Humanism 101

I had an enjoyable meeting with one of my congregants today, to do some brainstorming about a February sermon on Humanism, the Fifth Source of Unitarian Universalism. In case you haven't been checking out Ms. Kitty's for long, we've themed this worship year to spend time learning about our Sources, our bedrock, the roots from which we as a religious tradition have sprung.

My congregant is an older fellow, a staunch humanist for most of his life, trained as a scientific thinker and brilliant. When I first began to plan for this series of sermons, I knew I would want to engage him in conversation and perhaps as a co-celebrant for the service.

We are now thinking about a dialogue of sorts, offering perspectives on humanism and what it has been in our lives. So today's conversation was in that vein----offering possible threads to explore as we look at this Source.

The language of the Source is this: "Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit."

I've always viewed religious humanism as the anchor which keeps UUism from drifting, and I think that's what the language implies, that we are grounded, as a faith, in reason and in scientific process. Most of our membership avows a deep connection to humanism, the philosophy that all knowing comes through human experience and sensing.

Wikipedia's definition sounds like it was written by a Unitarian Universalist:

Humanism is a broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appeal to universal human qualities—particularly rationality. It is a component of a variety of more specific philosophical systems and is incorporated into several religious schools of thought. Humanism entails a commitment to the search for truth and morality through human means in support of human interests. In focusing on the capacity for self-determination, Humanism rejects the validity of transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on belief without reason, the supernatural, or texts of allegedly divine origin. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of the human condition, suggesting that solutions to human social and cultural problems cannot be parochial.

We'll talk a bit about the history of humanism as a philosophy, the differences between secular and religious humanism, how we see it relating to our seven principles and how it contributes to the human search for meaning.

I'm looking forward very much to working with this gentleman and offering this service to the congregation next month.

Fourth Annual UU Blogger Awards

I was tickled last year just to be nominated for an award in a few categories and this year I'm up again for consideration. In this national election year, with candidates by the bushel-load asking for your vote in primaries, caucuses, and in endless debates, it seems almost like a no-brainer to ask you to consider voting for Ms. Kitty's in some category or another.

You can vote whether or not you are a UU. Just go to the Nominations page on UUpdater and check out the nominations. You can nominate additional blogs or posts, if you wish. The voting itself will take place next week and I'll post a reminder.

This is a way to let UU bloggers know that you're enjoying what they're putting out there for you. Thanks for reading us!

How Privileged Are You?

From What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.

Bold the true statements.

1. Father went to college.

2. Father finished college.

3. Mother went to college.

4. Mother finished college.

5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.

6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.

7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.

8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.

9. Were read children's books by a parent.

10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18.

11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.

12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.

13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.

14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.

15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.

16. Went to a private high school.

17. Went to summer camp.

18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.

19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels.

20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.

21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them.

22. There was original art in your house when you were a child [kid's work is original!]

23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.

24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.

25. You had your own room as a child.

26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.

27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.

28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.

29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.

30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.

31. Went on a cruise with your family.

32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.

33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.

34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.


An interesting exercise, coming right on the heels of a week of preparation for the sermon on classism that is posted below.

MLK Jr. and Classism

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., AND CLASSISM
Rev. Kit Ketcham, Jan. 20, 2008

In the fall issue of the UU World magazine, Doug Muder, a writer for the World, wrote an article entitled “Not My Father’s Religion, Unitarian Universalism and the Working Class.” Some of you probably read the article and may have been struck by its relevance (or not) to your own life.

In the article, Muder described his upbringing in a working-class family, where his father worked in an Illinois factory, making cattle feed. It was steady work but not much fun and had a negative effect on his father’s health, with chemicals, noise, and night shift work.

Doug Muder grew up in a very conservative Lutheran household in the Midwest, and the elder Muders continue to be conservative Lutherans, content with a religion that specifies what to do and what not to do in order to get to heaven. Doug Muder is now a Unitarian Universalist and when he gave his first sermon, his father came to hear him but has never returned. There just aren’t any other people like Doug’s dad at his New England UU congregation. Doug wonders why UUism doesn’t attract more working class folks and his article is a theory in process about this question.

As I read the article, my own family came to mind. I come from working class forebears---both my maternal and paternal grandparents and great grandparents were folks who were pretty close to the edge of poverty much of their lives.

Farmers, gandy-dancers, draftsmen, clerks, gas station operators, mailmen, carpenters, cowboys, orchardmen, firemen, loggers, small business operators, to name a few of the jobs my male ancestors held. Their wives were almost universally stay-at-home moms because that’s what women did in those days.

My dad was the first person in his family to get much education beyond high school and that was two years of study at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, preparing to be a Baptist minister.

My mom went to school too, two year at Oregon Normal School fresh out of high school, to be a teacher and, when she married my father, to learn how to be a minister’s wife. They got their Moody Bible Institute education during the Depression and struggled just to eat during those years, never mind paying for hospitalization when my mother had a miscarriage of her first baby.

This slim layer of education separated my parents, in a way, from the working-class status of their families to that point. But their roots defined them still. So I grew up in a family where people who worked in service occupations were highly regarded, treated respectfully (they were our aunts and uncles and grandparents, after all), and who were not pressured to get more education or to move up in the world. Where they were was fine.

But nearly every one of those working class parents did push my generation of cousins to get an education, even just a year or two of junior college or training in a trade. And so it is that most of my cousins and both my siblings and I have at least a year of college and some of us have much more.

But almost every member of my family of origin is a member of a conservative congregation. I do have an aunt who is a Presbyterian and a cousin who is a Methodist, but nearly everyone else is staunchly in the conservative camp and always has been. Except me, of course.

I have done a lot of thinking about why this may be so. Education is clearly not an adequate explanation for the strong preference my family has for conservative theology.

I don’t pretend to understand each person’s affinity for theology I find inadequate. And I don’t really care. I am at peace with their choices and know that they are good and loving people, regardless of what faith they hold.

The people I know who choose other religions than Unitarian Universalism are smart people, educated people, fine people. They are not interested in UUism, I think, because to them, we’re not really a religion. We’re nice smart people, but we aren’t a religion by their standards. We know we’re a religion, but their definition of religion is different from ours.

So Muder’s question “why aren’t working class people more attracted to Unitarian Universalism?” sticks in my mind---and, to some extent, in my craw. I think it may be the wrong question.

My question might be “who are we really as UUs? Are we merely upper crust mostly-white liberals or are we reflective people from all walks of life? If so, how do we reach out to other reflective people from all walks of life?”

Muder lives in New Hampshire and grew up in the Midwest, so perhaps his viewpoint is tinged with that cultural overlay. I look around this West Coast congregation and at the Western congregations where I have been a member in the past and I see lots of people who are like me, whose education was hard-won, who don’t have McMansions, just ordinary houses, who read murder mysteries and do crafts, who play old songs on old acoustic instruments, who don’t dress in designer clothes or have designer pets or big honking cars.

Many of us have working class roots and are comfortable in that place. And we found UUism! So how does it happen that we may have a class problem? Because I think we do, but I’m not sure it’s the way Doug Muder sees it! At least not in this part of the country!

I do think we need to ask ourselves how we view our neighbors and friends, especially those who work for us, whose jobs are service jobs, who make minimum wage, who work two or more jobs to make ends meet. Because I don’t think we are fully aware of our privilege, even though we give generously to charities, support good causes, and try to walk our talk.

I want you to change personas for a moment. I want to invite you to imagine yourself as an immigrant woman working as a housecleaner here on Whidbey. Or imagine yourself as a custodian at one of the schools. Imagine yourself as a waitress at a local restaurant. Imagine yourself with an 8th grade education. Or as a man living in a camper in the Trinity parking lot and working days in construction. Or a student scraping by on student loans and several jobs. In this new persona, listen to these quotes from a survey on classism.

Quotes:
I ate out with a friend — someone proud to call herself a Massachusetts liberal — and the waitress got her order wrong. My friend said, "Well, if she was smart, she wouldn't be a waitress.

I was once part of organizing a radical book fair. It was held in a hall at a local university. At the end of the day several folks started to leave, despite the fact that the hall was a complete mess. When challenged to help clean up, one of them replied "Isn't that for the janitors to do?"

My mother is a passionate liberal Democrat. Her long-time housekeeper, a Mexican immigrant Pentecostal, voted for Bush on moral grounds. My mother says of her, "These people just don't understand!"

"Of course I am going to be patronizing to workers, I'm educated."

I have heard two different feminist governing boards, when deciding how to set fees for an event, say, "Everyone can afford five dollars. If they are not willing to spend five dollars, then they don't care enough about the event."

A faculty friend of mine and I use to talk about classes I taught on issues of hunger and homelessness. The faculty person, who came from working class roots, said "Those homeless people like being homeless; they choose to be that way, and they like living under the bridge". My mouth instantly dropped!

