I'm preaching on Sunday at the Skagit UUF, the third in a series on five theological questions. This sermon is about "authority" and I reprint it here, in case you're interested. I intended to offer excerpts for the latest UU blog carnival but didn't get it done.
QUESTION #3, “HOW DO I KNOW WHAT I KNOW?”
by Rev. Kit Ketcham, March 18 2007
This poem is entitled “Lament for a Wavering Viewpoint” and is by the late poet, Phyllis McGinley.
I want to be a Tory
and with the Tories stand,
Elect and bound for glory with a proud, congenial band.
Or in the Leftist hallways, I gladly would abide,
But from my youth I always could see the Other Side.
How comfortable to rest with the safe and armored folk
Congenitally blest with opinions stout as oak!
Assured that every question one single answer hath,
They keep a good digestion and they whistle in their bath.
But all my views are plastic, with neither form nor pride,
They stretch, like new elastic, around the Other Side,
And I grow lean and haggard with searching out the taint
Of hero in the blackguard or of villain in the saint.
Ah, snug lie those that slumber beneath conviction’s roof.
Their floors are sturdy lumber, their windows weatherproof.
But I sleep cold forever, and cold sleep all my kind,
For I was born to shiver in the draft from an open mind.
Born nakedly to shiver in the draft of an open mind.
My conservative Baptist minister dad used to say to me, “Honey, don’t be so openminded that your brains fall out.” He’d say this on the many occasions when I’d defend some--to him--indefensible act or position, such as my summer crushes on the handsome young men who came to town for pea harvest. Or that living with one’s future mate before marriage might be a good idea. Or that the war in Vietnam was crazy.
I never brought up my religious opinions, because I was pretty sure I’d get the same response, and yet it seemed to me that there was something worse than being so openminded that my brains fell out. It seemed to me that being so closed-minded that my brains dried up was worse. But saying so seemed tantamount to accusing him of dried up brains, and that didn’t feel so good either.
As a child, I depended on my parents and other trusted adults to tell me the truth, whether that truth was about religious beliefs or grammar principles or historical facts or Spanish vocabulary. They knew more than I did, it was clear, and I trusted their knowledge. I trusted them to be right.
As I grew older, I gradually began to realize that my parents and other adults were telling me the truth ONLY AS THEY SAW IT. Though I knew that they had my wellbeing in mind, I also began to understand that they had received their version of the truth from still other persons. Filtering this received truth through their own experience, they had passed it along to me. How many people were there in this line of truth-telling? Where did the original people get the truth?
You know how adolescent minds work--always questioning, wondering, considering alternative answers. Despite all the good advice available for free from parents, teachers, police, doctors,--- adolescents prefer to work out their own truth. “ Yeah, but, I’d rather figure it out myself” became my refrain, as I sorted through the sources of wisdom that I knew about and searched for others that made more sense. Which of course gave my dad a chance to use his other favorite stock phrase--”a yeah but is a half-brother to a halibut...”
I loved the romance and the tragedy of the ancient Christian stories: Mary’s anointing of Jesus’s feet and Jesus’ acceptance of this loving act; the commandeering of a donkey for a triumphal ride into Jerusalem; the overturning of the greedy vendors’ stalls in the temple; the clever answer to the trick question, “is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar?” the chilling words spoken at the Passover supper with his disciples--”this do in remembrance of me”; the betrayal by a kiss from Judas, a trusted disciple; the arrest in the garden and the subsequent series of denials from Peter, another trusted disciple; a kangaroo court, a condemnation, a beating, a savage public execution in front of Mary, Jesus’ mother, and all his friends.
This was all completely believable to me. As thrillers go, it ranks right up there with some of our best modern stuff. It displayed human nobility and human frailty in extremely clear detail. Shakespeare had nothing on the Gospel writers when it came to drama and tragic endings.
But that famous story as told in the Gospels of the Christian scriptures ends with a twist--a twist which turns a human tale into a ghost story. Jesus’ body disappears from the tomb in which it is placed. Angels appear to the women who are searching for his body to cleanse and wrap it. Jesus the living person reappears to his friends in several places, vanishes, and then reappears to offer them advice about evangelizing the world, building an institutional church, and living what he has taught them.
This part of that story bothered me. A lot. I didn’t know what to think about it. All the ghost stories of my youth notwithstanding, I didn’t believe people could rise from the dead. Surely there was another explanation.
In studying the Bible as literature in college, I discovered that there were actually several different versions of this story in the Gospels. Either it happened several different ways or it didn’t happen at all or somebody made it up or at least embellished it. Or maybe people dreamed it. In any case, the entire Christian tradition in all its many variants seemed to be built on a supernatural foundation. Never mind the perfectly sensible and inspiring events of Jesus’ life.
My sources of authority--how I knew what I knew--began to shift dramatically as I dealt with the ramifications of a possibly-fictional Easter.
I met non-theistic friends who told me that Easter was proof that the concept of God is absurd. What loving parent would send a beloved child to be killed as a sacrifice? This God didn’t make sense.
Nor did the Hebrew Bible seem any less fantastic in its authority. Laws which mandated that wool and cotton not be combined in fabric? Which recommended death for a myriad of seemingly minor offenses? Which dictated laws of diet that collided with modern science?
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free...”--one of Jesus’ most famous sayings. We want to find truth, to believe the truth, to be able to trust the truth we hear. We want to find reliable sources of authority. But we are hard pressed to find those reliable resources.
In the daily news, we hear conflicting reports about international events, domestic issues, political situations. Even the best medical research offers us thousands of studies proving both sides of any given subject: that butter is bad and butter is good, organic is good, organic is bad, estrogen works, estrogen harms, fiber is good, fiber doesn’t work.
If we followed all the studies available, we’d go nuts. So we sort things out according to our own experience. Uncle Bill had a heart attack and ate lots of red meat and dairy products; therefore, too much of that kind of stuff is probably not so good. We grow our vegetables organically and have few pests or diseases and all we have to wash off is the dirt, therefore organic is probably good.
The jury is still out on many issues, but we’re wary--if the market says it’s good, they’re probably saying so out of economic self-interest. Therefore, it might not be so wonderful.
Religion is a little tougher subject to sort out. Many of us were raised to revere certain texts and authority figures as sacrosanct, infallible, or at least true, if not factual. The Hebrew Bible, the Christian scriptures, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths--these are all sacred bodies of knowledge, revered by humans world-wide, accepted by many humans world-wide as absolutely true.
Now we have come to Unitarian Universalism at least partly because we have a problem with accepting a sacred written text or body of knowledge as absolutely true. We have come to Unitarian Universalism because we believe that our actions toward each other and toward the universe are more important than certain beliefs about God or the creation of the earth or the lives of the Buddha or Jesus, or Muhammed.
Yet we still need authoritative sources of knowledge. What will they be? How will we decide?
As a religious humanist, I am convinced that human experience and wisdom can be an authoritative source of my knowledge. My own experience and wisdom are authoritative for me, but may not be authoritative for others. I am willing to accept the experience and wisdom of credible others, but I insist on filtering it through my own experience and wisdom.
I accept certain texts as authoritative--the Declaration of Independence is, for me, an authoritative text, as is the Bill of Rights--imperfect as they may be, they establish principles of democracy that I believe to be right. The Constitution---with the challenges it’s getting these days and the current membership of the US Supreme Court---well, who knows?
As a Unitarian Universalist, I find great wisdom and credibility within most sacred texts. I do not consider them historical documents and would not use them as the basis for a history lesson. Yet, these poetic literary works offer me a great deal of universal wisdom: to treat others as I would be treated; to act with justice and mercy toward others; to be generous with the poor and downtrodden; to love freely and unconditionally; to express compassion and to work for freedom.
Our Unitarian Universalist principles are based upon the universal wisdom of many religious and many secular thinkers.
My friend and colleague, the Rev. Harold Rosen of Vancouver, B.C.in his book “Universal Questions: Exploring the Mysteries of Existence”, lists his methods for arriving at useful truth and declares that each balances and complements the others.
He lists as his sources of authority, how he knows what he knows, the following methods: See what you think.
The scientific method, the combination of reason and experience applied to an idea.
Common sense--a personal and practical understanding of reality.
Tradition-- accumulated patterns of thought and behavior, often of enduring usefulness and patterns which define a culture.
Intuition--a sense about the way things are that leaps ahead of ordinarily available information.
Artistic expression--a way of seeing, hearing, and feeling that is different from ordinary knowing.
Wisdom teachings--useful axioms and spiritual principles that can improve the human condition.
Revelation--direct communication of insights by prophetic personalities such as Martin Luther King Jr. and others, both ancient and modern.
In addition, Rev. Rosen believes that we are morally obligated to follow the laws of our government, except when those laws violate universal standards of justice.
So what do we use as our sources of authority? How do we sort out truth from fiction, hype from reality, ethical direction from self-serving manipulation?
Living in a multicultural world, we are always called upon to interpret and evaluate the sources of authority that bombard us. We are forced to rely upon media reports of national and international events that seem hysterical, inaccurate, and often evasive. We hear rumors and stories from friends and family about other friends and family.
We cringe at the proclamations of truth that we hear from certain groups--creation scientists, big corporations, cults and many political organizations, fundamentalist religions. We step carefully through our lives trying to live by our ethical and moral principles but always knowing we don’t have enough accurate information to know for sure.
And so we often become like Phyllis McGinley in her poem--chilled by the draft from our open minds, hoping that our brains won’t fall out but hoping just as much that our brains won’t dry up from too little openness.
How do I know what I know? I find it helpful to look at the things that I know for sure and tease out from them the reasons that I know them with such certainty. And I find that almost invariably there are common roots to my sense of certainty.
For example, I believe with all my heart that Easter is a season to celebrate, that it is deeply meaningful, that its meaning has profound consequences for my life, and that I neglect its meaning to my detriment.
Fifty years ago, my conviction was based on my Christian upbringing. I believed that it was the day that Jesus rose from the dead. My parents and teachers had told me that this was the truth, and I believed them. I found the story inspiring and the great love and sacrifice it portrayed thrilled me to the core.
But picture Kit the teenager, sitting on a windy bluff early one gray Easter morning with other youth as a single ray of sunlight pierces the clouds, singing an old hymn: “ His robe is the light, his canopy space, his chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form and bright is his path on the wings of the storm.” and then..”It breathes in the air, it shines in the light, It streams from the hills, it descends to the plain and sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.”
My understanding of the truth of the Easter message changed at that moment, from a concentration on the death and resurrection of Jesus to the ever-present, all-embracing sense of the Infinite Divine which I saw at that instant portrayed in nature to be bigger than Jesus, bigger than I was, bigger than all the doctrine I’d ever heard. With its boundary-less, inclusive power, the Living Universe subsumed the Christian message. And I would never again be satisfied by a doctrine or a creed as my source of authority.
Today I find the truth of the Easter season even more embracing as I understand the true source of its meaning and power, the Living Universe that enfolds and connects us.
Our celebrations in the spring of the year, of the Vernal Equinox, of Passover, of Easter, all come to us out of the same source of universal truth, LIFE, the life which infuses us with strength and power and inspiration and is revealed most fully in nature.
Because we are human, we have developed specific ceremonies to celebrate our sense of mystery, of gratitude, of incredible awe at the meaning of life. We celebrate the renewal of the earth in Spring, we celebrate deliverance from our enemies, we celebrate the rebirth of love.
But all our celebrations, all our joy and passion flow from a common source--our recognition that life is sacred, in all its pain and all its triumph, that living things all die and yet continue to live, whether in the fertile soil, within our hearts, within works of creativity which outlive us, in our families.
Yes, we do use our reason to determine truth; yes, we do rely on human tradition for continuity and connection. We trust our intuition, we respect our artists’ work, we use our common sense and our knowledge of wise words from various texts, and we pay attention to the prophets we hear, to discern what truth they may offer us, even when we disagree. And we trust most of the laws of our land.
But I believe that for virtually all of us, LIFE is our final authority. If it is life-giving, we can trust it. Even when it hurts, if it enhances life in its greatest form, we can believe in it. We sometimes get sidetracked by the needs of daily living--money, possessions, luxuries, are these not life? No--they are only what we accumulate in our day to day living. They are not life itself.
Life itself is in the threads that connect us, in the relationships we have with one another, with our own souls, and with the Living Universe or God as we understand God. Life is indestructible, but it can be nurtured into a greater profusion of joy and passion by our careful attending to its growth, its needs.
And we will goof up! We will make mistakes about what is lifegiving, life-enhancing. So will those around us. In the 2004 election, our nation voted to continue the efforts of the Bush administration to force controversial US policies on the world. In the 2006 election, we rectified that mistake, to some degree.
We live in a democratic society, where the will of the majority calls the shots. During the earlier election, the majority chose a path which has not proved to be life-enhancing, life-giving. Many of us thought it was a terrible, destructive path and in the recent election have tried to mitigate the damage and protest the injustices in process.
Life continues, but in a somewhat different direction because of that choice. How will our choices spin out in the coming years and the coming elections? The political scene tends to be cyclical. When it is our turn to be the majority---which it is now for awhile---how will we respond? Can we help those who disagree with us see our point of view? Can we see theirs? Can we forgive each other for the mistakes we each have made?
For forgiveness is life giving. It is never easy to let go of hurt and anger, and in many ways, the ancient human dramas of Easter and Passover are not ended. Jesus set an example on the cross when he prayed for his killers’ forgiveness. Can the Jews forgive the enemies who have persecuted them for centuries? Can the Palestinians forgive the Jews? Can the Christians forgive those who refuse to believe and do things their way? Can the earth forgive the torture it has endured? Can we forgive those who have hurt us?
As we get ready to celebrate spring in all its glory, let us consider how well we use our sources of authority, whether we are true to LIFE and its gifts, or whether we ignore its call. May we rededicate ourselves in love to LIFE, for ourselves, for each other, and for the Living Universe of which we are a part. Let's pause for a time of silent reflection and prayer.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Work Party and Koffee Klatch serve as covers for collecting sermon data
In a little while I'll be going off to work with other Whidbey folks on our forested lot, where soon a new UU church building will rise, thanks to the hands-on efforts and the financial support of the UUCWI congregation.
We will soon sign mortgage papers, hold a groundbreaking ceremony, and start pounding nails, but today's work will be clearing ground a little more, getting rid of slash (PNW term for cleared brush and limb piles), and trading jokes with the assembled crew of folks from the congregation.
Also this morning, I will go to SEKK (South End Koffee Klatch) down by the ferry dock and spend a couple of hours chatting with whoever shows up, including the barista, Rene, at Rockhoppers coffee shop. Rene is a UU and we meet at her folk-art-bedecked shop every month.
But today is also the day I need to write the sermon for Sunday and I've been looking for the right way to start it out. My work on the land and attending the koffee klatch are actually secret missions to look for what is at the heart of this congregation, this community.
The sermon title is "Faithfulness to our covenant with our commmunity" and you'll hear more about it later in the week.
We will soon sign mortgage papers, hold a groundbreaking ceremony, and start pounding nails, but today's work will be clearing ground a little more, getting rid of slash (PNW term for cleared brush and limb piles), and trading jokes with the assembled crew of folks from the congregation.
Also this morning, I will go to SEKK (South End Koffee Klatch) down by the ferry dock and spend a couple of hours chatting with whoever shows up, including the barista, Rene, at Rockhoppers coffee shop. Rene is a UU and we meet at her folk-art-bedecked shop every month.
But today is also the day I need to write the sermon for Sunday and I've been looking for the right way to start it out. My work on the land and attending the koffee klatch are actually secret missions to look for what is at the heart of this congregation, this community.
The sermon title is "Faithfulness to our covenant with our commmunity" and you'll hear more about it later in the week.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Faithfulness: Our Covenant with Self
A sermon preached at the UU Congregation of Whidbey Island, March 11, 2007.
FAITHFULNESS: OUR COVENANT WITH SELF
by Rev. Kit Ketcham, March 11, 2007
In this first of three sermons on the linked ideas of faithfulness and covenant, I want to check and see if we’re all on the same page when it comes to the definition of these ideas.
What’s a one-word definition, for you, of covenant?
Of faithfulness?
In this series, I want to expand on our understandings of those two familiar words and help us think about them in terms of our religious faith as Unitarian Universalists. We will consider three covenants in our lives that have particular significance in our free faith: our covenant with our selves, our covenant with our faith community, and our covenant with the universe, or God as you understand God.
What is a covenant, and what does it mean to us? Your definitions reflect much of what my American Heritage dictionary says: a covenant is a formal, binding agreement, a compact, a contract, a bargain, a deal. Religious covenants are a little different from this; a religious covenant is often unspoken and resonates with expectations and hopes about how the religious community will be together. Covenants, in religious life, mean promises, commitments, vows, pledges. We think of a marriage covenant, of a pledge to love, honor, and cherish.
Faithfulness, too, has dual implications, from mundane meanings such as “accurate” and “true” and “firm adherence to a policy” to meanings with a more reverent or ethical essence: loyalty, devotion, fidelity, trustworthiness, reliability.
One of my favorite old hymns from my Baptist upbringing was “Great is Thy Faithfulness”. We sang it a lot and when my mother died, we chose it as a hymn for her memorial service. And as I led that singing, on that beautiful June afternoon, the words suddenly meant something new to me.
Some of those old words go like this: “Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness, there is no shadow of turning with thee, thou changest not, thy compassions, they fail not. As thou hast been, thou forever will be.” And “morning by morning, new mercies I see. All I have needed thy hand has provided, great is thy faithfulness unto me.”
My mother’s face filled my mind as we all sang these words. If ever there was an example of faithfulness, it was my mother, I realized. All these words applied to her as well as to the God she felt so close to.
