sober or maybe the medication isn’t quite working well enough. Maybe it’s hard not crying when you see a mother and baby even though the miscarriage was a long time ago. But we come to church and hope that no one asks us anything too personal.

Someone might have said, “I can’t be in community like this; people will see me and think I don’t belong there.” And so they aren’t here with us because they weren’t up to the effort it takes to pass, to meet our standards of acceptability, whatever they imagine those are.

And this is why passing for normal, successful or affluent is problematic. It denies the full range of our experiences and prompts us to edit out the problematic parts of ourselves and our identities. It denies us the chance for wholeness and connection.

I often tell people that Unitarian Universalism is a place where we come together to learn new ways of being in the world. One of the things we will learn is how to dismantle racism and other forms of oppression. We won’t get it right the first time, or the second. But we have to keep trying. It is the work that will heal our world. And as always, we have to start with ourselves.

When Rabbi Jesus asks us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, the hardest part of that is the second part—loving ourselves fully. But it gets easier if you think about the people who have loved you forward—your family, your friends, your partners, your teachers. Consider their love for you. It might not have been perfect, but it was love. Look at the love that pushed you forward, and see if its momentum can push you a little further to greater love and empathy for others who are working to be accepted, not just acceptable.

This is our work.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110020049/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_06/01.mp3

I would have told you with complete certainty and utter sincerity that I was straight, right up until the first time I was seriously attracted to a woman. I was 40, and this was new for me. I was perplexed by the idea that I could be raised in a Unitarian Universalist family, and still only discover this significant fact about myself at that age. What reason, I wondered, would I have had to hide this from myself?

I did what I do whenever confronted with something unfamiliar: I researched it. After finding online articles about women coming out as lesbian or bisexual later in life, I discovered the book Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire by Lisa M. Diamond, a professor of psychology and gender studies. She conducted research with 100 women over the course of a decade. On the Kinsey Scale, which places people on a spectrum from “exclusively heterosexual” to “exclusively homosexual,” most of the women chose a point somewhere between those extremes, and the location shifted for many of them during the study.

I recognized that it was possible that I had not deceived myself, but instead had changed—had shifted my location on the Kinsey scale, for lack of a more poetic way to put it. My newfound attraction to women didn’t mean that I’d secretly always been a lesbian and that my past relationships with men were fake or deceptive. It wasn’t about past relationships. It was a recognition that my next partner could be of any gender.

I kept quiet about that realization for a while. Not exactly in the closet—I came out to my parents and some trusted friends—but under the radar. My “Midwestern Modest” upbringing meant that I was inclined to think that because I was happily unpartnered, there was no need for anyone other than my closest circle to know who I was attracted to.

I let it slide when a coworker said: “Well, since you were married, at least we know if we’re going to set you up, it should be with a man.” My response was something about not wanting to be set up at all. That was true, but avoided the issue.

After a few years of that strategy, I realized that if I kept it up, I faced a couple of potentially challenging possibilities.

Waiting to come out until I was in a relationship with a woman or non-binary person would put a lot of pressure on that partner. People who had only ever seen me as straight might assume the new partner caused the change in me, thinking (incorrectly) that someone can be “converted” to a different sexual orientation. That’s hardly a fair thing to do to someone you love.

While any such partner was then purely hypothetical, my calling to ministry was not. When I began to struggle with the decision to come out (or not), I was in the process of applying to theology school. I hoped that in a few years I would be searching for a congregation to serve as their ordained minister. Unless my sexual orientation came up during the interview process, it was likely that members of the church would just assume I’m straight, as so many people do. If I later revealed a serious relationship with a woman or non-binary person, I worried that there could be some shock, some anxiety about what this means for the church, and possibly some anger at being deceived—even though I wouldn’t have intentionally deceived anyone.

The first time I felt really uncomfortable with my choice to remain silent was the first time my religious leadership felt compromised by that silence. For many years, Unitarian Universalist congregations in the Boulder-Denver area had held a worship service on the steps of the capitol building in Denver focused on LGBTQ+ rights, including marriage equality and gender identity and expression.

The first time I attended that service I had to make an unexpected choice. In the service, those who identify as LGBTQ+ were invited to stand and receive a blessing. I wasn’t out and wasn’t ready to make that decision in that moment, so I remained seated. It made me uncomfortable. It made me feel ashamed…not of who I was, but of not being willing to literally stand up and be seen as who I was.

I did have one good reason not to be visibly “out” that day. I was with my son, who was ten years old at the time, and I wasn’t out to him yet. When we got home that day, we talked about it, and I explained that I had wanted to stand up, wanted to be brave enough to do that, but couldn’t because that wasn’t how I wanted him to learn that about me.

He said he would have been surprised but otherwise fine with me standing up, but I realized that day that unless I was fully out, every time I was in a situation like that I would have to think about who was there, who might see me, who might learn in that moment that their assumptions about me were incorrect, and what negative ramifications that choice might have.

I also thought about the positive ramifications coming out might have. What difference might it make in my ministry if, instead of people assuming I’m a straight ally to the LGBTQ+ community, they understood that I’m a member of it?

Who might see me, and know that there are people like them serving as clergy in a faith tradition that honors the inherent worth and dignity of all people? That there are people like them raising happy, healthy children? Who might learn that their assumptions about me were incorrect, and take from that a broader lesson about assuming who people are?

If I remain silent, I wondered, what does that do to the people I minister to? It doesn’t silence them, because they don’t know the choice I’m making. But it doesn’t help them find their voices, either. It doesn’t allow me to be among those who say, “It’s okay. I’ve been there. Look at me—I’m out, and I’m glad, and my life is good.”

These were all important considerations. But neither a theoretical future relationship nor my career in ministry were the most important reason for writing my “coming out” blog post. The most important reason was that continuing to be silent felt, for the first time, like I was actively hiding part of who I am. Unlike the moment of remaining seated at the public worship service, this was an ongoing act of hiding, and the internal pressure I felt about it was increasing. The metaphor of “the closet” was making sense in a visceral way it didn’t before.

In February 2015, when many of my fellow Unitarian Universalist bloggers participated in a #SexUUality blog project, my desire to come out publicly grew. The explanatory paragraph we all put into our #SexUUality blog posts included this statement: “Unitarian Universalists have a long history of courage in tackling issues around human sexuality—from campaigning for human rights to the  pioneering innovative work in the Our Whole Lives sexuality curriculum.”

I wanted so much to have the courage to publish my coming out post that February. I did write it then, but after reflection, I knew that I wasn’t ready yet. I had to do a lot of thinking before I could publish the coming out post: thinking about who needed to hear from me personally before it was in public space; thinking about how much to say, and what to leave out, or leave for another time.

In anxious moments, I’d revert back to my old thought patterns: It’s no one’s business. It’s too private to put on a blog. It’s not the kind of thing I should be talking about publicly. All of that was a defense mechanism, as thinking so often is. But after a few months, alongside all that thinking, there was a feeling. That feeling might best be described as a yearning to be seen. To be seen for myself, and not for some more societally acceptable version of who that might be—who I might be.

Waiting a bit longer was the right decision, just as not standing up at the worship service until I’d talked to my son was the right decision. Still, it bothered me in February, and continued to bother me as time went on—not just because I missed out on my coming out post being part of the #SexUUality project, though I did have a pang of regret about that. It bothered me because I felt invisible, even inauthentic. I felt “in the closet” instead of “under the radar.”

People who are claustrophobic know what it is to be uncomfortable in an enclosed space. Being closeted induces a kind of emotional claustrophobia, which stifles and silences the soul just as a physical closet traps the body.

Eventually I came out, but that was not the end of my struggle with both self-definition and how others defined my identity. In the coming out blog post I finally published in April 2015, I specifically rejected a few labels for myself, but I didn’t give my readers a new label to apply to me. Maybe that was because I was still letting go of the old one—straight—and maybe it was because there wasn’t a choice that felt quite like me to me. It took me a few more years to settle fairly comfortably on “queer” as a way to describe my identity.

A lot has shifted in the four years since I published that blog post. I’m uncomfortable now with the ableism in the use of standing both as a metaphor and as the way people were invited to identify themselves as LGBTQIA to receive a blessing.

I’m now an ordained minister serving a congregation in Peterborough, New Hampshire. I was open about my identity during the search that brought me here in 2016, and about the fact that I was happily single at that time. By the next spring, I began dating a woman who is also a Unitarian Universalist minister, and we are now in a committed partnership. The congregation I serve seems to have had no negative reaction to that change. It’s impossible to know how much of that is because I was already out.

Now that I’ve been out for a few years, I understand that “coming out” is a lifelong process, not something that was done in 2015. I don’t visually
present to a lot of people as “queer”  (whatever they think that’s supposed to look like), and so I still encounter frequent assumptions that I am straight. Even my beloved, when I first began flirting with her, thought I was straight (and thus, clearly not
flirting) until one of her close friends did a quick search online and told her otherwise.

Despite those continued incorrect assumptions and the awkwardness they sometimes lead to, I’m proud to be among those who can, indeed, say:
“It’s okay. I’ve been there. Look at me—I’m out, and I’m glad, and my life is good.”

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110020026/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_06/02.mp3

Some identities, like being a student or a resident in a particular place, come and go. Others are with you for life. Still others you find yourself easing into and becoming more and more familiar with. For me, right now, aging is one of those gradual ones I find myself thinking more about. I’m in my 60s now. People in their 60s used to be old in my mind—but I find that the word “old” really tends to mean people who are older than I am. It’s not a fixed identity. Suddenly 60s seem like the prime of life!

I hated turning 50. My women friends wanted me to have a croning ceremony, but that was annoying to me. I adopted a child at 40 and I was tired of people thinking I was the grandmother. At the urging of a friend who insisted I should have some kind of ritual, I honored the date in the most honest way I could: I gathered a circle of friends and then climbed under a table with a   tablecloth over it and said, “I don’t want to be 50! Tell me why I should come out!” Friends in their 50s then began to tell me what they liked about it—the increased confidence, the sense of not worrying so much about what other people thought. Finally, bored and sweaty, I emerged, still ambivalent but willing to face facts (and some late arrivers who looked stunned to have walked in on the middle of this).

I had no such difficulty turning 60. Rather, I felt invigorated and excited about it. For one thing, there were discounts attached to the number, and I’m cheap. For another thing, my kid was pretty much grown up and avoiding me anyway, so no one thought we were related at all on a daily basis, and so I wasn’t hearing all those grandma comments.

And I’ve loved my 60s. The confidence remains, and the sense of having nothing left to prove. There is an ease and self-acceptance which is a blessing I wish I could have received earlier, about everything from my body to my inevitable blunders and errors.

But being old…this is kind of a new identity that’s creeping up on me, and it seems to be getting stronger. For one thing, no one is left in my family who is older than me. Parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents—no one of the older generations serves as a barrier between me and death. For another thing, conversation at parties and social gatherings among my longtime friends is beginning to turn to their retirement plans.  Things like Medicare and Social Security are no longer just social issues, but rather are practical topics, as people compare and contrast options and plans. And, then there’s the matter of my body, which is no longer remotely drawn to late night dances or parties or even movies. Sleepy now, thank you very much.

And I’m beginning to wonder and fantasize about my next stage of life. Growing old is an exciting prospect to me because I have great role models for it. Though my mother died ridiculously young from ovarian cancer, my grandmother lived to 106 and enjoyed every minute of it. She eloped at 76, and promptly bought a trailer truck with her new love and hit the road. She continued to travel into her 90s, and planted gardens and got a 30-year mortgage at 82. (She had temporarily moved into a retirement home but found the people there politically incompatible.) She wrote fiery letters to the editor and otherwise behaved in ways I intend to imitate. When she turned 105, she said sadly to me, “Oh, to be 100 again!”

I was reminded of her recently talking to longtime CLF member Jeanne Beatty, who lives up in Alberta, Canada. At 98, Jeanne has been a member of CLF for 50 years. When I told Jeanne I’d be camping in Jasper Park this summer, she said it was only about 4 hours from where she lives and she’d drive over to see me. I was taken aback. “But Jeanne,” I said, “you can’t camp at 98!” “Why not?” she demanded. “I’ve got it on my calendar!” We’ll see if it works out, but I love her spirit!

With great role models like Jeanne and so many of you, “old age” becomes something to look forward to. But not for everyone. I was talking recently with another friend who, at 95, said he wants only to die. He said he’s not in pain, just tired, and he feels like “a waste of space.” I will admit that this upset me. My immediate, blurted out, response clearly surprised him. “I didn’t know you were that much of a capitalist!” I said. “Like you’re only valuable because of what you produce? I thought you knew better than that! You’re valuable because so many of us love you!” He laughed and said he didn’t believe me, but that it was a kind thing to say.

But I wasn’t kidding; I meant it. I love that man dearly, and his loss on the planet will be a sad day for me. Still, I know that the death of his wife and other beloved friends has left him feeling alone. I hear from many of you about the loss of your “other half” and I know that the blow this deals is immeasurable. And aging, grief and loss do seem to come as a package deal.

And yet, my grandmother, and Jeanne, and so many of you inspire me about the possibilities of old age precisely because despite so much loss all around you, you find new ways to love and be loved, new people and places and relationships. I can only hope that I embrace my old age with a fraction of the zeal you show for it.

Attached media: https://media.blubrry.com/clf_quest/www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_06/04.mp3

“Who are you?” the caterpillar asks Alice in Alice in Wonderland. It turns out that is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Maybe the caterpillar would like to know who Alice is in relationship to him. After all, she’s a stranger in Wonderland. The caterpillar is likely wondering where this stranger came from and what to make of her.