When I was a cashier at a food co-op, I hated it when members would say, "Have a great week-end," assuming that I had 2-day weekends off.

I was in college — an elite college where class stuff went down everyday. But one of the most classist things I ever heard was from a woman working to provide internships with school alumni for college women. I had won an internship in N. Dakota and had received a scholarship from the Dean to get airfare to go to fulfill my internship, but they wanted to issue it on a reimbursement basis. I didn't have money or a credit card, nor the safety net of my parents. When I tried to explain this to the woman, she simply told me: Well, ask a friend if you can buy it on their credit card. I didn't end up going, because none of my friends had credit cards with $500 available either. I was so angry that this woman called herself a liberal working on behalf of young women's development.

What do you hear between the lines in these personal experiences with classism? How would it feel to you if you actually were an immigrant woman or custodian or parking lot dweller or waitress or student and overheard these remarks?

I have to admit that I squirmed at some of these quotes, recognizing some of my own hidden assumptions, attitudes I didn’t realize that I had, ways of viewing others whose lives were unfamiliar to me, not understanding how patronizing my attitude or actions might be.

It gives me pause to know that even with my own working class roots, I might not be aware of ways I am patronizing to people I really want to know and help.

One of the prophetic men and women whose wisdom inspires us UUs, Martin Luther King, Jr., began his work as a civil rights activist working for the liberation of African Americans in our nation, but his perspective broadened as he began to see the connections between racism and classism, the invisible lines that poverty draws between people. He could see that the poor white families in the South were no better off than the poor black families, except that they had pale skin and could therefore lord it over poor black people. He once wrote the following in an essay entitled “The Community of Man”:

“As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than 28 or 30 years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic.

“I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.
This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.”

The interdependent web links us all, he was saying. The destiny of the rich is linked to the destiny of the poor.

“I, a privileged white woman, can never be what I ought to be until you, an impoverished immigrant woman, are what you ought to be.” Hmmm.

Turn it around and hear it again: “I, an impoverished migrant worker, can never be what I ought to be until you, a privileged person, are what you ought to be.”
The destiny of the poor is linked to the destiny of the rich. What is my obligation as a privileged person to assure a less-privileged person of a better life? What had I ought to be, in the words of Martin Luther King? What must I be in order to give others the chance to be what they ought to be?

The questions of privilege and wealth and education and career hover over every UU congregation. How do we provide a social and religious context here for all who enter this sanctuary?

How do we combat the impression some may have that Unitarian Universalism is mainly for educated, privileged people who are doctors or professors or lawyers or engineers or artists or social workers or therapists? Because we ARE all of those things AND we are also landscapers and hair stylists and accountants and construction workers and deep sea fishers and disabled people, limited income people, military people, retired people, small business people, young and middleaged and old people.

We are a rainbow of humanity and each of us brings to this congregation a set of traits, skills, knowhow, resources, which enriches our time together. We sometimes assume that we must all have the same kind of history, background, and upbringing, if we are in this place together. But we are remarkably different.

We have a common hope, though, in coming together and that is that we will find others who are reflective about the ways people ought to treat each other, the ways we ought to treat the earth, and the ways we can work together to achieve a better world.

And if there is something more we should be doing, I suggest that it is in the area of making sure that all of us, no matter our income level or our education or our employment or our history, that all of us have an equal place in this community, that our activities are affordable for all, that our events offer child care, that our conversation not linger on our expensive trips or our great educations or the hallmarks of privilege but on the common human experiences we all have.

Let us, also, be more mindful of the needs of the very poor in our larger community. If they come through our doors or if we have a chance to befriend them, let us be unfailingly respectful and never patronizing, remembering that hospitality is the trademark of true religious community. Let us seek to be helpful by offering our resources to agencies which serve our community. Let us give our time and energy where it matters to people.

And above all, let us examine our own attitudes and assumptions about others. Let us exercise our commitment to our first principle, affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person, whatever their station in life, whatever their sexual orientation or gender identity, whatever their race or creed or color, whatever their abilities or age or nationality.

And as we make ourselves what we ought to be, in Martin Luther King’s immortal words, we will give others a better chance to be who and what they ought to be.

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


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, mindful of our attitudes and assumptions about each other, committed to seeing each other as valued friends and equals. May we create here a community that is strong and vibrant and rich with the gifts of all who assemble here. Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.

Why people choose conservative religious paths

I have thought about this for much of my life, certainly ever since I became a serious Unitarian Universalist back in the 1970s. For a long time, I assumed it was a lack of information or education that kept people loyal to very conservative theological paths. But as I've spent time in ministry, become acquainted with good people on a wide variety of religious paths, and examined my own reasons for leaving conservative religion, I've had to change my thinking.

Quite a few people whom I respect and love are devout members of conservative religious communities with theologies far different in many respects from my brand of liberal UU mostly-Christian thought. Many of them are well-educated and committed to serving others. Except for theology, they're not that different from me, though we diverge on some social issues.

As I sat in a local restaurant this morning, finishing my breakfast coffee, I started a list of the reasons I think people choose (or remain in) conservative religious paths. Here it is, in order of how they came to mind.

1. They were born into it and see no reason to leave.
2. They make a bargain with God during some crisis.
3. They marry into it and are devout to satisfy their mate.
4. They are willing to believe religious authority figures (pastor, priest, etc.) about doctrinal matters.
5. They stay because of family unity.
6. They are not very self-reflective or critical of doctrine.
7. They lack information or they reject the information they do get.
8. They want to belong to a popular religious path.
9. They reject liberal social values.
10. They are rebelling against parents.
11. They work at jobs that give them little or no time to reflect on religious doctrines.
12. They have distaste for the Other whom their religion considers sinful.
13. The foundational story of their religion is gripping and the consequences of diverging from its tenets are frightening.
14. They fear that the story is true and this keeps them from abandoning it.
15. Their religion allows them to act in ways that they enjoy while forbidding them to act in ways they fear.

This is not an exhaustive list and there are overlapping reasons. If you think of more or if you quibble with any of them, please comment. I also jotted down lists of "why people reject conservative religious paths", "why people come to liberal religions" and "why people come to Unitarian Universalism". I will blog on those lists another time.

Got a life!

A tip of the old hatlo to Miss Cellania:

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7.3
Mind:	8.3
Body:	8.5
Spirit:	10
Friends/Family:	6.3
Love:	2.1
Finance:	8.1
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Mad Max is conked out.

Well, it's been a quiet day here at Ms. Kitty's, what with Maxwelton off at the vet's getting clipped. The instructions from the vet said to give him nothing to eat or drink after 10 p.m. and to have him there around 8 a.m. today.

I shuddered, thinking about the logistics of feeding Loosy and Lily while keeping Max away from the food, but it worked out pretty well to feed them all at 10 p.m., then put away all the food and water until morning, sequester the boycat while the girls ate, and then put it all away again.

Low blood sugar and thirst are no problem for Max, apparently, as his energy level was unabated this morning, though he looked puzzled at the lack of anything to put in his mouth. Finally it was 8 a.m. and we hustled off to the vet.

When I returned without him, L & L were suspicious and yet relieved. We all had a Max-free day, the girls snoozing undisturbed by the radiator, safe from the pillaging Mad One, I doping out this Sunday's sermon.

But it was too quiet. And when I picked him up at 3 p.m., we all wondered what to expect. A sore tush and general anesthesia have combined to keep the activity level down and it has continued to be a quiet day. He's currently sacked out in Loosy's favorite warm spot, after devouring a good-sized mound of Friskies. I expect that tomorrow we'll be back to chaos again.

I have ordered a new down comforter from The Company Store, after learning from the vet that the comforter would never lose its urine-y smell and was likely to be peed on again because of that smell. I hope such accidents are behind us, with Max's former gonads.

Mad Max is driving us crazy.

Max is off to the vet tomorrow morning to get his little tushy clipped. He is driving all the females in the house crazy, including me, though he treats me better than he treats the other girls. He has fallen in love with me and even as I type, he is attempting to meld with my face, my shoulders, my belly, rubbing and rubbing and purring and purring. He treats Loosy and Lily like punching bags, leaping on them, rolling them over as they yowl fiercely and hiss and bat at him. It's sort of like a 6th grade boy.

It won't be easy doing this. He can't have any food after 10 p.m., so he will have to be isolated until after the older cats have eaten in the morning and then he will doubtless need a lot of comfort and understanding and I will need to wear earplugs until I can bundle him into the carrier at 8 a.m. for the trip to the vet. I can't wait.

And yet, with my free and responsible search for truth and meaning coupled with a lifelong obsession for understanding myself, I have to wonder about my eagerness to emasculate this little guy. I don't think I generally approve of emasculating males of any species, but I can hardly wait to diminish the supply of testosterone in the house. Lily has enough for all of us.

