The Birth of Ms. Kitty

When I was married, we had an old VW bus in which we traversed Colorado and parts west and east.  My husband loved the idea of communicating with the semi drivers who plied the interstates, so he bought a CB radio for the bus and we all decided on our CB "handles". 

I think Larry was Silver Bullet, our son Mike was the Midnight Bullet (I could be wrong---maybe he'll correct me), and I, riffing on the old Gunsmoke TV show, decided I would be Ms. Kitty.  This moniker was a slight dig at my husband who once complained that the term "Ms." meant manuscript.  You might be able to tell he was an English major.

In any case, after we split up amicably, we shared the bus and the boy, and I entered a whole new stage of life.  My mother had suggested I look into joining Mensa as a way of making new friends.  I hadn't given much thought to the early years when my being a brainiac in high school had invited some of those hated nicknames, but she persisted and I took the IQ test and qualified for Mensahood.

As I got acquainted with other nerds (whose chief attraction was that they thought I was funny--not funny-looking or weird, but that they laughed at my jokes), I discovered that when they heard the nickname Ms. Kitty, they loved it! 

All these new friends immediately recognized the updating of Amanda Blake, the Miss Kitty of Gunsmoke and the apparent paramour of Sheriff Matt Dillon.  I became Ms. Kitty of Denver Mile High Mensa.  Not exactly a saloon, but we did spend a certain amount of time on bar stools after meetings and at TGIFs.

Ms. Kitty became a persona for me, over time, a persona that had to be set aside during my ministry studies and the 20 years I spent in ministry.  I was essentially celibate for those 25 years and continue with that approach to new friends, being the "A" in the sexual minority alphabet, where, in my case, it stands for both Ally and asexual.  I'm past caring about having a sexual partner.  I just want friends who laugh at my jokes.

What's in a Name?

When, in 1958, I came home from high school Baptist summer camp having decided to change my nickname from Betsy (from Elizabeth) to Kit (from nothing other than it was alliterative with my surname Ketcham) and announced this to my family, I blithely thought they had taken it in stride, a phase in the life of their eldest daughter who was beginning to show signs of flying the coop.

But the truth was that I was sick of being Betsy.  Betsy sounded so immature, a pigtailed persona with pimples.  Betsy Ketcham was too easy a name to turn into semi-insulting taunts:  Ketchup, Ketchy Belchum, Betsy Wetsy, Catgut, Ketcham and Kissum, and the like.

I had learned from my dad not to rise to the bait but to laugh off the slurs rather than to get mad or hurt.  He had learned this trick as a teenager who was 6'6", 140 pounds soaking wet, and teased unmercifully as a result.  So I coped, but when I went to college, I had made up my mind:  my family could still call me Betsy, but to everyone else, I was going to be Kit.

This transition was hard on my parents, who loved the name Elizabeth and had bestowed the nickname Betsy at birth.  They still called me Betsy, even in public where my fellow college chums could hear, and my sister was miffed because I had a lot of nicknames at my disposal, like Beth and Liza, and wasn't using them.  She didn't see what was so bad about Lizzie, but I did, and I wasn't going there either.  She had a very normal name with few nickname alternatives and she was peeved that she had very little to work with.

My brother had been given a difficult name himself, named for my father and our maternal grandfather, both of these names a mouthful and always requiring an explanation, both of their origin and how to spell them.  He has grown into his difficult name and wears it proudly these days, as far as I can tell.

Now, as an adult about to achieve my 78th birthday, I have been Kit for 61 years.  Kit, of course, has its own set of take-offs:  Kit Karson, Kitty, Kitsy, and the inevitable question arises---is your real name Kathleen?  I didn't really avoid much unnecessary attention by becoming Kit.  I still, in some circles, enjoy the moniker "Ms. Kitty", as you'll see from the name of my blog.