My mother and I had had our differences. She died in 1994, a lady with an uncommon amount of spirit and life, a lover of nature, of people, of God. A wife loyal beyond death, she never remarried after my father died, though the twinkle in her eye still attracted many an elderly swain.
As an oversensitive teenager, I vividly remember walking with my mother on an Oregon beach and cringing as she flung her arms wide to the grey sky with a line from Edna St. Vincent Millay, “O world, I cannot hold thee close enough”. Without a concern in her head about how cute guys might view the daughter of such a maniac, she loudly sang her joy to God, she smiled and talked to every passerby, she clasped my hand to her cheek in saltwatery ecstasy.
When I grew older and moved away from home, her letters exhorting me to remember my childhood faith annoyed and troubled me. My childhood faith had metamorphosed drastically and her insistence was embarrassing. In vain, I exhorted her in return. She should examine the inconsistencies in her own beliefs! She should see how honest and true I was in my reworked faith! She should leave me alone!
Twenty years of infrequent visits ended in November of 1990, when the call came from my sister, “Mom’s had a stroke, it doesn’t look good. Can you come home?”
When I walked into the hospital room in Vancouver, WA, her snowy hair was tousled on the pillow and she was paler than I thought possible. One side of her body was floppy-looking, as though the starch were gone. Green, unfocused eyes regarded my approach and then snapped to attention. A brilliant half-smile illuminated her pale face: “Oh, Betsy” was all she could muster.
She wanted to die. Over the next few days, with gestures and tears, she told me wordlessly of her anguish. She could not talk intelligibly. Three or four words might emerge before nonsense syllables elbowed meaning aside. She was embarrassed by her weakness, ashamed of her need for constant supervision.
And my father, her lover, was waiting for her. Beyond her crippled human form, she knew that his long arms were outstretched, ready to enfold her again. Impatience and frustration flashed from eyes which could see him there, just beyond the bar.
But as days passed and she got stronger and more able to care for herself, my mother gradually conceded her defeat. This was, apparently, not “it”. And she began to take delight in life again, roaring with surprised laughter on Thanksgiving night as kids and grandkids and nieces and nephews conga-ed into her room to the tune of “Over the River and Through the Woods, to Grandmother’s house we go”.
Again, tears and gestures and, this time, a determined set of the jaw communicated her intent: God hadn’t wanted her to come yet; He must have more work for her to do here on earth.
My mother was my lesson in faithfulness to the covenant with self.
What is the very first covenant we experience at our birth? I think we are born into a covenant with life. We are born with the will to live; instinctively we struggle to stay alive, against all odds. No matter how tiny the baby, once it is born alive, its mission is to live, to continue to breathe, to request what it needs through that most poignant of expressions, the cry of a tiny child.
Concurrent with this covenant are other innate and involuntary agreements---to learn what one must do to live, beyond breathing; to be a member of a family group; and, possibly, to be a participant in a religious group. These covenants we inherit at birth; living is instinctual and we learn, as children, without thinking much about it. Our family group, whatever it might look like, we manage with the learned behaviors that have kept us fed and comfortable as we grew. And our religious group, if our family is so inclined, is inherited at birth. We are born into Catholicism, or Hinduism, or atheism or whatever our parents’ belief system might be.
We discover our covenants with life and their meanings and consequences gradually and we may move in and out of them as we grow older.
In our reading by Wendell Berry, the protagonist, Jayber Crow, confides that his being taken in at age three by Aunt Cordie and Uncle Othy after his young parents died was a blessing he did not fully know until later. Their faithfulness to him forged in him an unbreakable connection to living fully.
And Theodora, in our story for all ages, lets go, for awhile, of her covenant with life because of the chilling effects of the magic mirror, which had convinced her that she was worthless. When she relinquished the mirror, her faithfulness to her covenant with life was restored.
My mother, even with grief and worry over a recalcitrant daughter, was faithful to her covenant with life, living out of her innate drive to love, to use the talents she was born with, to express her joy and gratitude for life in a thousand ways, whether those ways were wild and demonstrative or sedate and proper.
How are we doing with our own personal covenants with life? By now, our covenant with life has grown beyond the breathing, eating, drinking, and eliminating stage. We have taken all we’ve learned and we’ve made some conscious choices.
We may have consciously diverged from the early patterns that we inherited at our birth, our learnings about surviving in the world, our family expectations, and our religious upbringing. But the grooves are worn deep from those early years and we may still be affected by them.
It’s been pretty well established by science that patterns in families tend to be present over several generations. Family systems theory holds that addictions, for example, may be present in a family going back several generations. The evidence points not to genetics as a cause but toward patterns of deeply ingrained behavior, inculcated over generations, that encourage repetition of a harmful behavior.
Additional research shows that traumatic events in a person’s life can create wounds that take years to heal and may never heal unless the person is able to acknowledge the wound and take steps to heal the hurt.
Even more interesting is that traumatic events in a parent’s life will likely, unless treated, cause children and grandchildren to reflect the pain that occurred in their elders’ lives, perhaps decades ago.
Unexpressed grief, for example, grief for which there has been no comforting compassion, no outlet, goes underground and emerges again in the lives of children yet to be born. Some of us may know someone, or may have experienced personally, the loss of a parent in childhood. Such a loss leaves a hole in the heart and, unless grieved adequately, can affect one’s relationship with one’s own children, because one’s covenant with life has been violated, one’s trust in the goodness of living has been shaken.
We as Unitarian Universalists have as our first guiding principle the affirmation of that covenant with life, when we say to each other and to the world that we covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We as a religious tradition are committed to assisting individuals live out of their inherent worth and dignity.
We recognize that many persons with inherent worth and dignity squander that essential resource over a lifetime, and yet we believe that it is there at birth, and we are committed to lifting it up, helping others see it, and repairing that damaged sense of worth and dignity if at all possible.
Where others may see hopeless, sinful behavior and exhort the sinner to repent of whatever it is---homosexuality, for example---we find acceptance to be more promising, more life-giving, more loving.
As individuals, we each strive to maintain the healthiest covenant with life we can attain. We eat well, we exercise, we nurture our relationships, we get therapy if we need it. And we do what we can to heal ourselves from old wounds. We look for ways to find wholeness.
One of the old wounds many of us have deep inside concerns money. Our attitude toward money is often conflicted, uncomfortable, anxious. I know of people who stay home from church when it’s canvass season! Obviously, nobody here at UUCWI would do such a thing! But money is a touchy subject.
Take, for example, the adult who grew up with parents shaped by the Depression. I've seen this go several different ways. One may feel desperate to hoard resources, treating others stingily out of fear of deprivation. Another discovers credit card heaven and, afraid that gratification will never come if s/he waits, dives into the world of excessive spending and huge debt.
Most of us fall somewhere in between these two extremes, but many of us bring this kind of experience into our adult lives and struggle with it as we try to navigate our way through the many requests for our cash.
We know our churches need to be financed adequately. We know we can’t successfully carry out our mission without folks’ generosity and yet we don’t want to hear about the congregation’s budget needs because it touches something really tender and sensitive inside us. We feel badgered about money even if it only comes up once in awhile. Our personal finances are also a touchy subject; we don’t advertise how much we make nor do we tell people how much our possessions or our enjoyments cost us. We’re always looking for a bargain or feeling guilty if we don’t get something at the best price.
I spoke a few moments ago about how old, even historic, wounds can cause pain generations later. And I’d like to invite us all to take a moment of silence and think back to our earliest experiences with money, how our parents and other elders treated money, talked about it, used it, or even abused it.
When I thought about my history with money, I remembered how little there was of it when I was growing up, the produce and other gifts of food that subbed for a paycheck sometimes for my dad. And then I went farther back in my family history and remembered that my paternal grandfather had been a railroad worker who shot his hand off while hunting near his Missouri home. That ended his prospects with the railroad, so my granddad turned to moonshining as a way of supporting his wife and seven children.
My dad, when he was 13, got caught up in his dad’s moonshining and might have been arrested or even killed while making his deliveries. But his mother wisely shipped him off to Wyoming to live with family friends and work on a ranch, to get him out of the moonshine business.
When my parents met, my mother was a schoolteacher near Payette ID, scraping by on a tiny salary. After their marriage they went to Chicago to attend Moody Bible Institute and train for the ministry, just as the Depression was hitting. The Depression hit this young couple hard. My parents had come from slim pickings already and were thrown into the Depression with nothing to spare.
Surviving seminary on dented canned pears and mashed potato sandwiches, blackening white underwear with shoe polish to hide holes in the seat of their britches, my parents struggled to contain their desire for nice things and found credit awfully tempting when they returned to the Northwest to go into the ministry, though gratitude for their survival was expressed in their regular pattern of tithing.
They managed to provide well for us kids and I grew up not consciously realizing the extent of their anxiety about money, though I quickly came to see that anxiety in myself as my vulnerability to easy credit became evident. It took me a long time to come to the point where debt did not rule my life. And even today, I feel anxious about having enough.
So canvass season is hard for many of us, and I am no exception. I confess to continued (mostly subconscious) anxiety about money and whether I will have enough to live on, even though I know I am pretty much okay, financially.
One of the reasons I am telling you this today is that I want to face my own fears about money, for as our comfort level with money improves, we feel less fearful about money talk; we can ask for what we need; and we can be compassionate about others’ fears.
In closing I want to add that I learned, over a period of several years, as I paid off credit card debt and a second mortgage, that when I gave my money generously to the causes I supported, I felt healthier, less fearful about whether I could make it or not financially. An attitude of generosity and gratitude became my tool for healing my anxiety, my overspending, and my need for instant gratification. Being generous makes me feel rich!
Let’s pause for a time of silent reflection and prayer.
HYMN # 295 “Sing Out Praises for the Journey”
BENEDICTION: Our worship service, our time of shaping worth together, is ended, but our service to the world begins again as we leave this place. Let us go in peace, remembering to be mindful of our covenant with life, nurturing and taking care of ourselves, considering our anxieties, and finding healing in generosity to ourselves and to each other. Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.
FAITHFULNESS: OUR COVENANT WITH SELF
by Rev. Kit Ketcham, March 11, 2007
In this first of three sermons on the linked ideas of faithfulness and covenant, I want to check and see if we’re all on the same page when it comes to the definition of these ideas.
What’s a one-word definition, for you, of covenant?
Of faithfulness?
In this series, I want to expand on our understandings of those two familiar words and help us think about them in terms of our religious faith as Unitarian Universalists. We will consider three covenants in our lives that have particular significance in our free faith: our covenant with our selves, our covenant with our faith community, and our covenant with the universe, or God as you understand God.
What is a covenant, and what does it mean to us? Your definitions reflect much of what my American Heritage dictionary says: a covenant is a formal, binding agreement, a compact, a contract, a bargain, a deal. Religious covenants are a little different from this; a religious covenant is often unspoken and resonates with expectations and hopes about how the religious community will be together. Covenants, in religious life, mean promises, commitments, vows, pledges. We think of a marriage covenant, of a pledge to love, honor, and cherish.
Faithfulness, too, has dual implications, from mundane meanings such as “accurate” and “true” and “firm adherence to a policy” to meanings with a more reverent or ethical essence: loyalty, devotion, fidelity, trustworthiness, reliability.
One of my favorite old hymns from my Baptist upbringing was “Great is Thy Faithfulness”. We sang it a lot and when my mother died, we chose it as a hymn for her memorial service. And as I led that singing, on that beautiful June afternoon, the words suddenly meant something new to me.
Some of those old words go like this: “Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness, there is no shadow of turning with thee, thou changest not, thy compassions, they fail not. As thou hast been, thou forever will be.” And “morning by morning, new mercies I see. All I have needed thy hand has provided, great is thy faithfulness unto me.”
My mother’s face filled my mind as we all sang these words. If ever there was an example of faithfulness, it was my mother, I realized. All these words applied to her as well as to the God she felt so close to.
My mother and I had had our differences. She died in 1994, a lady with an uncommon amount of spirit and life, a lover of nature, of people, of God. A wife loyal beyond death, she never remarried after my father died, though the twinkle in her eye still attracted many an elderly swain.
As an oversensitive teenager, I vividly remember walking with my mother on an Oregon beach and cringing as she flung her arms wide to the grey sky with a line from Edna St. Vincent Millay, “O world, I cannot hold thee close enough”. Without a concern in her head about how cute guys might view the daughter of such a maniac, she loudly sang her joy to God, she smiled and talked to every passerby, she clasped my hand to her cheek in saltwatery ecstasy.
When I grew older and moved away from home, her letters exhorting me to remember my childhood faith annoyed and troubled me. My childhood faith had metamorphosed drastically and her insistence was embarrassing. In vain, I exhorted her in return. She should examine the inconsistencies in her own beliefs! She should see how honest and true I was in my reworked faith! She should leave me alone!
Twenty years of infrequent visits ended in November of 1990, when the call came from my sister, “Mom’s had a stroke, it doesn’t look good. Can you come home?”
When I walked into the hospital room in Vancouver, WA, her snowy hair was tousled on the pillow and she was paler than I thought possible. One side of her body was floppy-looking, as though the starch were gone. Green, unfocused eyes regarded my approach and then snapped to attention. A brilliant half-smile illuminated her pale face: “Oh, Betsy” was all she could muster.
She wanted to die. Over the next few days, with gestures and tears, she told me wordlessly of her anguish. She could not talk intelligibly. Three or four words might emerge before nonsense syllables elbowed meaning aside. She was embarrassed by her weakness, ashamed of her need for constant supervision.
And my father, her lover, was waiting for her. Beyond her crippled human form, she knew that his long arms were outstretched, ready to enfold her again. Impatience and frustration flashed from eyes which could see him there, just beyond the bar.
But as days passed and she got stronger and more able to care for herself, my mother gradually conceded her defeat. This was, apparently, not “it”. And she began to take delight in life again, roaring with surprised laughter on Thanksgiving night as kids and grandkids and nieces and nephews conga-ed into her room to the tune of “Over the River and Through the Woods, to Grandmother’s house we go”.
Again, tears and gestures and, this time, a determined set of the jaw communicated her intent: God hadn’t wanted her to come yet; He must have more work for her to do here on earth.
My mother was my lesson in faithfulness to the covenant with self.
What is the very first covenant we experience at our birth? I think we are born into a covenant with life. We are born with the will to live; instinctively we struggle to stay alive, against all odds. No matter how tiny the baby, once it is born alive, its mission is to live, to continue to breathe, to request what it needs through that most poignant of expressions, the cry of a tiny child.
Concurrent with this covenant are other innate and involuntary agreements---to learn what one must do to live, beyond breathing; to be a member of a family group; and, possibly, to be a participant in a religious group. These covenants we inherit at birth; living is instinctual and we learn, as children, without thinking much about it. Our family group, whatever it might look like, we manage with the learned behaviors that have kept us fed and comfortable as we grew. And our religious group, if our family is so inclined, is inherited at birth. We are born into Catholicism, or Hinduism, or atheism or whatever our parents’ belief system might be.
We discover our covenants with life and their meanings and consequences gradually and we may move in and out of them as we grow older.
In our reading by Wendell Berry, the protagonist, Jayber Crow, confides that his being taken in at age three by Aunt Cordie and Uncle Othy after his young parents died was a blessing he did not fully know until later. Their faithfulness to him forged in him an unbreakable connection to living fully.
And Theodora, in our story for all ages, lets go, for awhile, of her covenant with life because of the chilling effects of the magic mirror, which had convinced her that she was worthless. When she relinquished the mirror, her faithfulness to her covenant with life was restored.
My mother, even with grief and worry over a recalcitrant daughter, was faithful to her covenant with life, living out of her innate drive to love, to use the talents she was born with, to express her joy and gratitude for life in a thousand ways, whether those ways were wild and demonstrative or sedate and proper.
How are we doing with our own personal covenants with life? By now, our covenant with life has grown beyond the breathing, eating, drinking, and eliminating stage. We have taken all we’ve learned and we’ve made some conscious choices.
We may have consciously diverged from the early patterns that we inherited at our birth, our learnings about surviving in the world, our family expectations, and our religious upbringing. But the grooves are worn deep from those early years and we may still be affected by them.
It’s been pretty well established by science that patterns in families tend to be present over several generations. Family systems theory holds that addictions, for example, may be present in a family going back several generations. The evidence points not to genetics as a cause but toward patterns of deeply ingrained behavior, inculcated over generations, that encourage repetition of a harmful behavior.
Additional research shows that traumatic events in a person’s life can create wounds that take years to heal and may never heal unless the person is able to acknowledge the wound and take steps to heal the hurt.
Even more interesting is that traumatic events in a parent’s life will likely, unless treated, cause children and grandchildren to reflect the pain that occurred in their elders’ lives, perhaps decades ago.
Unexpressed grief, for example, grief for which there has been no comforting compassion, no outlet, goes underground and emerges again in the lives of children yet to be born. Some of us may know someone, or may have experienced personally, the loss of a parent in childhood. Such a loss leaves a hole in the heart and, unless grieved adequately, can affect one’s relationship with one’s own children, because one’s covenant with life has been violated, one’s trust in the goodness of living has been shaken.
We as Unitarian Universalists have as our first guiding principle the affirmation of that covenant with life, when we say to each other and to the world that we covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We as a religious tradition are committed to assisting individuals live out of their inherent worth and dignity.
We recognize that many persons with inherent worth and dignity squander that essential resource over a lifetime, and yet we believe that it is there at birth, and we are committed to lifting it up, helping others see it, and repairing that damaged sense of worth and dignity if at all possible.
Where others may see hopeless, sinful behavior and exhort the sinner to repent of whatever it is---homosexuality, for example---we find acceptance to be more promising, more life-giving, more loving.