But yesterday morning, SOMEBODY peed on my down comforter and it wasn't ME! So the usual suspect is going to take the fall. It's time, of course. He's five months old and getting more and more aggressive in his playing, even as he tries to tell me that I'm his only love. For Max, true love is related to food and I'd like to keep it that way.

Funniest thing...

I visited the museum for this railroad when I went to Reno for the FS's wedding last June.

You're the Virginia & Truckee!

Though you don't have much to be angry about, you really like
to blow off steam. People think that you come from simple, even common
heritage, citing your history with mountainous miners, but you know that
you have some royal blood in you. This doesn't keep you from having a bit
of interest in the wild west as well, however, and you enjoy a good poker
game as much as the next. If you were a lode, it would be the
Comstock.


Take the Trains and Railroads Quiz
at RMI Miniature Railroads.

Hey, Ms. K's still got it!

Typing speed, that is. I got an award in high school.

79 words

A satisfying experience

Another joy of ministry: being invited to preach in a colleague's church during a sabbatical or other arranged absence. It's an honor to be welcomed into another pulpit, a pleasure to experience the carefully crafted worship of another congregation, and a treat to meet Unitarian Universalists in another part of the district.

I hadn't had much experience with the Olympia UU Congregation, in our state capitol, except that I know their minister and a few congregants fairly well. And they have been a staunch supporter of the marriage equality movement that I have been quite involved in over the past four years, supplying large quantities of food for our yearly Equality Day at the capitol.

So when their minister, the Rev. Art Vaeni, asked colleagues in the PNWD if we would be willing to fill his pulpit during his four month sabbatical, I jumped at the chance to volunteer and signed up for Jan. 13. I also was invited to spend Saturday night at the home of some folks who had been part of my Vashon congregation before they moved to the Olympia area.

Choosing what to say as a guest preacher can be a little tricky. You want to challenge and inspire, yes, but you also know that you are filling big shoes and need to be entertaining and substantive as well. I also didn't have a lot of time to write a new sermon, so I chose one that had been successful and thought-provoking for my own congregation on Whidbey: "The Holy Fool".

After letting the worship committee at OUUC know my choice for the upcoming newsletter, I started to sweat it out. Was this going to be serious enough for a congregation known for its social activism? What if they hated the idea of joking about UUism? But it was a little late to change, so I vowed to give it my best and went ahead.

It turned out to be a huge success; everyone seemed to have a good experience, including me; they have a wonderful choir and choir director who really got into it and produced an incredible version of "A Modern Unitarian", Chris Raible's parody of a well-known Gilbert and Sullivan "Pirates of Penzance" song. They laughed at the jokes and nodded knowingly at the premise--that UUs are America's Holy Fool, willing to look foolish and stick our necks out for what we see as issues of freedom and conscience.

To top it off, I met my brother and his wife and daughter for lunch at a nice restaurant in Olympia after the service and we spent a couple of hours together. He looks wonderful after his surgery to implant a "left ventricle assist device" and may have a heart transplant in as little as four months, if the right donor is found. I am hugely relieved to have seen him, hugged him, heard his stories about the experience, and to know in my heart that he is going to be with us for a good deal longer. A few months ago it was pretty scary to contemplate.

So now I'm home again, gearing up for MLK Sunday and a service on classism, something I've been meaning to address for several weeks. MLK had strong opinions about classism and its connection to racism, so I'm looking forward to pulling it together into a sermon.

Opposing Torture

Last night, members of the lectionary group (Quaker, United Methodist, and UU) sponsored a showing of "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" to a group of about 50 folks from the island. It was my second viewing of this stomach-turning, powerfully-convincing HBO movie and no easier to sit through the second time.

After the movie, viewers discussed their responses to the brutality and sadism they had seen depicted and the dehumanization of both detainees AND their brutalizers, most of whom were ordinary soldiers who had been encouraged by their superiors to torture the detainees.

I was overcome by the senselessness of torture. Our military "superiors" had made a terrible post-9/11 scenario and made it a thousand times worse, by degrading their captives and forcing young soldiers to participate in torturing their victims. The soldiers clearly felt ashamed of their behavior and were remarkably candid about what they had done and how they had maintained a sense of equilibrium during their stint at Abu Ghraib.

This heinous behavior by the American military has created even more hatred in the world for Americans, has ruined the lives of the young soldiers who participated, and has made America less safe by increasing the justifiable anger of those who were tortured and who lost friends and family members to torture.

What possible good outcome can torture have? The information gained thereby is suspect and scanty. It is vengeance, rather than necessary military policy, when men are humiliated, injured, and even killed for an elusive hint of information. It is unconscionable.

No more posts this weekend. I'm off to Olympia to preach at OUUC tomorrow morning. Back later.

Joys of Ministry

There are some joys I didn't know to anticipate when I went into the ministry. I experienced some today at our lectionary group. We have been spending our hour together talking more about the problems of poverty and homelessness on the island than about the scriptures of the week. And the joy I found in noticing that shift in our conversation was quiet and unexpected; I don't know whether my presence has had anything at all to do with it, except, perhaps, to change the balance of orthodoxy. Perhaps the more social-action-oriented pastors see me as a fellow advocate for social action. Last year, it was pretty much all Bible all the time. This year it's different.

At our lunch yesterday, we had one brave soul show up, the longtime pastor of the Assembly of God church, though the word was that others would have been there, including the pastor who was shy of me last year, except that travel or other obligations intruded. We decided we would get together every few months to discuss common cause, so perhaps we will be able to build bridges. And another unexpected quiet joy came as we all held hands for our grace before the meal and I felt included, accepted, a member of the collegial group serving South Whidbey Island.

I don't feel a need to argue about theology; I don't feel uncomfortable even when "in Jesus' name" we prayed; I offer my particular wisdom when it feels appropriate and let them discuss their insights without comment, and I find joy when they say something pretty orthodox and I can see what they mean. Bricks and steel like this build the bridges I'm hoping for.

Reaching out to conservative pastors

Today my lectionary group is trying something new. We've invited the conservative pastors on the South End to lunch at a local restaurant, in hopes of finding common ground to stand on, so that we can work together to address some of the human needs on the island: homelessness, poverty, unemployment--all the things that every community needs to face.

I can't predict how it will turn out but I'm hopeful. I'm also realistic. One of the pastors, a volunteer chaplain at the hospital, was asked (when I was getting ready to start volunteering myself) by the coordinator to show me around and teach me the ropes of informal chaplaincy. He turned down the request because I'm not the right kind of Christian, i.e., someone who believes that Jesus was God.

The coordinator was a little abashed at telling me the news but I read his mind, when he said that he'd been turned down. "Is it because of our different theology?" I asked. He said yes and I theorized that it was because of our differing Christology (though I didn't use that word). He acknowledged that was the case.

I was frustrated but not surprised. The implication seemed to be that somehow meeting with me would be a betrayal of his belief system, that he would endanger his soul by helping me learn the hospital's chaplaincy procedures, that his congregation would disapprove.

So I hope for today's luncheon and I wonder if this pastor will show up. I wonder what I might say to allay the fears. I wonder if my colleagues in the lectionary group understand the depth of antipathy that one "Christian" has for another.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Bookin' It, John-o

Is that a dated expression or what? John over at A Pageless Book has tagged me with a meme. I'm thinking I've done this one before but as I read through the categories, I had some different answers and I think I'll do it again.

A book that changed my life:
"Heavenly Discourse" by Charles Erskine Scott Wood. I discovered it the summer after I graduated from college. I was a staffer at the American Baptist Assembly grounds in Green Lake, Wisconsin, and I think one of our speakers that summer recommended it. The concept is of God talking with people who are in heaven: Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha, Billy Sunday, Carry Nation, Voltaire, Rabelais. What a Universalist motif! They are discoursing about the state of affairs on earth, particularly Christianity's mistakes.

A book I read more than once:
"The Source" by James Michener. I must have read this one five times as a young adult. Also the Tolkien trilogy.

A book I'd want to have on a desert island:
"How to Survive in the Woods" by Bradford Angier. I went through a phase in my early married life (with a man who thrived on this kind of thing post-Outward Bound) when I was fascinated by the ingenuity with which one could live well in the woods. I particularly remember the part about how the stomach of a deer which had been feasting on leaves could produce an already-dressed salad for a hungry human.

A book that made me laugh:
Any of the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich. I wait with great anticipation for each new book. Anyone who has read this series knows exactly what I'm talking about.

A book that made me cry:
Books don't usually make me cry with sorrow but rather with tenderness. I teared up a lot over Kate Braestrup's "Here If You Need Me". Did you notice it's been on the best seller list? What great PR for UUism!

A book I wish I'd written:
"Bridging the gap between conservative and liberal religious folk". I guess I'd rather build the bridge than write about it. It seems to me that we have some common causes to support; I wish we could find them instead of criticizing each other's approach to the ones we disagree on.