It turns out that this side of our identity is something that we run into a lot. We humans are relational creatures, and we want to understand how other people’s lives connect with ours. When you meet a new person they might want to know where you work or where you go to church or where your kids go to school.

Unfortunately, we humans are also quite territorial, and all too ready to decide that someone “doesn’t belong.” After her encounter with the caterpillar, Alice ends up growing so tall that her neck becomes long and snake-like, and a pigeon, in great disgust, accuses her of being a serpent. It doesn’t do Alice any good to protest that she is a little girl—the pigeon has already concluded that Alice is a serpent after her eggs.

This is rather silly in Wonderland—after all, no one ever really eats a mushroom and turns into a giant with a long neck—but it happens all the time that people decide who we are, and then conclude that what they have invented about us makes us a threat. And the less people know—the more they categorize someone as a stranger—the more likely they are to see them as potentially dangerous. For instance, people in locations with very few immigrants tend to be much more negative about immigration than people who live in places with large populations of people from outside the country. People who believe that they don’t know any LGBT folks are more likely to be homophobic than people who have LGBT friends or family.

Our brains want to affirm our identity by identifying who we are not. Evolution has shaped our brains to distrust those we think of as being not like us. But the world changes faster than evolution does, and in the modern world our chances of being neighbors with people who are, in one way or another, not like us are just about 100%.

So how do we re-tune our brains to this world where we constantly encounter people who are outside our “tribe,” who differ from us in ethnicity or race or language or politics or gender or sexual orientation or ability or any of the 1001 ways that people are different from one another?

Maybe some part of the answer lies in our ability to answer the question Who are you? There are so many answers to that question. We are our relationships: parents, children, siblings, partners, friends, colleagues, teachers and students. We are our heritage: race, ethnicity, language, stories. We are our sexual and gender identities. We are our bodies: age, ability, height, appetites. We are our theologies and our philosophies, the things we’ve learned and the things we want to explore. We are our hopes and fears and dreams and disappointments.

And not one of those things is normal. Or abnormal. When we invest the time and attention into deeply and specifically answering the question Who are you? we come up with a long list of precious details that we hold in common with others—and at least as many that differ from people who we know. The tendency to identify people as “strange” or “other” rests in the assumption—often unconscious—that our identity and experience is “normal.” But the more we look at all the facets of who we are, the more obvious it becomes that our intricate set of facets couldn’t possibly be the same for everyone.

But there’s another piece of the puzzle. Alice, in the confusion of falling down the rabbit hole and changing size and meeting beings as surprising as a hookah-smoking caterpillar, loses track of who she is. Or at least loses the ability to define herself in the ways she is used to. But in moving through a place where so much is unknown to her she is challenged to understand herself in new ways. Which is another part of the answer to how we change our brains.

When we dare to enter unfamiliar places, talk with unfamiliar people, taste unfamiliar things (even if they don’t change our size), then who we are expands to meet our expanded world. As Alice experiences, we may run into folks who challenge our sense of who we are—who lead us to the awkward realization that we aren’t sure, that our identity is shifting with each surprising encounter. It isn’t necessarily comfortable, this interview with a caterpillar, or with any stranger. But it is what leads us into a Wonderland of discovery, where we move beyond imagined walls into new possibilities for who we might turn out to be.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110015823/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_06/05.mp3

(I'm republishing this essay on here as it's another one of those important historical documents that I believe is only on one website, and I want to make sure it stays available to all - SL) The Five Points of Calvinism and the Five Points of the New Theology by James Freeman Clarke (1885) (With a few minor updates to the language by Mercy Aiken) "And thou shalt make . . . five pillars

I've been studying Bowen systems theory for about seven years now and though there have been many epiphanies, there are two that stand out.

#1 Don't Trust Your Instincts

#2 Healthy Boundaries are about Self-Definition, not Self-Protection

Let's talk about #2.

When my mentor in systems theory presented me with this concept, I felt like staggering backwards. (Which would have been weird, since I was sitting in a comfortable chair.)

It was one of those moments where I somehow knew in my brain that this was theoretically correct, but I also knew I was going to have to sit with that for a while, in order to truly understand it. And sit  with it longer before I could truly begin living it out.

On the face of it, it's a pretty radical notion. Because the messages we hear all the time are about the need to have boundaries for one's protection. We need to feel safe, the logic goes, so we need to establish and maintain boundaries.

You know what the critical error is in that logic?

It means we're giving the power over our feelings to someone else. But the only person responsible for our feelings is us. 

That doesn't mean we shouldn't create boundaries. Boundaries are vitally important.

What is healthy, what is empowering, is when we are clear about who we are, and create our boundaries around our own self-definition. What helps us to be clear about who we are is to have clearly articulated guiding principles that reflect our core values.

Rather than walls of a castle, think of the walls of a healthy cell, as Edwin H. Friedman does in A Failure of Nerve (1). Imagine you're that cell. Having a strong membrane means that you maintain your structural integrity - you stay YOU.

Boundaries are about self-definition, and self-definition is about ethical integrity. Your guiding principles are your promises to yourself about the person you are working to become. You commit to them. And thus, as a matter of integrity, you sometimes need to create boundaries so that you can keep your commitment.

Example: you create this guiding principle for yourself, for when dealing with family members:
I remove my presence when another person persists in using oppressive language. 

So when Uncle Zeb starts talking about (insert bigoted term), I say, "Hey Uncle Zeb, we don't use that word anymore." When he says, "I'm going to say anything I want," I say, "Yes, you can do that, but I've committed myself to not condoning (racist/sexist/etc) language with my continued presence, so I will be leaving (the room/your house/etc.)."

And in this way, I am keeping my commitment to myself. I am being responsible for myself.

I am not responsible for Uncle Zeb. I cannot control Uncle Zeb. I can control myself.

And I leave it to him to control himself. He gets to decide what he has control over, and I get to decide what I have control over. He may then decide, "Oh, fine, fine. I won't say that when you're around." I have established a boundary, and he has agreed to honor it. Or he decides not honor it. But I have already established the consequences.

Boundaries aren't boundaries without consequences. They're just wishes. But our boundaries are what are within our dance space. Our boundaries are about us controlling us.

The primary job of maturity, in my opinion, is about learning to be responsible. As systems writer Jenny Brown calls it, "growing yourself up."

Learning to see boundaries not as self-protection, but as self-definition, is a way of stepping forward into becoming a stronger, more mature person, committed to an ethic of personal responsibility.



--
(1): "There is a way of understanding the self that leads to integrity and well-differentiated community rather than narcissism, isolation, and lack of feeling. It is to be found in the latest understanding of the immune system, which turns out to be far less connected to self-defense than to integrity...Up until the mid-1960s, immunity had been thought of primarily in terms of a system of defenses that the body mobilized against foreign invaders. This way of thinking goes back to microbiologists of the late nineteenth century, such as Pasteur and Ehrlich. More recently, however, the immune system has come to be seen primarily as the source of an organism’s integrity, developed out of the organism’s need to distinguish self from non-self." -- A Failure of Nerve, Friedman

I’m going to spend the long weekend not writing about the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA) and the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA).

After all,

• I have a newsletter for the Universalist Christian Initiative to write instead (sign up here if you like).
• I also have sermon to write for Pentecost.
• There’s paperwork to catch up on.
• I just got a used copy of E. Brooks Holifield’s Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War at good price.
• Of course, I’ll listen to Sufjan Stevens. The songs from Call Me By My Name are in my head.
• And so I might read the passes about Gideon, in the book of Judges.
• And I’ll pray a communion service “dry” (without bread, wine or communicants) as a devotion, dedicated to the increase of the ministry. Using Fredrick Henry Hedge’s 1853 service, to be exact.
• I will buy a watermelon if I can find one that looks edible.
• I might even go outside.

I won’t be writing about the following, which is in no way exhaustive:

• Proposals that confuse and conflate congregational and ministerial interests;
• Plans that will embolden cranks to make specious or ideologically-driven charges against ministers (and sucking away energy to find genuine misconductors);
• How this will cause ministers to self-censor, withdraw from public life, grow suspicious and adopt other damaging habits;
• How UUMA membership should not obligatory, and if it produced something of greater value, it wouldn’t have to lock ministers into it;
• Or how “hard cases make bad law.”

I will write about the UUMA and the UUA proposals next week, and in weeks to come. Unless other ministers speak my mind before me, in which case I’ll link from here.

"And I'll find strength in pain, and I will change my ways; I'll know my name as it's called again."

We don't want people to hurt. Some people can find strength in pain, but for others, it weakens us. It distracts us from important things. And so any compassionate person would want to protect others from pain.

In western civilization, we have gone to extremes with this. At one time, it was believed that denying emotional trauma was the healthiest answer -- if a child lost a parent, they were discouraged from talking about it, a soldier returning from war was told to just get on with their new life, a person who had been raped was told to forget about it, never think about it.

And, the pendulum swung the other way, with therapy that involved going over and over and over the trauma, the idea being that the person would somehow "talk/cry it all out" and be done with it, rather than learn coping mechanisms for how to deal with the unwanted memories.

Outside of formal therapy, we who want to help our friends have followed those trends, either studiously avoiding the topic, or urging the friend to tell us all about it, sometimes against what they wanted.

The thing is, there is no way around the fact that pain is a reality. It is inevitable. The second part of that common statement is the Buddhist belief that "suffering is optional," but I will pass that part over to actual experts in Buddhism.


But pain is inevitable, and despite all of our best, often unhealthy, attempts to eradicate it, it's here. And oh, how we try to avoid it! Both in ourselves and in others, we are afraid of pain, and so we do everything we can to get away from it. We try to avoid hard discussions, conflict, truth-telling, and dealing with our own wounds. "I'm fine with the glass splinter in my arm. Get those tweezers away from me!"

And people have the right to do so. They get to make their own decisions. And they may decide to step away. To not attend certain church services, to not get on Facebook on certain days, to not read certain social media threads or comments.

The problem is when we try to protect others from pain.

Taking responsibility for the feelings of someone else often feels noble and generous.

 It is not.

Trying to take responsibility for the feelings of another person means we are crossing boundaries and attempting to control them. 

Our motives may be good. We may have the best intentions. But the result is that by overfunctioning, the other person will usually underfunction. We are taking away their own agency. We are trying to impose what we want on them. "But I just want you to be happy!"

Not your job. Get back in your own dance space.

A reminder: declining to protect others from pain does not mean you have permission to go be mean to someone with impunity.

This is not a simple thing. It is loaded with complexity and there are no easy answers. Right now, we want easy answers, e.g. do no harm. But even that is loaded with difficult questions. What is harm? Is it entirely decided by the person who claims to feel harm? We are living in a world now where people weaponize their pain in order to manipulate a certain outcome: the baker who claims making a wedding cake for a gay couple harms them because it goes against their religious beliefs. The person who says being greeted with "Happy Holidays" is painful because it ignores their Christian identity. Every three year old everywhere being told they're not allowed to eat cookies before dinner.

Pain can be weaponized. And if we're honest, we've probably done it ourselves.

We learn lessons through our pain. (Note: this does not mean we learn good or helpful lessons necessarily.) Those lessons were so expensive for us, that damnit, people should recognize our expertise!

Sometimes that expertise is valuable. Because the voice of lived experience is powerful.

And even then, it's not as simple as "prioritize the person with the lived experience of pain." Because there's all kinds of pain. "A broken heart is a broken heart. To take a measure is cruelty." (Yes, I'm quoting Scandal.)

In the song mentioned at the top of this post, The Cave, there is also this line that I considered posting:

"I will hold on hope and I won't let you choke on the noose around your neck."

Someone might say that a quote referencing "noose" should never be used outside of the context of lynching, because that has been (and continues to be) such a horrific act of terrorism against African Americans. That is true. And we shouldn't (in my opinion) casually use terms that carry such a weight of pain.

And ... when I was 10 years old, I learned one of the quirks of English is that proper usage would be to say that a person was hanged, while an object was hung. And the reason why I know that odd bit of grammar is because my brother hanged himself in an act of suicide.

So that line from The Cave has a deep, painful, meaningful message to me.

And that line has a deep, painful, meaningless message for others.

Can't we see this "pain vs. pain" playing out in a well-meaning church somewhere? Where one person questions the use of the lyric, and another tosses her experience of a dead brother as a trump card onto the table of discussion?

So what do we do, knowing that pain is inevitable, and that perhaps "do no harm" is not only futile, it's not the best way to make decisions?

That is the power of having guiding principles.

It's not that we think pain is unimportant. It's not that we shouldn't be mindful that our actions/words may cause someone pain.

Making decisions from guiding principles means that we're investing responsibility in what we have control over, and are being guided by our deepest values.

And we probably all have a deep value about not causing pain, if we can at all avoid it. We may even have an unarticulated guiding principle around it. And we may find it in conflict with another of our guiding principles, e.g.:

• I avoid knowingly causing pain through my words or actions.
• I work to dismantle oppressive thinking in myself and others.

When we are operating at a higher level of emotional maturity -- acting out of our guiding principles rather than our anxiety -- the hardest thing will always be when we have two or more guiding principles in conflict. 

Because then we have to prioritize one.

And most likely, we will have to decide which one is the priority according to the particularities of the situation in front of us.

There are no easy answers here. And there aren't supposed to be.

Easy answers are for fundamentalist thinkers who ground themselves in rigid dualistic thinking and blow off nuance and complexity as moral relativism.