As individuals, we each strive to maintain the healthiest covenant with life we can attain. We eat well, we exercise, we nurture our relationships, we get therapy if we need it. And we do what we can to heal ourselves from old wounds. We look for ways to find wholeness.
One of the old wounds many of us have deep inside concerns money. Our attitude toward money is often conflicted, uncomfortable, anxious. I know of people who stay home from church when it’s canvass season! Obviously, nobody here at UUCWI would do such a thing! But money is a touchy subject.
Take, for example, the adult who grew up with parents shaped by the Depression. I've seen this go several different ways. One may feel desperate to hoard resources, treating others stingily out of fear of deprivation. Another discovers credit card heaven and, afraid that gratification will never come if s/he waits, dives into the world of excessive spending and huge debt.
Most of us fall somewhere in between these two extremes, but many of us bring this kind of experience into our adult lives and struggle with it as we try to navigate our way through the many requests for our cash.
We know our churches need to be financed adequately. We know we can’t successfully carry out our mission without folks’ generosity and yet we don’t want to hear about the congregation’s budget needs because it touches something really tender and sensitive inside us. We feel badgered about money even if it only comes up once in awhile. Our personal finances are also a touchy subject; we don’t advertise how much we make nor do we tell people how much our possessions or our enjoyments cost us. We’re always looking for a bargain or feeling guilty if we don’t get something at the best price.
I spoke a few moments ago about how old, even historic, wounds can cause pain generations later. And I’d like to invite us all to take a moment of silence and think back to our earliest experiences with money, how our parents and other elders treated money, talked about it, used it, or even abused it.
When I thought about my history with money, I remembered how little there was of it when I was growing up, the produce and other gifts of food that subbed for a paycheck sometimes for my dad. And then I went farther back in my family history and remembered that my paternal grandfather had been a railroad worker who shot his hand off while hunting near his Missouri home. That ended his prospects with the railroad, so my granddad turned to moonshining as a way of supporting his wife and seven children.
My dad, when he was 13, got caught up in his dad’s moonshining and might have been arrested or even killed while making his deliveries. But his mother wisely shipped him off to Wyoming to live with family friends and work on a ranch, to get him out of the moonshine business.
When my parents met, my mother was a schoolteacher near Payette ID, scraping by on a tiny salary. After their marriage they went to Chicago to attend Moody Bible Institute and train for the ministry, just as the Depression was hitting. The Depression hit this young couple hard. My parents had come from slim pickings already and were thrown into the Depression with nothing to spare.
Surviving seminary on dented canned pears and mashed potato sandwiches, blackening white underwear with shoe polish to hide holes in the seat of their britches, my parents struggled to contain their desire for nice things and found credit awfully tempting when they returned to the Northwest to go into the ministry, though gratitude for their survival was expressed in their regular pattern of tithing.
They managed to provide well for us kids and I grew up not consciously realizing the extent of their anxiety about money, though I quickly came to see that anxiety in myself as my vulnerability to easy credit became evident. It took me a long time to come to the point where debt did not rule my life. And even today, I feel anxious about having enough.
So canvass season is hard for many of us, and I am no exception. I confess to continued (mostly subconscious) anxiety about money and whether I will have enough to live on, even though I know I am pretty much okay, financially.
One of the reasons I am telling you this today is that I want to face my own fears about money, for as our comfort level with money improves, we feel less fearful about money talk; we can ask for what we need; and we can be compassionate about others’ fears.
In closing I want to add that I learned, over a period of several years, as I paid off credit card debt and a second mortgage, that when I gave my money generously to the causes I supported, I felt healthier, less fearful about whether I could make it or not financially. An attitude of generosity and gratitude became my tool for healing my anxiety, my overspending, and my need for instant gratification. Being generous makes me feel rich!
Let’s pause for a time of silent reflection and prayer.
HYMN # 295 “Sing Out Praises for the Journey”
BENEDICTION: Our worship service, our time of shaping worth together, is ended, but our service to the world begins again as we leave this place. Let us go in peace, remembering to be mindful of our covenant with life, nurturing and taking care of ourselves, considering our anxieties, and finding healing in generosity to ourselves and to each other. Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.
Covenants and Money
Yesterday's sermon went over pretty well and I was pleased by the response of those who attended the service. The sermon segued from our involuntary covenant with life, to the choices we make about which early covenants we will keep and how, to the deep grooves worn in our hearts by the experiences we've had in our lives, and on to how our early experiences with money have made us touchy about money.
Of course, folks could have just been enthusiastic because the power went off in the middle of the service, since winds were howling across the island all day, and my "teacher voice" reached to the far corners of the room without amplification. We have a fair number of folks who have hearing deficits and can't enjoy the service unless they can hear it.
And it's a good thing we now are on daylight savings time, because we had enough daylight to read the hymnal by! We have 4 p.m. services and we wouldn't have had enough daylight to have an enjoyable service, had we not all woken up at 2 a.m. to set the clocks ahead. You did, didn't you?
Of course, folks could have just been enthusiastic because the power went off in the middle of the service, since winds were howling across the island all day, and my "teacher voice" reached to the far corners of the room without amplification. We have a fair number of folks who have hearing deficits and can't enjoy the service unless they can hear it.
And it's a good thing we now are on daylight savings time, because we had enough daylight to read the hymnal by! We have 4 p.m. services and we wouldn't have had enough daylight to have an enjoyable service, had we not all woken up at 2 a.m. to set the clocks ahead. You did, didn't you?
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Why are many people hesitant about giving generously to their religious community?
I brainstormed a few possibilities about the fearful giver while thinking about my upcoming sermon series on Faithfulness and Covenant. Please add things I might not have thought of.
In no particular order:
--if we are angry come-outers from another tradition,
will we be deceived here?
--if we live at a fixed income,
will our giving generously cut into our ability to live comfortably?
--if we give to many causes,
is our congregation as worthy as the other causes we support?
--if we need companionship and connection,
will we find it here?
--if we have spent foolishly in the past,
will we be spending foolishly here?
--if we have been wounded by money in some way,
will that happen to us here?
--if we are generous,
will we set a standard that we may not be able to live up to later?
Many people, not just UUs, are fearful, not cheerful, givers. They may have grown up in a culture of scarcity because of the Depression, family patterns, Me First-ness, and a host of other reasons.
Instead of scolding them for their fear, it seems to me better to understand it and encourage them to deal with it effectively. I think people want to be generous but are afraid.
In no particular order:
--if we are angry come-outers from another tradition,
will we be deceived here?
--if we live at a fixed income,
will our giving generously cut into our ability to live comfortably?
--if we give to many causes,
is our congregation as worthy as the other causes we support?
--if we need companionship and connection,
will we find it here?
--if we have spent foolishly in the past,
will we be spending foolishly here?
--if we have been wounded by money in some way,
will that happen to us here?
--if we are generous,
will we set a standard that we may not be able to live up to later?
Many people, not just UUs, are fearful, not cheerful, givers. They may have grown up in a culture of scarcity because of the Depression, family patterns, Me First-ness, and a host of other reasons.
Instead of scolding them for their fear, it seems to me better to understand it and encourage them to deal with it effectively. I think people want to be generous but are afraid.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Dixie Chicks rule!
I liked the old Dixie Chicks better than the reconstituted version. That is, the Dixie Chicks who performed at bluegrass festivals in Colorado in the early nineties---they were oldtime country and sang old Patsy Cline and Dale Evans stuff, which I loved.
When they fired their lead singer (whose name I don't remember) and brought on Natalie Maines, their style changed, became more slick and bigtime, and their popularity soared, making them THE most popular female band in existence.
Until the eve of the Iraq war, when Natalie made her infamous comment at a London performance, "just so you know, we're ashamed that President Bush is from Texas"! Hate mail, death threats, dumped by country stations, picketed by all and sundry, the Chicks looked like goners.
I just finished watching their recently released DVD "Shut Up and Sing" after having purchased the CD "Taking the Long Way" and knowing the songs now well enough to beller along in the car, "I'm not ready to make nice, I wouldn't do it if I could...".
In the documentary, I was impressed by the Chicks and their sturdy resistance to backing down from their point of view. They were scared their careers were in the tank, but they didn't blame Natalie or kick her out, they didn't capitulate to get their country fans back, and they stuck to their guns.
And we know now that their CD won Grammys and that they are once again on top of the music heap. And they were right about the war and President Bush.
When they fired their lead singer (whose name I don't remember) and brought on Natalie Maines, their style changed, became more slick and bigtime, and their popularity soared, making them THE most popular female band in existence.
Until the eve of the Iraq war, when Natalie made her infamous comment at a London performance, "just so you know, we're ashamed that President Bush is from Texas"! Hate mail, death threats, dumped by country stations, picketed by all and sundry, the Chicks looked like goners.
I just finished watching their recently released DVD "Shut Up and Sing" after having purchased the CD "Taking the Long Way" and knowing the songs now well enough to beller along in the car, "I'm not ready to make nice, I wouldn't do it if I could...".
In the documentary, I was impressed by the Chicks and their sturdy resistance to backing down from their point of view. They were scared their careers were in the tank, but they didn't blame Natalie or kick her out, they didn't capitulate to get their country fans back, and they stuck to their guns.
And we know now that their CD won Grammys and that they are once again on top of the music heap. And they were right about the war and President Bush.
An involuntary covenant
I'm about halfway finished with this Sunday's sermon entitled "Faithfulness to Our Covenant With Self" and hope to finish it today. When I was in the cogitating phase (which for me lasts from the time the idea arrives in my mind---well before the newsletter deadline, hopefully---until I sit down to figure out hymns, readings, intergen story, and opening gambit), it occurred to me that all humans are born into involuntary covenants which we work with till we die.
This is probably old news to many folks, but it was a new thought to me. And that first involuntary covenant is with life; we involuntarily agree to preserve our life at all costs. Call it instinctual, call it evolution at work, whatever you want, but from the moment we arrive outside our mother's womb, we are involuntarily sworn to strive to live.
Babies born with an infinitisimal chance of survival often live beyond all expectations. Folks with terminal illnesses often survive long after their projected lifespan. Underwater, we struggle to reach the surface and air. Cornered, we fight or run.
The covenant we have with life has many ramifications. It undergirds our every move, and, if we are shaped by negative experience in some way early on, our will to live often morphs into something less than healthy.
Take, for example, the child who grew up with parents shaped by the Depression. I've seen this go several different ways. One child becomes miserly and greedy, desperate to hoard resources, treating others stingily out of fear of deprivation. Another child discovers credit card heaven and, afraid that gratification will never come if s/he waits, dives into the world of excessive spending and huge debt.
Most of us are probably somewhere in between. My own experience was growing up with parents who had come from slim pickings already and were thrown into the Depression with nothing to spare. Surviving seminary on dented canned pears and mashed potato sandwiches, blackening white underwear with shoe polish to hide holes in the seat of their britches, my parents struggled to contain their desire for nice things and found credit awfully tempting.
They managed to provide well for us kids and I grew up not realizing the extent of their anxiety about money, though I quickly came to understand that anxiety in myself as my vulnerability to easy credit became evident. It took me a long time to come to the point where debt did not rule my life.
One of the things I learned in that long struggle was the healing effect of generosity, that being generous with cash, as in my pledge to my church or to the charities I supported, felt different from being generous with gifts given via Master Card.
That's where I want to go with this sermon. Generosity is healing of self; it is an outgrowth of a healthy covenant with life.
This is probably old news to many folks, but it was a new thought to me. And that first involuntary covenant is with life; we involuntarily agree to preserve our life at all costs. Call it instinctual, call it evolution at work, whatever you want, but from the moment we arrive outside our mother's womb, we are involuntarily sworn to strive to live.
Babies born with an infinitisimal chance of survival often live beyond all expectations. Folks with terminal illnesses often survive long after their projected lifespan. Underwater, we struggle to reach the surface and air. Cornered, we fight or run.
The covenant we have with life has many ramifications. It undergirds our every move, and, if we are shaped by negative experience in some way early on, our will to live often morphs into something less than healthy.
Take, for example, the child who grew up with parents shaped by the Depression. I've seen this go several different ways. One child becomes miserly and greedy, desperate to hoard resources, treating others stingily out of fear of deprivation. Another child discovers credit card heaven and, afraid that gratification will never come if s/he waits, dives into the world of excessive spending and huge debt.
Most of us are probably somewhere in between. My own experience was growing up with parents who had come from slim pickings already and were thrown into the Depression with nothing to spare. Surviving seminary on dented canned pears and mashed potato sandwiches, blackening white underwear with shoe polish to hide holes in the seat of their britches, my parents struggled to contain their desire for nice things and found credit awfully tempting.
They managed to provide well for us kids and I grew up not realizing the extent of their anxiety about money, though I quickly came to understand that anxiety in myself as my vulnerability to easy credit became evident. It took me a long time to come to the point where debt did not rule my life.
One of the things I learned in that long struggle was the healing effect of generosity, that being generous with cash, as in my pledge to my church or to the charities I supported, felt different from being generous with gifts given via Master Card.
That's where I want to go with this sermon. Generosity is healing of self; it is an outgrowth of a healthy covenant with life.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Asking for what we need is scary!
This topic has been on my mind repeatedly during my ministry, in every congregation I've served. It is, for me, terrifying to put together a proposal about some shift in my work or schedule, present it, and then wait to see what the outcome will be.
I came from a profession in which the teachers' union did all the heavy lifting for us. We had professional negotiators looking out for our raises, our class sizes, our evaluation standards. And, as a preacher's kid, I didn't know how my dad handled his salary concerns with the board of trustees, so when I came into ministry, I didn't have much experience with asking for what I needed, as a minister.
In my earliest congregations, I just took what they offered and made it work. Gradually, I began to feel on more solid ground and started to set my own rates for such things as weddings and memorials. But even they weren't firm; I'd take what folks could afford. It was an "honorarium", after all, not a fee. Fees weren't religious! The ministers' professional chapter helped with this and set recommended honoraria, which gave us something to use as a reference.
But the task of asking for a new approach to a ministry is scary! I am in the waiting stage, but past the chewing my fingernails stage, of getting input about tweaking my work for next year. Changes in a small congregation need to be carefully considered, for they cause shifts in the culture of the congregation.
It's often valuable to think of changes as "experiments" or a process of discernment about the future of the congregation. It helps for people to know that changes are not necessarily carved in stone and are designed to help the congregation prosper.
My Buddhist buddies tell me to let go of the outcome and I try, I really do, but I also have such a strong drive to get completion on situations that I tend to "awfulize" if I don't get feedback right away.
Did I mention that on the Myers-Briggs I'm "J to the nth power"? That's me, ENFJto the max!
I came from a profession in which the teachers' union did all the heavy lifting for us. We had professional negotiators looking out for our raises, our class sizes, our evaluation standards. And, as a preacher's kid, I didn't know how my dad handled his salary concerns with the board of trustees, so when I came into ministry, I didn't have much experience with asking for what I needed, as a minister.
In my earliest congregations, I just took what they offered and made it work. Gradually, I began to feel on more solid ground and started to set my own rates for such things as weddings and memorials. But even they weren't firm; I'd take what folks could afford. It was an "honorarium", after all, not a fee. Fees weren't religious! The ministers' professional chapter helped with this and set recommended honoraria, which gave us something to use as a reference.
But the task of asking for a new approach to a ministry is scary! I am in the waiting stage, but past the chewing my fingernails stage, of getting input about tweaking my work for next year. Changes in a small congregation need to be carefully considered, for they cause shifts in the culture of the congregation.
It's often valuable to think of changes as "experiments" or a process of discernment about the future of the congregation. It helps for people to know that changes are not necessarily carved in stone and are designed to help the congregation prosper.
My Buddhist buddies tell me to let go of the outcome and I try, I really do, but I also have such a strong drive to get completion on situations that I tend to "awfulize" if I don't get feedback right away.
Did I mention that on the Myers-Briggs I'm "J to the nth power"? That's me, ENFJto the max!
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
What classic film actress would Ms. Kitty be?
I found a great quiz on Joel the Neff's website and when I clicked the results button found out what classic film actress I would be. Ahem! Look at this! Scroll on down---I can't get it any closer to this paragraph.
Carole Lombard You scored 19% grit, 14% wit, 42% flair, and 35% class! |
You're a little bit of a fruitcake, but you always act out in style. You have a good sense of humor, are game for almost anything, but you like to have nice things about you and are attracted to the high life. You're stylish and modern, but you've got a few rough edges that keep you from attaining true sophistication. Your leading men include William Powell, Fredric March, and Clark Gable. Watch out for small planes.
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My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
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| Link: The Classic Dames Test written by gidgetgoes on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test |
Monday, March 05, 2007
Coming to the end of a weekend on Vashon Island
It's been a good, productive weekend on Vashon Island, these past few days. I arrived on Friday afternoon in time to attend the Program (aka Worship) Committee meeting. Our meeting was at the home of the chair, Beth, and part of the charm of the meeting was the view out over Quartermaster Harbor from her front room, while petting Sadie, the Rhodesian Ridgeback, and Tiber, a labbish mix, plus a couple of other dogs who were visiting. It's a good crew of folks on this committee and we always enjoy our meetings; they are putting the finishing touches on the remainder of the church year's worship services and looking ahead to next fall, though they are not sure just whether they will have a minister by then to work with.
Saturday morning, I hustled down to another member's home; she was hosting the New UU class that I was presenting with the help of the Membership committee. We had three attendees besides the M'ship committee and host. We offered a brief version of our personal spiritual journeys and spent some time talking about UU history and answering questions. I smile inwardly when I hear people say "I don't know if I'll fit here---I've got a kind of weird outlook about religion" because it's so likely that the person will discover that s/he is not so weird after all.