A book I wish had never been written:
There aren't any. I think every book has contributed something, if only to start a backlash against what it says.

A book I'm currently reading:
"Pillars in the Earth" by Ken Follett. I read it first a long time ago and thought about reading the sequel to it, but I didn't remember enough of PITE to feel ready to take on the project, so I'm rereading it. I'm about half through with it and getting a little tired of this darned cathedral and Prior Philip's tribulations. (Heresy!)

A book I've been meaning to read:
Al Gore's "The Assault on Reason". It's been sitting on my night stand for months. I got it cheap at Costco and it just sits there. It's mostly that I can hardly bring myself to read serious non-fiction any more. Diatribe doesn't move me like story moves me.

So there you go, John, I've booked it, as you asked. I'm not going to tag anyone else. Whoever wants to can pick it up.

Twelfth Night Epiphanies

A sermon delivered on January 6, 2008, at the UU Congregation of Whidbey Island.

On the morning I had set for myself to begin working on today’s sermon, I woke up singing an old song I’d learned in my dad’s church many years ago. And I’d like to invite you to sing it with me, as a starting point for our thoughts today. It’s an insert in the O/S and I expect that some of you know it as well.

“Work for the night is coming, work through the morning hours;
Work while the dew is sparkling; work 'mid springing flower.
Work when the day grows brighter, work in the glowing sun,
Work for the night is coming, when man's work is done."

Anna Coghill, who wrote this old hymn in 1854, doubtless had a different take on work than most of us do today. Not only was the work she had in mind of the sort that brings folks to Jesus, but work generally in the mid-19th century was different.

There were no computers to program, no McDonald’s burgers to flip, no open-heart surgery to perform, no video games to invent, few of the spectrum of job opportunities open to human beings today. Work in the 19th century was mostly grueling physical work: farming, mining, logging, housekeeping, all were even harder than they are today. The Industrial Revolution was just beginning and most people did not have the resources to purchase the few labor-saving devices coming onto the market.

Our grandparents and great-grandparents lived in an age when heavy physical labor was what most breadwinners did to support their families. Many of them were also subservient to bosses or overseers whose demands were constant and often heartless; their jobs were in jeopardy much of the time and wages were scant.

Factory work was grueling but it was where people worked when they left the farm and its insecurities for so-called greater opportunities in the city. And people did work through all hours of the bright day, for the night was their only respite---unless, of course, they were on the night shift at some factory or birthing baby animals on a farm.

Since that time, the work scene has changed considerably. Unions have changed working conditions in many heavy physical jobs and also in white-collar workplaces. Educational opportunities are greater and an emphasis on education and training for all has changed what young people expect to do to win their “bread”.

I often recall my own early work experiences when I think about how much times have changed. My earliest jobs were physically hard. As a teenager, I was one of the many girls in Umatilla County who drove a truck during harvest season, a job which paid 85 cents all the way up to a dollar an hour for twelve hours a day of work, in the hot, dusty pea and wheat fields of northeastern Oregon.

I’ll bet you have your own hard physical jobs to recount. What are some of those?

Today, January 6, marks the holiday celebrated as Twelfth Night in some cultures and known in many Christian denominations as the Feast of the Epiphany, which celebrates the arrival of the three kings in the nativity story and the proclamation by the early church that Jesus was a divine being, one with God. Unitarians had their own epiphany about that decision for it caused our spiritual ancestors to declare the heresy that God was one and that Jesus was a prophet and teacher and NOT God!

Twelfth Night, however, had less doctrinal, more pagan connotations. In Tudor England, the Twelfth Night marked the end of an autumn into winter festival that started on All Hallows Eve, which we now call Halloween, and is the twelfth day after Christmas. In Twelfth Night festivities, The Lord of Misrule, a character prominent in this gala event, symbolized the world turning upside down. And you may remember in Shakespeare’s play “Twelfth Night” that its theme is mistaken identity and confusion leading to erroneous assumptions and hilarious situations.

On January 6, the date of Twelfth Night, the king and all those who were in high places would become the peasants and the peasants would temporarily take their places. At the beginning of the Twelfth Night festival, a special cake was served and eaten, a cake which contained a bean.

The person who found the bean became the ruler of the festival and would rule over the feast. Midnight signaled the end of that upside down rule and the world would return to normal. The common theme was that the normal order of things was reversed.

In Ireland, January 6 is also known as Women's Christmas, so called because of the tradition of Irish men (at least in Cork) taking on all the household duties on that day and giving their spouses a day off. Most women either hold parties or go out to celebrate the day with other women. Bars and restaurants have a near 100 percent female clientele on this night, as women celebrate this upside-down day.

So what does any of this have to do with us as Unitarian Universalists? Let’s see how we can tie some of these threads together. One of my favorite challenges in life is looking for patterns, finding connections between seemingly disparate things, finding sense in the apparently nonsensical.

Twelfth Night is a perfect time to do that! So let Misrule reign and let’s look for the patterns, the connections, the meanings in a collection of disparate bits of trivia about January 6.

Let’s let Twelfth Night and its epiphanies set the pace, with the idea of trading places, doing things differently from what we’re used to, allowing unexpected insights to change our thinking and our lives.

What if we suddenly found ourselves as individuals involuntarily placed in a position that we did not choose, did not prepare for, did not want! How would we respond to the insights that such a situation brought?

In our story for all ages, we laughed as we watched a band of tough old cowpokes be changed by the presence of Foofy, the toy poodle. They learned to appreciate things they had never thought important in the past. They learned to do things they had previously thought of as wimpy. They learned that they could change without losing themselves in the process.

In our true story, the one going on around us right now, we may someday be faced with the prospect of living conditions much changed from what we’re used to, by the lack of petroleum products or building materials or by flood or earthquake or accident or other natural disaster. Our lives can change in a flash, through seemingly random events.

What would that mean to us? How would it test us? Would we survive such a shift in our lives or would we buckle under its strain? We can’t know just how or when or why another kind of life might overtake us. We can only be vigilant and do what we may to prepare.

I remember as a little kid, lying on my back in bed staring up at the ceiling and wondering what it would be like to live on the ceiling, stepping over doorway lintels, walking around light fixtures, stooping down to look out of windows.

I could see that my whole perspective on my life would change if I lived on the ceiling. How would I sit to eat? How would I read my book? (Gravity didn’t seem to figure into this imaginative scenario!)

Now, of course, astronauts do this all the time in their zero-gravity environments. It was something I could not foretell with my limited experience but I could tell that life would be much different and would require a great deal of adaptation.

So one thing that topsy-turvy Twelfth Night might offer us is the knowledge that change, even drastic change, can happen suddenly and without notice and that we can survive it, even thrive with it. No matter what the change, if we can find a measure of dignity, we can survive a topsy-turvy world. And that’s a heck of an epiphany!

A epiphany, as you probably know, is a realization of the meaning and importance of something or someone, an inspired understanding arising from discovering some profound insight, awareness, or truth.

A friend of mine in Portland, a PhD clinical psychologist with many credits to his name, once found himself so depressed by life’s events that he felt unable to work as a psychologist. He had experienced an unexpected divorce, his son had committed suicide, and he was having flashbacks to having been the victim, as a child, of sexual assault. He was desperate to support himself and took a job as a temporary laborer at a construction site. The only skill he had to offer in that arena was wielding a broom as the cleaner-upper behind the skilled craftsmen.

Initially, he was ashamed at how low he felt he’d fallen. Sweeping up construction debris at a condo project was a far cry from sitting at a desk counseling patients. But one day, after a conversation with the foreman, he gradually began to find his work meaningful.

It wasn’t just the gratitude of the foreman for his help, or the appreciation of the craftsmen or other laborers, it was the epiphany that honest work, no matter how lowly, is valuable. This friend found dignity in seeing his work as honest and valuable and that dignity enabled him to survive a blow to his circumstances.

We have all worked at a wide variety of jobs, I’m guessing, some easy, some hard and physical, some mentally challenging, some mind-numbingly boring. We know what it means to work hard, day in and day out.

What is the work we are doing now, today? For we are all still working, even though many of us may be retired. And I’m not talking about income-producing labor. I’m talking about the places we put our energy, our time, our hearts. In other words, I’m not talking about employment necessarily, but the service we offer to each other and the larger community because of our commitments to peace, to justice, and to inclusiveness.

This is our work, as people of liberal religious faith, as Unitarian Universalists.

During 2007, we as a congregation experienced a huge epiphany of our own, when we came together on Sept. 9 to mark the official start of our building project. When so many from the larger community came to celebrate with us, when our friend Pastor Jim Lindus from Trinity said to us, in essence, “it’s time for you to be in your own home, offering your unique message of hope and faith to Whidbey Island from this place which you are creating”, when this happened, we were collectively jolted into realizing how important our effort is in this community.