Tomorrow: It is Well with My Soul


My Love Song To Unitarian Universalism ... And Unitarian Universalists. Part 1 Of 5
Personal Responsibility Is Non-Transferable. Part 2 Of 5
That Whole Guiding Principles Thing. Part 3 Of 5


Related Post: Recommitting To An Ethic Of Personal Responsibility Or"Backless Chairs Are Not The Answer"

All we can do

is walk into Jerusalem,

with the Hosannas ringing

in your ears, and the palms

coming at you in every direction,

and you’re wondering what’s real here, and

if there’s any love that won’t swallow you up, and

you’re already starting to remember the bitter

of all that will come next –

even then, all we have

is the next

step into the city,

and the listening

for the call

that reminds you –

you’ve been preparing for this

your whole life.

That every good thing will come

undone does not make it all

make believe,

and when the world turns

upside down, and lovers become

strangers, and thieves

and betrayers

turn out to be the beloved

beside us in the dark,

because secrets are loyal company,

even when the palms turn to

passion,

even then

we can throw our arms open wide

and turn forgiveness

over and over

on our tongues

until it just falls

out

and we find ourselves empty of everything

for a moment.

Until the breath begins

and the next morning comes,

steady

with

life.

I’m convinced that God is not done with the Universalists when I find Christian of differing traditions and charisms professing God’s complete to us. Tonight, I came across another.

Universalist Orthodox Church

The Universalism, as a theological point, comes through a bit clearer in what appears to be an earlier version of the jurisdiction’s website, and in any case I may be misreading it. The inclusion and leadership of LGBT persons is front and center.

It’s a young (coming together in 2016) jurisdiction, and small with two or three parishes (one the cathedral) and falls with the Independent Sacramental Movement, which I think has a lot of lessons to teach the rest of us. I pray them and their Archbishop Olga many blessings.

[Multi-generational service] Join us for this beloved annual tradition, as we close out the regular year with gratitude and celebration.

We don't want people to feel pain. Of course. We're compassionate people.

But often this means that we're part of the problem rather than the solution.

People come in to our UU congregations with wounds. Most likely, they aren't responsible for having received them. Those wounds came from other people, or our society. But the thing is, once the wound is in you -- like a piece of broken glass -- it's your responsibility. It has to be. It's in you.

That doesn't mean you have to do your healing alone. That's one of the beautiful, painful, wonderful things about a UU church. You're not alone. Yes, some of your healing may need to take place outside of the church, with a therapist or a spiritual director or some kind of a therapeutic group. But you have a place to come back to. You have a community to come back to.

I'm worried about our religious movement right now. I'm worried that we're about to repeat a failed experiment.

In the 60s, 70s, and 80s (okay, yes, before and beyond, even to the present in some places), people would come into our UU churches with big religious wounds, usually from having grown up in mainstream or fundamentalist Christianity. They were hurting. And we didn't want to hurt them further.

Going back to the broken glass metaphor ... it's like folks were walking in with big ole pieces of glass sticking out of their backs. But rather than try to help each other extract the glass, clean out the wound, do the work of healing, instead, we effectively banned all of the chairs with backs. Because someone might sit down on one and AIIIIGH! it would nudge the glass in their back, giving them a jolt of pain.

So we knew the solution: BACKLESS CHAIRS! STOOLS! BENCHES! BACKLESS PEWS!


We stripped away anything that might trigger someone's religious wound. No religious language! No God, Worship, Prayer! It wasn't a sermon, it was a talk! No hymns, only songs! 

We were proud of the way we could explore world religions. (As long as that didn't include Christianity, which might trigger someone's wound.)

We tried to protect people from pain, rather than working on healing. And so much of the time, when their kids grew up and left the religion, so did their wounded parents. They left, and that glass was still there, embedded further. Not only did we not work on their healing with them, we made it easier for them to just live with the wound. We were a safe place where they never had that wound brushed against.

Meanwhile, the people who didn't have that particular wound came in to find a religion that had stripped all religion out. Disappointed that the inclusive "big tent" of religion they'd heard about didn't exist, they went elsewhere.

We tried to make a safe space, where people wouldn't be triggered by having anyone brush against their wounds. This is a failed experiment.

I fear we are trying to repeat it.

People come to us now with other wounds. They've been on the receiving end of abuse, oppression, harassment, aggressions major and micro. Others have unconsciously soaked up the racism and oppressive messages our society gives, until it is an invisible wound within them that they continue to perpetuate. We need to find ways that we can heal.

But backless chairs are not the answer.  Telling people not to ask any genuine questions* or to discuss certain topics in public because it might brush up against someone's wound is a way of overfunctioning.

As a faith, recommitting to an ethic of personal responsibility is necessary to our healing. Again, you are not responsible for having received the wound. But once it's in you, you must be responsible for your healing. It's like the old joke: how many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the lightbulb has to really want to change. 

How many churches does it take to heal a soul? 

Only one, but the person has to be willing to be healed. And has to do the part of the work that is theirs to do. 

If everyone commits to this ethic, we really could be the communities of transformation that this world needs right now. The man who doesn't want to hear any more "me, too" stories. The white woman who is being told that her beloved self-identity as "color-blind" is problematic. And the people who have been on the receiving end of oppression and are just so freakin' exhausted and they want everyone to BE THERE already.

I hear you.

And it just doesn't work like that.

Change and healing happen in community. And it's messy. We're clumsy. We make mistakes. We fail. We fall, and when we do, we bump up against wounds. Our own or others'.

On a basic level, we are a village of folks walking around with shards of glass stuck in us. Some large shards, some small. Some invisible to the bearer. Most of us really are trying to get the glass out, and get health around the wound. I can get awfully fixated on my own wound, but looking around and seeing -- really seeing -- that everyone has their own, well, it makes it easier for me to extend grace. I know they're extending it all the time, even when in pain.

A lot of healing can happen when we extend and receive grace. Not overfunctioning. Not getting rid of the chairs with backs. But the grace of humility and the grace of forgiveness. Rooted in the grace of love.




* This does not include personal, invasive questions. Or questions demanded of an individual or group, as written about here. You have the right to ask genuine questions. But that doesn't mean you have the right to make other people answer them.

My fellow Unitarian Universalists, I'm concerned.

People come to UU congregations from other religious places, including from the theologically conservative. Over and over again, I hear their joy when they learn that in a UU church, yes, really and truly, you can ask questions! It's okay to question the stories they've always been taught were true. It's okay to question whether God exists. It genuinely is okay to question the minister about her sermon last Sunday. (And ... it's okay to come to a different conclusion!)

Increasingly, though, on social media, I see people attacked for asking genuine, non-leading, questions. Not for their commentary or opinions, but just for asking the question.





One of the gifts I received as someone who grew up as a Unitarian Universalist is that I was always encouraged to ask questions. It was a surprise for me (growing up in a conservative area of Texas) to learn that other kids did not get that encouragement. Friends in other religions whispered to me about the questions they would like to ask their pastor. My pastors and religious teachers loved it when I asked questions.

And it's just naturally developed that questions are kind of my thing. When I went through my dark night of the soul, it was in a "big questions" covenant group that I was able to be healed and find my way back. When I prepared for my meeting with the Ministerial Fellowshipping Committee, I did it by inviting people on Facebook to ask me questions. For six months, I answered questions 5 days a week.


Six months of questions. And people argued with me. Debated. Gave me new information and insights. Changed my mind. Confirmed my answer.

A vast community helped me prepare not just for the MFC, but for ministry itself. I was blessed by their questions. A holy blessing. (Hey, that doesn't meant that I always enjoyed the process. After my (successful) meeting with the MFC, they asked if I had any comments for them. "This sure was easier than my prep for it!" I said. One panelist asked why. "Because y'all didn't argue with me!"

As my Facebook friends will tell you, I love questions. And ask a lot of them. Questions to help prepare me for a sermon, crowd-sourcing questions, questions just because I'm nosy curious.


I'm always touched by the vulnerability and courage so many people show as they answer. And the compassion. Frequently, a friend will say to another of my friend's (but whom they don't know) words of comfort or support.

And we debate. And discuss. And maybe even sometimes change our minds.

Real change happens in places when people are free to ask questions and engage with the answers. It is tempting to think it can happen in an easy and linear way ... have a question, go to a book, get the answer. DONE.

Does that often happen for you? Well, I obviously keep hoping for that, judging by my shelves sagging under the weight of books. But most of the time, it requires some follow up questions, and discussions, and hearing about the ideas of other people.

We are living in an amazing, confusing, painful, exhilarating time. Mores - societal customs about what's okay -- are changing at the speed of light. You know ... finally changing "at the speed of light." New understandings. New words or usage. And a lot of people are confused. Perplexed. (Sometimes I'm in that group.) Wouldn't it be great if there were a place they could go to try and sort these things out? A place to learn, a place for transformation? A place with a history of encouraging questions?



Asking a question doesn't mean you have the right to demand an answer. You definitely do not have the right to demand that a particular person or group provide an answer.

But we are the religion where it's okay to ask questions.




Next week: "Backless Chairs" Are Not the Answer

I preached this sermon at Universalist National Memorial Church, on May 5, 2019 with the lectionary texts from the Revelation of John and the Gospel of John.

I extemporize parts of the service, which are not present here apart from my opening aside, which I reconstructed from memory. The title, drawn from John, was meant to have a meaning, but didn’t in the final writing.

---

I would like to thank Pastor Gatton for having me back this rainy Eastertide morning and thank you for welcoming me back.

[I’m going to break from my notes a moment and point out a few things in this church. It preaches though silent. There’s an inscription on the back of the wall of the chancel. It’s hard to read but has a version of one of the lines in today’s responsive reading: “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God and God in him.” (1 John 4:16). Along the chancel rail, you have images of the four “living creatures” which are customarily associated with the four gospel-writers, and you’ll find these four on the chancel-wall cross and in the archway over the front door of the church. The furthest stained glass window on the pulpit side — the one with the gold ring and the sprig of leaves — is associated with the text from the Revelation of John, “the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations.” (22:2). That was the text I preached here the Sunday after 9/11, a word of hope.

So if you find yourself tuning out, let the building preach.]

Today’s lessons from the Gospel of John and the Revelation of John have in common — as you might guess — John. Or, it’s more accurate to say they share a theological outlook.

But the closer I got to them, the more I realized there was something about them that both excited and bothered me.

And I realized that this was not my specialty, and that it’s been twenty-five years since I took my New Testament course in seminary, and I have to continually got my head around this.

So let’s start with basics. (Everybody who knows this has to learn this at one time.)

The New Testament is a set of twenty-seven documents written roughly between the 50s and about the 120s, so in the two generations after Jesus’ life and ministry. The four gospels are the longest and best known of these documents; they’re not biographies or histories as we know them, but rather a kind of hero tale that would have been familiar in the time of the Roman Empire. They concern the life, ministry, death and post-death experience of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles, conventionally read in this Easter season, is essentially a sequel to the Gospel of Luke and continues the story in the experience of the earliest Church. The documents are in the form of letters, either true letters from one person to a particular community, or “general” or public letters. The Revelation of John is written is if it were a letter to the seven churches of Asia Minor, in today’s Turkey.

Early Christians wrote many documents, including many gospels; that is, works is the gospel genre, but later influential Christians considered four “canonical” or worthy of being a rule of faith. There’s long been a whiff of conspiracy around these other Gospels, and sometimes they’re described as being hidden or suppressed. but I think they’re hidden or suppressed in the same way those ugly dishes or scratchy blankets that a dear relative once gave you: you know they’re there and you just don’t want to have to deal with them.

In fact, apart from the Gospel of Thomas — which is really a collection of sayings of Jesus — most are pretty loopy. Others are very late, and do not represent an authentic tradition of the apostle, Jesus’ core appointed leaders. It’s hard to take a gospel seriously when you know who wrote it. Because he’s, like, over there.

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas — not to be confused with the Gospel of Thomas — is an extreme example. It’s the one where Jesus make clay birds come to life and then kills other children because they bothered him but it’s OK because he brings them back to life. You know: normal Jesus stuff.

The gospels and other texts we have were chosen early on because the have the voice of authenticity and authority to them. Besides those wild gospels, other practical but later works didn’t make the cut. If you look online for New Testament Apocrypha you can find all you could ever want.

But it’s not like the four gospels are mirror images of one another. They are four versions, often of the same events, with different focuses. Mark is the shortest and probably the oldest. It’s missing events we take for granted, like Jesus’ birth. Luke focuses on secret knowledge, while Matthew is the most tied to Jewish concepts. But despite these differences, there’s enough overlap between these three that they look on the same events, and are not wholly dissimilar. Indeed, Matthew and Luke seem to depend on Mark; for this reason the first three gospels are known as the Synopics, meaning they “look together.”

The Gospel of John is not like that. It’s about 90% unlike the others (though perversely our passage today seems to depend on Luke.) So, for example, instead of Christmas narrative it has a theological prologue: “In the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

The Gospel of John tracks its own path, with the three letters of John and the Revelation of John are collectively known as Johannine literature, which is where we started. This is not to say they are all written by the same person, and hat’s not controversial: Christians since the second century have figured that out. But there are similarities of outlook that holds them together, and we’ll get to that later.

But like the apostle Paul with his emphasis on sin, the Gospel of John has a bad reputation in liberal churches.

I think there’s two reasons for this. First, the synoptic gospels are earlier. Being a closer witness to Jesus and his ministry matters. It’s that same attitude that the early church applied to post-apostolic writings, and I get that. John is later and different. It’s also less practical. With the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, for instance, you get a sense of what you should do. “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Be a peacemaker. It’s practical and approachable in its own way. John is less about doing and more about being, and its meaning isn’t clear.

But there’s another reason we might be uncomfortable with John: we might sense that we’re reaching a limit of what’s acceptable. And a lot of that problem is what we bring to the reading of these text as our cultural inheritance.