In the afternoon, I taught the first session of Building Your Own Theology and we have twelve people signed up for the class. The activities for the first session include introductions and a brief version of religious background and thinking and we launched into a productive discussion of "theology---the word". I realized that we UUs redefine words rather cavalierly sometimes and one participant called us on it in the discussion. "Theology" does mean, literally, "study of God" or "knowledge about God", but we have softened the meaning so that it can apply more broadly to nontheists as well.
In the evening, I attended a rather loud concert with my hostess Rhoda and her family, a benefit for a sister village in Guatemala which was decimated by mud slides awhile back. The combination of weariness and loudness wore me down and I left at intermission to go home and go to bed early.
Sunday, the church service went very well, though Joys and Concerns was so lengthy and full of sorrow that before we sang the next song (Enter, Rejoice, and Come In), I felt moved to call for a time of silence to honor the several deaths and losses noted by congregants. My sermon was the annual "sermon on the amount", to kick off the canvass campaign, and it was okay, though not particularly outstanding, in my view. It did engender some positive response later, which I appreciated.
One of the Vashon longtimers is Beryl, an incredible 87 year old woman who still rides horses, hikes, travels a lot, and plays stupendous piano. She puts together a yearly recital for friends and I was invited, so I spent the afternoon in her tiny apartment listening to a phenomenal concert of Schubert, Mozart, Albeniz, and Bach piano works, with twelve others crammed into that small space. Whew!
Today, Monday, we had seven people show up for TSKK (Tea Shop Koffee Klatch) only it was really CLUUKK (Cafe Luna UU Koffee Klatch) because the Tea Shop was closed and we had to relocate to Cafe Luna for our gathering. It was a boisterous crowd that showed up, and as we were leaving, one woman at another table stopped me and said, "Your group was having a lot of fun. What group is it?" and I confessed that we were from the Unitarian Fellowship. At which point she said, "Boy, I've got to become a Unitarian again!"
At noon, we decamped to the Homegrown Cafe for our monthly Lunch Bunch, and five of us enjoyed the Homegrown's excellent grub. Afterwards I made a couple of pastoral calls and am now back at my hostess's home. The board meeting is tonight and after that, I'll come back here, get a short night's sleep, and take off on the 5:45 a.m. Southworth ferry for Port Townsend and home across the Strait. I should get home in time to get re-organized and up to Whidbey General to do my Tuesday volunteer stint.
It's been a good weekend. Full, which is how I like it best, and interesting, with plenty of folks showing up for the various events offered. I especially like teaching classes, so Saturday was really fun, though today's coffee and lunch groups were pure hilarity.
I will miss these good people but their search process is heating up and they are going to do fine.
Saturday morning, I hustled down to another member's home; she was hosting the New UU class that I was presenting with the help of the Membership committee. We had three attendees besides the M'ship committee and host. We offered a brief version of our personal spiritual journeys and spent some time talking about UU history and answering questions. I smile inwardly when I hear people say "I don't know if I'll fit here---I've got a kind of weird outlook about religion" because it's so likely that the person will discover that s/he is not so weird after all.
In the afternoon, I taught the first session of Building Your Own Theology and we have twelve people signed up for the class. The activities for the first session include introductions and a brief version of religious background and thinking and we launched into a productive discussion of "theology---the word". I realized that we UUs redefine words rather cavalierly sometimes and one participant called us on it in the discussion. "Theology" does mean, literally, "study of God" or "knowledge about God", but we have softened the meaning so that it can apply more broadly to nontheists as well.
In the evening, I attended a rather loud concert with my hostess Rhoda and her family, a benefit for a sister village in Guatemala which was decimated by mud slides awhile back. The combination of weariness and loudness wore me down and I left at intermission to go home and go to bed early.
Sunday, the church service went very well, though Joys and Concerns was so lengthy and full of sorrow that before we sang the next song (Enter, Rejoice, and Come In), I felt moved to call for a time of silence to honor the several deaths and losses noted by congregants. My sermon was the annual "sermon on the amount", to kick off the canvass campaign, and it was okay, though not particularly outstanding, in my view. It did engender some positive response later, which I appreciated.
One of the Vashon longtimers is Beryl, an incredible 87 year old woman who still rides horses, hikes, travels a lot, and plays stupendous piano. She puts together a yearly recital for friends and I was invited, so I spent the afternoon in her tiny apartment listening to a phenomenal concert of Schubert, Mozart, Albeniz, and Bach piano works, with twelve others crammed into that small space. Whew!
Today, Monday, we had seven people show up for TSKK (Tea Shop Koffee Klatch) only it was really CLUUKK (Cafe Luna UU Koffee Klatch) because the Tea Shop was closed and we had to relocate to Cafe Luna for our gathering. It was a boisterous crowd that showed up, and as we were leaving, one woman at another table stopped me and said, "Your group was having a lot of fun. What group is it?" and I confessed that we were from the Unitarian Fellowship. At which point she said, "Boy, I've got to become a Unitarian again!"
At noon, we decamped to the Homegrown Cafe for our monthly Lunch Bunch, and five of us enjoyed the Homegrown's excellent grub. Afterwards I made a couple of pastoral calls and am now back at my hostess's home. The board meeting is tonight and after that, I'll come back here, get a short night's sleep, and take off on the 5:45 a.m. Southworth ferry for Port Townsend and home across the Strait. I should get home in time to get re-organized and up to Whidbey General to do my Tuesday volunteer stint.
It's been a good weekend. Full, which is how I like it best, and interesting, with plenty of folks showing up for the various events offered. I especially like teaching classes, so Saturday was really fun, though today's coffee and lunch groups were pure hilarity.
I will miss these good people but their search process is heating up and they are going to do fine.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Domestic Partnership Bill will pass in Washington State
Hot off the press! The Washington State Senate has passed a bill conferring domestic partnership rights upon same-sex couples and unmarried heterosexuals age 62 and older, giving them the right to visit a partner in the hospital, inherit their property without a will and make funeral arrangements, among other things.
Equality Day 07 was in behalf of this bill and those of us who attended ED07 lobbied legislators to vote yes, which most did.
The bill still has to pass the House, where it will easily find favor. Governor Chris Gregoire has said she supports the measure and will sign it.
This is not the same thing as marriage equality, but it is a step toward justice for same sex couples and older couples who cannot marry for financial reasons.
There were, of course, mean-spirited remarks about the homosexual agenda, etc., but I think Sen. Ed Murray, one of the bill's sponsors, put it well when he said, "You have prevented us from marrying; please do not prevent us from caring for each other."
Marriage equality is still on the Religious Coalition for Equality's agenda but this is a great first step.
Hallelujah!
Equality Day 07 was in behalf of this bill and those of us who attended ED07 lobbied legislators to vote yes, which most did.
The bill still has to pass the House, where it will easily find favor. Governor Chris Gregoire has said she supports the measure and will sign it.
This is not the same thing as marriage equality, but it is a step toward justice for same sex couples and older couples who cannot marry for financial reasons.
There were, of course, mean-spirited remarks about the homosexual agenda, etc., but I think Sen. Ed Murray, one of the bill's sponsors, put it well when he said, "You have prevented us from marrying; please do not prevent us from caring for each other."
Marriage equality is still on the Religious Coalition for Equality's agenda but this is a great first step.
Hallelujah!
An opportunity to advance action on Climate Change
Dear readers,
Rather than forward this email to everyone in my address book, it seems better to post it on my blog. That way only those who want to read it will do so. I hope you all will read it and take action.
I was thrilled when "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Oscar, as did the Melissa Etheridge song which was its theme. I'll bet many of you were too.
I received this email today with the request that Americans send Mr. Gore (our former next president) their letters and emails of support for action by Congress. I am placing it here in hopes that you will write letters and send emails in support of action by Congress on climate change.
Al Gore wrote:
From: "Al Gore" <AlGore@algore.com>
To: all of us on the planet (I removed the forwarder's name)
Subject: Our Next Step
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 17:00 -0500
When the producers of An Inconvenient Truth first
approached me with the concept for the film, I was
skeptical. Could we really take a slideshow about
the climate crisis and turn it into a compelling
movie? Davis Guggenheim's Oscar win for best
documentary and a second one for Melissa Etheridge's
beautiful song "I Need to Wake Up" was a testament
to their ability, but it was also a testament to
you.
It was you who packed the theaters and got your
friends to go see this film, greatly increasing the
audience. And then this past December, it was you
who connected through MoveOn.org and AlGore.com to
attend An Inconvenient Truth viewing parties. At
those parties and in the weeks that followed, nearly
200,000 of you wrote to Congress, demanding that
they address the climate crisis like the planetary
emergency that it is.
Even though I have been a life-long movie fan, I
didn't really understand how big of an audience a
movie could reach. And of course I never would have
imagined in a million years that a movie that I was
a part of would receive two Academy Awards� or one� or
would have ever been made in the first place! As
humbling as this moment is, An Inconvenient Truth
will only succeed if it drives all of us to take
action. That's why I'm asking you to join me in the
next stage of our fight. On March 21st, I'm going
testify at Congressional hearings on the climate
crisis.
This is an incredible opportunity to demonstrate to
Congress that we demand immediate action. And I
need your help to really make this moment count.
Can you commit to getting 10 friends to send their
message to Congress through AlGore.com before March
21st? The more voices I can bring to Washington,
the more powerful our message will be.
To get your friends involved, just forward them this
note or direct them to:
http://algore.com/cards.html
There is no longer a debate about the fact that
global warming is real. We're causing it. The
consequences are serious, and could be headed
towards catastrophe if we don't fix it. And it's
not too late. I don't want to imagine a future in
which our children say, What were our parents
thinking? Why didn't they wake up when they had a
chance? And I know you don't either.
The hundreds of thousands of you who signed messages
to Congress showed me what's possible. Working
together we can unite millions of people and build
support for real action on a scale that has never
been seen before.
Help me take the first step and fill up that hearing
room with your signatures. That picture alone will
send a powerful message.
Can you commit to getting ten more people to send
messages to Congress demanding action to stop global
warming?
http://algore.com/cards.html
I'm looking forward to working with you on this
monumental task.
Thank you,
Al Gore
Rather than forward this email to everyone in my address book, it seems better to post it on my blog. That way only those who want to read it will do so. I hope you all will read it and take action.
I was thrilled when "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Oscar, as did the Melissa Etheridge song which was its theme. I'll bet many of you were too.
I received this email today with the request that Americans send Mr. Gore (our former next president) their letters and emails of support for action by Congress. I am placing it here in hopes that you will write letters and send emails in support of action by Congress on climate change.
Al Gore wrote:
From: "Al Gore" <AlGore@algore.com>
To: all of us on the planet (I removed the forwarder's name)
Subject: Our Next Step
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 17:00 -0500
When the producers of An Inconvenient Truth first
approached me with the concept for the film, I was
skeptical. Could we really take a slideshow about
the climate crisis and turn it into a compelling
movie? Davis Guggenheim's Oscar win for best
documentary and a second one for Melissa Etheridge's
beautiful song "I Need to Wake Up" was a testament
to their ability, but it was also a testament to
you.
It was you who packed the theaters and got your
friends to go see this film, greatly increasing the
audience. And then this past December, it was you
who connected through MoveOn.org and AlGore.com to
attend An Inconvenient Truth viewing parties. At
those parties and in the weeks that followed, nearly
200,000 of you wrote to Congress, demanding that
they address the climate crisis like the planetary
emergency that it is.
Even though I have been a life-long movie fan, I
didn't really understand how big of an audience a
movie could reach. And of course I never would have
imagined in a million years that a movie that I was
a part of would receive two Academy Awards� or one� or
would have ever been made in the first place! As
humbling as this moment is, An Inconvenient Truth
will only succeed if it drives all of us to take
action. That's why I'm asking you to join me in the
next stage of our fight. On March 21st, I'm going
testify at Congressional hearings on the climate
crisis.
This is an incredible opportunity to demonstrate to
Congress that we demand immediate action. And I
need your help to really make this moment count.
Can you commit to getting 10 friends to send their
message to Congress through AlGore.com before March
21st? The more voices I can bring to Washington,
the more powerful our message will be.
To get your friends involved, just forward them this
note or direct them to:
http://algore.com/cards.html
There is no longer a debate about the fact that
global warming is real. We're causing it. The
consequences are serious, and could be headed
towards catastrophe if we don't fix it. And it's
not too late. I don't want to imagine a future in
which our children say, What were our parents
thinking? Why didn't they wake up when they had a
chance? And I know you don't either.
The hundreds of thousands of you who signed messages
to Congress showed me what's possible. Working
together we can unite millions of people and build
support for real action on a scale that has never
been seen before.
Help me take the first step and fill up that hearing
room with your signatures. That picture alone will
send a powerful message.
Can you commit to getting ten more people to send
messages to Congress demanding action to stop global
warming?
http://algore.com/cards.html
I'm looking forward to working with you on this
monumental task.
Thank you,
Al Gore
February went out like a lion and March...?
Yesterday morning it began to snow hard, so hard, in fact, that I called the parishioner I planned to visit and left a message that I felt I shouldn't brave the weather to get to his place several miles away. Very shortly thereafter, the snow stopped and I went to visit him anyway. The roads were clear going down but suddenly, as I came back home, the snow started up again, this time pelting down much more heavily, and by the time I got home, it had started to stick.
I felt I'd really dodged a bullet and was puttering around the house, doing this and that, when a knock came at the door. It was one of my parishioners who lives not far from me and she was stuck on the road at the bottom of my driveway. So she used the phone to call her spouse for a snow shovel (I don't have one) and left in a few minutes to meet him.
The dangerous thing about western Washington snow is that it is very wet. Living in Colorado, I wasn't so at the mercy of the elements. Rocky Mountain snow is dry and fluffy with a low moisture content. Driving on a Colorado snow-packed road isn't the same kind of thing it is here.
I remember learning that lesson when my spouse and I came to visit my family over Christmas vacation one year and decided to go to Mt. Hood to ski. He, being the experienced Colorado snow driver, got a little too confident and we skidded straight into a snowbank on our way to the mountain.
But I'd forgotten the lesson by the time I moved to Portland and the first snow on the ground quickly reminded me, as my trusty little front-wheel-drive radial-tired Toyota slid helplessly down a sloped parking lot in a couple of inches of slush.
Last night's TV news featured a pileup of dozens of vehicles on Snoqualmie Pass, which is Interstate 90 and the chute between eastern and western Washington. "Chute" it was, as freezing conditions made the road a skating rink and every car on the road did a panicky back-pedal, to no avail, upon cresting one particular hill and observing the melee on the other side.
Fortunately, few were seriously injured but the road was closed for several hours.
Coloradans I've known scoff at Northwesterners' seeming inability to handle the snow. They ridicule our shutting down schools over two inches of snow. "Heck," they chortle, "we don't close schools here unless it's two feet deep and windy!"
Yes, indeedy, they chortle----until they experience the snow from hell, one inch of packed slush virtually impervious to de-icer and sand. And then they're the ones in the SUV ricocheting wildly off the jacknifed semis in the median.
Anyhow, February went out like a lion and this morning, this March 1 morning, the sun is out and we are sparkling under blue skies. We pays our dues, we gets our rewards!
I felt I'd really dodged a bullet and was puttering around the house, doing this and that, when a knock came at the door. It was one of my parishioners who lives not far from me and she was stuck on the road at the bottom of my driveway. So she used the phone to call her spouse for a snow shovel (I don't have one) and left in a few minutes to meet him.
The dangerous thing about western Washington snow is that it is very wet. Living in Colorado, I wasn't so at the mercy of the elements. Rocky Mountain snow is dry and fluffy with a low moisture content. Driving on a Colorado snow-packed road isn't the same kind of thing it is here.
I remember learning that lesson when my spouse and I came to visit my family over Christmas vacation one year and decided to go to Mt. Hood to ski. He, being the experienced Colorado snow driver, got a little too confident and we skidded straight into a snowbank on our way to the mountain.
But I'd forgotten the lesson by the time I moved to Portland and the first snow on the ground quickly reminded me, as my trusty little front-wheel-drive radial-tired Toyota slid helplessly down a sloped parking lot in a couple of inches of slush.
Last night's TV news featured a pileup of dozens of vehicles on Snoqualmie Pass, which is Interstate 90 and the chute between eastern and western Washington. "Chute" it was, as freezing conditions made the road a skating rink and every car on the road did a panicky back-pedal, to no avail, upon cresting one particular hill and observing the melee on the other side.
Fortunately, few were seriously injured but the road was closed for several hours.
Coloradans I've known scoff at Northwesterners' seeming inability to handle the snow. They ridicule our shutting down schools over two inches of snow. "Heck," they chortle, "we don't close schools here unless it's two feet deep and windy!"
Yes, indeedy, they chortle----until they experience the snow from hell, one inch of packed slush virtually impervious to de-icer and sand. And then they're the ones in the SUV ricocheting wildly off the jacknifed semis in the median.
Anyhow, February went out like a lion and this morning, this March 1 morning, the sun is out and we are sparkling under blue skies. We pays our dues, we gets our rewards!
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
A Great Day in Olympia, the story
I think what delighted me first was the small flock of protesters with their signs about God's wrath and their bullhorn inviting us to repent and avoid the fiery pit. My delight was severalfold: they were courteous, even in their rhetoric; they stood in sharp contrast against the lovefest on the steps with their signs about repentance and hell; and they were the first group of picketers we've had in three years, I think. I don't remember any in other years. We've hit the bigtime, if we actually inspired a protest! And, God knows, we could have used a touch of the fiery pit--------the statehouse steps face away from the sun, so we were in the shadow all during the rally and it was cold and windy, though fairly clear.