And when the foundation was poured and the first work parties began, as the sanding and varnishing of trusses progressed, as the windows and framing took shape, as we poured our time and energy into our home, we all grew, just as the building grew. Carpentry and cleanup were equally valued as we worked together on our common cause. That was another great epiphany!

The crisis of climate change, as it became more and more evident that our lives would be drastically altered by the effects of global warming, has caused a huge shift in consciousness across the planet. And we realized that we are not alone in honoring and protecting the earth, that disparate faith communities, big business, political entities all have a stake and an interest in dealing with this crisis. The human community is waking up to one of our UU principles and sources, which is the need to respect and live in harmony with the earth. Another remarkable epiphany!

So just in this past several months, we as a community of Unitarian Universalists have been jolted into the recognition that we are important on Whidbey Island, that we are capable of building a home for ourselves, that we have a message to offer to people on the island who are not served well by traditional religion, that we are expected to step up to the plate and serve not only ourselves but the entire community.

How will we choose to do that?

As I’ve helped in my small ways to make our sacred home a reality, I can’t help but look forward in my mind to the day we get ready to move into our new home.

And I have dreamed something like this. I have dreamed of a long procession of vehicles, bicycles, motorcycles, with banners and flags waving from every antenna and open window, escorted by the Island County sheriff’s department, departing from the Trinity parking lot with great ceremony, driving in a long caravan of singing, rejoicing, flag-waving humanity, carrying our chalice and proceeding together to 20103 State Route 525, where we will enter our building, our new home, for our first worship service together in that space.

And I’ve continued to dream. I have dreamed of rooms filled with children, rooms filled with community leaders working on civic matters, rooms filled with support groups helping people make changes in their lives.

I’ve dreamed of teachers teaching classes in our building. I’ve dreamed of concerts in our sanctuary. I’ve dreamed of banners and weavings and artwork beautifying our halls. I’ve dreamed of music in every corner, a family band that performs for us on special occasions, a choir that fills the sanctuary with soaring harmonies and poetic lyrics.

And I’ve dreamed of worship services in a sanctuary that we can call our own, where our chalice is always in the center of our sacred space, where seats are filled with spiritual seekers, where every Sunday morning hearts are nourished by the wisdom of those who speak here. I’ve dreamed of joy reverberating around the room and enlivening all those present.

And I’ve dreamed of reaching out into the larger community, of offering space to our Quaker friends, to our Jewish friends, sharing our building with compatible people of faith. I have dreamed of sponsoring a scout troop that welcomes all youths, regardless of their beliefs or sexual orientation. I have dreamed of becoming a gathering place for people eager to promote peace and peacemaking in our world.

I’ve dreamed of a renewed spirit among us as a congregation. I’ve dreamed of an awareness in our midst of the value and the joy of being of service to this congregation. I’ve dreamed that we have all the volunteer ushers and refreshment providers that we can possibly use. I’ve dreamed that an atmosphere of bounteous generosity pervades our congregation so that we have the resources to do all that we can to live out our Unitarian Universalist ideals and principles.

And I’ve dreamed of a sanctuary where all those who are members and friends of this congregation make it their first priority to come together on Sundays, bringing their friends, their relatives, their neighbors. I’ve dreamed that every Sunday our sanctuary is full, full of seekers, full of children and parents, full of people who belong to this community, whose faces and forms are as dear to us as our own.

But that’s not all I dream about.

On Friday, the South End ministers met at my house for our weekly Bible study, and over coffee and cookies we got to talking about civic affairs on the island----affordable housing, ministry to prisoners, our homeless population. One pastor talked eloquently about the ways he is encouraging his congregation to be more active in community outreach. His congregation had invited the Wellington school to set up shop in their facility, when Wellington was flooded out in December, and he wanted his congregants to continue to reach out in the community.

As he was talking, I started dreaming again. Would it be possible to work with other congregations on the South End to develop projects that would improve conditions for the island’s low-income folks? Affordable rental units supervised and underwritten by a coalition of congregations?

A homeless shelter? A ministry to prisoners in our county jail? Help for families in transition, for victims of domestic violence?

Because our work as a congregation is to serve not only ourselves but the larger community. And therefore we must look beyond the walls of our shiny new home to find ways of using our home as a springboard for community outreach. If we only use our building to make ourselves happy, we will have a shallow happiness indeed. It is when we use our new resources to reach out to others that we will find a deep and abiding happiness that will enrich not only our lives but the lives around us.

What are your epiphanies on this Twelfth Night, at the end of the year 2007? I hope you’ll share them with us as we look ahead to the coming year of 2008.

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


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 that the epiphanies and insights of these past months can inform our future together as a congregation. May we take what we have learned from these moments and use their energy and strength to help us make a real difference in people’s lives, here on Whidbey Island. Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.

Is there such a thing as a transgender cat?

The reason I ask is that my beautiful Lilycat really seems to be more of a boy than a girl. I know she's physically a neutered female and when the vet removed her girl parts, she (the vet) didn't say anything about there being any anomalies, but she looks and acts like a big male.

Having had several transgender friends, I'm conscious of the gender identity issue for humans and maybe that makes me more alert to gender signals, but I have caught myself calling Lily "he" and "him", even though she has a female name and is a black tortoise-shell calico, a color pattern which is almost never male.

Lily is big and bulky, not fat, but she probably weighs 18 pounds and she behaves in a boyish way. I think I've become more conscious of this behavior since Maxie came to live with us. Maxie is an as-yet-tomkitten who is definitely full of testosterone, even at 5 months, though fortunately he hasn't displayed any spraying behaviors and will be off to the vet himself in a month or so for a little clipping of the nether regions.

I have read somewhere that sexual orientation is a feature of all animals, not just humans, and that homosexual behavior is displayed by a percentage of all animal life. Because Lily is spayed, she's not getting any sex hormones, so I can't say that she's a lesbian cat. But there is something different about Lily and it seems to be her masculine nature in a female body. Her nature is so different from Loosy's nature that it's remarkable, and some of the differences (not all) seem gender-ish in nature.

I used to think it was because she had a feral mama and might have absorbed some of her mama's wild instincts. Now I wonder if her nature may be more connected to her sense of being different.

Of the three cats, s/he is probably my favorite because she is so different. She is absolutely gorgeous but very wary of strangers and takes a long time to warm up to anyone else. Yet she will hoist her majestic bulk up into my lap, plant her paws against my bosom and her head into my chin, and purr till the house rattles. She is pretty much a one-person cat and this is very flattering, of course.

When Maxie came along, Lily was initially very wary of him, seeing him, no doubt, as a competitor for my affection. But she came to terms with him much sooner than Loosy, who still hisses and swats him angrily, and the two of them are more like big brother/little brother. Maxie seems to consider Lily his bud and he clearly considers Loosy a girl to tease and torment.

Now, I know I'm anthropomorphing my cats and that there may be no substance to what I'm theorizing. But I've been wondering about this for awhile. If anyone has any evidence or helpful input, I'd appreciate it. Her gender identity is not a problem of any kind, it's just interesting.

Twelfth Night and Epiphanies

At our ministers' lectionary session today, we didn't spend much time on the upcoming lectionary reading. Instead, we spent our hour together talking about local civic matters---the lack of affordable housing on the island, our homeless population, the problems with ferry transportation which have the potential to cripple the local economy.

I've been struggling with this Sunday's sermon, which is entitled "Twelfth Night Epiphanies", linking both the paganish celebration of Twelfth Night (Jan. 6) and the Feast of Epiphany in traditional liturgical bodies and coming up with a collection of trivia that didn't seem to be going anywhere.

But during our conversation in the lectionary group, I had an epiphany of my own. This community desperately needs affordable housing for our work force, the women and men who teach in our schools, who cut our hair, who build boats and houses and churches and manage to bring in just enough income to survive---unless they live in a house whose rent or mortgage payment is beyond their means. We have a number of homeless people who live in cars or in dark corners of the forest and scavenge a living with odd jobs and other means.

What if our congregations (today the Methodists, Lutherans, House of Prayer, UUs, and Quakers were represented) combined our resources, wrote for grants, and inveigled the other congregations on the island to pitch in, and set up units of affordable housing? When I broached the idea, it seemed like a pipe dream at first, but I think we could do it.

It would take time and energy and money, but I can envision an agency run by representatives of many congregations which would oversee the units, keep maintenance current, police the development so that it was safe and livable, and offer an example of religious folk working together despite their theological differences.

That's a dream I have, that evangelical Christians, mainline Christians, Jews, UUs, and anyone else interested can come together to serve a common cause, letting our differences be less important than our mission to serve our community.

Wouldn't that be exciting? After the meeting, I found I had a lot of ideas for the sermon and it's just about done now!

Work for the Night is Coming

I'm using this old hymn, written by Anna Coghill in 1854 when she was 18 years old, as a starting point for this Sunday's sermon. I like to start with an unexpected song on occasion and this one fits the topic.