Let’s also be plain about Christians for century have made targets of Jews, and have very often used texts from John to justify terrible violence. The community that produced these material were probably expelled from their synagogues, and might have been bitter and hurt for it. The relationship between Judaism and Christianity isn’t the same then as now. Both were periods of rapid transition. From its own perspective, the separation from a Jewish identity was not anti Jewish, much like a much less anti-Semitic in our modern use of the word.

But a lot of Christians who followed in the generations to our own have used the Gospel of John as a blunt weapon against Jews. And so we have to be very careful when we introduce these texts in our worship do so carefully. I’m unapologetic that I will remove or trim ratings in order to take out a phrase that means something very different to us today than it did when it was written.

The text is associated with Holy Week just passed or some of the hardest to deal with, and that’s why in place of the usual Good Friday text from John, I was glad to see Pastor Gatton use the text from Luke instead. It’s reading aloud is less likely to put casual readers on edge when emotions are prone to be high.

Another problem with Johannine literature is much older: it’s association with, and approval by, Gnostics. in these tolerant and pluralistic days is easy to overlook how dangerous Gnostic seemed. I think it’s because we’ve lost the sense of how powerful ideas can be, although that hasn’t really changed. Ideas are as powerful as ever, which means that some ideas are necessarily harmful.

Gnostics fall into that category. They have strong dualistic view of existence. Light and darkness are real, separate and irreconcilable. Spirit and matter are real, separate and irreconcilable. And the spirit is good in the matter is evil. The Gnostic views our physical bodies, our material world and the created order itself is something tragic. What Gnostics are described as having an equal regard for men and women, it’s because physical existence of self is equally bad I’m so how could you distinguish between them? It doesn’t read like approval to me, indeed when I think of Gnostics I think of the great sadness they must be towards the world. Any beauty or comfort or desire would have to be a delusion, or worse something misleading and diabolical.

Their hatred (or fear or rejection) of the material world. Not being able to love trees or mountains; birds or beasts; their hunger or their food; the sky and the stars; their bodies and their growth, even aging and dying. They hate the non-spiritual, and hate living itself, subordinating everything to the spiritual. And that moves me to tears.

I’ve come to love the Revelation of John, who is not fashionable in the liberal tradition. It’s wild, erratic, based on visions, is full of wild imagery and (most of all) is apocalyptic. Liberal Christian grows well in better-tended garden, one less wild and without the threat of sudden and inextricable change. But who doesn’t? Even the early church wasn’t sure the book — framed as letter — belonged in the canon of the New Testament.

It was probably a coded taketown of the Roman empire exactly at the time when it was most dangerous to do so. In the nineteenth century, it became

But it’s precisely that wild visionary view that gives the words of the Revelation their power. It was probably a coded taketown of the Roman empire exactly at the time when it was most dangerous to do so.

It’s this otherworldiness found in Revelation that helps us understand the Gospel of John. They belong to the same “school of writing” if not the same author, and are known collectively as Johannine literature.

Be careful in your dealings with people, yourself included. Be wise in your dealings with people, yourself included. Above all, be loving in your dealings with people, yourself included.

Seek that spirit that goes where it will, and be conscious of where it is taking you, for just because it seems to be of God, doesn’t mean that it is.

And lastly, look that the opportunities that God has given you with a questioning mind. What is the truth in this moment? What details am I missing? What other perspectives might there be? Does your understanding of our shared experience differ? Maybe my understanding or your understanding has a greater portion of the truth, and with wise discernment we can try to tell the difference.

I preached this sermon at Universalist National Memorial Church, on May 5, 2019 with the lectionary texts from the Revelation of John and the Gospel of John.

I extemporize parts of the service, which are not present here apart from my opening aside, which I reconstructed from memory. The title, drawn from John, was meant to have a meaning, but didn’t in the final writing.

---

I would like to thank Pastor Gatton for having me back this rainy Eastertide morning and thank you for welcoming me back.

[I’m going to break from my notes a moment and point out a few things in this church. It preaches though silent. There’s an inscription on the back of the wall of the chancel. It’s hard to read but has a version of one of the lines in today’s responsive reading: “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God and God in him.” (1 John 4:16). Along the chancel rail, you have images of the four “living creatures” which are customarily associated with the four gospel-writers, and you’ll find these four on the chancel-wall cross and in the archway over the front door of the church. The furthest stained glass window on the pulpit side — the one with the gold ring and the sprig of leaves — is associated with the text from the Revelation of John, “the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations.” (22:2). That was the text I preached here the Sunday after 9/11, a word of hope.

So if you find yourself tuning out, let the building preach.]

Today’s lessons from the Gospel of John and the Revelation of John have in common — as you might guess — John. Or, it’s more accurate to say they share a theological outlook.

But the closer I got to them, the more I realized there was something about them that both excited and bothered me.

And I realized that this was not my specialty, and that it’s been twenty-five years since I took my New Testament course in seminary, and I have to continually got my head around this.

So let’s start with basics. (Everybody who knows this has to learn this at one time.)

The New Testament is a set of twenty-seven documents written roughly between the 50s and about the 120s, so in the two generations after Jesus’ life and ministry. The four gospels are the longest and best known of these documents; they’re not biographies or histories as we know them, but rather a kind of hero tale that would have been familiar in the time of the Roman Empire. They concern the life, ministry, death and post-death experience of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles, conventionally read in this Easter season, is essentially a sequel to the Gospel of Luke and continues the story in the experience of the earliest Church. The documents are in the form of letters, either true letters from one person to a particular community, or “general” or public letters. The Revelation of John is written is if it were a letter to the seven churches of Asia Minor, in today’s Turkey.

Early Christians wrote many documents, including many gospels; that is, works is the gospel genre, but later influential Christians considered four “canonical” or worthy of being a rule of faith. There’s long been a whiff of conspiracy around these other Gospels, and sometimes they’re described as being hidden or suppressed. but I think they’re hidden or suppressed in the same way those ugly dishes or scratchy blankets that a dear relative once gave you: you know they’re there and you just don’t want to have to deal with them.

In fact, apart from the Gospel of Thomas — which is really a collection of sayings of Jesus — most are pretty loopy. Others are very late, and do not represent an authentic tradition of the apostle, Jesus’ core appointed leaders. It’s hard to take a gospel seriously when you know who wrote it. Because he’s, like, over there.

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas — not to be confused with the Gospel of Thomas — is an extreme example. It’s the one where Jesus make clay birds come to life and then kills other children because they bothered him but it’s OK because he brings them back to life. You know: normal Jesus stuff.

The gospels and other texts we have were chosen early on because the have the voice of authenticity and authority to them. Besides those wild gospels, other practical but later works didn’t make the cut. If you look online for New Testament Apocrypha you can find all you could ever want.

But it’s not like the four gospels are mirror images of one another. They are four versions, often of the same events, with different focuses. Mark is the shortest and probably the oldest. It’s missing events we take for granted, like Jesus’ birth. Luke focuses on secret knowledge, while Matthew is the most tied to Jewish concepts. But despite these differences, there’s enough overlap between these three that they look on the same events, and are not wholly dissimilar. Indeed, Matthew and Luke seem to depend on Mark; for this reason the first three gospels are known as the Synopics, meaning they “look together.”

The Gospel of John is not like that. It’s about 90% unlike the others (though perversely our passage today seems to depend on Luke.) So, for example, instead of Christmas narrative it has a theological prologue: “In the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

The Gospel of John tracks its own path, with the three letters of John and the Revelation of John are collectively known as Johannine literature, which is where we started. This is not to say they are all written by the same person, and hat’s not controversial: Christians since the second century have figured that out. But there are similarities of outlook that holds them together, and we’ll get to that later.

But like the apostle Paul with his emphasis on sin, the Gospel of John has a bad reputation in liberal churches.

I think there’s two reasons for this. First, the synoptic gospels are earlier. Being a closer witness to Jesus and his ministry matters. It’s that same attitude that the early church applied to post-apostolic writings, and I get that. John is later and different. It’s also less practical. With the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, for instance, you get a sense of what you should do. “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Be a peacemaker. It’s practical and approachable in its own way. John is less about doing and more about being, and its meaning isn’t clear.

But there’s another reason we might be uncomfortable with John: we might sense that we’re reaching a limit of what’s acceptable. And a lot of that problem is what we bring to the reading of these text as our cultural inheritance.

Let’s also be plain about Christians for century have made targets of Jews, and have very often used texts from John to justify terrible violence. The community that produced these material were probably expelled from their synagogues, and might have been bitter and hurt for it. The relationship between Judaism and Christianity isn’t the same then as now. Both were periods of rapid transition. From its own perspective, the separation from a Jewish identity was not anti Jewish, much like a much less anti-Semitic in our modern use of the word.

But a lot of Christians who followed in the generations to our own have used the Gospel of John as a blunt weapon against Jews. And so we have to be very careful when we introduce these texts in our worship do so carefully. I’m unapologetic that I will remove or trim ratings in order to take out a phrase that means something very different to us today than it did when it was written.

The text is associated with Holy Week just passed or some of the hardest to deal with, and that’s why in place of the usual Good Friday text from John, I was glad to see Pastor Gatton use the text from Luke instead. It’s reading aloud is less likely to put casual readers on edge when emotions are prone to be high.

Another problem with Johannine literature is much older: it’s association with, and approval by, Gnostics. in these tolerant and pluralistic days is easy to overlook how dangerous Gnostic seemed. I think it’s because we’ve lost the sense of how powerful ideas can be, although that hasn’t really changed. Ideas are as powerful as ever, which means that some ideas are necessarily harmful.

Gnostics fall into that category. They have strong dualistic view of existence. Light and darkness are real, separate and irreconcilable. Spirit and matter are real, separate and irreconcilable. And the spirit is good in the matter is evil. The Gnostic views our physical bodies, our material world and the created order itself is something tragic. What Gnostics are described as having an equal regard for men and women, it’s because physical existence of self is equally bad I’m so how could you distinguish between them? It doesn’t read like approval to me, indeed when I think of Gnostics I think of the great sadness they must be towards the world. Any beauty or comfort or desire would have to be a delusion, or worse something misleading and diabolical.

Their hatred (or fear or rejection) of the material world. Not being able to love trees or mountains; birds or beasts; their hunger or their food; the sky and the stars; their bodies and their growth, even aging and dying. They hate the non-spiritual, and hate living itself, subordinating everything to the spiritual. And that moves me to tears.

I’ve come to love the Revelation of John, who is not fashionable in the liberal tradition. It’s wild, erratic, based on visions, is full of wild imagery and (most of all) is apocalyptic. Liberal Christian grows well in better-tended garden, one less wild and without the threat of sudden and inextricable change. But who doesn’t? Even the early church wasn’t sure the book — framed as letter — belonged in the canon of the New Testament.

It was probably a coded taketown of the Roman empire exactly at the time when it was most dangerous to do so. In the nineteenth century, it became

But it’s precisely that wild visionary view that gives the words of the Revelation their power. It was probably a coded taketown of the Roman empire exactly at the time when it was most dangerous to do so.

It’s this otherworldiness found in Revelation that helps us understand the Gospel of John. They belong to the same “school of writing” if not the same author, and are known collectively as Johannine literature.

Be careful in your dealings with people, yourself included. Be wise in your dealings with people, yourself included. Above all, be loving in your dealings with people, yourself included.

Seek that spirit that goes where it will, and be conscious of where it is taking you, for just because it seems to be of God, doesn’t mean that it is.

And lastly, look that the opportunities that God has given you with a questioning mind. What is the truth in this moment? What details am I missing? What other perspectives might there be? Does your understanding of our shared experience differ? Maybe my understanding or your understanding has a greater portion of the truth, and with wise discernment we can try to tell the difference.

All I could think, as I headed into my second day of the machine of Rethink Leadership and the Orange Conference (a mostly-evangelical Christian leaders gathering) was:

Progressive Christians have ruined me. 

Before seminary and my classmates – those brave and bold friends who taught me over and over again the meaning of that song that I sang growing up: They will know we are Christians by our love.  And before witnessing the compassion and innovation of colleagues who lead Christian churches all across the country.  And definitely before Anne Lamott and Glennon Doyle, and Jim Wallis, and Barbara Brown Taylor, and before Rachel Held Evans – whose sudden tragic death the day after the conference ended only underscored the grief that was weighing on me in that gathering of about 8,000 people younger and more-racially-diverse than most UU gatherings.

Before any of these voices and relationships that have over the last 12 years, drawn me in and sent me out, loved me, and known me. Before, as the conference theme said it – progressive Christians made Christianity feel personal for me, I could’ve dismissed all of the discomfort I was experiencing (and sometimes nausea) as inevitable. I could’ve rolled my eyes, shrugged it off.  I could’ve dismissed it all as confirming my shallow, stereotype of what Christians are like.

And how not-Christian I am.  How unwelcome I am.

Before it got personal, I would’ve thought it was just further proof that to Christians, I am the enemy.  My people are the enemy.  The ones to pray for and to look down on, and to convert. And most of all, before progressive Christians ruined me, I would’ve remembered to keep my guard up.  Because they are my enemy, too.

But instead, I was caught off guard.  I was caught off guard by my grief, and even more, I was caught off guard by my rage.

Which is not to say that I didn’t love a lot of what I experienced at Orange.

Actually, the opposite.  I think what they are doing is brilliant, and mostly spot-on – which is what makes the whole thing so especially infuriating, and terribly sad.

This combination of brilliant/infuriating can be summed up in one question.  The question that the conference put at the center of this year’s conference:

What’s your name?