Missing Real Contact with Friends

It struck me this morning in the middle of my 7th week of quarantine that what is getting me down these days is the lack of real contact with friends.  Yes, there's Facebook and email and Messenger and the phone, but there's no hugging, no coffees or lunches together, no singing together, no long conversations marked by laughter or tears, no cooking for guests, none of the deep normal pleasures of friendships both longtime and new.

As an extrovert with introvert tendencies, I can attest that I love the quietness, the solitude, the time to work on projects uninterrupted, the occasional sit-down at a distance with somebody equally wary about safe distance.  All these are important parts of my quarantined life and I am grateful.

But since I retired, I've had the chance to meet new friends, friends I'm not professionally connected to, friends who bring newness into my life, friends to sing with, to let down my hair with, to allow to know me more deeply than most others, to be my real self with, not the professional persona of ministry.

These (mostly women) friends have been the greatest gifts of retirement for me and I have loved the time spent with them over a glass of wine or cup of coffee, a meal, a jam session, a walk, a conversation that frequently erupted into gales of laughter, a chance to hug and be hugged, a sense of being nourished by a friendship.  Not joined at the hip but ready to meet and replenish the wells of responsible living that are easily drained down by our obligations.

Most of my friendships seem to be online or on-phone these days and I am longing for the day when I can see friends face to face, hug them, laugh with them out loud instead of with emojis.  I'm not planning to resist the rest of the quarantine but I sure will celebrate it when it comes.

Friends are clearly a lifeline for me, especially with family members far away.  This experience has made me so aware of my friendships and how important they are.  I am grateful.

Murder on the Riverwalk?

MURDER ON THE RIVERWALK?

Kit Ketcham

August 2018

         It started out innocently enough a few months ago, I swear.  I’d been hooked on the idea of a murder since my Gearhart days, wondering if it was worth the effort, worth the expense, worth the public condemnation, worth the possible repercussions, as I’d heard warnings of all of these.

         You won’t be able to quit, they told me.  You’ll get dependent on the thrill.  You’ll spend your hard-earned pennies on setting the stage, wooing the victims, arranging the set-up and following through.  Once you set things in motion, you have to continue, mindful of the enemies you may make and the friends you may lose.  And the victim may seek revenge.

         My early attempts in Gearhart were spotty and unsatisfying.  The set-up proved to be illusory, too hard to get the target to cooperate, and once I did get a feeble effort underway, I ended up moving to Astoria and having to bunch the whole deal.

         But I moved to Alderbrook in Astoria, to a spot near enough to the Riverwalk that it might be possible to pull off a murder without attracting too much attention.  So I brooded and I watched and I listened, familiarizing myself with my new environment, its challenges and its advantages.

         There’s lots of open space in the natural area, lots of trees, plenty of cover, and, early in the morning, not too many intruders on my intended territory.  The path seemed a perfect surface—easily picked clean of other debris, easy to spot the lure of the bait from the alders and willows, where my intended prey seemed to lurk.

         So I began to set the trap.  Each morning I’d fill a baggie full of bait, stuffing it in a pocket on the other side of the doggie biscuits I always carry.  If I saw an intended target, I’d make a great show of turning around and flinging my mysterious lures in the air, making sure that my motions would be easily spotted and the bait clearly visible on the path.

         The problem was that other people like to use the Riverwalk as well, so I had to conceal my murderous impulses and often make polite conversation with runners, bikers, dog walkers, and the occasional derelict sleeping on the Lewis and Clark bench.  So efforts were again spotty, with all the interruptions, but it was so clear that there was a population hungry for opportunities to group up and take chances on a mysterious snack from my hands.

         And then suddenly my potential victims did not show up at the accustomed time.  No raucous greetings, no swish of garb, no noisy thank you’s, no chatter amongst themselves.  What had happened?  Did the weather keep them away?  Had they sensed a threat?  I did see them in the distance, nearer the water, but not a one approached me and my baggie.