I had picked up a youth from my Whidbey congregation to accompany me. He is part of our tiny Coming of Age group and wanted to attend, as part of his social action education. We got on the 7:30 ferry and headed south on I-5 to Olympia, arriving about 9:30 a.m., just in time to attend the advocacy training offered by Equal Rights Washington, our partner group in planning the rally.
One of the Olympia-area UU congregations (All Souls) had provided breakfasty goodies for the training and we chatted with them afterwards, thanking them for the food and their commitment. They've provided this amenity every year and they are a tiny group--only about 30 members. Wow!
After the training, the youth (Y, henceforth) and I headed over toward the capitol steps to find our other Whidbey participant, stopping to check out the protesters, who were at that time on the steps being noisy. We'd been advised not to interact with them or fight with them about the issue, which some folks couldn't resist anyhow, though nothing got overheated, apparently.
I think Y was absorbing all the activity and storing it away for thinking about later. This young man is very bright, very eager to share his thoughts, and it was a huge pleasure to spend the day with him. We talked nonstop all the way down and back, laughing a lot at our interchanges. No need to drag information out of this guy, he was bubbling over.
I saw dozens of UU supporters from all over Puget Sound, many clergy in robes and stoles over heavy coats, banners from a variety of faith traditions, and lots of bglt folks, including the Seattle Men's and Women's choruses, several advocacy groups besides ERW, and others who just showed up to lend support.
The atmosphere was lively, festive, celebratory, and just plain fun. The chorus sang a few songs, inviting people to join in, state legislators were introduced and our "out" legislators spoke briefly about how their faith is important to them as public servants, and then it was time for us clergy speakers.
I was the third to speak, of the three clergy, and when I was introduced, a huge cheer went up from the UUs! That tickled me, took away my butterflies and gave me the sense of connection that I always need when I speak. I used the message that I posted here earlier, asking them to sing "Tell Me Why". I was pleased at the response to the song and to my words. There were moments when they interrupted me with cheers and applause (always a lovely moment for a preacher!) and at the end, when I asked them to reach out to one another, if they could bear to take their hands out of their pockets, they laughed, hugged each other, and shouted with me "We stand together here for Love and Justice!" three times, each time louder. It was very gratifying to feel that connection and passion enveloping the gathering.
Afterwards, we hustled off to meet with our legislators; we could only manage to meet one in person, Sen. Haugen from Island County, but our visit with her was productive; she is a supporter of our cause, though not yet completely on board with marriage equality. We think she will eventually come around. One of our representatives, Barbara Bailey, was unavailable as she was in committee, and the other, Chris Strow, had been told there were no Island County constituents at the rally (gotta investigate this one, as it was problematic) so had left his office. We did meet with his legislative assistant and gave her our packet of info.
Y and I headed home after eating our sack lunches in the cafeteria, managing to get on the 5 p.m. ferry. There was no press coverage that I could find this morning; I think probably that Seattle Gay News has covered it and I will provide a link when I get one.
It was a great day!
I had picked up a youth from my Whidbey congregation to accompany me. He is part of our tiny Coming of Age group and wanted to attend, as part of his social action education. We got on the 7:30 ferry and headed south on I-5 to Olympia, arriving about 9:30 a.m., just in time to attend the advocacy training offered by Equal Rights Washington, our partner group in planning the rally.
One of the Olympia-area UU congregations (All Souls) had provided breakfasty goodies for the training and we chatted with them afterwards, thanking them for the food and their commitment. They've provided this amenity every year and they are a tiny group--only about 30 members. Wow!
After the training, the youth (Y, henceforth) and I headed over toward the capitol steps to find our other Whidbey participant, stopping to check out the protesters, who were at that time on the steps being noisy. We'd been advised not to interact with them or fight with them about the issue, which some folks couldn't resist anyhow, though nothing got overheated, apparently.
I think Y was absorbing all the activity and storing it away for thinking about later. This young man is very bright, very eager to share his thoughts, and it was a huge pleasure to spend the day with him. We talked nonstop all the way down and back, laughing a lot at our interchanges. No need to drag information out of this guy, he was bubbling over.
I saw dozens of UU supporters from all over Puget Sound, many clergy in robes and stoles over heavy coats, banners from a variety of faith traditions, and lots of bglt folks, including the Seattle Men's and Women's choruses, several advocacy groups besides ERW, and others who just showed up to lend support.
The atmosphere was lively, festive, celebratory, and just plain fun. The chorus sang a few songs, inviting people to join in, state legislators were introduced and our "out" legislators spoke briefly about how their faith is important to them as public servants, and then it was time for us clergy speakers.
I was the third to speak, of the three clergy, and when I was introduced, a huge cheer went up from the UUs! That tickled me, took away my butterflies and gave me the sense of connection that I always need when I speak. I used the message that I posted here earlier, asking them to sing "Tell Me Why". I was pleased at the response to the song and to my words. There were moments when they interrupted me with cheers and applause (always a lovely moment for a preacher!) and at the end, when I asked them to reach out to one another, if they could bear to take their hands out of their pockets, they laughed, hugged each other, and shouted with me "We stand together here for Love and Justice!" three times, each time louder. It was very gratifying to feel that connection and passion enveloping the gathering.
Afterwards, we hustled off to meet with our legislators; we could only manage to meet one in person, Sen. Haugen from Island County, but our visit with her was productive; she is a supporter of our cause, though not yet completely on board with marriage equality. We think she will eventually come around. One of our representatives, Barbara Bailey, was unavailable as she was in committee, and the other, Chris Strow, had been told there were no Island County constituents at the rally (gotta investigate this one, as it was problematic) so had left his office. We did meet with his legislative assistant and gave her our packet of info.
Y and I headed home after eating our sack lunches in the cafeteria, managing to get on the 5 p.m. ferry. There was no press coverage that I could find this morning; I think probably that Seattle Gay News has covered it and I will provide a link when I get one.
It was a great day!
Monday, February 26, 2007
A Great Day in Olympia
It was a great day in Olympia, at the Equality Day 07 advocacy day and rally. I am too tired to write more right now, but tomorrow I'll report on the events of the day. Eventually I may even have some video of it to share.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
What is a faith community?
One of the most important theological questions that religious folk must answer is "what is a faith community?" Most orthodox religious folk would consider this a no-brainer: a faith community is a gathering of the adherents to the faith tradition and it exists to serve God and humankind.
Unitarian Universalists, of course, would tweak that definition, perhaps quite a lot. Some see a UU congregation as a lecture forum; some see it as a social gathering, as an educational gathering, as a tool for social justice.
Ministers and laypersons often see the faith community through different lenses. Ministers, by virtue of their education and experience, see the faith community as all of these things but also as an opportunity to create what MLK Jr. called "the Beloved Community", a gathering of souls intent on furthering the work of love and justice in the world, caring for one another, with rituals and experiences that deepen their sense of connection, a place where they are inspired to offer their best selves to the larger community.
Laypersons don't necessarily see it that way. They don't always see the faith community as a living organism but as a place or an agency. They don't see the value of familiarity and interconnection as sharply as the minister does. This can lead to disagreements about what the church/congregation should look like, what Sundays ought to offer, what the minister's priorities should be, or even if there should be a minister.
This tends to be more problematic in a congregation which has not had much experience with a minister. It takes awhile to reassure the congregation that the minister offers something that even the most dedicated group of volunteers can't always manage--a vision of the Beloved Community and a process for getting there.
So there are often sparks as the congregation grows and outgrows the old layled model. There are fears that the minister will take over, that too much minister means that there is too little autonomy for lay leaders, that seeing the same face in the pulpit more than once in awhile is a turnoff.
I sympathize with this fear but I also work to allay it because I have learned that most lay persons will discover that having more ministerial presence is a good thing, that it means that the minister's sermons can be more personal, better addressed to the congregation's specific needs, strengthening the relationship between congregants and between the minister and congregation, that visitors who are considering membership appreciate the opportunity to check out the minister even more than the chance to hear an outside speaker.
There is a covenant between minister and congregation that is important and needs care. The minister must be a loving presence, dedicated to serving the needs of the congregation but also dedicated to helping the congregation move towards its vision while living out its mission. The congregation must be clear about its mission and vision, dedicated to walking its talk, and considering seriously the message of the minister, offering different views respectfully, and treating the minister with justice and compassion.
This is a quickie version of my theology of the faith community. What's yours?
Unitarian Universalists, of course, would tweak that definition, perhaps quite a lot. Some see a UU congregation as a lecture forum; some see it as a social gathering, as an educational gathering, as a tool for social justice.
Ministers and laypersons often see the faith community through different lenses. Ministers, by virtue of their education and experience, see the faith community as all of these things but also as an opportunity to create what MLK Jr. called "the Beloved Community", a gathering of souls intent on furthering the work of love and justice in the world, caring for one another, with rituals and experiences that deepen their sense of connection, a place where they are inspired to offer their best selves to the larger community.
Laypersons don't necessarily see it that way. They don't always see the faith community as a living organism but as a place or an agency. They don't see the value of familiarity and interconnection as sharply as the minister does. This can lead to disagreements about what the church/congregation should look like, what Sundays ought to offer, what the minister's priorities should be, or even if there should be a minister.
This tends to be more problematic in a congregation which has not had much experience with a minister. It takes awhile to reassure the congregation that the minister offers something that even the most dedicated group of volunteers can't always manage--a vision of the Beloved Community and a process for getting there.
So there are often sparks as the congregation grows and outgrows the old layled model. There are fears that the minister will take over, that too much minister means that there is too little autonomy for lay leaders, that seeing the same face in the pulpit more than once in awhile is a turnoff.
I sympathize with this fear but I also work to allay it because I have learned that most lay persons will discover that having more ministerial presence is a good thing, that it means that the minister's sermons can be more personal, better addressed to the congregation's specific needs, strengthening the relationship between congregants and between the minister and congregation, that visitors who are considering membership appreciate the opportunity to check out the minister even more than the chance to hear an outside speaker.
There is a covenant between minister and congregation that is important and needs care. The minister must be a loving presence, dedicated to serving the needs of the congregation but also dedicated to helping the congregation move towards its vision while living out its mission. The congregation must be clear about its mission and vision, dedicated to walking its talk, and considering seriously the message of the minister, offering different views respectfully, and treating the minister with justice and compassion.
This is a quickie version of my theology of the faith community. What's yours?
Friday, February 23, 2007
Equality Day 07
I've written out what I will say at the Equality Day rally on Monday. We are asked to keep our remarks to 3-4 minutes and that's a bit of a challenge, but I figure two pages, double-spaced, 14 point type in Helvetica is 4 minutes, which is what I have come up with.
I offer those words here for your consideration.
EQUALITY DAY 07, FEB. 26, 2007
Rev. Kit Ketcham
Remember when we went to summer camp that year and sat around a campfire with our fellow campers and sang songs and maybe stared longingly across the circle at a person we were madly in love with that summer? Sing with me, if you remember this old camp song and feel free to harmonize. (Sing first two verses of “Tell Me Why”)
Love is a drive, a yearning, an ability that is so deeply imbedded in each of us that we are compelled to follow its leading. It is a basic human need, to love and to be loved. Our first experience with love is from the parents and others who care for us when we are small, and out of that experience grows the ability to trust, to nurture, to commit to the love which is our birthright and the responsibility of each human being.
If we are not loving, we are not living up to our potential. We are not fulfilling perhaps THE major purpose of our lives-----to love.
As a Unitarian Universalist, I also believe that we human beings have a drive and a deep yearning for justice and we have the responsibility to bring it into our own lives and the lives of others.
We are here today in behalf of Love and Justice. We acknowledge the role of Love in our lives and we are committed to acting in behalf of Justice.
When we come together today, to learn how to fulfill our responsibilities as citizens and to advocate in behalf of citizens who are not getting a fair shake, we are performing a profoundly religious act.
We are saying to the world that we believe in love and justice. We believe that people who love should not be punished for that love. We believe that the world needs more love, not less. We believe that the world is improved by more commitment to loving partnerships, not less.
And we believe in justice as a moral and religious imperative. We are saying to the world that it isn’t right that our friend Jim lost his home when his partner died, that our colleague Ginger couldn’t give her partner the memorial service she would have wanted, that our neighbor MIke couldn’t visit his dying partner in the hospital.
Those who oppose justice for those who love are afraid, afraid of what it means if they question long-held prejudices, afraid of the disapproval of other fearful people, afraid of being generous with their love.
But love can drive out fear. When we love, we take on all the joys and sorrows of love. We commit ourselves to living out the responsibilities of love. And one of those responsibilities is to seek justice in the name of love.
And so I ask you to reach out to those around you, touch a shoulder, take a hand, and join me in telling the world what we are here for, that we stand together here today for Love and for Justice.
Say it with me: We stand together here for Love and Justice. Again, loudly, We stand together here for Love and Justice. And loudest of all, so that all of Washington can hear us, We stand together here for Love and Justice.
Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.
I offer those words here for your consideration.
EQUALITY DAY 07, FEB. 26, 2007
Rev. Kit Ketcham
Remember when we went to summer camp that year and sat around a campfire with our fellow campers and sang songs and maybe stared longingly across the circle at a person we were madly in love with that summer? Sing with me, if you remember this old camp song and feel free to harmonize. (Sing first two verses of “Tell Me Why”)
Love is a drive, a yearning, an ability that is so deeply imbedded in each of us that we are compelled to follow its leading. It is a basic human need, to love and to be loved. Our first experience with love is from the parents and others who care for us when we are small, and out of that experience grows the ability to trust, to nurture, to commit to the love which is our birthright and the responsibility of each human being.
If we are not loving, we are not living up to our potential. We are not fulfilling perhaps THE major purpose of our lives-----to love.
As a Unitarian Universalist, I also believe that we human beings have a drive and a deep yearning for justice and we have the responsibility to bring it into our own lives and the lives of others.
We are here today in behalf of Love and Justice. We acknowledge the role of Love in our lives and we are committed to acting in behalf of Justice.
When we come together today, to learn how to fulfill our responsibilities as citizens and to advocate in behalf of citizens who are not getting a fair shake, we are performing a profoundly religious act.
We are saying to the world that we believe in love and justice. We believe that people who love should not be punished for that love. We believe that the world needs more love, not less. We believe that the world is improved by more commitment to loving partnerships, not less.
And we believe in justice as a moral and religious imperative. We are saying to the world that it isn’t right that our friend Jim lost his home when his partner died, that our colleague Ginger couldn’t give her partner the memorial service she would have wanted, that our neighbor MIke couldn’t visit his dying partner in the hospital.
Those who oppose justice for those who love are afraid, afraid of what it means if they question long-held prejudices, afraid of the disapproval of other fearful people, afraid of being generous with their love.
But love can drive out fear. When we love, we take on all the joys and sorrows of love. We commit ourselves to living out the responsibilities of love. And one of those responsibilities is to seek justice in the name of love.
And so I ask you to reach out to those around you, touch a shoulder, take a hand, and join me in telling the world what we are here for, that we stand together here today for Love and for Justice.
Say it with me: We stand together here for Love and Justice. Again, loudly, We stand together here for Love and Justice. And loudest of all, so that all of Washington can hear us, We stand together here for Love and Justice.
Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Will preach for food...
Preaching is pretty much the bread and butter of a ministerial vocation. It's what most people think of as our main task in ministry. I've even been asked what I do when I'm not in the pulpit---it was a kid who asked, so I didn't bridle as I might have. But sermons are a major piece of my work and I love to preach.
So I've been thinking about how I approach sermon-writing, in the past day or two, and I realize that I've gotten a little stale during the time I've been serving two congregations; I've often re-used sermons from my earlier pastorate, updating them to suit a different congregation and to reflect any changed thinking on my part. And because my schedule has had me preaching on Vashon the first Sunday of the month and on Whidbey the second Sunday, I've usually written a sermon that could be used both places, to use my time efficiently.
As I look ahead to a future in which I'm serving only one congregation, writing sermons for only one group of folks, I'm aware that this will make a difference in how I approach sermon writing. I think, I hope, it will bring a freshness to my writing and delivery.
Because I'm aware that I've gotten a little too hurried in my delivery, that I need to give a little more time for major points to sink in. I've learned that people want to know more about my own struggles, and though it's important not to use the pulpit as a therapeutic device, I think it's valuable to share my "experience, strength, and hope", as they say in 12-step programs.
And I definitely know that, as I write for just one congregation, I can be more challenging in my approach, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable!
My approach to preaching is much like my approach to teaching, my earlier career. I know I've got to get people's attention and keep it; stories, interactive moments, the unexpected, all these devices keep listeners connected and involved. It's a challenge to my creativity to establish and maintain this connection, and I relish it.
In March, I'm going to be preaching at Whidbey three Sundays in a row, and this will give me a chance to offer a series of three sermons on Faithfulness. I've been thinking about what Faithfulness means in a congregational setting and will use that theme to speak about our covenants with self, others, and the universe. This will be a wonderful opportunity to refresh my style and approach.
I've come to these awarenesses about preaching partly on my own, partly through useful feedback from listeners. And while it's always scary to be critiqued, it is essential for a minister to listen to that critique, examine it, and use it--not to try to please the critiquer but to improve this most visible of all ministry tasks.
I think of myself as a good preacher already, but I would like to be even better, to know that my thoughts were reaching people in the most effective ways possible. It is a worthy goal.
So I've been thinking about how I approach sermon-writing, in the past day or two, and I realize that I've gotten a little stale during the time I've been serving two congregations; I've often re-used sermons from my earlier pastorate, updating them to suit a different congregation and to reflect any changed thinking on my part. And because my schedule has had me preaching on Vashon the first Sunday of the month and on Whidbey the second Sunday, I've usually written a sermon that could be used both places, to use my time efficiently.