I was standing in line for my free/Jesus-approved coffee, when one of the volunteers looked right at me with this question.  (One piece of their brilliance is that they are not shy about immediately putting their tactics into practice.)

Before I could respond, the guy wearing the perfectly-designed Christian t-shirt read my name back to me off my badge. And then, he had more questions.

Do you know what it means? Do you remember? What’s the story behind your name? Why did your parents call you that, do you know?

Do you know my name? is actually just the first in a series of five questions the conference kept coming back to.  Because these are the questions that they say lead to real belonging, hope, and transformation.

The others:

Do you know what matters to me?

Do you know where I live?

Do you know what I’ve done?

And Do you know what I can do?

All of these questions go to support this year’s theme: Everything changes when things get personal.  Everything changes when you know someone’s name.  And everything changes when that knowing leads to another layer of knowing.  When you see someone not just at the surface, but for the story behind their name.  When you know what they care about, where they are from, what they struggle with, and what they long for.

Everything changes when you see someone.  And, everything changes when you let yourself be seen.

Which basically feels like the core of what I’ve been preaching for the past few years in my Unitarian Univeraslist church – vulnerability, connection, belonging.  I kept thinking about my 13-year-old daughter and her friends, a peer group that has seen three attempted suicides and regular psychiatric care for more than that in just this school year.  They need exactly this sort of ministry.  Personal.  Committed. Deep. Ministry that says – you matter.  It would be literally life-saving for them.

That’s the brilliance.

As for the infuriating…note I said I was in line for coffee when the guy hit me with this approved-line of questioning.  Which means I hadn’t had any yet. But my under-caffeinated state was not the only reason – despite being totally sold on the whole idea –  I shrugged and half-smiled, and thanked him for the coffee, unwilling to play along.

Because, see, each time they asked the question flashed on the big screen – do you know my name? I couldn’t help thinking about one of my friends whose parents’ evangelical faith was the primary reason they have never even tried using his name, or his pronouns.  It’s been decades. Even though studies show that using a trans person’s name automatically decreases their risk of suicide and depression, this question of “do you know my name” does not lead the evangelicals to a campaign for all adults to use all kids’ names and pronouns.

Instead, we get bathroom bills and righteous wedding cake-cases, and chick-fil-A.

When the question about names wasn’t making me think about trans and queer folx, I’d instead remember the chanting of protesters and lamenters: Say Her Name.  It was a call that began after the death of African American woman Sandra Bland while in police custody, and that has become the cry of a movement seeking justice for Black women and African Americans everywhere who have been profiled, targeted and brutalized at the hands of police officers.

It wasn’t that there was no racial lens at Orange. A few of the speakers, especially those digging into the “do you know where I live” question linked their faith directly to their cultural and ethnic context.  And Dr. Bernice King – that’s MLK’s daughter – held the floor with bad ass bravery with a straight-up Micah-centered call for social justice as the heart of Christianity.

It was a moment where I wondered – if white evangelicals might manage to grow in their understanding and vocabulary around race, even a little – there is such a potential for organizing with Black Christians.  They wouldn’t need to move any or at all on women, or on GLBT inclusion.

Another reason I’m so grateful for Black Lives Matter’s insistence on intersectionality, and why I don’t see Orange connecting their “Do you know my name” campaign with the “Say Her Name” campaign anytime soon.

After all they presented all sorts of stories and ideas related to the “Do you know my name” question (and the other 4), the speakers’ lines took a small but important turn: We make it personal, because God made it personal.  In Jesus. 

For the most part, Orange is remarkably low on specifically-Christian content.  It’s how they can have a crowd of 8,000 with beliefs ranging from Presbyterian to Pentecostal to Unitarians (hey, we were took up at least a row of 8 at one point!).

For example, they chose one bible story – the story of Zacchaeus – and came back to it repeatedly – but even that, only about every third talk.  The way they told the story, it was accessible regardless of what you believe about who Jesus was, or what his life, or death or resurrection meant.  Instead, their message focuses mostly on how to improve life for everyone, at every age, now.  How to love the outcast, and how much that matters when the outcast is you.

The smaller-than-you-might-expect-Jesus-content makes this turn to Jesus, and how everything changes when you know Jesus’ name – feel both sneaky, and again, brilliant!

And it was in this sneaky brilliance that the rage hit.

And the grief.

Because before that I was starting to give in, as I remembered the women in the prison where I served as a chaplain my first year of seminary, how they taught me about swaying and raising your arms – in vulnerability, and solidarity.  I was giving in to being present, without defense. Yes, we’re all in this together.  Seen people see people.

I was even thinking – I was wrong to have not let myself be seen by that friendly coffee guy.  How could I see them if I wasn’t willing to be seen, I was thinking?

And even more, I was wrong to have not let myself be seen by the senior pastor who I’d sat next to the day before.  After two days of conversation about church life, and leadership, he asked me what the name of my church was, and I said simply: Foothills.

Are you a part of a denomination, he asked? I said, no.  I mean, it wasn’t exactly a lie.

But then the name of JESUS flashed across the stage.

And the people around me were deep in the swaying and the singing What a Beautiful Name

and instead of vulnerability and solidarity and telling them my name, I wanted to say all the swear words.

But not because I don’t think that it matters that we know who Jesus was – and where he lived, and what he cared about, what he did, and what he was capable of.

But because I have seen what it looks like when Christians think it matters too.  I’ve felt what it feels like when Christians put Jesus at the center of their worship lives, their communities.

When Christians center Jesus (and not just Paul), they throw baby showers for two women who have a new baby – as my classmates did for me and my family my first year in seminary.

When Christians center Jesus (and not the Republican party line), they show up at the border and feed and clothe the migrants seeking refuge – just as I witnessed so many doing when I was in San Diego in December.

When Christians center Jesus (and not patriarchy), they tell a young (heretical, queer) potential church leader: the church needs you as you – as one of my mentors did for me.

But what Christians who care most of all about who Jesus was, would not do – is (on the same day they flash JESUS from the mainstage) celebrate the latest expansion of “religious exemptions.” Exemptions lobbied for by Christians just like those in that stadium, that make it legal for anyone in the medical field to refuse to care for someone because of their religious beliefs.  Which is another way of getting personal, I guess.

“Religious exemption” is of course code.  Code for refusing to care for women needing reproductive health care.  Code for refusing to learn where women really live, and what matters to them.  (An afternoon session at the senior leaders portion basically tried to persuade the room that women are people.  Thank Beyoncé they didn’t ask us to talk at our tables after that one.)  And…code for refusing to treat trans people for all sorts of reasons.  Code for refusing to learn – in a very literal way – their names.

Before progressive Christians reminded me, in a really personal way, of what centering your life on Jesus for real looks like – I would’ve let all this slide.

I would’ve accepted that Christianity is inextricably connected to bigotry, and even death.

But because Methodists and Lutherans and Baptists have given me a taste of what it means when Christians follow Christ – I found myself so angry at this disconnect, this hypocrisy.

Especially when it is packaged up in this much brilliance.

Because I have a sense, a lived-in personal sense of Jesus – far beyond his name.  Because I know what it looks like when someone cares about what he cared about, when whole communities work to understand his context and applies it to our own, and when leaders wrestle with complexity as Jesus wrestled – I really want to stand up like Emma Gonzalez and call BS.

Because I really don’t think it matters if you can say the name of Jesus, if you don’t know the name of Amber Nicole, a trans woman who was recently beaten in Denver.

And I don’t think his name is all that wonderful if it doesn’t compel you to say the name of Stephon Clark, who was shot by the police while in his grandmother’s back yard in Sacramento just over a year ago?

And while millions of Christians are singing about what a sweet name Jesus is, how many are working to find out the name of the 16-year-old boy who died recently in ICE Custody?

Dear Orange.  Dear Evangelicals.  Dear Christians.  Dear friends who I know in my heart are not my enemies, but my kin – You are so right.  Everything changes when you know my name.  And when you know their name.  And my prayer, my lament, my rage, and my grief, which I pray with my hands raised and my heart open – is that you’ll keep growing whose names you mean, and whose name you’re willing to call beautiful.  

Twenty years ago this September, Canon Universalist Church, Canon, Georgia ordained me to the Ministry of the Gospel. That day I made this pledge:

Friends: With a deep sense of responsibility, trusting not in my own strength, but in the grace and power of God, I take up the ministry to which you ordain me. I do pledge myself, so far as in me lies, to maintain the freedom of this pulpit; to speak the truth in love, both publicly and privately, without fear of persons; diligently to fulfill the several offices of worship, instruction and administration, according to the customs of this congregation and fellowship; and in all things so to live as to promote piety and righteousness, peace and love among this people and with all humanity.

I’ve thought quite a bit about that pledge and my responsibilities, not the least of which to our religious traditions and the ministerial college. A vague comment, I admit, but one that will be more clear in the next couple of weeks as start working some things out in public.

[Our annual business takes place in the Fellowship Hall immediately after the service.]

The invitations were elegant. They announced a hunger  banquet. And as soon as people began receiving these invitations, I began  getting calls. They were excited. Which made me smile. Because I knew they didn’t know what a hunger banquet really was.

For those who are unfamiliar with a hunger banquet, it’s not your regular dinner. People are invited to gather and eat, like a regular dinner. But not everyone is served the same things. In a hunger banquet, a hierarchy is established such that some get more than others. Just like our society—and our world. Some get a lot. Some get enough. And some get not enough.

I arranged for all invited to be assigned to one of three tables based on some arbitrary characteristic. I chose eye color. The objective was to make it something people had very little say in—like how we have no say in what family or what class we are born into.

The brown-eyed folks got to sit at the first table—the privileged table. This table was placed on the risers where the choir sat, a little bit above the congregation. They had a floral arrangement, matching china, polished silver and ruffled napkins. Two bottles of wine, sparkling cider, crystal pitchers of ice-water, candles and silk table-cloths sprinkled with little daisies. The table was arranged banquet style, like you’d see at a wedding, where guests sat all on one side looking out over the room.

The green or hazel-eyed folks were placed at the second table, below. It was somewhat less elegant. Real dishes went with paper napkins, a pitcher of water and juice.

The third table, for the blue-eyed folks, was placed around the corner by the entrance to the kitchen next to the big trash cans. They had paper plates, plastic forks, Dixie cups and water. Their location was such that the privileged table couldn’t see them. But the middle table could. Interestingly, 10 of the 14 people at the middle table chose to sit facing toward them, with their backs toward the privileged table.

To provide an indication that some system was in place, I had asked two of our newest—and relatively unknown—members to stand as “guards.” I asked them to dress “officially.” One surprised me by coming in combat fatigues, army boots, sunglasses, with a beret and a nightstick. When the poor table saw him at parade rest, watching over the room, they began referring to him as the man. The guards were given almost no instruction, except to maintain order and civility, which at a friendly invitational dinner might seem unnecessary. But, after all, we were dealing with hungry Unitarian Universalists encountering injustice.

When the dinner was served, the privileged table received the greatest care. They started with tossed salad, fruit salad, bread and butter, carrots and onions, rice and finally, chicken divan.

The second table was served after a few minutes and received the green salad, bread, plain carrots, rice and chicken.

The third table received only rice. And there was an extensive delay before that came. By the time it did arrive, some had grown tired of waiting and sent one among them who was intimately familiar with the children’s religious education program on a reconnaissance mission to liberate half a box of Triscuits and a bag of Smarties from the snack cupboard.

This surprised me a bit. But, I confess, I really didn’t know what would happen. I had fully expected that the artificial groups I set up would quickly dissolve, food would be shared between tables almost as quickly as we set it out, and the evening would be spent talking about the gross inequity in the world.

But I was intrigued to see that this was not what happened. There was a hesitation. And what happened during this hesitation was what taught us the most about our goal of oneness and the work of justice required to move us there.

The people at the privileged table had two kinds of responses. The first—and I will clarify that this was said in jest—referred to how appreciative they were that the superior nature of the character had finally been recognized and that it was about time they were given the treatment that was their due.

The other half of that same table did not seem so proud. They did express discomfort upon realizing that, while they were going gourmet, others were going without. Yet there was also a strong sense of confusion about what the guards would do if they challenged the system. They were reticent to do anything to create a scene. And that reticence held the status quo in place. All in all, it reflected some truth about the privileged group in our society—justifying some entitlement while issuing vague discomfort about the state of affairs and slow to take any action to change their position of privilege.

The second table was, to my mind, the most interesting. One member of the table reported, matter-of-factly, that he knew what we were attempting and considered it old news. Consequently, the conversation turned toward the details of one another’s lives. All in all, a fairly true picture of the middle class: generally intelligent people who work hard, are aware of the dynamics and problems of the world around them, but are too preoccupied with their own lives and those of their friends to effect much lasting change on systemic conditions of poverty.

The third table also seemed very adept at capturing the essence of the group they represented. They were pissed. They were hungry. And they minced no words about it being unfair. They weren’t angry at the guards, who were just doing what they were told. They also weren’t really upset with the other tables—they were just playing their part in the game. But they were, without question, pretty unhappy with me.

They came to see me as the instigator. The maker and the keeper of the system. For all intents and purposes, I played the role of God. A figure whom the privileged throughout history have cited as the source of the privilege they enjoyed, God has always been an ambivalent figure for the middle class, sometimes treated with confusion or indifference. And God is a figure the poor have often felt promised them more. And the poor have been dining on empty promises for a long time.

None among us can deny the tragic inequality in our world. Unfortunately, pinpointing the ultimate cause behind it isn’t as clear in real life as it seemed to be in our simulation. One of the truest statements made during the evening was during the discussion afterward, when someone pointed out that the experience that we simulated that evening was too simple. They pointed out that the roots of all oppression are far more complex and entangled in well-meaning endeavors than is ever initially perceived, and it is hard for any congregation to know how to do the good they so desperately want to do.