         They had posed for a photo earlier in the week.  I was eager to see that enthusiastic crowd again.  Was I being shunned?  How many individuals does it take to create a murder?

         Would 15 do it?  How about 25?  You be the judge.  Was there a murder on the Riverwalk

Post-College Musical Memories Part III.

After college graduation in May 1963, I spent the summer at the American Baptist Assembly grounds in Green Lake, WI, as an ice cream shop clerk, immediately gaining back all the weight I'd lost just before my senior year.

That summer, musically, was kind of like Baptist summer camp, with songfests weekly around a campfire, a little choir drummed up by the music director, and a review of a lot of Sunday School songs dressed up by the changed voices of the boys who were once sopranos and had, over time, become tenors and basses.

I'd been urged to come by a sort-of boyfriend who was part of a musical quartet invited to provide worship service music.  The romance cooled shortly after we arrived at Green Lake, but the music continued in staff housing and in theatrical productions.  And it took on a distinctive social-justice flavor. 

The South was tumultuous in the summer of 1963 and the issues of voting rights for black people, unions for blue collar workers, and women's reproductive rights were part of our cultural milieu, even far far north of the Southern states.  And the songs of social upheaval were what we sang around the campfires and after hours.

At the end of the summer, I returned to my parents' home in small town Washington, as I had no job prospects, and attempted to get back in step with conservative theologies and hymnody.  But I had learned enough about more progressive hymn writers and modern theologies of freedom that I craved music other than what we always had sung in my dad's churches.

I accepted the invitation to lead the junior choir, where I could make my own choices about songs to teach them and felt daring as I chose less traditional Christmas and Easter songs for them to sing.  Not that "I wonder as I wander" is particularly daring in itself, but it does push the envelope a bit, though it was irresistible to even the most hidebound mama in the congregation when her angelic Ruthie sang the plaintive verses in a sweet, pure soprano.

A job came along and I let someone else lead the junior choir, as I explored the new freedom of living away from home for a full year, living in the Columbia River Gorge in a tiny apartment and serving a small WA county's welfare recipients.  No music, except for records, but I did join the Columbia Record Club where you could select several records for a dollar and just pay postage.

I remember that I discovered the Swingle Singers, Norman Luboff Choir, Robert Shaw Chorale, and played and replayed the two albums our college choir had recorded during my years at Linfield.  But there wasn't much radio reception in Stevenson WA, just upriver from Bonneville Dam, so it was records or nothing until I went either to Portland (downriver) or back up to Goldendale (upriver) where reception was better.

After 18 months of serving welfare recipients in the very backwoods of rural Washington, I had a chance to move to Denver CO to be a program worker at the Denver Christian Center, and that will be a story for another day.

Love Medicine

In the May 2020 edition of Discover Magazine, I ran across an article entitled “Love Medicine” by Jeffrey Rediger, which quotes Barbara Fredrickson, a psychologist at the U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  Dr. Fredrickson has been involved in research on the link between the vagus nerve and social connections for more than 20 years, and what she’s learned from her studies is that what keeps us strong and healthy mentally is small moments of positive interaction, which she dubbed “a sort of falling in love” with the people who surround you on a day-to-day basis.  That means everyone, from your spouse and children, to the barista you’re getting to know at your corner coffee shop.

Fredrickson believes that culturally, we underestimate these fleeting moments.  To her, love is a series of “micro moments of positivity resonance” that we experience, over and over again, as we go through life.  We may have one of these interactions with a stranger at a bus stop or a million of them over the course of a lifetime with the person we marry.  

Rediger goes on to muse about an interaction he’d had soon after his interview with Fredrickson, with an older woman who was pushing a baby in a stroller as Rediger hurried toward his office.  He joined her in walking and afterwards he recognized that in that fleeting conversation, filled with laughter and friendly talk, he’d experienced a moment of real bonding with someone and exercised his vagus nerve in the process.