As I look ahead to a future in which I'm serving only one congregation, writing sermons for only one group of folks, I'm aware that this will make a difference in how I approach sermon writing. I think, I hope, it will bring a freshness to my writing and delivery.
Because I'm aware that I've gotten a little too hurried in my delivery, that I need to give a little more time for major points to sink in. I've learned that people want to know more about my own struggles, and though it's important not to use the pulpit as a therapeutic device, I think it's valuable to share my "experience, strength, and hope", as they say in 12-step programs.
And I definitely know that, as I write for just one congregation, I can be more challenging in my approach, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable!
My approach to preaching is much like my approach to teaching, my earlier career. I know I've got to get people's attention and keep it; stories, interactive moments, the unexpected, all these devices keep listeners connected and involved. It's a challenge to my creativity to establish and maintain this connection, and I relish it.
In March, I'm going to be preaching at Whidbey three Sundays in a row, and this will give me a chance to offer a series of three sermons on Faithfulness. I've been thinking about what Faithfulness means in a congregational setting and will use that theme to speak about our covenants with self, others, and the universe. This will be a wonderful opportunity to refresh my style and approach.
I've come to these awarenesses about preaching partly on my own, partly through useful feedback from listeners. And while it's always scary to be critiqued, it is essential for a minister to listen to that critique, examine it, and use it--not to try to please the critiquer but to improve this most visible of all ministry tasks.
I think of myself as a good preacher already, but I would like to be even better, to know that my thoughts were reaching people in the most effective ways possible. It is a worthy goal.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Update on Holston Valley situation
Dear Readers,
The Rev. Christine Riley has let me know that calls and emails from all over the country are rolling in to offer support and encouragement for Holston Valley UUC. Holston Valley UUC is in a very conservative rural area and your response to their plight is helping to cheer and inspire them. Thank you for your generosity and kindness to these folks whom most of us will never know in person.
This, it seems to me, is the meaning and heart of religious community---that we the faithful reach out to those we see struggling. That we are generous, not just when it's convenient and easy, as Lizard Eater has remarked, but when we don't know the people we are helping, when we're feeling poor or troubled ourselves, or have no strong identification with the situation.
I am grateful to all of you for your willingness to give a helping hand to my colleague and her church.
The Rev. Christine Riley has let me know that calls and emails from all over the country are rolling in to offer support and encouragement for Holston Valley UUC. Holston Valley UUC is in a very conservative rural area and your response to their plight is helping to cheer and inspire them. Thank you for your generosity and kindness to these folks whom most of us will never know in person.
This, it seems to me, is the meaning and heart of religious community---that we the faithful reach out to those we see struggling. That we are generous, not just when it's convenient and easy, as Lizard Eater has remarked, but when we don't know the people we are helping, when we're feeling poor or troubled ourselves, or have no strong identification with the situation.
I am grateful to all of you for your willingness to give a helping hand to my colleague and her church.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
More information about the Holston Valley UU Church tragedy
Dear Readers,
Here is more information about the Holston Valley UU Church situation, in an excerpt from another note from the Rev. Christine Riley. Some of you have sent cash donations; thank you so much! Others might find it possible to meet some of the other needs Christine mentions.
She writes:
Basically we lost everything in the RE Classrooms and our kitchenette area.
Some books and some most of the curriculums were in the DRE's office in the main church building and are fine. SO...luckily, her brand new computer was not in the RE Building...(which this congregation fondly called "THE REZ"--RE Zone).
We lost ALL classroom furniture. We lost All classroom art supplies (markers,pens, papers, glues, construction paper..etc, etc). ...while this sounds trivial it will amt. to thousands to replace and is needed soon.
Some area (think 90 min to one hour or more away) DRE's are talking about what they have that is extra, not needed, and will be in touch later this week.
Our Buddhist Sangha Group met there too, for years and years. They lost their entire library...and all their Buddhist, Yoga, meditation tapes. They are heart broken about the loss of their library texts and videos.
We are in the beginning stages of doing a loss inventory for each room....and hope to have it by the week's end. It is just really hard to recall each single item....what was in drawers,cupboards, etc. I have asked the DRE and teachers to begin listing things...mentally walk through the rooms, then wait a day and re-visit their lists to see if there are other things that come to mind.
We lost a big screen TV that we used for youth and adult RE, a DVD player, at least two VHS players...and today someone remembered that there was another TV stored in a closet there, too. At this point I know of two CD-stereo type units that were lost.
We were able to have ONE cabinet pulled out at the beginning of the fire response...with some of our brand new Spirit Plays and their individual baskets and manipulatives....sadly most were totally destroyed...saved a few things only.
The cabinet itself was a beautiful piece of carpentry done by some men in the congregation, was solid wood and on rollers. It is now in a garage at a member's home and we will see if it can be saved...when we priced buying one this fall the cost for it alone was over $1000....so we are hoping that it can be restored.
I am thinking that $, art supplies, books...all would be wonderfully appreciated.
-------------------------
Let's see if we can help out in this sad situation. Let the HVUU folks know you heard about it from a UU blog!
Here is more information about the Holston Valley UU Church situation, in an excerpt from another note from the Rev. Christine Riley. Some of you have sent cash donations; thank you so much! Others might find it possible to meet some of the other needs Christine mentions.
She writes:
Basically we lost everything in the RE Classrooms and our kitchenette area.
Some books and some most of the curriculums were in the DRE's office in the main church building and are fine. SO...luckily, her brand new computer was not in the RE Building...(which this congregation fondly called "THE REZ"--RE Zone).
We lost ALL classroom furniture. We lost All classroom art supplies (markers,pens, papers, glues, construction paper..etc, etc). ...while this sounds trivial it will amt. to thousands to replace and is needed soon.
Some area (think 90 min to one hour or more away) DRE's are talking about what they have that is extra, not needed, and will be in touch later this week.
Our Buddhist Sangha Group met there too, for years and years. They lost their entire library...and all their Buddhist, Yoga, meditation tapes. They are heart broken about the loss of their library texts and videos.
We are in the beginning stages of doing a loss inventory for each room....and hope to have it by the week's end. It is just really hard to recall each single item....what was in drawers,cupboards, etc. I have asked the DRE and teachers to begin listing things...mentally walk through the rooms, then wait a day and re-visit their lists to see if there are other things that come to mind.
We lost a big screen TV that we used for youth and adult RE, a DVD player, at least two VHS players...and today someone remembered that there was another TV stored in a closet there, too. At this point I know of two CD-stereo type units that were lost.
We were able to have ONE cabinet pulled out at the beginning of the fire response...with some of our brand new Spirit Plays and their individual baskets and manipulatives....sadly most were totally destroyed...saved a few things only.
The cabinet itself was a beautiful piece of carpentry done by some men in the congregation, was solid wood and on rollers. It is now in a garage at a member's home and we will see if it can be saved...when we priced buying one this fall the cost for it alone was over $1000....so we are hoping that it can be restored.
I am thinking that $, art supplies, books...all would be wonderfully appreciated.
-------------------------
Let's see if we can help out in this sad situation. Let the HVUU folks know you heard about it from a UU blog!
Monday, February 19, 2007
Tragedy in a UU congregation
Dear readers,
My colleague Christine Riley, who is the interim minister at a church in Tennessee, is in deep water with her congregation. A fire destroyed their entire RE building with almost all its furnishings and supplies. I'm pasting in parts of her letter to me for your information and if I can figure out how to paste in a photo, that too.
If any of you are able to help, it would be greatly appreciated. Christine is a Pacific Northwesterner doing interim ministry and we in the PNWD will be reaching out as well.
Christine writes:
Hi Kit:
Thank you for taking time to be in touch.
The fire here on Friday totally-totally destroyed our Religious Education Center.
All three classrooms and their contents ... the structure itself...the kitchenette...
all are a total loss...
...
We are already aware that ...EVEN THOUGH...we have "replacement coverage" for both the building itself and the contents that any settlement will take time...and will
fall FAR short of what is going to be needed for replacement. It's amazing what is allowed to be "deducted" from "replacement value"....
The Thomas Jefferson District advised us to start a "FIRE FUND" here ...so that
we can receive and separate any donations that might come. We have done so.
We get mail ONLY through our PO BOX here...as the church is in a rural area that serves three cities and numerous area smaller towns..there is no on-site mail delivery.
That PO BOX info is:
Holston Valley UU Church
PO BOX 8383
Gray, TN 37615
At this point we are holding RE classes in rooms which we JUST built this fall on
the lower level of the new building expansion...this church IS ALREADY in the last
year of a Cap. Drive!... the rooms were just wall-boarded in and we got heat to them
about a week ago...no paint, no floors, no furniture...no classroom supplies except what folks are bringing form home at this point.
I am attaching a few pics so you can see how things look here...except for the
3 inches of snow and ice that fell over the weekend ...which is now melting into
the open structure...
Your prayers, your thoughts for healing ... are most welcome, Kit...during
this time of grief and loss here.
Lay leaders and I will begin looking forward this week as a BOD Task Force is established. This congregation has already been through so much pain and challenge over the past few years...this just was not what we needed when they are now ...finally...at a point of optimism and are Pre-Candidating.
But ...it is what it is...and we are dealing with it thus far in gentle fellowship.
Thank you for reaching out, Kit.
Christine
--
Rev.Christine Riley
Interim Minister
Holston Valley Unitarian Universalist Church
Gray, TN
crirish@comcast.net
My colleague Christine Riley, who is the interim minister at a church in Tennessee, is in deep water with her congregation. A fire destroyed their entire RE building with almost all its furnishings and supplies. I'm pasting in parts of her letter to me for your information and if I can figure out how to paste in a photo, that too.
If any of you are able to help, it would be greatly appreciated. Christine is a Pacific Northwesterner doing interim ministry and we in the PNWD will be reaching out as well.
Christine writes:
Hi Kit:
Thank you for taking time to be in touch.
The fire here on Friday totally-totally destroyed our Religious Education Center.
All three classrooms and their contents ... the structure itself...the kitchenette...
all are a total loss...
...
We are already aware that ...EVEN THOUGH...we have "replacement coverage" for both the building itself and the contents that any settlement will take time...and will
fall FAR short of what is going to be needed for replacement. It's amazing what is allowed to be "deducted" from "replacement value"....
The Thomas Jefferson District advised us to start a "FIRE FUND" here ...so that
we can receive and separate any donations that might come. We have done so.
We get mail ONLY through our PO BOX here...as the church is in a rural area that serves three cities and numerous area smaller towns..there is no on-site mail delivery.
That PO BOX info is:
Holston Valley UU Church
PO BOX 8383
Gray, TN 37615
At this point we are holding RE classes in rooms which we JUST built this fall on
the lower level of the new building expansion...this church IS ALREADY in the last
year of a Cap. Drive!... the rooms were just wall-boarded in and we got heat to them
about a week ago...no paint, no floors, no furniture...no classroom supplies except what folks are bringing form home at this point.
I am attaching a few pics so you can see how things look here...except for the
3 inches of snow and ice that fell over the weekend ...which is now melting into
the open structure...
Your prayers, your thoughts for healing ... are most welcome, Kit...during
this time of grief and loss here.
Lay leaders and I will begin looking forward this week as a BOD Task Force is established. This congregation has already been through so much pain and challenge over the past few years...this just was not what we needed when they are now ...finally...at a point of optimism and are Pre-Candidating.
But ...it is what it is...and we are dealing with it thus far in gentle fellowship.
Thank you for reaching out, Kit.
Christine
--
Rev.Christine Riley
Interim Minister
Holston Valley Unitarian Universalist Church
Gray, TN
crirish@comcast.net
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Question #2: What Must I Do to Be Saved?
Tomorrow I am preaching the second sermon in a series of five sermons on big theological questions. "What must I do to be saved?" I ask.
"Salvation" is a red flag word for many Unitarian Universalists because they associate it only with the evangelical Christian use of the word, with proselytizing, with fear and shame, and with the kind of emotionality that UUs traditionally shun. They forget that many important, useful words, even to UUs, emerge from the same root: salve, salvage, save, for example. The root of the word is used to denote health, wholeness, safety and preservation.
Few UUs would protest the need for wholeness, for health, for safety, for preservation of resources. But the idea of salvation has been associated with being forgiven of sins so that one can go to heaven, and that's where UUs balk.
I believe we all have characteristics and behaviors that we know are not healthful or whole, that decrease our safety and diminish our resources. Our human task is to acknowledge them and consider how to deal with them.
Many have said to me, "I have nothing to be saved FROM, so I don't need salvation as a theological concept." When they think about the moments in their lives that have offered transformation, however, they often see that salvation (of a different sort than the stereotype) has indeed been part of their lives.
Perhaps we need to think of "salvation" as opportunity for transformation-----not so we'll go to heaven (Universalists believe in universal "going to heaven" anyhow) but so that our lives are more joyous and free, with less fear and shame and more love and respect.
Most world religions offer some interpretation of soteriology (the 50 cent word which means salvation) and most of those are framed in terms of how we treat each other and ourselves and what the rewards might be. Some offer heaven as a carrot; others offer increased meaning and joy in life.
We are all looking for increased meaning and joy in life. That's why we're here, hoping to find answers in our experiences that will lead us into deeper relationship with ourselves, each other, and the power beyond human power.
The sermon can be found on the UUCWI website at http://www.whidbey.com/uucwi/ministry.html
"Salvation" is a red flag word for many Unitarian Universalists because they associate it only with the evangelical Christian use of the word, with proselytizing, with fear and shame, and with the kind of emotionality that UUs traditionally shun. They forget that many important, useful words, even to UUs, emerge from the same root: salve, salvage, save, for example. The root of the word is used to denote health, wholeness, safety and preservation.
Few UUs would protest the need for wholeness, for health, for safety, for preservation of resources. But the idea of salvation has been associated with being forgiven of sins so that one can go to heaven, and that's where UUs balk.
I believe we all have characteristics and behaviors that we know are not healthful or whole, that decrease our safety and diminish our resources. Our human task is to acknowledge them and consider how to deal with them.
Many have said to me, "I have nothing to be saved FROM, so I don't need salvation as a theological concept." When they think about the moments in their lives that have offered transformation, however, they often see that salvation (of a different sort than the stereotype) has indeed been part of their lives.
Perhaps we need to think of "salvation" as opportunity for transformation-----not so we'll go to heaven (Universalists believe in universal "going to heaven" anyhow) but so that our lives are more joyous and free, with less fear and shame and more love and respect.
Most world religions offer some interpretation of soteriology (the 50 cent word which means salvation) and most of those are framed in terms of how we treat each other and ourselves and what the rewards might be. Some offer heaven as a carrot; others offer increased meaning and joy in life.
We are all looking for increased meaning and joy in life. That's why we're here, hoping to find answers in our experiences that will lead us into deeper relationship with ourselves, each other, and the power beyond human power.
The sermon can be found on the UUCWI website at http://www.whidbey.com/uucwi/ministry.html
Noticed by the UU World
Heavens! Imagine my surprise upon opening up my new UU World mag, which arrived today, and find Ms. Kitty's cited in Jane Greer's column "On the Web", p. 12. The quote she pulls wasn't one of my finer ones, to judge by some of the comments I got on that post, but I'm just tickled to be noticed. I love the UU World magazine and read it cover to cover over a period of several days. Chris Walton, my old friend from the Mountain Desert District who bailed out of the Rockies to go to Boston, is a fine editor and the UU World reflects his skill and commitment.
Thanks, Chris and Jane.
Thanks, Chris and Jane.
Susanna will be okay
Thanks to all who offered prayers and kind thoughts in Susanna's behalf. I just talked with my sister Jean in Moses Lake and she tells me that Susanna will be home today, with a pacemaker implanted to regulate her too-slow heart beat. That's such good news!
Jean has been doing grandma duty with Abigail and Keith and the two dogs and she is about worn out, having worried lots and slept little, aggravated by boisterous dogs and anxious kids. So she needs our thoughts and prayers too. We have become very close in the past few years; once I gave her a pillow with a slogan: you'll always be my best friend; you know too much! And, though we squabbled a lot growing up and are very different as adults, she is my closest friend.
I know she would come to be with me in a crisis and I would go to be with her in a flash, if she needed me.
Jean has been doing grandma duty with Abigail and Keith and the two dogs and she is about worn out, having worried lots and slept little, aggravated by boisterous dogs and anxious kids. So she needs our thoughts and prayers too. We have become very close in the past few years; once I gave her a pillow with a slogan: you'll always be my best friend; you know too much! And, though we squabbled a lot growing up and are very different as adults, she is my closest friend.
I know she would come to be with me in a crisis and I would go to be with her in a flash, if she needed me.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Your prayers, please
Please keep my niece Susanna in your hearts. She is only 33 and has today been diagnosed with a heart arrythmia requiring a pacemaker. She and her husband are in the process of adopting little Keith and they have a precocious young daughter Abigail to raise as well. This little family needs all the prayers they can get.
Thank you all.
Thank you all.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
We Gotta Put Shoes on Willie
This post is because in recent days I have gotten several hits on the blog from people looking for the words to this song. Can you believe our parents let us pantomime this song in a small-town talent show? Pretty nervy!
We gotta put shoes on Willie,
We gotta get 'em on somehow,
From the size of his beard and the things I've heared,
Willie is a big boy now.
He's a courtin' his cousin Tillie,
And whenever he milks the cow,
He's a hummin' a song and a milkin' too long,
And a gruntin' like a lovesick sow.
Last night I seen him behind the shed,
Sparkin' like a lightnin' rod,
And if he's gonter wed,
the durn fool critter's got to be shod,
So go get our relations, cuz Willie may begin a row,
It took his uncles and aunts to put him into pants,
And we gotta get the shoes on now somehow,
We gotta get the shoes on now.