As I prepare a sermon, I pray for guidance about the topic, and sometimes I get that guidance in the form of a song that appears first thing in the morning. This morning, "Work for the night is coming" was the song I found myself singing in the shower.

I'd been puzzling over how to start the sermon, whose title is actually "Twelfth Night Epiphanies" and whose theme is actually "service". We ministers think up these titles for a newsletter deadline and then spend time trying to reconcile the title with the theme that is trying to be born.

Did you know, as I was reminded during my Wiki search for info about Twelfth Night, that this day was once celebrated by a reversal of roles in some cultures? It was a time when the peasant became king for a day and the Lord of Misrule reigned in the village. At midnight the roles reversed again and things went back to normal.

It reminded me of my days as a teacher, when "Spirit Week" in the junior high where I taught sponsored a day when students taught the classes and the teachers sat in the desks. It was chaotic but kind of fun and I was always acutely aware of how well (or not) I had prepared my student to teach.

"Work" for Ms. Coghill probably meant working to save souls, as this hymn appears in most traditional hymnals and refers to a New Testament admonition to do God's work until night comes.

But the concept of "work" in today's world is markedly different from "work" in the mid-19th century, pre-Industrial Revolution. I hope to note some of those differences and contrast "work" with "service". And somewhere I have to tie it to epiphanies, as well.

But right now I'm taking a break, having written about four pages (doublespaced) and looking forward to getting a haircut at 11. My back is much better and it allowed me to spend New Year's Eve with some folks from the church, eating and playing games and laughing, then going home at 10 p.m., since it was midnight in Chicago!

Happy New Year, all, and thanks for spending time at Ms. Kitty's!

Unexpectedly at home on New Year's Eve

I had planned to be at Seabeck, at Winter Eliot, on New Year's Eve, celebrating with 140 friends, but instead I'm home, after wrenching my back on Friday lugging suitcases up to my room (no elevators at Seabeck). I had foolishly assumed that the muscle spasms I get a few times each year were behind me, since I've been working out faithfully five days a week, and I didn't take any of the paraphernalia I usually haul along, "just in case".

So after a Saturday in pain which no amount of ibuprofen or naproxyn could allay and a night in which I slept almost not at all, I decided to call it quits and come home where the heating pad and meds were awaiting me. It meant finding another ride home for my passenger, but she was cooperative and we managed that, so after breakfast, I packed the car and left Winter Eliot.

It took three hours, what with ferry lines and icy roads, but by noon I was home and able to pop a Skelaxin and lie down with the heating pad. Whew!

Today I have had a good night's sleep plus a couple of naps and am feeling much better. I think I am well enough to join some friends for a celebration at their home, but I will have to forego the bubbly, since the meds already make me a bit dim. Of course, I could decide not to take a pill before I go. We'll see how I'm feeling.

Right now, the pain and spasming seem to be gone, but until I've gone several hours without the back support truss and microwaved buckwheat insert, I can't be sure I'm cured.

Whatever happens, I'm glad to be home experiencing it, not trying to have a good time through the pain at Seabeck, much as I like being there.

Countdown till the end of the year

I'm watching the clock right now, awaiting the magic moment of 1:25 p.m., when I will leave the house and head over to pick up my passenger for our trip to the Winter Eliot Institute at Seabeck Conference Center. We have to detour via the eastern mainland because the Port Townsend ferry is passenger-only these days, so we've built in a little extra driving and waiting time. We hope to catch the 2 p.m. Clinton ferry and then the 3 p.m or so Edmonds to Kingston ferry.

As always, I'm ready way too early and twiddling my thumbs in the interim.

My dad used to say that he'd rather be thirty minutes early than thirty seconds late, and I guess I've inherited that philosophy, as I am almost always early and almost never late. And when I am late, I'm anxious about it, as though it actually mattered a hill of beans whether I am five minutes late anywhere. It usually only matters to me.

Eliot always starts on the 28th of December and ends on January 1, celebrating the end of the old year and the beginning of the new in fine style. This gathering of Unitarian Universalists has been going on every New Year's for many years; some of my friends who attend have been attending for decades.

This year's speaker is my friend and colleague the Rev. Amanda Aikman, a skilled playwright, preacher, and humorist, and I am looking forward to seeing her again and spending four days in her company. I don't get to see her very often, even though she only lives across the water from me. Our paths don't cross much because of our differing ministries. So this will be fun.

While I'm at Eliot, I'll have my laptop so I can keep up with my blog connections and email. But generally, I hope it will be four nice long days of leisure and rest. No cats to feed, no newspapers or TV, just me and 200 friends and Hood Canal and the Olympics. Ahhhh.

I fear for women in power.

I saw the news about Benazir Bhutto online this morning when I sat down to check email and my first thought was "I'm not surprised". Whether it is assassination by suicide bomber or assassination of character by swiftboaters, women in power are in danger.

I remember years ago reading an interview in Glamour or some such (yes, in my earlier days I read the fashion and how-to-get-a man mags), an interview with a woman who had been Bhutto's roommate/friend at Radcliffe. I thought at the time, "how cool would that be, to have a Pakistani woman for a roommate and then to watch her ascend to power in her native land! To see her education and intellect and charisma pay off in this exciting way!"

Today I'm wondering how that former roommate/friend must be feeling now, how she must have been feeling in the past years as her friend was exiled and then returned to Pakistan to challenge the military establishment, knowing full well that her life was in constant danger.

I worry about Hillary Clinton. She too is challenging many ingrained attitudes and expectations about how women are supposed to act. She is so hated by many, even some who are feminists, because she isn't doing things the way she's supposed to, whatever that means.

Women in power are in danger, real physical danger sometimes, other times real emotional and economic danger. Women are vulnerable to attack through physical violence, through innuendo and suspicion and rumor, through character defamation.

There must be a radical shift in world view for women to be safe, whether that is in the Oval Office, the Prime Minister's role, the home, the classroom, the congregation, the public streets and shops. When women challenge the current world view, they are branded as bitches, witches, and whores, and their lives and wellbeing are endangered.

Women are, in the current world view, supposed to be compliant, sexy, submissive, thin, pregnant, nurturing, motherly, sweet, servile, modest, what have I forgotten? And if we're not, we're in danger.

Actually, we're in danger regardless. I remember viewing a movie, The Color of Fear, in seminary, a movie that was supposed to wake us up to the physical violence inherent in racism. Eight men, White and Asian and Latino and Black, were filmed in a seminar where they talked about their experiences with racism. I listened to horrific stories about their lives, watched one white man have an epiphany about his own racism, and learned a lot about the fear of one another that they experienced.

But at the end of the film, I was still thinking "I'm afraid of all of them. Because I'm a woman, and even the wimpiest of them could hurt me physically." I'm not saying that sexism is worse than racism but they are equally dangerous. I fear for Barack Obama as well, because he too is challenging stereotypes and hatred of the same kind.

I'm not afraid for myself most of the time, but I'm aware that I am constantly on guard, constantly aware, constantly making sure of my surroundings, my companions, my safety. It is so ingrained in me to be alert to danger from men that I carry this into my everyday life. And I love men, generally! But until I know them, and know that they are safe, I am on guard.

Pondering things in my heart

I took the FS and FB to SeaTac yesterday afternoon, our last hours together for who knows how long, and though I am aware that I won't see them again for a long time, I was ready for some solitude again. The weather going down was blustery and spitting snow, though the roads weren't slushy, and I managed to be back to catch the 4:30 p.m. ferry home.

But the hours since I dropped them off have been full of ponderings in my heart. I have kept many memories of the time since his birth in 1972 and am now holding them up to the light of 2007, to see how our experiences together have changed and grown.

One thing I'm aware of is that, though I miss the days when it was just him and me against the world (a slight exaggeration, but we had some lean, unhappy times), the "mother and child reunion" (thank you, Paul Simon, for that phrase) is always changing. And that's a good thing.

I understand the impulse that keeps mothers resisting the entrance of another woman into the life of their sons. I understand the irresistible urge that prods mothers into continuing to treat their adult sons as though they had never left childhood. I think I was pretty successful at not succumbing to nagging him about health issues, though I did side with the FB when she expressed a concern.

But it all served to teach me that I no longer have a mother/son relationship with him in the same ways. He will always be my beloved child, but the generative step has been taken. He has moved beyond that relationship, whether I have or not, and it is now my task to move beyond it as well.

Christmas Eve

Yesterday's "Do You Want to Hold the Baby" pageant (by Joyce Poley, marvelous composer of Unitarian Universalist dramatic and musical literature) was a huge hit. Our DRE, Lorie, had spent hours with other staff members and volunteers putting it together and the result was a tableau of the Nativity story expanded beyond the bare bones of the story to portray it in the light of radical hospitality and the miracle that is every baby's birth. My part was small and I didn't have to do much preparing, so I could let myself flow with the story and songs, thrilling to the generosity of spirit and the joy of a new and important life beginning.