I was so struck by this article that I looked back at what gives me great pleasure and a sense of being right with the world.  I’m a single woman with a couple of good love experiences with a mate but with no partner or love interest in my life at present.  In fact, I’d go so far as to call myself asexual, not interested sexually or romantically in any person, male or female.  I’m happy with my celibate life and do not feel deprived by it.

And I realized that my life is enriched and made delightfully pleasant by the moments I have talking with others at the grocery store or over coffee or on the Riverwalk, the times when I extend myself to greet another person and warmly receive them into a kind of friendship, if only on the Riverwalk or over the salsa at Freddies or admiring someone’s dog or a color they’re wearing.  In fact, I go out of my way to make those connections.  And when I come home and look back, it is those moments that help me realize my own place in the universe and how I maintain it.

Incidentally, the vagus nerve is worth reading about.  Look it up.

Musical Memory Lane Part II

Let me regress to high school years briefly, for this was a period in my life where I began to realize that I could sing, could carry a tune accurately, stay on pitch, and read the alto part mostly successfully. So I joined the high school choir which introduced me to some show tunes (even though I hadn't seen the movies!), classical religious choral music, and choral renditions of folk tunes and other non-Baptist hymnody.

So I wasn't musically illiterate when I headed off to college at Linfield, a historically Baptist college but moderately liberal in its outlook on life, with historical rather than literal studies on religious topics.

Two of the first things I did at Linfield were to join a sorority and, second semester, to audition for the a cappella choir.  The sorority was local, not national, but it offered opportunities for socializing and projects with other young women.  Phi Beta Mu was a good place for me to make new friends and the choir an entirely new musical experience.

Linfield's a cappella choir was directed by a well-known Oregon conductor and musician, Dr. Robert Zimmerman who also directed the Portland symphony and chorale.  He was an exacting director, always helping us learn the skills of musicality ("you're sharp!  you're flat!" were shouted out as necessary during rehearsals) and performance (we memorized everything, we were schooled in walking onto risers, exiting the stage without stumbling, looking professional on stage, etc.).

And we sang the most beautiful religious and secular music I'd ever heard:  classics like the Faure' Requiem, Ralph Vaughan Williams' Peaceable Kingdom, Gershwin selections, show tunes, even some pop oldies that met Zim's critical standards.

We had fun, we traveled on fall and spring tours, singing nightly in Baptist churches all up and down the Pacific Northwest, romances sprang up in the chartered bus seats between the singers and the instrumentalists, our bus driven by a genial, chubby man we called Lefty, whose musical contribution was his effort to convince us that he could sing fugues.  

We sang regularly at major college occasions like graduation, welcoming new students, and Parents' Weekend.  There was status in being in the choir.  We rehearsed two or three times a week for two hours and were granted the privilege of coming to supper in the Commons late on those days because we were similar to the famous Linfield Wildcats in terms of cachet.  I was in heaven, never having had that sort of public approval in my young life!

Musical Memory Lane, Part 1

It's been fun to review (or to use the cool-kids' word "curate") my musical life, from as far back as I can remember it, which would mean starting when I was quite young---about 4 or 5.  The songs and music I heard and learned at that time were straight out of Baptist Sunday School curriculum:  Jesus Loves Me, of course, and others with a Jesus-theme.

We kids attended Sunday School first and then sat with our mother during the regular, upstairs service, participating in all the small rituals of Baptist worship (very low-church and homely), including all the old hymns, many of them rather blood-drenched in their theology but others reverent or energetic and easy to sing.

So I grew up on "Washed in the Blood" for one (fun to sing with its repetitive chorus and "warshed in the blood" rhythmically bellowed out by those of us destined to grow up with dark senses of humor and to forsake blood sacrifice theology forever) and "Wonderful Grace of Jesus", also rhythmically fun to sing and belt out its forgiveness and sunny attitude toward sin.