Where oh where is the mail order catalog,
Grampa was lookin' at it last,
Grampa, Grampa, gimme that catalog,
Here, I'm abringin' it fast.
Now doncha tear the pages with the shoes on,
Say, Ma, what size'll we get?
Well, ya might try a pair a twenty-twos on,
Our Willie's a growin' yet.
Now how about the color?
Well, black's kinda mighty nice.
Brown is snappier in town.
No, black is better, but we'll make a compromise,
One shoe black and the other one brown.
We gotta put shoes on Willie,
We gotta get 'em on somehow.
It took his uncles and aunts to put him into pants,
And we gotta get the shoes on now, somehow,
We gotta get the shoes on now!
We gotta put shoes on Willie,
We gotta get 'em on somehow,
From the size of his beard and the things I've heared,
Willie is a big boy now.
He's a courtin' his cousin Tillie,
And whenever he milks the cow,
He's a hummin' a song and a milkin' too long,
And a gruntin' like a lovesick sow.
Last night I seen him behind the shed,
Sparkin' like a lightnin' rod,
And if he's gonter wed,
the durn fool critter's got to be shod,
So go get our relations, cuz Willie may begin a row,
It took his uncles and aunts to put him into pants,
And we gotta get the shoes on now somehow,
We gotta get the shoes on now.
Where oh where is the mail order catalog,
Grampa was lookin' at it last,
Grampa, Grampa, gimme that catalog,
Here, I'm abringin' it fast.
Now doncha tear the pages with the shoes on,
Say, Ma, what size'll we get?
Well, ya might try a pair a twenty-twos on,
Our Willie's a growin' yet.
Now how about the color?
Well, black's kinda mighty nice.
Brown is snappier in town.
No, black is better, but we'll make a compromise,
One shoe black and the other one brown.
We gotta put shoes on Willie,
We gotta get 'em on somehow.
It took his uncles and aunts to put him into pants,
And we gotta get the shoes on now, somehow,
We gotta get the shoes on now!
Found a copy of the song with its tune: https://archive.org/details/78_we-got-to-put-shoes-on-willie_stanley-fritts-and-the-korn-kobblers-stanley-fritts-f_gbia0202875a
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
What a thrill!
No, it has little to do with Valentine's Day; it's a larger thrill.
I am a member of the board of the Religious Coalition for Equality, an interfaith clergy organization advocating for marriage equality and equal rights for sexual minorities. We had our Feb. board meeting today in Seattle, to finalize the details of our big rally on the Statehouse steps on Feb. 26, and I have been asked to be one of the speakers at the rally!
This is a huge honor and responsibility. There will be people there from all over the state; we have attracted nearly 2000 in the past, for a day of advocacy training, the rally, and meetings with legislators.
I have secretly wanted to be a speaker every year but never was brave enough to put forth my name. In the past, they've had Jewish, Christian, and Muslim (Sufi) speakers. This year the program committee decided to ask a Unitarian Universalist because of our particular slant and involvement in marriage equality advocacy.
So I am thrilled and all the way home on the freeway and ferry I was thinking about how I will use my three minutes of opportunity to address this crucial issue.
It's only 12 days away, so I need to do some thinking. I'll let you know how it goes.
I am a member of the board of the Religious Coalition for Equality, an interfaith clergy organization advocating for marriage equality and equal rights for sexual minorities. We had our Feb. board meeting today in Seattle, to finalize the details of our big rally on the Statehouse steps on Feb. 26, and I have been asked to be one of the speakers at the rally!
This is a huge honor and responsibility. There will be people there from all over the state; we have attracted nearly 2000 in the past, for a day of advocacy training, the rally, and meetings with legislators.
I have secretly wanted to be a speaker every year but never was brave enough to put forth my name. In the past, they've had Jewish, Christian, and Muslim (Sufi) speakers. This year the program committee decided to ask a Unitarian Universalist because of our particular slant and involvement in marriage equality advocacy.
So I am thrilled and all the way home on the freeway and ferry I was thinking about how I will use my three minutes of opportunity to address this crucial issue.
It's only 12 days away, so I need to do some thinking. I'll let you know how it goes.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Love and the Single Woman
Most Valentine's Days in my life have been Valentine-less. Before my mother died in 1994, she always sent me a Valentine, but almost no boyfriend was ever so inclined, except when reminded, and it'd be a little weird to get one from my son.
And you know what? I don't really mind. This is not a gripe session. It's more an opportunity to think about what it means to be my age (64 3/4), single, living alone, professionally and satisfyingly employed, enough friends to feel content, and no strong desire to be mated.
Oh, I joke around about wanting a boyfriend (though anyone who applied would certainly not be considered a "boy"), but when push comes to shove, I'm not sure I really do. Would I want to give up my independence? Would I want to have company all the time? Could I make the sacrifices necessary to sustain an intimate relationship?
I look at the successful couples I know and admire and I just can't see myself managing what they manage---the day to day compromises and negotiations, the need to accommodate a partner's needs and wishes, the obligation to give up a part of my life to a partner's life. I just don't know if I could do it, after 27 years of living single.
It may be that I have just gotten out of practice, that if I were in a relationship of trust and affection, I could do it with little difficulty. It worries me to think that I may have been wounded enough by my past experience with marriage that I can't get past that and be successful in another partnership.
Whatever the reason, I am, at this time, Valentine-less and still valid. I love and am loved and that is enough. At least right now.
And you know what? I don't really mind. This is not a gripe session. It's more an opportunity to think about what it means to be my age (64 3/4), single, living alone, professionally and satisfyingly employed, enough friends to feel content, and no strong desire to be mated.
Oh, I joke around about wanting a boyfriend (though anyone who applied would certainly not be considered a "boy"), but when push comes to shove, I'm not sure I really do. Would I want to give up my independence? Would I want to have company all the time? Could I make the sacrifices necessary to sustain an intimate relationship?
I look at the successful couples I know and admire and I just can't see myself managing what they manage---the day to day compromises and negotiations, the need to accommodate a partner's needs and wishes, the obligation to give up a part of my life to a partner's life. I just don't know if I could do it, after 27 years of living single.
It may be that I have just gotten out of practice, that if I were in a relationship of trust and affection, I could do it with little difficulty. It worries me to think that I may have been wounded enough by my past experience with marriage that I can't get past that and be successful in another partnership.
Whatever the reason, I am, at this time, Valentine-less and still valid. I love and am loved and that is enough. At least right now.
Emehrrgency, Emehrrgency, Everrrybody to get frrrom Strrreet...
Remember Alan Arkin speaking this phrase in "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming"? One of the funniest movies I think I've ever seen, it gave me a good line to spout whenever things got a little too serious.
However, it did not come to mind last night when I attended the first session of the Emergency Preparedness seminar offered by Whidbey Island volunteers schooled in the issues of disaster response.
In a serious but light-hearted presentation, we heard about the challenges we would face in a variety of disaster scenarios and how we might address them. We learned about filling a grab and go bag with essentials in case of an earthquake or fire; getting water from the house water heater; "if it's yellow, let it mellow"; that Island County has chosen a site where it will dig a mass grave in the event of a pandemic; how and what can be shared with neighbors; dealing with pets (cats are a problem); purifying dirty water; storing a 10 day or more supply of food, water, and other necessities where animals won't break into it; precautions in the event of radiation exposure. The list was endless.
None of it was presented with a Doom and Gloom overlay, but it was clear that being informed and prepared was a smart thing to do. We all went through the lengthy and frequent power outages of early winter and doubtless this experience was why some 40-50 people showed up at this first session.
What stood out for me was the importance of being connected to others in the community, to help and to be helped. A neighborhood can act as a buddy system for its residents, making sure that each household has adequate resources and a contact point in time of need.
It was a sobering but enjoyable evening. I was pleased that several UUCWIers were also in attendance. And I was pleased as well that UUCWI is fostering neighborhood groupings itself, as well as looking at how we might serve others as neighbor. I came home pondering the opportunities that crisis can offer.
However, it did not come to mind last night when I attended the first session of the Emergency Preparedness seminar offered by Whidbey Island volunteers schooled in the issues of disaster response.
In a serious but light-hearted presentation, we heard about the challenges we would face in a variety of disaster scenarios and how we might address them. We learned about filling a grab and go bag with essentials in case of an earthquake or fire; getting water from the house water heater; "if it's yellow, let it mellow"; that Island County has chosen a site where it will dig a mass grave in the event of a pandemic; how and what can be shared with neighbors; dealing with pets (cats are a problem); purifying dirty water; storing a 10 day or more supply of food, water, and other necessities where animals won't break into it; precautions in the event of radiation exposure. The list was endless.
None of it was presented with a Doom and Gloom overlay, but it was clear that being informed and prepared was a smart thing to do. We all went through the lengthy and frequent power outages of early winter and doubtless this experience was why some 40-50 people showed up at this first session.
What stood out for me was the importance of being connected to others in the community, to help and to be helped. A neighborhood can act as a buddy system for its residents, making sure that each household has adequate resources and a contact point in time of need.
It was a sobering but enjoyable evening. I was pleased that several UUCWIers were also in attendance. And I was pleased as well that UUCWI is fostering neighborhood groupings itself, as well as looking at how we might serve others as neighbor. I came home pondering the opportunities that crisis can offer.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Playing
In the past few days, I have actually had chances to play! I sometimes wonder about myself. I enjoy my work so much that I occasionally will go for many days before I take time to goof off and have some non-church-related fun.
I used to justify this by intoning Robert Frost's lines from "Two Tramps in Mud-Time":
"But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future´s sakes."
I love this stanza of his poem and truly, my avocation and my vocation are mostly united. Ministry for me is so much fun that sometimes I am amazed that they pay me to do this work.
But that means that I don't look for opportunities to play very often. I always seem to be working on something, whether it's at the gym, around the house, doing email, even thinking. I rarely read fiction except when I'm in bed. I am never far from my work. Even my trips out of town are usually work related.
I'm well aware that there is a certain Type A mentality in me and I have to make myself turn away from the job and do something entirely different.
This week has offered a couple of opportunities for fun. On Thursday night, I hosted a small group of musicians and we played old fiddle tunes, waltzes and folk songs for a couple of hours. I often just listen, but this time I dragged out my electronic keyboard and practiced a bunch of stuff I knew and was able to play along. I'm no Elton John, but I've played piano for years and learned how to use a fake book a long time ago.
We used to jam at Swallow Hill Music Association in Denver, at the Denver Friends of Folk Music, and in small groups, and it was there that I learned all the fiddle tunes in my repertoire. I never did learn how to play the fiddle, but I could use my keyboard know-how to play along. And it was hugely satisfying to play along with Judy, Steve, and JoAnn on their assorted instruments on Thursday night.
Then last night was the big UUCWI church auction, an annual fundraiser. And it was church-related, but it was also a lot of fun in its own right AND I bid on and bought several items which will offer occasions for fun.
I bought the following items: two beautiful, handthrown pottery serving bowls, which I will probably use for a gift; a lesson in making photographic bookmarks; a night of playing 25 cent poker; a family picnic at Goss Lake; a mystery dinner at Lavender Wind Farm; and, most exciting, a trip to the Walla Walla wine country in September. The events are spread out across the next several months, guaranteeing that I will be forced to have fun on a regular schedule during the coming year.
You might wonder if it's possible for a minister to have fun at church-related events. I know that the common wisdom among clergy is that a minister is always "on" when with the flock, and I agree with that and am careful when I'm with congregants (not that I do anything appalling when I'm not with them), but in a small community, it's necessary and appropriate to mingle socially with members of my congregation, avoiding church business if possible, and just enjoying each other.
A couple of UUCWI musicians occasionally come to the Thursday jams and there we are just fellow singers and players; the relationship is not minister and parishioner but musician and musician.
If it weren't possible to stretch these boundaries a bit, it would be very lonely to live in a small community. But it does require care. I don't want to embarrass my congregation nor make it difficult for them to see me as their minister, not just their buddy. It's a fine line to walk. I hope I do it appropriately.
I used to justify this by intoning Robert Frost's lines from "Two Tramps in Mud-Time":
"But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future´s sakes."
I love this stanza of his poem and truly, my avocation and my vocation are mostly united. Ministry for me is so much fun that sometimes I am amazed that they pay me to do this work.
But that means that I don't look for opportunities to play very often. I always seem to be working on something, whether it's at the gym, around the house, doing email, even thinking. I rarely read fiction except when I'm in bed. I am never far from my work. Even my trips out of town are usually work related.
I'm well aware that there is a certain Type A mentality in me and I have to make myself turn away from the job and do something entirely different.
This week has offered a couple of opportunities for fun. On Thursday night, I hosted a small group of musicians and we played old fiddle tunes, waltzes and folk songs for a couple of hours. I often just listen, but this time I dragged out my electronic keyboard and practiced a bunch of stuff I knew and was able to play along. I'm no Elton John, but I've played piano for years and learned how to use a fake book a long time ago.
We used to jam at Swallow Hill Music Association in Denver, at the Denver Friends of Folk Music, and in small groups, and it was there that I learned all the fiddle tunes in my repertoire. I never did learn how to play the fiddle, but I could use my keyboard know-how to play along. And it was hugely satisfying to play along with Judy, Steve, and JoAnn on their assorted instruments on Thursday night.
Then last night was the big UUCWI church auction, an annual fundraiser. And it was church-related, but it was also a lot of fun in its own right AND I bid on and bought several items which will offer occasions for fun.
I bought the following items: two beautiful, handthrown pottery serving bowls, which I will probably use for a gift; a lesson in making photographic bookmarks; a night of playing 25 cent poker; a family picnic at Goss Lake; a mystery dinner at Lavender Wind Farm; and, most exciting, a trip to the Walla Walla wine country in September. The events are spread out across the next several months, guaranteeing that I will be forced to have fun on a regular schedule during the coming year.
You might wonder if it's possible for a minister to have fun at church-related events. I know that the common wisdom among clergy is that a minister is always "on" when with the flock, and I agree with that and am careful when I'm with congregants (not that I do anything appalling when I'm not with them), but in a small community, it's necessary and appropriate to mingle socially with members of my congregation, avoiding church business if possible, and just enjoying each other.
A couple of UUCWI musicians occasionally come to the Thursday jams and there we are just fellow singers and players; the relationship is not minister and parishioner but musician and musician.
If it weren't possible to stretch these boundaries a bit, it would be very lonely to live in a small community. But it does require care. I don't want to embarrass my congregation nor make it difficult for them to see me as their minister, not just their buddy. It's a fine line to walk. I hope I do it appropriately.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Prophetic Atheism
The latest UU Carnival has as its topic a quote from James Luther Adams: “A good deal of so-called atheism is itself, from my point of view, theologically significant. It is the working of God in history, and judgement upon the pious. An authentic prophet can be a radical critic of spurious piety, of sham spirituality.”
When I entered the UU ministry, I had already done a lot of thinking about atheism, agnosticism, and theism. There had been a long period of time when I wasn't too certain about what/who/how God could be; in fact, there are times now when I am not too certain.
It was my experience in AlAnon, needing to find a Higher Power in order to work the 12 step program, that pushed me to define my thoughts about God. And it was helpful to me to listen to the several nontheists I knew. I found that their perspective pushed me further, to examine my own assumptions, my prejudices, my uncertainties. But in order to work through the first few steps of AlAnon, I had to find a Higher Power.
My "old white guy on a throne" didn't work for me any more. In casting about for a power that was greater than my power, I settled on Gravity, one thing I knew for sure that was greater than my power. Gravity morphed into Natural Law as Higher Power and it was there that I found myself in agreement with my atheist friends.
I wrote the following short piece later as a result of my changing thinking, in an effort to broaden and not make captive my thinking about God.
What do I believe about God?
I am an atheist, if you ask me about the old white guy in the sky. I am a believer, if you ask me about nature or spirit or love. I am an agnostic, if you ask for proofs of God. I am a believer, if you ask for my experience of God.
To me, God is all----nature, spirit, love, cosmos, creation. God is in all----in me, in you, in my belongings, in my animals and the plants I tend, in all beings, animate and inanimate. God is in my relationships----with myself, with other beings, with the universe. God is beyond all----infinite, endless, limitless.
How can I know God? How can I not know God? God is all around me, God is within me, God is beyond me. God is in all my experience, yet beyond my experience.
God is mystery, yet I know God when I tend my garden, when I care for my pets, when I nurture my relationships.
God is invisible, yet I view God in the starry sky, in a mountain meadow, in a mighty storm.
God is infinite, yet I experience God in the limitless ocean, in an endless prairie of grass, in the wind which cools the hot day.
God is not human, yet I pray for God’s guidance; God is impersonal, yet I seek God’s blessing; God is detached, yet I feel God’s presence.
God is genderless, yet I sense God’s understanding of my womanhood.
God is changeless, yet I am aware of the continuous growth of creation.
What do you believe about God?
When I entered the UU ministry, I had already done a lot of thinking about atheism, agnosticism, and theism. There had been a long period of time when I wasn't too certain about what/who/how God could be; in fact, there are times now when I am not too certain.
It was my experience in AlAnon, needing to find a Higher Power in order to work the 12 step program, that pushed me to define my thoughts about God. And it was helpful to me to listen to the several nontheists I knew. I found that their perspective pushed me further, to examine my own assumptions, my prejudices, my uncertainties. But in order to work through the first few steps of AlAnon, I had to find a Higher Power.
My "old white guy on a throne" didn't work for me any more. In casting about for a power that was greater than my power, I settled on Gravity, one thing I knew for sure that was greater than my power. Gravity morphed into Natural Law as Higher Power and it was there that I found myself in agreement with my atheist friends.
