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Today begins Thirty Days of Love – a month of reflection and action centered around the idea that love is the ultimate guiding force. Across the denomination, people are meeting, learning, reflecting, and doing, guided by our Standing on the Side of Love campaign.

Some of us are also writing.

About a month ago, the UU Bloggers Workshop was created as space for support, learning, and collaboration. We thought, we shouldn’t just help each other become better and farther reaching bloggers – we should have public conversations and coordinated explorations. Thirty Days of Love seemed a perfect first such collaboration. Over the next thirty days, bloggers will write and reflect about love and our way forward to create the beloved community – with posts collected here for easy browsing. Together, we’ll take on this big, incredibly expansive compulsion to do good in the world – that crazy little thing called love.

I get to go first.

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In reality, Unitarian Universalists are talking about love all the time; many of our congregations use an affirmation each week that begins “Love is the doctrine of this church.” Easily half our readings and hymns contain the word love. More contain “compassion,” which seems to be the preferred word these days. But I like the word “love.” It’s both simple and complex; it’s particular and all encompassing. Love is central to all of the world’s religions. It is a guiding force for our exemplars and pioneers. Love is everywhere – in our practices, prayers, and in our sacred texts.

handsIn fact, one of the most famous passages in sacred texts is about love is found in the New Testament:  I Corinthians 13.

We hear this passage all too often, most often at weddings. It’s poetic, yet as CS Lewis says, it has become so commonplace that it has lost its potency. But a closer look shows that this, perhaps the most famous passage in the New Testament, tells us how we are with each other and how we act in the world.

This passage is a digression of sorts:  In this first letter to the Corinthians, Paul is addressing a number of divisive issues that are coming up in the church, including the question of “spiritual gifts” as a measure of one’s worth. Paul addresses them this way:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

For the Corinthians, and indeed most of the early Christians, the spiritual gifts were signs that God was working in their lives. These gifts are not unlike our own – where they embraced prophesy, healing, and speaking in tongues, we embrace prophetic witness, reason, and generosity.

Now these gifts themselves are fine – in fact, just as Paul preached on them to his flock, we preach on our gifts. They are important ways in which we move through our days, putting our faith into action. Some of us are great at hospitality, others at caring for one another, others still at speaking with a prophetic voice, or using intellect to understand the world. But the problem in Corinth – and the danger among us – is when the gifts become a sign, a shibboleth if you will, that divides the believers from the non-believers, the good UUs from the bad. The gifts are not the thing. They are useful to encourage and develop, but they are not THE thing.

The thing… is love. Without love, Paul says, “I gain nothing”… and frankly, neither does anyone else. Love is what allows our gifts to function.

And what a thing it is:

Love is patient.    Love is kind.
Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way.
It is not irritable or resentful.
It does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Paul may not be able to tell us exactly what love is, but he sure knows it when he sees it.

How many times have we gotten irritated when our justice endeavors run into road blocks? Maybe the volunteers don’t show up. Maybe we don’t get the donations we expected. Maybe the people we’re helping don’t seem to appreciate it. There’s a sign that we may not be acting out of love.

How many times have we limited ourselves? Expected the worst, so we didn’t go the full distance? There’s a sign that we may not be acting out of love.

How many times have we been so angry at the injustice in the world that we’ve become paralyzed?  There’s a sign we may not be acting out of love.

How many times have we been so proud of our own actions that we look down upon those who don’t – or can’t – do as much justice work? There’s a sign we may not be acting out of love.

How many times have we simply gotten burned out? There’s a sign we may not be acting out of love.

I told you it’s not easy.

But love is permanent. It is eternal – and as the song says, there is more love somewhere. Paul emphasizes this point in the next three verses, which I have tweaked a little for our own time:

Love never ends. But as for our prophetic witness, it will come to an end; as for speaking truth to power, that will cease; as for intellect, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we reason only in part, but when justice and inclusion is complete, the parts will come to an end.

He then continues with two somewhat puzzling thoughts; first is this:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned as a child, but when I became an adult I put away childish things.

My first thought always is “really? I can’t be a kid anymore?” But Paul is saying that we should put aside the petulant, smug, judgmental, and boastful side of promoting our gifts. We don’t want to be that way… and most of the time I don’t think we are… but it’s a danger, and one we should remember. When we act as adults, we put love first.