But a few years into my life, suddenly there appeared in our living room a turntable and a set of children's records that had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with international music, including classical themes like "Peter and the Wolf".  I suspect that our mother was the instigator of that shift in our musical tastes, with her college education and teaching experience.  I still remember some of those tunes ("There's a boat from Bahia, Bahia" and "Grand Canyon Suite" morsels) which opened me up to a wider range of musical experience.

At age 9, I moved, with our family, out to northeastern Oregon, where we kids had our first experience with public school and a public school music program:  "Happy Wanderer", "Walloping Window Blind" and the like, sung gustily by 5th and 6th graders to the accompaniment of the old upright piano played by our music/PE teacher Mrs. Lewis.

Before too many more years, I was swept up in 50's teenage culture, with Pat Boone crooning "Friendly Persuasion" over the local airwaves and "Earth Angel" the favorite request song of my friends.

High school days brought a lot of pop music---Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis the Pelvis, and others like them.  Rock and Roll hit the charts and worried the Baptists and others concerned about "modernism" in religion and in the cultural life of small town America.

In Athena, we were not "allowed" (by community norms) to attend movies, go to dances, or play cards.  We were the Preacher's Kids who had to set a different standard of teenage behavior, so my sister and I were careful about what music we told our folks we liked.

I kinda liked Johnny Cash and "I Walk the Line" which hinted at illicit behavior but didn't elaborate.  Of course, this was at the time of my life when I had just barely realized how babies were actually made.  I was smart, but not that smart.

Having started to learn piano at about age 8, I had the advantage early in life of reading music, which has served me well all my life.  It is a skill that goes beyond simple sight-reading of new music and led me into inventing my own sense of harmony and of music theory (some of which actually worked but was all seat-of-the-pants).

College years changed my tastes again.  More on that later.

All the Paid Jobs I've Had in the Past 65 years.

1,  Babysitting, 25 cents per hour
2.  Pea truck driver, 85 cents per
3.  Wheat trick driver, 1.00 per
4.  Harvest timekeeper, 1.00 per
5.  Retail clerk, JCP
6.  Row boss/bus driver, strawberries and beans
7.  Receptionist, hometown newspaper
8.  Soda jerk
9.  Welfare worker
10. Missionary
11. Office staff
12. Kelly Girl
13. Spanish teacher
13. School counselor
15. Office staff
16. Minister

Coming Out of the Religion Closet

COMING OUT OF THE RELIGION CLOSET

Rev. Kit Ketcham

Since I retired and have had time to think about more than the next deadline I faced as a minister, and since my religious journey over time has been a concern to my family members, and since I have come to see how deeply embedded in me is my Christian upbringing, I have done some important thinking about my religious life and how the changes in me have come about.  Let me set the scene a bit.

From birth through high school, ages 0-17, I was pretty much your Baptist preacher’s kid and youth.  My baptism at age 6 was meaningful to me and as I grew up, I was pretty sure I wanted to have a career serving God as I understood God at the time.

My college years at Linfield were revelatory, as I met other Christians from a diversity of backgrounds.  I loved my two required religion classes:  Life of Jesus and Basic Christian Thought.  Both gave me understandings of Jesus’ teachings and of the history of Christianity that I had not come across in Sunday School.

The summer after graduation, 1963, I served as a staff member at the American Baptist Assembly grounds in Green Lake, WI, where I encountered Christian preachers and leaders with an even broader understanding of Christianity and a Christian’s mission in the world.  Intellectual scholars like Harvey Cox and Howard Moody were among them, preaching ideas that I had not ever heard from the preachers of my youth, powerful speakers whose message was inspiring and focused on social justice and civil rights.

When I returned to Goldendale, where my family now lived, I got a job in the local WA Dept of Public Assistance, serving Old Age and Family recipients of welfare.  It was my first real glimpse of poverty.