Trying to find oneness or navigate our way toward justice isn’t always straightforward. We want to help, but we don’t want to upset others in the process. We want to empower others, but we don’t want to take power from those who have earned it. We want others to have a place at the table, but we hope it is not at the expense of our own. This can lead to paralysis, and eventually, despair.

But beyond despair, beyond the tangled details of cause and effect, beyond the many reasons why it is impractical to work for change, there is something else: a realization that when any in the world suffers, we all suffer. As our inner cities are assaulted with strife, our suburbs are assaulted with fear. As the poor, the Black, the Asian, the Jew, the gay, the disabled and the disenfranchised are denied their due, we all feel the hunger of living on empty promises. And none of us—not the rich or the poor—ever get to know what it would be like to live in one world, where bridges are built and peace is possible for all people.

If the situation in my church had remained at a stalemate of confusion and inactivity we might have all gone home that night in despair. We might have demonstrated the reasons why 1% of the world’s population owns 99% of the combined wealth. We might have justified why prisons are over-represented by the poor and minorities. We might have accepted the inevitability that guards will always be threatened by plastic utensils because crime is the only hope for the poor. And we might have lost hope for the kind of communion we all crave—the kind that says that all differences and all fear can be bridged by love. If the situation in my church had remained the way it began I might have lost hope.

But I knew my community. And I knew deep down that they would get indigestion dining on fear and injustice. That is why I invited them—to show how it is possible to overcome paralysis. And I was not disappointed.

As I was talking to some of the folks at the privileged table, I began hearing the echoes of rebellion coming from across the room. Voices from the underprivileged table started singing. Slowly at first. Softly… “We Shall Overcome…” Some started to join hands or link arms. Then, the people at the privileged table saw their opportunity. They rose above their hesitation, elbowed their way past the guards, and carried food across the room. When the guards feebly attempted to stop them, the middle class quickly surrounded the guards and handcuffed them in debate about prolitarian morality in postmodern capitalistic systems. They were quickly overpowered. The lower class, seeing the privileged people coming toward them with food, unlinked arms and welcomed them into the group. Everyone began to sing louder. Then it was only a matter of a few minutes before we were all—guards and cooks and people of every class—sitting at the same table discussing what happened and in complete agreement: it was all the minister’s fault.

The way out of paralysis came when we heard the voices calling for action and heard the confusion within our own voice—and realized it was the same voice. The difference came when we recognized that all that separated us, whether authentic or artificial, did not, could not, would not divide us in our common humanity. The difference was made in recognizing that the good within us is as powerful as the complexity and the confusion of the system around us.

We will only work for others in their efforts to escape the yoke of bondage and oppression when we see ourselves inextricably linked to them. When we understand that their story is our story, their opportunity is our success. Coming together on the Side of Love is everyone’s reward.

Since that evening, I’ve helped organize hunger banquets at four different congregations. On no occasion have we ever ended hunger or oppression. But I have seen six-year-olds stuffing rolls in their shirt to deliver them to their parents at the poor table. I’ve seen 75-year-olds loading up their walkers and cussing out guards on their way to bring dessert to children. And every single time, I’ve come to know a communion of people who never thought about the poor—or the rich—in quite the same way again.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110004746/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_05/02.mp3

It’s possible to be surrounded by abundance and never notice. It’s hidden in plain sight, and we miss it in the day to day grind—burdened by responsibility, meetings, traffic—waiting for some kind of relief. We miss it as we go about our usual way of thinking and doing, playing the role we’ve been cast in, or the one we’ve cast ourselves in. Too often we just accept the script that is handed to us by our parents, our society, even our churches, without much thought for what’s truly possible. We sigh, and concede to limitations that are embedded in the script we’ve been given.

If we listen to this kind of advice too often we can feel cold, lifeless, alone. We yearn to take in the world, to love and be loved, and this is so hard sometimes. It takes a level of trust we can hardly imagine.

The Buddhist tradition understands this painful predicament. The tradition teaches about a malady where we can be surrounded by life’s abundance, and yet lack the ability to take it in—to let it touch our heart, our soul. We can lack the ability to digest the beauty and possibility that is surrounding us. The tradition refers to these creatures who can’t take in life’s greatest gifts as hungry ghosts. Hunger is a painful thing. It’s horrible to hunger for something that is not available. It is even more painful to hunger for something that proves to be right in front of you, but which you can’t take in or digest. It gets missed. These hungry ghosts are depicted with long necks and distended bellies, showing the limitations of what they can swallow, and showing the toll a narrow neck or a narrow perspective can have on us.

It’s part of the reason I think we need church. We want to live, and we know living can feel small and limited, but we have a sense that perhaps there is a way to live with more freedom, more courage, more love. Perhaps we can find ways of seeing which show us the abundance that is waiting for us, but we’ve been too busy and bogged down to notice. We need help to get fed. In our shared hunger, our shared plight, even our shared sense of scarcity, we have a chance to stumble across something that truly satisfies.

Buddhism holds teachings on re-birth, and tradition says that these hungry ghosts will continue to be in a state of constant hunger until the day they find a way to allow in some kind of satisfaction and be re-born. I have thought a little bit about re-birth, and this is what I’ve come to: Every day is a chance at re-birth. We may feel we were born into a certain kind of life, a certain kind of story, and yet re-birth is possible every waking moment of our lives. We have a chance to wake up and see the life we’re actually living, a life that is expansive, mysterious and connected to every living thing. This is possible, and it’s not based on belief. It can be your experience or mine at any minute, on any given day.

I think this kind of re-birth has potential to show us a truth that is incredibly obvious but commonly missed—by feeding others, we too are fed. We can’t find satisfaction by stubbornly trying to feed and satisfy ourselves. Our culture teaches us that we can, but it’s a lie. The spell can be broken. All it takes is a little imagination. When we begin to develop the ability to listen to the growling stomachs in the world, we see something truly awesome and ordinary—our own hunger. And instead of wallowing in our own dissatisfaction and failed attempts for fulfillment, we reach out and we touch another. And the ghosts find what they were hungering for, and we are reborn.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110004725/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_05/03.mp3

“You were ravenous right from birth!” This is the story I was told through my whole childhood. It puzzled me as I began to spend time with babies, because it seemed to me that when they were hungry, all of them were ravenous. Which is to say that they turned purple and screamed till they were fed. And then they calmed down.

I don’t remember my babyhood, but I do remember a very complicated relationship with food and hunger from earliest childhood. When my parents told me that I was ravenous from birth, it always felt laced with shame and judgment. This, I think, was because of two factors—one, my gender, and two, more essentially, that I was always chubby. When I was young, just a little chubby. As I aged, and largely due to dieting and external controls on food, chubbiness turned to obesity.

As someone who has lived with “weight issues” my whole life, hunger is a complicated thing to talk about. I grew up in a household where there was enough food and we did not worry about where the next meal would come from, so there was never a question of physical hunger. Someone I know who had to live with hunger describes it thus: “I couldn’t focus, couldn’t think straight, couldn’t keep my energy up…at times I remember thinking about what it would be like to die of
starvation.”

This was never my experience, and I know from others who lived with it that the trauma that comes from genuine hunger, especially in childhood, never goes completely away, no matter how circumstances change. My experience was that there was food around, plenty of food, but that I was not supposed to eat it. That I was bad if I ate it. This led to a different kind of hunger, to a distrust of what my own body wanted and needed and an externalization of how I thought I “should” eat. That kind of hunger led to secret eating, shame about eating, and a sense that my hunger was insatiable.

Beginning when I was about seven or eight, and family photos show me on the chubby side of being normally sized, my parents locked the food in a closet. There was food in the refrigerator—things like condiments and leftovers—but other than that, food was impossible to get unless it was served. Mealtimes, however, were fraught with anxiety. We had to “clean up our plates,” whether we liked the food or hated it. Many nights ended with my father sitting at the kitchen table glowering at me while I sat defiantly by a half-eaten vegetable or half-drunk glass of milk, watching the hours tick away until bedtime. At breakfast, the same food, which had been on the table all night, would be served up as breakfast.

There is an insatiable hunger that arises from being out of sync with your own body, with your own rhythms and needs, likes and dislikes. Other female friends have told me how shame and hunger interacted for them, and I’ve heard a huge variety of stories about women told they were too thin, too fat, or simply hungry when they shouldn’t be—who also felt shamed about hunger or lack of hunger. I did not ask other genders but I suspect they also have complicated narratives to share. Thirty percent of the American people are obese. Depending on which study you believe, between 30 and 75% of American women have eating disorders of one kind of another. These numbers correlate, I think, to the quantity of processed food we consume, but also to some deeper hungers which are not being honored or addressed.

By now, I have engaged in so many forms of controlling what I eat that I couldn’t even begin to list them all. Diets, “food plans,” restrictions from certain processed foods, call them what you want. What I notice is that the times I am in best relationship with food and with my body are when I am eating with people I care about and we are eating food prepared with love and care, living a life where I am engaged with and connected to others.

I can’t get my childhood back, or re-do the shaming messages that permeated my relationship with food and hunger and my body. What I can do is refuse to pass that shame and judgment on to others. I refuse to judge anyone’s appetites or choices, to presume that I know what anyone else needs for their own body, to dictate when or what other people should eat. I refuse to participate in the shaming of anyone about their body or their appetite (or lack of appetite).

And I celebrate good food with friends and family, paying attention to how food makes me feel and honoring those feelings, trusting my own body. For me, it’s been the work of a lifetime, but I am grateful to have made some amount of peace with myself about it.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110004705/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_05/04.mp3

If, like me, you are fortunate enough to have a refrigerator and the means to fill it, it is possible that you have a tendency to stand in front of the open fridge, staring at the contents and wondering what there is to eat. It is even possible that some of us do this multiple times a day, staring at the shelves as if something would have magically appeared while the door was closed.

The thing is, when I stare at my open refrigerator—or at my open snack cupboard—it’s not just that I’m hungry. I’m hungry for something in particular, but I don’t know what. And so I stand there, wondering if what would satisfy me at this moment is avocado or cheese—or maybe both together on toast. What exactly is it that I want?

You could quite reasonably argue that my refrigerator-gazing habit is silly—I pretty much know what’s in there with the door closed, since I did the shopping and the cooking myself. And it is certainly not energy efficient to stand there letting the cold air out and the warm air in. But I would contend that the question that goes along with staring at the food is absolutely crucial.

What do I want? What exactly do I want? I imagine that pretty much all of us spend a lot of time dissatisfied with our own personal lives and with the world in general. We hunger for work that is meaningful and restorative rest and caring relationships and fun times and a world that is more just. And many of us have gotten pretty good at recognizing and sharing the many things we see that are wrong with the world—racism and homophobia and sexism and ableism and environmental degradation and corruption in government and the whole long list of very real, and often devastating, problems.

And it matters to identify those problems, whether personal or social. We need a clear analysis of what has gone wrong and why. But it seems to me that we often assume that identifying the problem is the same as finding a solution. Somehow we seem to think that if we tell our partner or our child how their looking at their phone during dinner makes us nuts, it should fix the relationship. Or maybe we figure that by sharing news of the latest police atrocity against a person of color on Facebook we are dismantling white supremacy.

And those are both perfectly good things to do. But they aren’t solutions. Solutions don’t start with what is wrong. Solutions start with the question What do I want? And the more precise we can be about what we want, the more specific we can be about how we might be able to get there.

What do I want from my family at dinner time? I want to hear about each person’s day, their successes and frustrations. I want to look in the eyes of the people I love. I want to share a story about something that happened to me today. I want to make plans for what we will do on the weekend. I want to hear about an idea you had or a book you read or something you learned.

When I know what I want, I can ask for it. I can make a plan for how I might get it. I shift the focus from how the other person is wrong to concrete steps that would move in the direction of something that is better. Of course, getting to those solutions is not necessarily easy. What I want may be in conflict with what someone else wants. Powerful forces may stand in the way of what I want. But creating change is only possible when you move step by step down the path of what exactly do I want?

To be clear, I’m not saying that there is some magic power that will manifest what you want if you just imagine it. I’m not a fan of the power of positive thinking, or of the prosperity gospel which seems to generate so much more prosperity for its preachers than for its followers.

The question What exactly do I want? is pragmatic, useful. What do I want? Justice. What exactly do I want? Well, it’s a long list, and I’m going to have to choose where I will focus my attention at any given point in time. I want an end to racist policing. OK, but that’s really what I don’t want. I don’t want racist policing. What do I want? I want police who understand their job as protecting and serving the entirety of the community where they work. I want police to choose de-escalation over force whenever possible. I want the police department to listen to the community about what would make people feel safer. I want police officers to be accountable for their behavior.

That list could go on and on, and each piece could be broken down into smaller pieces. But when I know what I want I can find other people who want the same thing, and we can find points in the system where we can exert pressure to accomplish those goals.

Maybe my standing in front of the refrigerator pondering what exactly I might be hungry for is a waste of time and energy. And it is possible to get what you wanted purely as a delightful surprise, without even knowing the hunger was there. But if you intend to actively pursue positive change, then the more exactly you know what you want, the better position you are in to make it happen.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110004621/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_05/06.mp3

They came in the very early morning hours.

In the stillness of the deep dawn, when light and dark were equally everywhere.

Mary, Mary Magdalene, Salome, maybe other women – came to anoint their friend, their teacher with all the rituals of death.

Just a few days ago, they had watched him die, and terribly. Why? They still weren’t sure why.  