We had had a quiet day, hanging around the house, because there wasn't much time to get out and do something before I had to be at church, so we were ready for a little entertainment and inspiration and we got it in spades. Because not only was the pageant inspirational, it was also hilarious.

Imagine two adult men dressed as cows. Yes, cows, udderly true. Several cats, all sizes and shapes. A donkey's head on a tall, husky man. Teenage Joseph and middle-aged Mary. A little brown baby. Three Wise Ones (one preteen girl, her mother, and a man). Two sheep, a three-year-old boy and his mother, who exited briefly with him under her arm about the time my line was "Do you want to hold the baby?" "Yes, please, won't you?" was her murmured plea, as he squawled his way out the door. A dove, whose costume was only a white feather boa (over clothes, of course!).

One woman said to me afterwards,"you know, I had my doubts about this whole thing, but I have to say I wouldn't have missed it for the world!" Our several visitors were enchanted.

But the glory of the night made it hard to unwind last night and, coupled with more caffeine later than usual and cats who would not settle down, I had a hard time going to sleep, so this morning, very short on sleep and feeling groggy, I took the FS and FB up to the Keystone ferry dock to let them go to Port T. on their own. I came home, took a nap, and now am feeling more chipper.

They'll call me in the middle of the afternoon when they're ready to come home and I'll run up and get them. That will also give me plenty of time to make our Christmas dinner, which I'll enjoy, and have it ready for them a bit earlier than if we'd all gone.

Tomorrow they go home. There's a part of me that hates to see them go but our lives have become so different that I will also welcome a return to my own ways of doing things. We've had some good conversations, broaching subjects that sometimes don't come up until a crisis occurs. I want him to know where the documents are, the will, the insurance. I want the reassurance that he will step in for me, someday, when I can't do it myself. And, judging from his responses to the conversations, he will do so respectfully and sensitively. That makes me feel good. It's being a good Christmas.

Christmas Eve Eve

We're two days into the visit of the Favorite Son and Favorite Bride. It's been interesting learning how to be together in this new relationship of married adult son, daughter-in-law, and mother-friend-mother-in-law. It's a configuration I have not experienced before and I confess I was a bit tense during the first hours we spent together on Friday.

I waited for them at SeaTac's Concourse C/D spillway, where passengers from flights using those gates pour in a steady stream to enter the main terminal. And when I saw the two of them coming down the ramp, I couldn't hold back a little squeal and eager hand-wave, even though I could see FS grinning a little self-consciously at my uncool behavior. But he is a good guy and if anyone was looking at us weirdly, it didn't matter a bit as we three hugged and moved out of others' way.

It was only midafternoon and we intended to go to the Pike Place Market so that Jayde could check out a shop she wanted to visit, so that was our first stop and then on to Saba, an Ethiopian place on 12th to enjoy a little enjera and lentils, greens, lamb, and beef. By the time we were finished with supper, it was almost 7 and traffic had abated so much that we had a smooth ride north to the ferry terminal at Mukilteo.

It takes awhile to find conversational ease, for me, in exploring a new relationship. I felt uncharacteristically quiet at first, with the lightweight news shared and the heavier topics unbroached, yet hanging there, ready for consideration. When to bring up the new topics that his marriage and my aging suggest? How to do it?

Eventually, once we were home and the cats had done their preliminary circling of the new laps and legs, I brought out one set of topics---the few jewelry pieces that have sentimental or monetary value and the stories behind them. I find that, now that he is married to a woman I love and whose children I have taken into my heart, I have entered the stage of "what do I want my son to have for his memories and possessions from me?"

"This brooch is, I think, silver or maybe pewter and belonged to my Tante Caro. She gave it to my mother, who gave it to me. It is Swedish and at least 100 years old. I would like you, FB, to have it someday and perhaps pass it along to your daughter, my new granddaughter (would that be FGD?), if you think she would value it."

Murmurs of appreciation from both FS and FB. (It is a beautiful brooch, heavy and intricately designed, but very out of fashion and too heavy to pin on anything lightweight.)

"This is my wedding ring from your dad's and my marriage of 13 years. I don't know what it might mean to you, FS, but I'm grateful for the good years we had together and especially for you, who were the most important and most valued outcome of those years. Do with it whatever feels right."

FS takes the ring, slips it on and off his little finger, looks inside at the inscription, sets it down. I pick it up and look inside at the inscription, remembering it as having had a serious mistake in the etching. There is no mistake glaring back at me, only a slight scratch. My memory is faulty, perhaps the result of my long agonizing over this marriage. Today, December 23, would have been our 41st wedding anniversary.

"This box holds the Navajo turquoise jewelry that I got at a garage sale before you were born, for $35. I have no idea what it's really worth but it will be yours."

We sit in silence at the table. I want to talk with him about my life, about how my life will go in the future and ask him to be good to me. I don't say any of these things yet. Perhaps I will before the visit is over.

Yesterday we spent the day touring the island, as our trip to Port Townsend had to be postponed because of high winds on the Strait. We hope to go tomorrow, but today we are resting, going to church for the children's pageant in the afternoon, and enjoying ertasopa (Norwegian split pea soup), our traditional Christmas Eve meal for supper. Only it is Christmas Eve Eve and tomorrow will be our Christmas feast, since they have to leave on Christmas Day, too early for a big dinner.

Yesterday was a good day. My tension has ebbed considerably. We are again at ease and when I mentioned the "spiritual autobiography" I was writing, FS said he'd like to read what I've got so far. So I printed it out for him and both of them have now read it. I've only gotten to the place where his father and I have parted ways and I don't know how to write this piece. So it will take me awhile to find the words that will describe the breakup of our marriage without casting too many aspersions at either of us and yet be honest and true.

It is early morning and they are still sleeping. We will go to Neil's Clover Patch for crab benedict in a little while and we will see what this day brings, in the way of conversation.

The Quintessential Holiday Reading for Unitarian Universalists...

is certainly NOT by me but is by my colleague, the Rev. Dennis Hamilton of Horizon UU Church in Carrollton, Texas. It was published in the December edition of Quest, the monthly publication of the Church of the Larger Fellowship and you can link to it here .

Delve into everything else Quest has to offer. It is one of the best publications the UUA puts out.

PS. Off to pick up the FS and his bride at SeaTac! Yay!

Preparation for an arrival

No, or rather yes, it's Advent, that season of the liturgical year when in Christian churches all over the world preparations are made for the arrival of the Son, the baby of Bethlehem, but no, that's not the arrival I'm preparing for.

I am preparing for the arrival of the Favorite Son and his bride who will be arriving on Friday via Alaska Airlines, not a donkey, and there will be a room in this inn for them when they get here, although I will have to move Maxie out of his deluxe accommodations to make that happen. (Maxie is routinely shut up in the guest room at 10 p.m. every night so that the adults can get some respite. I am not sure what it will be like to have him on the loose all night. Poor Loosy and Lily!)

Anyhow, I went to the grocery store this morning to lay in supplies-------heavens! I'd forgotten how much it costs to feed more than one person for several days! After laying out buckets of cash for supplies, I came home, took a look at what I absolutely had to do to get ready for them, and lay down for a nap.

Now I'm delaying the inevitable a little while longer, cooking a little supper, planning to watch a DVD after that, and vowing to do it all tomorrow, for sure. Luckily the FS has never been a stickler for pristine cleanliness, though I'm not sure about his bride. If I feed them well, though, I suspect I will get away with whatever degree of preparation I manage.

It will be wonderful to have them here. They visited me in Seattle three years ago but they've never been to visit me on Whidbey. Our plans for the weekend include stopping by the Pike Place Market in Seattle on our way home from the airport, a trip across the water to Port Townsend, and a little exploration of Whidbey. I want to take them up to Deception Pass, on the north end, because it is so beautiful.

I have a picture taped up on my wall of the FS and me, taken years ago when we were both much younger, for our church directory. He is long-haired and bespectacled, wearing a tattered jean jacket, a tie, and a black t-shirt with a slightly offensive slogan, his baseball cap on backwards, a maniacal grin on his face. I am long-haired myself, in a red dress, much thinner, beaming innocently, unaware of how this picture will turn out. As it was, we chose it for our directory picture because it was so much a depiction of who we were in those days. He must have been about 19 at the time and I was probably only 50 or so.

He was the ringleader of the youth group at our church and at the time, the church was in the middle of an all-church social action project which involved everyone in helping with a local agency for families in transition. The youth group was in charge of a drive to amass paper products for the agency.

One Sunday we were complacently listening to the announcements at the beginning of the service, when the rear doors swung open and through them marched a phalanx of black-clad young men, the FS at the point position. They reached the front of the church, swung around, legs planted wide, hands on hips. The FS, in his black leather trench coat, opened one side of his coat to reveal many paper products fastened inside.