It was hard living in Goldendale under my parents’ roof and being the preacher’s daughter again, but I had no real choice.  Being back in my father’s church and trying to respect his beliefs while hanging onto my own expanded consciousness and knowledge of a bigger Christian message than the one of supernatural events and discomfort with such issues as evolution.

But that winter I learned of a class being taught at the First Baptist church of Yakima and I braved Satus Pass at the snowiest time of year, several weeks in a row to attend the class for about 6 weeks, wanting to be among fellow seekers for something beyond conservative Christian belief.

At the very last class, I met a young man who was a minister with the American Baptists working with juvenile offenders in outdoors settings, but he also knew about job opportunities in Christian Centers across the nation.  He was charming and helpful (and cute) and helped me contact the director of the Christian Center program.  I applied and was offered a job in Denver and started in the fall of 1965.

At the Denver Christian Center, located in the inner city area of Denver, I taught a small preschool class, had after-school programs for elementary and junior high school kids, and a monthly teen canteen at night.  I was thrilled to be active in this way, working with inner city kids and their families.

The director of the DCC was the Rev. George Turner, who had marched with Martin Luther King Jr in Selma, just a couple of months before I arrived in Denver.  My co-worker Lydia Ortiz and I became fast friends.  We socialized after work, helped with the tiny Baptist congregation that met in the DCC building on Sundays, and visited families in the housing projects together.

Around Thanksgiving of that first year at the DCC, I went home to Goldendale for a visit and was invited by my dad to speak at church on Sunday.  I was eager to tell them what I was doing, how the Center worked, who we served, and at the end, I opened it up for questions.  The last question, just before the closing hymn, came from a man at the back of the sanctuary, who raised his hand and asked “how many souls have you saved for Christ?”

I was stunned.  Humanitarian aid, not evangelism, was the mission of the DCC and I tried to explain, but I don’t think I convinced him, and as I left the building that day, I said to myself, “I don’t think I’m that kind of Christian anymore, if I ever have been.”  And that question became the theme of my life for years after that day.

During the year and a half I worked there, before it became a United Way agency, Lydia and I decided to attend a Young Democrats meeting in a restaurant in downtown Denver, and it was there I met the man I came to love and marry in late 1966, a year later.

The Christian Center experiences and my marriage to Larry, who was a Unitarian, were transformative.  Moving to Denver and marrying a man from a very different faith were giant steps away from family ties and loyalties, which was very painful for my whole family and also for me.  

Moving to Denver also provided me with a much larger world than I had known before and an introduction to urban Baptist and Unitarian churches.  During my time at the DCC, I had joined the nearby Calvary Baptist church, which later disappointed me greatly by moving from the inner city to the suburbs. That seemed like a desertion of the innercity community and I was deeply bothered by their move.

The Baptists were the founders of the DCC but those Denver congregations didn’t seem very interested in helping out with our programming.  It was the Unitarian ladies’ auxiliary that provided cookies and lemonade and extra hands for my preschool kids, and this discrepancy was not lost on me:  the Unitarians were interested in social justice work; the local Baptists were not.

This was the era of the Vietnam War when churches were leery of taking political stands, no matter how justified, and Larry and I joined protesters in downtown Denver to shout slogans and oppose the war.  Again, the Unitarians were visible.  The mainline churches were not.

Another experience convinced me.  Larry and I had a chance to go through the first iteration of the Colorado Outward Bound school for teachers, another transformative experience, for sure!

As part of that six weeks course, we spent a weekend on the streets of Denver and on Sunday morning, I decided to attend church in my grubby disheveled attire.  I went to Denver’s First Baptist church, wondering what the reception would be, but I might as well have been invisible.  No eye contact, no friendly greeting, nothing.  One more disappointment from the Baptists.

So Larry and I began attending UU churches in Denver and after our son was born in 1972, we joined Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden, CO, and began to learn more about UUism.