I wrote the following short piece later as a result of my changing thinking, in an effort to broaden and not make captive my thinking about God.
What do I believe about God?
I am an atheist, if you ask me about the old white guy in the sky. I am a believer, if you ask me about nature or spirit or love. I am an agnostic, if you ask for proofs of God. I am a believer, if you ask for my experience of God.
To me, God is all----nature, spirit, love, cosmos, creation. God is in all----in me, in you, in my belongings, in my animals and the plants I tend, in all beings, animate and inanimate. God is in my relationships----with myself, with other beings, with the universe. God is beyond all----infinite, endless, limitless.
How can I know God? How can I not know God? God is all around me, God is within me, God is beyond me. God is in all my experience, yet beyond my experience.
God is mystery, yet I know God when I tend my garden, when I care for my pets, when I nurture my relationships.
God is invisible, yet I view God in the starry sky, in a mountain meadow, in a mighty storm.
God is infinite, yet I experience God in the limitless ocean, in an endless prairie of grass, in the wind which cools the hot day.
God is not human, yet I pray for God’s guidance; God is impersonal, yet I seek God’s blessing; God is detached, yet I feel God’s presence.
God is genderless, yet I sense God’s understanding of my womanhood.
God is changeless, yet I am aware of the continuous growth of creation.
What do you believe about God?
Addendum
The author of the article mentioned in the earlier post responded immediately to my plaint in such a thoughtful way that I have reprinted his note here:
"Thanks for your note. "Rave and reflection" is a nicer way of putting it
than "Rave and a complaint"!
"I guessed that the humorous approach to the Universal Life ordination
might rub some people the wrong way, though as one who grew up in the
Unitarian church, I guess I thought it would be the Baptists I'd hear
from first!
"But forgive me for being glib. I respect your profession and the
selfless hard work that goes into it, and I'm sure the easy confusion
between "Unitarian Universalist" and "Universal Life" must grate after a
while.
"Mr. Childs struck me overall as a very thoughtful individual with a
slightly impish sense of humor, which I wanted to reflect. His book,
"Stone Palaces," published by The Mountaineers, might give you more
insights into his character than I could in a 7-inch sidebar.
"I'm glad you found the article's information useful!
"Best regards,
"Brian Cantwell"
Thank you, Brian Cantwell, for your kind response to my gripe!
"Thanks for your note. "Rave and reflection" is a nicer way of putting it
than "Rave and a complaint"!
"I guessed that the humorous approach to the Universal Life ordination
might rub some people the wrong way, though as one who grew up in the
Unitarian church, I guess I thought it would be the Baptists I'd hear
from first!
"But forgive me for being glib. I respect your profession and the
selfless hard work that goes into it, and I'm sure the easy confusion
between "Unitarian Universalist" and "Universal Life" must grate after a
while.
"Mr. Childs struck me overall as a very thoughtful individual with a
slightly impish sense of humor, which I wanted to reflect. His book,
"Stone Palaces," published by The Mountaineers, might give you more
insights into his character than I could in a 7-inch sidebar.
"I'm glad you found the article's information useful!
"Best regards,
"Brian Cantwell"
Thank you, Brian Cantwell, for your kind response to my gripe!
Hmmmph! Universal Life minister indeed!
This morning's Seattle Times Weekend supplement had a nice article about Washington's beautiful Methow Valley in northcentral Washington, all about a gorgeous place to stay and the many wintertime activities available there.
But it was marred for me by a sidebar whose headline was "He can book your meeting, bless your vows". This blurb featured a guy who is the sales manager of the lodge mentioned and he is an "ordained minister", courtesy of the Universal Life Church, aka mail order company.
I was a bit peeved and wrote a note to the author of the article expressing my irritation that the "ordination" of The Right Reverend Rabbi Mahavishnu, as this fellow names himself, should be mentioned as if it were a legitimate credential.
I would like to believe that neither the author nor the "minister" intended to disparage the years of work I put in to earn my ordination nor the call I experienced which preceded my decision to study for the ministry. But I suspect that, at least in the case of the "minister", he intended just that, to poke fun at something he thinks is silly.
Perhaps in today's cultural milieu, where many clergy and religious folk are often ridiculous and espouse incredibly un-saintly views and behaviors, "to be foolish is human, to spoof, divine".
I'm very likely too sensitive to this issue. I once was asked by the mother of a bride if I was a "real" minister, was Unitarian Universalist the same as Universal Life? I reassured her that, indeed, I had gotten my degree and credentials after a long process of study and training, not by typing in a credit card number on a web site.
I do know that some Pagan leaders, in order to perform ceremonies for their faith groups, need to use the Universal Life credential to legally sign marriage licenses. This is a legitimate use of such a credential, as few seminaries welcome Pagan seminarians.
But in other cases, the Universal Life Church ordination seems to me to be a cheapening of the concept of a Call to ministry and the humbling journey of discernment and formation.
But it was marred for me by a sidebar whose headline was "He can book your meeting, bless your vows". This blurb featured a guy who is the sales manager of the lodge mentioned and he is an "ordained minister", courtesy of the Universal Life Church, aka mail order company.
I was a bit peeved and wrote a note to the author of the article expressing my irritation that the "ordination" of The Right Reverend Rabbi Mahavishnu, as this fellow names himself, should be mentioned as if it were a legitimate credential.
I would like to believe that neither the author nor the "minister" intended to disparage the years of work I put in to earn my ordination nor the call I experienced which preceded my decision to study for the ministry. But I suspect that, at least in the case of the "minister", he intended just that, to poke fun at something he thinks is silly.
Perhaps in today's cultural milieu, where many clergy and religious folk are often ridiculous and espouse incredibly un-saintly views and behaviors, "to be foolish is human, to spoof, divine".
I'm very likely too sensitive to this issue. I once was asked by the mother of a bride if I was a "real" minister, was Unitarian Universalist the same as Universal Life? I reassured her that, indeed, I had gotten my degree and credentials after a long process of study and training, not by typing in a credit card number on a web site.
I do know that some Pagan leaders, in order to perform ceremonies for their faith groups, need to use the Universal Life credential to legally sign marriage licenses. This is a legitimate use of such a credential, as few seminaries welcome Pagan seminarians.
But in other cases, the Universal Life Church ordination seems to me to be a cheapening of the concept of a Call to ministry and the humbling journey of discernment and formation.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Loving and Leaving
This past weekend on Vashon, I was very aware of my feelings about ending my contract with these dear people. And as Valentine's Day approaches---and as I preached about love on Sunday morning---what it means to love and to have love in one's life was much on my mind.
I realized recently that, in making the decision to leave Vashon, I've experienced the professional equivalent of that old romantic song, "to say yes to one and leave the other behind; it ain't often easy, it ain't often kind, did you ever have to make up your mind?"
As the years have gone by since I began to serve both these small congregations (since fall 2003), though I have always loved the Vashon congregation and have felt close to individual members and pleased with their successes, I eventually realized that my feelings and actions toward the Whidbey congregation represented a deeper sense of connection.
And then I knew that I needed to make a decision: would I continue to serve both groups, risking serving one better and more passionately than the other, or would I end my relationship with one group so that I could serve the other with greater dedication, risking the lessening of my financial security?
It has felt eerily like dating two lovely men, but seeing the relationship with one as sweet and the relationship with the other as deepening. At some point, it's necessary to decide what one wants out of the relationship---sweetness or deeper intimacy.
And so I have chosen the Whidbey congregation as the group I will spend the next years of my professional (and personal) life with. My decision means I will figure out how to keep body and soul together without the income from a second congregation; it means I will ask the Whidbey folks to change their relationship with me from "consultant" to "settled". And it means I can throw my whole heart and soul into my relationship with them.
Ministry to a congregation is a love commitment requiring one's whole self, being careful to retain one's perspective and to take care of oneself but committing to the spiritual nurture and wellbeing of that beloved community.
There's always risk in an intimate relationship, whether it is a marriage or a friendship or a ministry. Will it last? Will either of us be disappointed? Will we manage our difficulties and continue to grow together? Will our partnership result in beneficial contributions to each other and the larger community? We take on these risks together and covenant to live with them, facing them, dealing with them, overcoming them with trust and with great love. I look forward to it.
I realized recently that, in making the decision to leave Vashon, I've experienced the professional equivalent of that old romantic song, "to say yes to one and leave the other behind; it ain't often easy, it ain't often kind, did you ever have to make up your mind?"
As the years have gone by since I began to serve both these small congregations (since fall 2003), though I have always loved the Vashon congregation and have felt close to individual members and pleased with their successes, I eventually realized that my feelings and actions toward the Whidbey congregation represented a deeper sense of connection.
And then I knew that I needed to make a decision: would I continue to serve both groups, risking serving one better and more passionately than the other, or would I end my relationship with one group so that I could serve the other with greater dedication, risking the lessening of my financial security?
It has felt eerily like dating two lovely men, but seeing the relationship with one as sweet and the relationship with the other as deepening. At some point, it's necessary to decide what one wants out of the relationship---sweetness or deeper intimacy.
And so I have chosen the Whidbey congregation as the group I will spend the next years of my professional (and personal) life with. My decision means I will figure out how to keep body and soul together without the income from a second congregation; it means I will ask the Whidbey folks to change their relationship with me from "consultant" to "settled". And it means I can throw my whole heart and soul into my relationship with them.
Ministry to a congregation is a love commitment requiring one's whole self, being careful to retain one's perspective and to take care of oneself but committing to the spiritual nurture and wellbeing of that beloved community.
There's always risk in an intimate relationship, whether it is a marriage or a friendship or a ministry. Will it last? Will either of us be disappointed? Will we manage our difficulties and continue to grow together? Will our partnership result in beneficial contributions to each other and the larger community? We take on these risks together and covenant to live with them, facing them, dealing with them, overcoming them with trust and with great love. I look forward to it.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
And the results are in!
I was so tickled this morning to check the vote totals and see that favorite bloggers Chalice Chick and Linguist Friend had scored big in the vote department! Congratulations to both of you and thanks for setting such a high standard for writing and imagination.
To echo PeaceBang, megawinner, this has been a lot of fun and even though I occasionally noticed myself obsessing about checking the totals, I only thought of it as fun, not as a test of worthiness. I was purely astounded to be nominated, let alone inch my way up into 4th, 5th, and 9th places in the categories of Best Minister blog, Best New blog, and Best Writing.
So thanks for all the fish, er, votes, and happy blogging.
To echo PeaceBang, megawinner, this has been a lot of fun and even though I occasionally noticed myself obsessing about checking the totals, I only thought of it as fun, not as a test of worthiness. I was purely astounded to be nominated, let alone inch my way up into 4th, 5th, and 9th places in the categories of Best Minister blog, Best New blog, and Best Writing.
So thanks for all the fish, er, votes, and happy blogging.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Books and cats--Ms Kitty's cure
Well, I didn't get over to the beach, but I did stop by a friend's house and gave her cat Ophelia some pastoral care. Ophie had her tail in a twist because her owners are taking care of A Dog; Oph and I are buds and she likes to crawl into my lap and tell me all her troubles. She is an ancient old girl with a voice like a squeaky gate but it is a pleasure to listen to her complaints.
So that helped. Plus I went to the Langley bookstore (Moonraker--great name, huh?) and picked up a Sister Fidelma mystery I hadn't yet read (Peter Tremayne is the author), as well as a couple of other murderous tales.
The landlord has reduced my rent temporarily while the repairs are being made and that's one reason I felt flush enough to splurge on a few books with little redeeming social value. Of course, Sister Fidelma is an education in early Irish law and a long-ago boyfriend and I once attended a Halloween party as Sister Fidelma and her sweetie Brother Eadulf. I looked great in a cowled robe and red wig!
And then I came home and found a useful comment from Judy and a sweetly comforting comment from LinguistFriend. I feel like I've been visited by angels.
I'm still a bit blah, but I've been soothed into not minding so much. Off to Vashon tomorrow for a couple of days. The sermon for Sunday is an oldie, "Our Love is Here to Stay", about relationships and how the stages of love relationships can be similar to those of connecting with a faith community. The fact that I'm doing a re-run is a symptom of the blahs, but I do feel some creative rumblings beginning, so I expect to be picking up speed here soon.
So that helped. Plus I went to the Langley bookstore (Moonraker--great name, huh?) and picked up a Sister Fidelma mystery I hadn't yet read (Peter Tremayne is the author), as well as a couple of other murderous tales.
The landlord has reduced my rent temporarily while the repairs are being made and that's one reason I felt flush enough to splurge on a few books with little redeeming social value. Of course, Sister Fidelma is an education in early Irish law and a long-ago boyfriend and I once attended a Halloween party as Sister Fidelma and her sweetie Brother Eadulf. I looked great in a cowled robe and red wig!
And then I came home and found a useful comment from Judy and a sweetly comforting comment from LinguistFriend. I feel like I've been visited by angels.
I'm still a bit blah, but I've been soothed into not minding so much. Off to Vashon tomorrow for a couple of days. The sermon for Sunday is an oldie, "Our Love is Here to Stay", about relationships and how the stages of love relationships can be similar to those of connecting with a faith community. The fact that I'm doing a re-run is a symptom of the blahs, but I do feel some creative rumblings beginning, so I expect to be picking up speed here soon.
Groundhog Day Blahs
It's a gorgeous day out there, I've been to the gym and worked out, we had a productive, if long, board meeting last night, I've gotten a few votes in the blog awards competition, I'm not scheduled to leave for Vashon till tomorrow-----------I should be feeling pretty UP. And at least I'm not feeling down. But "blah" just doesn't cut it for me. And it doesn't usually produce a blog post, either.
But today it's going to.
I don't feel very interested in anything right now. And I'm not sure why. There's nothing serious enough in my life to actually worry about; there's nothing thrilling enough in my life to enthuse about; if anything, I feel tired of the same old, same old.
I was thinking about sermons this morning; I would like very much to increase my preaching schedule for the next church year. I think it would stimulate me to start caring more about what's happening in the world, rather than observing it all and sighing wearily.
What am I sighing wearily about these days? The presidential campaign which has already shifted into "what can we get this guy/gal saying on national TV that will get our viewers' attention?". The propensity of sane people to deny responsibility for stupid actions, whether they are national figures or local yokels. The endless arguments about climate change, some of which fly in the face of common sense, as in "quintupling the population of the planet has nothing to do with the extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere".
And then there's Seattle's ongoing effort to deal with their traffic headaches in expensive and controversial ways. The ongoing east/west battle in the state of Washington, with the east side of the mountains being stubbornly conservative (not necessarily in a bad way) and the west side being stubbornly righteous about their liberal behavior (not necessarily in a bad way).
To say nothing of Exxon Mobil's immense profits in 2006, at the expense of the environment and the consumer. Or Congress' partisan conflicts over ideologies. Or Bush's babblings about how we can win in Iraq despite the growing wisdom to the contrary.
I guess I may have gone into "blah" mode to protect my sanity. Everything I've mentioned is worthy of a rant, but I just can't work one up. Molly Ivins always did it for me, but she's ahead of us all now, doing whatever the deceased do, wherever they do it. Or not. At least she's finished the book now; she knows the ending, whereas we do not.
So what is even slightly interesting to me right now? My island friends' stories about squirrels in the house. Training the cat not to yowl at the door to come in or go out (hah!). Checking the blog awards hourly. Wondering how much rent credit my landlord will give me because the basement is still in disrepair. (note: $600!)
And underneath it all is the beginning of an itch----to do a restart on my personal creativity and passion for this work. I think I have been so drained by winter's neediness that I need a resurrection. Maybe I'll go for a walk on the beach.
But today it's going to.
I don't feel very interested in anything right now. And I'm not sure why. There's nothing serious enough in my life to actually worry about; there's nothing thrilling enough in my life to enthuse about; if anything, I feel tired of the same old, same old.
I was thinking about sermons this morning; I would like very much to increase my preaching schedule for the next church year. I think it would stimulate me to start caring more about what's happening in the world, rather than observing it all and sighing wearily.
What am I sighing wearily about these days? The presidential campaign which has already shifted into "what can we get this guy/gal saying on national TV that will get our viewers' attention?". The propensity of sane people to deny responsibility for stupid actions, whether they are national figures or local yokels. The endless arguments about climate change, some of which fly in the face of common sense, as in "quintupling the population of the planet has nothing to do with the extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere".
And then there's Seattle's ongoing effort to deal with their traffic headaches in expensive and controversial ways. The ongoing east/west battle in the state of Washington, with the east side of the mountains being stubbornly conservative (not necessarily in a bad way) and the west side being stubbornly righteous about their liberal behavior (not necessarily in a bad way).
To say nothing of Exxon Mobil's immense profits in 2006, at the expense of the environment and the consumer. Or Congress' partisan conflicts over ideologies. Or Bush's babblings about how we can win in Iraq despite the growing wisdom to the contrary.
I guess I may have gone into "blah" mode to protect my sanity. Everything I've mentioned is worthy of a rant, but I just can't work one up. Molly Ivins always did it for me, but she's ahead of us all now, doing whatever the deceased do, wherever they do it. Or not. At least she's finished the book now; she knows the ending, whereas we do not.
So what is even slightly interesting to me right now? My island friends' stories about squirrels in the house. Training the cat not to yowl at the door to come in or go out (hah!). Checking the blog awards hourly. Wondering how much rent credit my landlord will give me because the basement is still in disrepair. (note: $600!)
And underneath it all is the beginning of an itch----to do a restart on my personal creativity and passion for this work. I think I have been so drained by winter's neediness that I need a resurrection. Maybe I'll go for a walk on the beach.
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