"We need you to bring paper towels, disposable diapers, kleenex," he opened the other side of his coat; "also toilet paper, computer paper, all kinds of paper products for Family Tree". He closed his coat, put hands on hips, glared menacingly. "And ya better do it. Cuz if you don't.........I'm gonna date all your daughters!"

The paper drive was a great success.

Tragedy in Florida UU congregation touches us all

My friend and colleague the Rev. Millie Rochester is the associate minister at the Clearwater UU Congregation in Florida, where five members of her group are dead tonight after a murder/suicide that took the lives of two women partners and two children and the ex-husband of one of the women, a man who took his own life after killing the women and children.

I can't imagine what that must demand of Millie and her congregants. Please keep them in your hearts and prayers. Members of the UU Trauma Response team are in Florida with the congregation. The senior minister of the congregation, Abhi Janamanchi, is on sabbatical but will doubtless return to assist with care for the community.

Millie was the DRE at the Salem, Oregon, church for many years before studying for the ministry and ordination. She is well known in this district for her competence and cheerful nature.

How can these things be happening? There are no answers to that question that satisfy me these days.

An interesting challenge

The newsletter deadline is coming up and one of my monthly duties is to write a column "from the Minister". Here is my column for January, whose topic emerged from last night's Conversation on Source #4, "Wisdom of Jewish and Christian teachings".
*******
Recently, as we considered the Fourth Source of Unitarian Universalism (the wisdom of Jewish and Christian teachings), the topic of language came up. I had asked those attending the conversation about that Source to think of one religious word that they liked and another religious word that they didn’t like----and why.

Among the words that folks liked were “spirituality”, “soul”, “grace”, “tolerance”, largely because they were words that felt big, inclusive, open to everyone. The words folks were uncomfortable with included “faith”, “church”, “cross”, and “salvation”, because they were words that felt limiting, excluding of some. Some evoked images that were foreboding.

A lively discussion grew out of this exercise and it became clear that those of us who had been UUs for a long time had less trouble with some words than others who were fairly new to the congregation. But there were other factors as well; a couple of people knew of someone who had chosen not to seek out a UU congregation because it felt “churchy”, i.e., Christian.

This has been a conversation in Unitarian Universalist circles for as long as I can remember---over thirty years of membership in a UU congregation! As new people join us and begin to experience the pluralism that is the essence of our universalist theology, there is a growing desire to open the circle as far as possible with our language. Naturally, there is also a resistance to changing old and comfortable language. Both sides have reasons and feelings to bolster their convictions.

So what can we do to live with this paradox, this tension between the historical language and the present reality? We don’t want people to be turned off by who we are, but we also want to be true to our roots.

My thirty-plus years of Unitarian Universalist membership also make me very aware that we can’t make rules about words. We can only listen to one another’s concerns and thoughts and try to understand how people’s experience has shaped their thinking. We can only be sensitive to one another’s positions.

At the conversation that evening, it was also clear that it hurts to hear that the historic word “church”, which comes from our Christian roots, is painful for others who do not share Christian roots or feel uncomfortable with present-day Christianity. And it occurs to me that there is a need for understanding and a democratic spirit on both sides of this coin.

As we get closer to completion of our new building, I think it would make sense to consider naming it something big, not to avoid using the word “church” but to point us toward the larger mission of Unitarian Universalism, which is an invitation to the Whidbey community to experience what it means to have differing beliefs but a common concern for one another, for the larger community around us and for our planet Earth. Is there a way to do that? It would be exciting to explore that idea, I believe.

Controversy about GA 2008 in Ft. Lauderdale

I've been following a heated conversation on the UUMA ministers' chat about the pros and cons of having General Assembly 08 in Fort Lauderdale, where attendees will be required to show an official ID (more than a GA badge) in order to enter the conference center. Concerns center on the justice issues involved, the potential for our youth to be excluded unfairly at times, and generally the atmosphere that such heightened security involves.

A message came out today from UU leadership about this issue and its concerns, and I've reprinted it below. I've got problems with the scenario myself but am mostly watching it develop because there's no way I am going to be able to attend GA in Ft. Lauderdale, whether I think it's just dandy to be attending a UU event in a locale where suspicion and threat of punishment abound or not.

If you're going to GA, you ought to be aware of the controversy. Some are calling for GA to be cancelled if it can't be scheduled in a friendlier location or, at the very least, for there to be strong opposition shown to the security policies of the Port of Ft. Lauderdale.

Here's the email that went out to the UU-News list:

General Assembly Planning Committee Chair Beth McGregor, President
William G. Sinkford, and Moderator Gini Courter have sent a memorandum
to the UUA Board of Trustees and the General Assembly Planning Committee
regarding security issues at the Fort Lauderdale site of the 2008
General Assembly. The memorandum notes, "Our concerns include the
possibility of an unfriendly environment for youth, particularly youth
of color, and the problems inherent in using a site that is not open to
those not eligible for government-issued identification." The complete
memorandum can be found online at
http://www.uua.org/events/generalassembly/updatesannouncements/60305.shtml .

After studying reports on the Fort Lauderdale conference site and
following meetings held by UUA staff with convention center and law
enforcement officials in Fort Lauderdale, McGregor, Sinkford, and
Courter have concluded that "the conditions in Fort Lauderdale provide
us with an opportunity to shine a light on the issues that concern us
and to use the situation as a teaching moment: What is it that we, as
religious people, are called to say at this time and in this place? What
privilege do we enjoy that is denied to others?" They have recommended
to the Board of Trustees that the Board not take any steps to change the
location of the 2008 General Assembly.

Further information, including the security protocols at Fort Lauderdale
and a report from an onsite visit, can be found at
http://www.uua.org/events/generalassembly/updatesannouncements/60305.shtml (see related content links).


So whaddya think?

In tribute to Beverly Anderson

My friend Bev died last Thursday and her memorial service is today. It is an honor to conduct her memorial service. Here are my closing words for her service this afternoon.

CLOSING WORDS:
After hearing so many stories about Bev’s life, I regret that my friendship with her didn’t start sooner! As it was, we began to get acquainted when she was diagnosed about a year ago with the cancer which would kill her.

I was doing my volunteer chaplaincy work at Whidbey General, peeking in rooms to see if anyone wanted to talk or pray or laugh, and one of the nurses caught me in the hallway, pointed toward a room, and said, “the lady in that room has just had some pretty bad news. You might want to go see her.”

I went in the room and there was Bev, perched on the side of her bed, looking out the window at the wintry skies. In chaplaincy work, there’s no time for chit-chat, and I got right to the point. “Bad news?” I asked, and we started to talk.

Eventually we realized we had met before, during one of the sessions my congregation had sponsored about gay and lesbian issues, and our connection began to grow.

During the next year, I visited frequently at her home, met her family and friends, and came to love her for her spirit, her sense of humor, her love of life. And as she fought the cancer, clung to life tenaciously, finally letting go, she never lost her trademark humor or spirit.

In fact, on the last day before she died, Wednesday of last week, I visited her at Bailey Boushay, finding her feverish and barely awake. I took her hand, realizing it was probably my last chance to do so, and said, “Bev, it’s Kit, I’m sorry I haven’t been able to get here sooner,” and she, in a voice barely audible, said, “well, it’s about time…”

Twenty four hours later, she was gone, but not without giving me one last sassy remark, letting me hold her hand one last time, stroking her hair one last time.

Bev’s ashes will be distributed by her family. But her life continues in our memories. We loved her, we continue to love her, we may continue to be guided by her. Our grief, our emotion, our life with her does not end today. Remember this and be gentle with one another. We will relive our pain many times and this is natural. It is our nature as human beings to carry with us the experience of love, in all its joy and sorrow, and to learn from its teachings.

May we learn from Bev’s life and death. May we live on in the spirit in which she lived, with courage, fortitude, and love. Let us enter now into a time of silent reflection and prayer, remembering Bev’s life.

SILENCE

Let me close with this poem by May Sarton, which to me is a fitting conclusion to a celebration of Bev Anderson’s life.

“Now Voyager” by May Sarton

Now voyager, lay here your dazzled head,
Come back to earth from air, be nourished,
Not with that light on light, but with this bread.

Here close to earth be cherished, mortal heart,
Hold your way deep as roots push rocks apart
To bring the spurt of green up from the dark.

Where music thundered, let the mind be still,
Where the will triumphed, let there be no will,
What light revealed, now let the dark fulfill.

Here close to earth the deeper pulse is stirred,
Here where no wings rush and no sudden bird,
But only heartbeat upon beat is heart.

Here let the fiery burden be all spilled,
The passionate voice at last be calmed and stilled
And the long yearning of the blood fulfilled.

Now voyager, come home, come home to rest,
Here on the long-lost country of earth’s breast,
Lay down the fiery vision and be blest, be blest.

Be Blest, Bev, as you have blessed so many.