The chief attraction for me about UUism has always been the involvement in social justice work, something that had gone missing in mainline Christianity.  I missed the stories and songs of my Christian upbringing, but I relished the intellectual content of the UU sermons I heard.  I liked the lack of emphasis on supernatural events which seemed to be the core of much of the theology of mainline churches. 
 I liked the emphasis on reason in religious thought and the acceptance of scientific evidence, particularly for the theory of evolution.

Hopping now from the 70’s to the 80’s and on into the 90’s---Larry and I were just occasional attendees of UU services until Mike was old enough to attend Sunday School and then we joined JUC.  But our marriage was bumpy at best and in 1980 we divorced.

I ended up being the one who got “custody” of the church, at least at that time, and I became much more active, singing in the choir, attending singles events, working with the social justice projects underway in this activist church.

In 1992, I was a member of the Committee on Ministry, a group which examined the various ministries of this 500 member congregation and evaluates their effectiveness, as an aid to the senior minister.  And that year, as a member of the committee, I helped to lead the Homecoming Service, which was always the 2^nd Sunday of September.

Asked to give a brief homily in the service (presumably because as a Junior high teacher and counselor who did cafeteria duty with a bullhorn, I was accustomed to speaking to herds of cats and getting them to listen to me!) I got up in the pulpit that morning, spoke about the past year, the challenges and the joys, got a few laughs, saw a few tears, and sat down again in the choir.

Our minister went to the pulpit and, into the mic and in front of all those people, he said “Kit, you missed your calling---you ought to be a minister.”

It was like a lightning bolt.  My life changed at that moment. 

Four years of seminary, plus a summer of chaplaincy internship in a trauma hospital and a yearlong internship in a Colorado UU congregation flew by and in the spring of 1999, I graduated with a Master’s of Divinity and was ordained by JUC and my internship congregation, the UU Fellowship of Boulder CO.

I wanted to relocate to the PNW where I’d grown up and applied for a fulltime position at a newly formed congregation in Portland, Wy’east UU Congregation, which was a spinoff from the large downtown Unitarian church.

At a luncheon with the board of the congregation, I was grilled on my background, how I would serve the congregation, what I would like to do as their minister, when a woman on the committee, after listening to my answer to a question, turned to me and said with glee, “I knew it, you’re a believer!”

Now, she had told me earlier that she was an affirmed atheist, so I inferred (accurately, as it turned out) that she meant I held to religious beliefs that she had discarded and was judging me, perhaps jokingly, as being on a different team, somehow.

We managed to get past that assumption on her part, but I made a personal vow that my mission as a UU minister would be to try to bridge that gap between progressive Christianity and rational humanistic but also pluralistic UUism.

It was hard.  In every congregation I have served, including PUUF, I have struggled to make the point, over and over again, that we are descendants of progressive Christianity.  Christians are not the enemy and we have nothing to be ashamed of in our long and mostly honorable history---except, perhaps, for the subtle dislike, rarely openly discussed but existing as an underground prejudice in congregational life, prejudice toward the Christian religion and its language of reverence.

To be fair, many UUs were wounded by a harsh fundamentalist theology as children and were looking for a safer religious home.  I can’t deny that and certainly understand a need to deal with that pain.  But it may need to be faced directly, instead of avoided.

My own Christian upbringing was gentle and loving and uncomplicated.  Nobody treated me badly or accused me of being a terrible sinner because I was female.  My parents had conservative beliefs and I heard many a sermon about heaven and hell, and the dangers of worldliness, like movies and dancing and card-playing.

But when I found Unitarian Universalism, which was so appealing with its courage to speak out on social issues and to get our hands dirty doing the actual work of changing the world, I just added our seven UU principles to my own understandings of Christianity, which boiled down to the teachings of Jesus and the simple statement of the prophet Micah in the Hebrew scriptures.

You may remember that Jesus, when asked for his take on the greatest commandment simply said, “You must love God with all your heart and soul and your neighbor as yourself”.  And Micah’s teaching was also simple: “What does God require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly in life.”