Another of their friends, someone close to Jesus, had betrayed him, and somehow it quickly ended here. In the not-quite-light, at his grave.

It made no sense.

All they knew is that he’d taught them that they mattered.  Everything about him taught him this, again and again. Until they believed him.  

They’d never be the same.   

But somehow, he was suddenly just – gone.

And so they came with their spices and their oils, their grief, their sense of duty.  They came to help, in the only way they could.  

Over the last few weeks we have been exploring this idea of help – mostly in terms of our common neediness – our limits and our vulnerability.  We’ve talked about asking for help, receiving help. We’ve even dealt with our helplessness.

Which is why I’d imagine you might be breathing a sigh of relief today, because today we are finally talking about helping, as in offering help – rather than (shudder) receiving it.  Right?

Let’s be honest, we Unitarian Universalists often want to be the shepherd – not so much the sheep.

It’s one of the reasons that our tradition hasn’t taken so well to the idea of using pastor as a title for its ministers – even though I think it’s a lot easier to say in regular speech than minister, or reverend.  But Pastor is Latin for shepherd so historically UUs have been….hesitant – because if we’re shepherds, then who are the sheep?

This has been made worse by the rumor that sheep are dumb, or that they thoughtlessly follow the crowd.

It turns out however, that sheep are actually quite intelligent, social, and complex.  

But I’m guessing this doesn’t convince you – it’s hardwired.  We want to be the helpers – the ones who step up, and show up, the ones who make things a little, if not a lot better.

Helping feels good.  It reminds us of our power, our agency, which is not wrong. Especially when things feel chaotic, painful, or confusing – helping can be a way of regaining some sense of control.  This is what the women were doing in the early morning hours.

These strong, courageous, prophetic women – tending to the body of their friend.  

As the story is told, they were the first to meet, in fear and amazement, the resurrected Jesus, the first charged with telling the world that he had risen, the first to be disbelieved by the male disciples because who would believe a woman’s story afterall.

These strong, courageous prophetic women went to Jesus’s grave as many of us go in these moments. Hoping to do what they could for him, and for his body, to honor and remember his life.  

They went as helpers.

And yet we know, and they likely knew too,  that even more they went because they needed help, and comfort.  They needed reassurance that everything would be ok. They were feeling – lost, helpless, painfully aware of their own limits.

Even when we try to assert some degree of agency – it’s always true – that we run into our limits.  Even when we’re offering help, we still need help.  It turns out there’s no firm line possible between us, and them.  

Help that is helpful gets this – accepts it – surrenders to it as part of the deal. 

Even more, help that is helpful knows that this limitedness is fine.  Even good, and a gift, a relief – to be able to trust that you could show up filled only with this sense of love, of inherent worth, to believe this offering is enough.  Trusting that not being able to fix everything doesn’t mean we can’t fix anything.  And that our worth is not dependent on fixing or helping or saving anything at all.  

This is a gift.  

A couple weeks ago I finally got to watch the Mr. Rogers documentary.  

In case you’re not someone who grew up or raised kids in the US in the 70s, 80s, or 90s – Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was a show on PBS that basically broke every rule for good TV and yet somehow totally worked.  

Watching the documentary from today’s context, I was shocked at how radical Mr. Rogers really was – and still is.  

Because at the core of his message – and he says this in a clip at the end of the film – is the idea that you don’t have to do anything sensational to be loved.

Help that is helpful gets this still-radical idea  – and just tries to pass it on.  

Help that is not helpful, however, doesn’t get any of this.  Thinks that this whole idea – that you don’t need to do anything sensational – or fix everything, or save everyone – that that idea is stupid, foolish, insufficient, and/or irresponsible.  Help that is unhelpful is afterall – often driven by our egos – it’s why helping can feel so good! Unhelpful helping wants everyone, including ourselves, to know how strong and capable and in control and not vulnerable we are.

Help that is not helpful wants to keep that idea of a clear line between those of us who are helpers, and those who receive help; Those who are needy, and those who are not; help that is not helpful denies our inter-relatedness and instead tries to hold us all as entirely separate, disconnected. 

A lot of the time, this sort of unhelpful help believes that unless we can make it all better we shouldn’t even try.  Or, that we aren’t good enough anyway, to help. That we don’t have the right words, or the right education…We are too quick to fill up the silence, or change the subject.  We don’t show up at all.   Or, we show up too much, and get confused about whose pain is whose.  Finding ourselves so caught up in the struggle it starts to pull us under.

A few years ago, psychologist Susan Silk started to notice this sort of unhelpful helping when she had breast cancer, and people would say things that she would find – unbelievable.

One favorite she says, came from one of her colleagues, who wanted to visit her after her surgery.  

“Susan didn’t feel like having visitors, and she said so.  Her colleague’s response? ‘This isn’t just about you.’  

‘It’s not?’ Susan wondered. ‘My breast cancer is not about me?’”

From these experiences, Silk developed a model for helpful help. She calls it the “Ring Theory.”

It can apply to all sorts of crises – medical, financial, emotional, existential.

The idea is, you draw a circle.  This is the center ring. In it, you put the name of the person at the center of the current trauma.  For Silk’s breast cancer – that would’ve been her.  

Next, draw a larger circle around the first one.  In that ring, put the person next closest to the trauma.  Maybe the spouse, or other immediate family. 

Repeat the process as many times as you need. In each larger ring, put the next closest person.  

When you are done, you have, as Silk says, the “Kvetching Order.”

She goes on: “Here are the rules.   The person in the center ring can say anything she wants to anyone, anywhere. She can kvetch and complain and whine and moan and curse the heavens and say, ‘Life is unfair’ and ‘Why me?’ That’s the one payoff for being in the center ring.

“Everyone else can say those things too, but only to people in larger rings. When you are talking to a person in a smaller ring – the goal is to help, which means listening more than talking, and avoiding giving advice.  

“People who are suffering don’t need advice, they need comfort, and support.  

So, say, ‘I’m sorry.’ Or, ‘This must really be hard for you.’

Or, ‘Can I bring you a pot roast?’ 

Listen for their experience that is just theirs.  

Don’t say: ‘You should hear what happened to me.’

Don’t try to argue them out of their pain, or tell them how hard it is for YOU.

When you need support – and you will – just look for it from someone in a bigger ring.”

Silk’s mantra is: Comfort IN, Dump OUT.

It’s a great way to think about how to create entire communities that offer help that his helpful.  Communities of help.

Help that is helpful realizes we’ll all get our turn in the center ring.  And in all the other rings too.  We’ll all get a chance to be the helpers, and the help-receivers – it’s all part of the single fabric of destiny that Martin Luther King spoke of – this inescapable network of mutuality.

As I’ve been thinking about the Easter story this year, I’ve been especially thinking about how help that is helpful comes from an awareness that we too need help.   Because I’ve been thinking especially about Jesus as a helper – and what his life, and his death have to teach us about help that is truly helpful.

Afterall, it’s one of the promises that Christianity makes –

that Jesus saves.  Which is like helping, but super-sized.  

Help that fixes and heals – everything.

In those days, and months, and years after Jesus died, his followers and friends tried to make sense of the senselessness the women were just beginning to acknowledge in the stillness of the morning.  

Why he died.  Why he lived.

The way his life had changed them.

How or if this change would last, or matter – even beyond their own lives.  

There is no way to say for sure what happened to Jesus after his death, if he was actually there to greet the women, calling Mary by name; no way to know if later he asked his followers to touch him, to feed him – to prove he was alive.  There’s no way to say for sure – any more than any of us can say what happens to us after death.

We can only say that the people of his time experienced – or at least universally said that they experienced – Jesus as alive. As scholar Marcus Borg says – it was the unanimous testimony of all the early Christians.

Still, it’s important to note that only much later did this testimony become the sole focus of how people made sense of all that senselessness – what help his life actually provided, and what it meant for him to be a savior.

As scholars Rebecca Parker and Rita Nakashima Brock remind us in their work, Saving Paradise, it took about 1,000 years of Christianity, before all of Jesus’ help got narrowed down to his crucifixion, and what came to be understood as his atoning sacrifice – a turn that connected love to suffering, even death.  

It took about 1,000 years for this turn to happen.  

Before that, the good news of Jesus’ life, the way we understood the help he offered, was focused more on his – and our – lives here on earth.  The experience of his humanity in human community.  Humans with bodies, and feelings, and needs; humans who help and heal and save one another in small and big ways, every day.  

I thought about this last Thursday night, at our vespers service. As I felt the water hit my bare feet – all of us awkwardly carrying around our socks in our hands, so human together. I tried to imagine this great teacher kneeling before his followers and washing their dusty, dirty, weary feet. And I thought – this is what Jesus meant when he said love one another.  

This kneeling, this letting go, this helper that is also helpless.

This savior who also needs saving.   

This healer who needs the touch of his friends’ hands, the food of the Passover meal, the company and witness when the fear becomes too much, the surrender when even the supreme helper knows he cannot stop the end from coming…

Love one another.  He told them – that night, as he passed them the bread and the wine. 

In the same way that I have loved you, love one another. It’s all that really matters.

If they loved one another like this, even if he wasn’t literally with them it will feel like he is.  

If they can stay connected to this love that is inherent, perpetual – if they can be its partner. If they can help and heal in a way that is connected to their own helplessness, their own need for healing.  Then it will feel as if he never died.  

These many years later – it’s still true – when we wake in the early hours of dawn to find news of the world’s and our own brokenness then it feels as if we are too small, too limited – we are still called to offer what we can, to do what we can, and then to trust that a love is holding us through it all.

We are the shepherds, and the sheep.

We are the helpers, and the helpless.

We are the name at the center of the ring; and we are sitting at the outer-most-edge holding our arms out wide.

And the good news of Easter is that when we stay connected through it all to the love that says – You Matter.  You Belong. No matter what. If we live our lives in a way that keeps coming back to this truth.  Then we can trust that this Life, and this Love, will never die.

Amen, and alleluia.

A service for Easter. What were Jesus’ final wishes for his loved ones?

Rev. John will lead a brief communion service in the Sanctuary at the conclusion of worship.

As is my Holy Saturday custom, I’m reading Old English poem, The Dream of the Rood. I’m not committed to a particular translation, so this year using this version from Rutgers (presumably by Aaron K. Hostetter.)

Until the Resurrection morning, God bless!

As is my Holy Saturday custom, I’m reading Old English poem, The Dream of the Rood. I’m not committed to a particular translation, so this year using this version from Rutgers (presumably by Aaron K. Hostetter.)

Until the Resurrection morning, God bless!

The April UUA Board meeting packet was published today and the changes in congregational status report was longer than usual. Apart from name changes and two congregations becoming “covenanted communities” (it’s never been clear what that means) there’s this news:

NEW CONGREGATION:

Tapestry UU (Cong ID #7817), Houston, TX, … Separated from 1stUU Church of Houston multisite and became an independent congregation.

DISSOLVED CONGREGATIONS:

Original Blessings, Brooklyn, NY dissolved 3/17/2019.
All Souls UU Community, WA dissolved 9/10/2018.

It’s more accurate to say that the Tapestry Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston has re-asserted its independence by recently  coming out of a federation, even if we usually think of federations as being across denominations; after all, according to its own site, it was

originally founded in 1995 as Northwest Community Unitarian Universalist Church (NWCUUC). In December 2011, the Church merged with First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston (First UU), and its name was changed to the Copperfield Campus, and later the Tapestry Campus, of First UU.

As for those congregations that disbanded — I don’t have the heart to say dissolved, as if they were dropped in a vat of acid — let’s pause to note what’s gone.

I wrote about Original Blessing (not Blessings) just before it joined the UUA five years ago, and without belaboring the point, it’s disturbing to see one of the very few new congregations to organize in recent years disband. Their charming website is gone but — if you go to Archive.org — is not forgotten.

Founded in 1999, the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Community was until recently one of two Unitarian Universalist churches in Olympia, Washington (or in the nearby suburb of Lacey), and by far the smaller of the two. In 2009, for instance, it reported 24 members. Here’s an archive of their site from 2013; by 2014, the site’s domain had become a site for unrelated advertising.

Best wishes to all involved in what the future holds.

The April UUA Board meeting packet was published today and the changes in congregational status report was longer than usual. Apart from name changes and two congregations becoming “covenanted communities” (it’s never been clear what that means) there’s this news:

NEW CONGREGATION:

Tapestry UU (Cong ID #7817), Houston, TX, … Separated from 1stUU Church of Houston multisite and became an independent congregation.

DISSOLVED CONGREGATIONS:

Original Blessings, Brooklyn, NY dissolved 3/17/2019.
All Souls UU Community, WA dissolved 9/10/2018.

It’s more accurate to say that the Tapestry Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston has re-asserted its independence by recently  coming out of a federation, even if we usually think of federations as being across denominations; after all, according to its own site, it was

originally founded in 1995 as Northwest Community Unitarian Universalist Church (NWCUUC). In December 2011, the Church merged with First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston (First UU), and its name was changed to the Copperfield Campus, and later the Tapestry Campus, of First UU.

As for those congregations that disbanded — I don’t have the heart to say dissolved, as if they were dropped in a vat of acid — let’s pause to note what’s gone.

I wrote about Original Blessing (not Blessings) just before it joined the UUA five years ago, and without belaboring the point, it’s disturbing to see one of the very few new congregations to organize in recent years disband. Their charming website is gone but — if you go to Archive.org — is not forgotten.

Founded in 1999, the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Community was until recently one of two Unitarian Universalist churches in Olympia, Washington (or in the nearby suburb of Lacey), and by far the smaller of the two. In 2009, for instance, it reported 24 members. Here’s an archive of their site from 2013; by 2014, the site’s domain had become a site for unrelated advertising.