Both these teachings are simple; they reflect what we UUs know about the human world and how to be most effective in it.  Most of us no longer have a childlike concept of God; our studies in science and human history have taught us that whatever “God” is, it is not a being, not male or female, not even definable.  We each have our own concept of the power beyond human power, which many call God.

Like most UU congregations, PUUF has a strong and valuable strain of humanism as one of our theological sources.  It is a product of the Enlightenment of the 18^th century and the growing influence, over the centuries, of science in daily life and in our understandings.

But we can easily let the attractions of humanism sidetrack us from the beauty of a religious faith that appreciates its diverse roots and celebrates them all. And we can easily let some of the symbols and words of conservative Christianity sidetrack us from the wisdom of its prophets like Jesus and Micah.

And because some strands of the traditional Christianity we may have rejected in the past have become even more conservative, more punitive, more disconnected from scientific reality, we have allowed a scorn for Christianity generally to creep into our consciousness and create an atmosphere that can be unwelcoming to folks who walk through our doors, folk who use and love the ancient words of reverence.

I feel compelled to speak about this today because of my own journey from conservative Christianity to a religious faith that combines the teachings of Jesus and other ancient prophets with a 21^st century faith that is unafraid to challenge the oppression in the world. 

 I am a Christian Unitarian Universalist, just as some of you probably are.  Others of you are Humanist Unitarian Universalists, others Buddhist UUs or Jewish UUs.  In our faith tradition, we have Pagan UUs, Muslim UUs and birthright UUs, who are folks who were born into UUism and never left.  We are a faith of great diversity and widely varied backgrounds.

Starting next week, we will be meeting in a Presbyterian sanctuary, perhaps schmoozing with devout Christians at coffee hour and other social events.  We will doubtless join them in some of their social justice efforts.  We may listen to Pastor Bill Van Nostran preach on occasion.  We will become friends with progressive Christians and we will need to be aware of the subtle uneasiness that lies beneath the surface of our time together.

Progressive Christianity is a different breed of cat than fundamentalist Christianity.  It is a pretty close relative of ours, and the differences of the past which separated us need to be set aside in favor of the many commonalities we share, in terms of social justice work and a peaceful world.

We must not refuse to address this issue.  To be true to our seven principles and our six sources (which you can find in the first few pages of our hymnal), we must work toward understanding and accepting the fact that Christians are not dumb, not ignorant for loving the ancient stories, the language of reverence, and for feeling the presence of God in our daily lives.

As one of our spiritual ancestors, Francis David in the 16^th century, reminds us, “We need not think alike to love alike.”  I also kinda groove on Hard Rock star Alice Cooper’s statement: 

 “There’s nothing in Christianity that says I can’t be a rock star.  People have a very warped view of Christianity.  They think it’s all very precise and we never do wrong and we’re praying all day and we’re right-wing.  It has nothing to do with that.”

In closing, a little more meme wisdom: 

“In this congregation, it’s okay to be an atheist, it’s okay to be Christian, it’s okay to be Jewish, it’s okay to be pagan, it’s okay to be x, y, or z…

It’s not okay to shame other people for their beliefs, either publicly or behind their backs.”

For more perspective on UU theology and Christianity, I invite you to check out the latest UU World magazine, which you should have gotten in your mailbox this past week, for views on the teachings of Jesus and also of various activist movements that we as UUs embrace and support, created  by Christian leaders and supported by UU theology and our leadership.

Let’s pause for a time of silent reflection and prayer.

BENEDICTION:  Our worship service has ended, but our service to the world begins again as we leave this place.  Let us go in peace, remembering that our religious faith is multi-faceted and attracts a wide diversity of religious views.  Our values are our commonality, by which we covenant to accept each other with respect and encouragement to spiritual growth and healing. May we not be afraid to hear different languages of faith and may we bless the richness of our community in all its beauty.  Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.