Best wishes to all involved in what the future holds.

As I have thought about the development of my Unitarian tradition I have come to the conclusion that there was a point when it took the wrong pathway. The point was 1838. In 1838 Ralph Waldo Emerson preached his Divinity School Address - a seminal sermon in the history of Unitarianism. In that sermon Emerson preached a religion based not on repetition of the stories of the Bible, but on an

One of the great differences I have noticed between Christians and Buddhists is how much more confident Buddhists are in their faith - and more specifically their practices. I read a lot of books about church planting, mission, fresh expressions of church, etc, etc. There's always a new book about how the Christian church should change to become more relevant, more post-modern, more this,

The Story of this Sermon

About 18 months ago, one of our church members, Mary Hill, “bought” the right to select the topic of a sermon from me at the church Auction. Usually when someone does this, they have a topic in mind – but Mary didn’t. 

But a couple months later, over dinner in downtown Denver, it came to her.  We were there because we were lucky enough to see the musical based on the life of Alexander Hamilton.  We were talking about the show, and our favorite parts – the inspiring ambition Hamilton had, his determination – all represented in his theme song that declares – I’m not going to throw away my shot.

That’s what I want my sermon to be about, Mary said, not throwing away your shot.

I nodded, and immediately tried to figure out who in the congregation could pull off that song’s rap.  

But then.  A few months later, life – happened. 

Mary got a crappy cancer diagnosis. Before long, her life was all about treatments and pain management. Which is when I started to think about her request a little differently.

I started to think about the double meaning of Hamilton’s song about his shot – as you might know from the musical or from high school history class, two literal shots -gunshots shift the whole course of Hamilton’s life.  First, a shot that killed his son Phillip. And then the shot that killed him, too early. 

What happens to our ambition, our will – when life doesn’t go the way we thought? It’s not that we threw away our shot.  It’s that the shot wasn’t what we thought it would be….life happens.  And we’re helpless to fix it.  

These questions – and also a little bit that I don’t think we have someone who can pull off that rap – are why I decided, instead of anchoring this service with the song about Hamilton not throwing away his shot, we should begin with another song, It’s Quiet Uptown.  

It’s in the middle of Act 2 when Alexander Hamilton’s son, Phillip, accepts the invitation to a duel.  Hamilton and his wife, Eliza, have been somewhat estranged – because Hamilton was obsessed with his work, and also he cheated on her, an affair she found out about when he publicly confessed. 

Hamilton had advised his son that no one really shoots in a dual, that he’d be fine.  

But it wasn’t true.  Phillip is shot, and dies with his father by him, helpless.  

This song, It’s Quiet Uptown, comes right after his death.  As Hamilton tries to make sense of this senselessness – and as the song says, learn to live with the unimaginable.    

Helpless

A few years ago, my mom decided to reclaim her attic, which resulted in a 3 box fedex delivery filled with remnants of my childhood.  

One of my favorite finds was small purple Hello Kitty diary which represented my 3rd and 4th grade years.  

Every entry is equally embarrassing and fascinating. 

One stand-out was an angry and frustrated tale of trying to teach my sister, who was two and a half years younger than me, how to ride a bike.

I was 8 at the time, so she was not quite 6.

Dear Diary,

My sister is so ungrateful!

I was trying to teach her how to a ride a bike today,

And she won’t listen.  

She was soooo cranky and stubborn.  

I was just trying to help!

I decided she was destined to never ride a bike. She was a bad listener, and she was mean.  And stupid.

This is how we all react, in the face of helplessness.

We get angry, or frustrated.  We blame.

Maybe we lecture, explain or criticize.

Help is about connection.  Helplessness cuts that connection off. 

We take helplessness personally. In my mind, my sister hated me.  Rejected me. Her inability to take my help was about me. 

Or, she was particularly stubborn, and mean.  I was helpless because of her.

Helplessness feels personal. Even though it almost always indicates that there’s stuff going on that has nothing to do with us.  

Like, a developmental stage that wasn’t yet ready to bike ride.

I start here because helplessness isn’t just a matter of life’s most extreme situations – losing a child, a cancer diagnosis…let alone a duel.  Helplessness is regular. Daily.  Familial.  

It’s our good advice our friends won’t take. It’s our aging parents.  It’s our own aging. It’s depression, and overwhelm, and stress. Helplessness is addiction. Illness. And debt. It’s job our partner can’t find. And it’s the scrolling through news on auto-pilot, seeing in an instant, one unimaginable thing after another. So much helplessness..

And helplessness is when the news gets personal – like with our compa, the woman some of our members are companioning while she awaits a decision on her asylum application. So many experiences of helplessness.  

Helplessness is born in compassion – it starts in the hope to fix, to heal, to pick up all the broken pieces, find the glue, and get to work.  It’s why helplessness can be so painful, such a shock – because we come with all our good intentions, our blessing to offer – and we meet instead – rejection. We find the limits of what we can, and cannot control.  

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, I’m guessing many of us know this prayer written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1940s. 

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

It became connected to the work of Alcohol Anonymous – as they embraced the critical step of sorting out of what is within and  beyond our control. The discerning work to not over, or under -estimate our personal power. 

Which it turns out, we aren’t always great at. Our brains trick us to believing we can fix something we actually can’t; and just as much, we can believe we have no agency or power when actually there’s a lot we could do to help.   

“Learned helplessness” is a psychological term for those times or situations where we feel helpless, but we actually aren’t. Learned helplessness can be the result of trauma – where we experience something extremely painful that we didn’t have control over, and then we apply this feeling of powerlessness broadly.

It doesn’t have to be from trauma though – one study I read talked about how students who don’t do well on math tests, as an example, come to experience a feeling of helplessness with any math-related task. Learned helplessness is an overgeneralization of our our sometimes-real-helplessness – it’s a flawed reading of reality, and even more, it’s a breakdown in our imagination.

We can’t imagine all that is possible, all the ways we might act, all the ways that life remains available to us, that life is still becoming.  Life constricts, we constrict. Pessimism has a strong correlation to feelings of helplessness.

Writer Parker Palmer talks about being caught in this sort of helplessness as a major component of his depression.  No matter what he did, or what help others tried to offer, he could not pull himself out of this dark place. He says people would come to him and say “why are you sitting here, being depressed? It’s beautiful outside.  Go feel the sunshine.  Smell the flowers.” Or, “You’re so successful, you’ve written so well. Why are you depressed?”

Next week, for our Easter service, we’re going to explore more about offering help that is actually helpful. But spoiler alert –it’s not usually helpful to try to argue someone out of their pain. This kind of admonishment often only makes us feel worse.

As Palmer says, of course, he knew “intellectually, that it’s sunny out and the flowers are lovely and fragrant, but [he couldn’t] really feel it in [his] body.” He started to feel like a fraud. Which of course made him feel even more helpless. I imagine his friends and family were also feeling pretty helpless during this time. This incredible person, who they loved, with so many gifts to offer the world, was caught and disconnected – they wanted to do something to make it, make him better. They needed him.  The world needed him. They had to be able to fix it.  Or convince him to fix it. 

It isn’t really a thing as far as I can tell, but it seems like we should call this learned over-helpfulness.  Because we are taught these things too.  We are conditioned to save, to fix, or at least to keep trying to fix – far beyond what it is actually ours, to fix, or control.

Hardly any of us are taught to give up – taught to accept things as they are – to let go of the struggle.

We aren’t taught to pause, to wait in the midst of the struggle. To be patient.  To see what happens that is not through our own doing or our own fixing.

The experience of helplessness is often a practice of patience. Realizing that help doesn’t always come on our private timetable.  Or in the way we’d like it to come.

Helplessness invites us to be present and open to all we do not know. Open and present to the other, to their suffering – to grow in empathy. And helplessness invites us to be open and present to ourselves, to our own suffering, and struggles. 

Often when we are trying to help someone else, especially over-help someone else our own pain is at play.  Some feeling is at risk that we don’t want to feel, some experience we don’t want to experience. A deep need that is just ours.  A need to be needed. To do. Whatever it is that we’ve unconsciously connected to our own worth.

Only when we pause, and get in touch with these feelings, can we breathe into the letting go. Breathe into the love that holds us, regardless of our doing, our fixing, our saving regardless of how helpful, or helpless we are.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Palmer did eventually receive help that was helpful during this time – from a friend who didn’t offer him anything that most folks would call “helpful.” Every afternoon, his friend would sit with him, and with his permission, take off his socks and shoes, and massage his feet. He hardly ever said anything. He offered no advice.  No encouragement.  Only occasionally he would say something like, “I can feel your struggle today.” He would simply report, from time to time, what he was intuiting about how Palmer was doing.  

We cannot be argued out of our helplessness. But we can be seen in our struggle, in our suffering.  And in being seen – fully we can begin to see more fully. Being accepted in our helplessness helps us to see more fully the help that is available, both within, and beyond ourselves.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

Actually, it’s not actually about knowing the difference. In my experience. Sorting out of what things we can change, and what we cannot –it’s not really about knowing.

Not in the usual way we mean knowledge, at least. It’s not facts, information, reason.

Because sometimes we can know exactly what we cannot change, and yet refuse to know.  Sometimes the knowing is too much, we close off, we shut down. And sometimes the too much overtakes us and we go the other way.

Helplessness leads to surrender, and we fall into the arms of whatever might be there.   

And we pray.

Like Alexander Hamilton, and his wife, in those days following their son’s death, we surrender to the quiet where we try to learn to live with the unimaginable. In these moments, I have come to think of the task of helplessness as less a matter of knowing, and more as a matter of forgiving.

As in: can we forgive life for not going completely according to plan?  Can we forgive ourselves for not being able to stop it, or fix it, or save it – whatever it is? Can we forgive our own limitations? Our own humanness? Can we forgive everyone, everywhere for their being human too? 

This sort of forgiveness is a practice psychologist and Buddhist teacher Tara Brach describes as the beginning of a radical acceptance. 

Which is not the same as saying everything is ok, that we’re good with it. This is important because we can get stuck here – thinking if we accept the unimaginable – then we are condoning it.  But acceptance is not the same as agreement.

Acceptance is a practice that invites us to release ourselves from judgment, release ourselves from disconnection, from the hardening and shutting down to life. Acceptance frees us into compassion, radical compassion. Acceptance, and the forgiveness that brings us to it is a practice of softening, rather than hardening our hearts, so that we can free ourselves into life’s blessing that is still available – still there.

And so we can be fully present to the gift of life that is arising even…now.

Just over 13 years ago, my partner and I brought home a 2-day old baby girl from the hospital. It was what they call, a high risk placement.

Her birth mom still had parental rights. Which meant, we were extremely aware of our own helplessness. Every call that came, we thought was the call saying she couldn’t stay.

The way we dealt with this helplessness was by taking up the very important and serious task of – worrying.

Sometimes worry works like this – like a proxy for being able to do something when we know we can’t do anything. Like a task that signals to ourselves and the world – we may not be able to stop the bad thing from happening, but we can worry about it.  

We lived a little on edge – all the time.  We wouldn’t let our friends buy us anything. And we didn’t want to name her, or act as if she was going to stay.  Imagine the heartbreak, we thought, if she has to leave, and we are left with all her stuff.  We couldn’t.

A couple weeks after we picked her up, I was talking to my sister – the same one who refused to take my help to learn to ride a bike – I was telling her how we knew that she might not get to stay, we were being careful not to love her too much. 

She responded with a real sisterly love, “That is so stupid.” 

“To her, you’re already her moms.  You can try to be all distant, but you’ll miss out on what’s happening right now, and if she doesn’t stay – your hearts will still be broken.”

And then she made me deal. “How about if I take your worry for you? I’ll worry for you, every day.  So you know it’s taken care of. But then you don’t have to do it.  And instead, you can just love her, and name her, and be her moms – now.”

Some call this invitation my sister made me, a “worry fast.”  When we actively choose to not worry – for some period of time, we just choose not to.  Worrying keeps us locked in the future that may or may not arrive – and it keeps us disconnected from what’s happening right now.

Letting go of worry, we accept what is – regardless of whether we can control it, or change, it or fix it. We accept this moment just as it is, we forgive and accept ourselves just as we are, and open ourselves to the beauty and the grace that has been there all along.

Even without someone else willing to take on your worries – anyone can go on a worry fast – for an hour a day, or more, or less. Whatever break you’ll let yourself take – so that you can be fully present to all of this.  A couple days after that call with my sister, we held our little baby at the kitchen table, and lit a candle, and named her.  

Gracie Ella. It means, she who is a gift.  

Everyday, in ways sometimes catastrophic, but more often, casual, life offers us these moments where we get to experience our helplessness. These chances to practice giving up. Giving up, and letting go, and forgiving – everything.

This chance to stop worrying and to radically accept life – as it is right now.  Even when we find ourselves face to face with the unimaginable.  

And, in the giving up, we have the chance to receive the gift, the grace – the help that holds us always, and connects us. The help that as Anne Lamott says – is always on the way.

The two Unitarian theology booklets, based on two conferences in 2016 and 2017 are now available and free to download. Click here to download the 2016 booklet, including my talk on "Some Foundations for Unitarian Theology". Click here to download the 2017 booklet, including my talk on "Dialogues of Faith: An Adamsian Approach to Unitarian Evangelism."

April’s theme is “Wholeness” – This Sunday, Rev. John takes a look at what it means to be whole as a person, a community, and a human family.

Please join us after the service in the Fellowship Hall for the dedication of our Memorial Garden.