The second puzzlement comes in the next verse:

For now we see in a glass darkly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part, then I will know fully even as I have been fully known.

Mysterious, and yet: glass in the first century wasn’t clear – they hadn’t quite perfected that yet – so “seeing through a glass darkly” is seeing something obscured by grainy, opaque glass. In other words, we can’t see everything, or know everything. Our knowledge is NOT the be-all, end-all. Because, remember, if I have not love, I am nothing at all.

Put it another way: we can’t know every effect of everything we do. We can only act in love, with our best and highest intentions. Maybe you don’t know the effect your actions will have, but if you do it as an act of love, that is enough. And when you show love? People are not just helped and healed themselves. The also know you in ways you can’t anticipate. They see your generous heart, your kind spirit. They see your passion and compassion, your earnestness and forthrightness.

Paul concludes:

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three. And the greatest of these is love.

No matter what else is going on, it’s all about love. Love is where we begin – whether it is with each other, with the Divine (however we define it), with our families, our communities, or our world. Without love, anything we do is half a loaf. It’s ineffective. It’s uninspiring. It can cause bitterness.

I think about how large corporations are forced to pay for things like cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico after an oil spill… when philanthropists give large amounts of money just for the tax breaks – and those acts always feel empty to me. Yes, the money is important to solve the issues, but if they walked through the world in love, they maybe wouldn’t have caused the problems in the first place.  What if we shared love from the start – not just when things get bad, but pre-emptively?   Maybe that’s what Paul is getting at. and what all of our songs and activities and organizations for social justice are about too: starting from a place of love so that the world is better nurtured from the start. In her book Blessing the World, Rebecca Parker implores us to “Choose to bless the world.” She writes,

The choice to bless the world can take you into solitude to search for the sources of power and grace; native wisdom, healing and liberation. More, the choice will draw you into community, the endeavor shared, the heritage passed on, the companionship of struggle, the importance of keeping faith, the life of ritual and praise, the comfort of human friendship, the company of earth, its chorus of life welcoming you. None of us alone can save the world. Together—that is another possibility, waiting.

Together, we must share love, because it IS the greatest gift of all. Ultimately, it is all we have. It burns in us – it is our pilot light, which we can keep low and hidden under a bushel… or we can turn up so it is a beacon bright and clear – a beacon stoked by hope and faith. Everything else may fade away,  but first and always, we must love.

 

 

 

 

 

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I love words.

I love their power to evoke emotions, actions, ideas, images. I love how a carefully crafted phrase can roll gracefully and deliciously like a warm cinnamon bun, or jar us like an unexpectedly bitter orange.

And more, I love that as Unitarian Universalists, we delight in words, and all that they can evoke. We memorize quotations from great thinkers and doers, we wrestle with words long laden with pain, we use as many words as we can to understand our world and the Divine. We continue to find new ways to describe the expansiveness of our extravagant welcome. We continue to explore theological and philosophical ideas in our deep-seated earnestness to understand the understandable through reason and fact.

This is why I am a reader. I want to see how others are thinking about things, describing things, wrestling with things. I love those moments when a phrase catches me and lives in my mind for hours or days or weeks. My vast collection of books are filled with post-its marking pages, sections highlighted, words underlined, and occasionally a conversation with the author scribbled in the margins.

This is also why I am a writer, and why I continue to blog, whether I have one reader or thousands. I love using words and playing with words to explore the joyful, thoughtful, and painful. I love writing papers for my courses. I frankly even loved writing the essays for the Regional Sub-Committee on Candidacy (but don’t tell anyone).

I am also a talker. I’m one of those people who best processes ideas out loud. I make decisions best when I talk them through with someone. I love class discussions and small group discussions and Q&A sessions. I love preaching and teaching and leading workshops.

Yes. Words matter to me. To us. Our fourth principle, the responsible search for truth and meaning, relies largely on words.

But are the words we say to each other enough? Is it enough to read each other’s blog posts and sermons, to absorb books and podcasts, to relish in the reading and the talking, to let words rule? What of the UU who says “worship is my least favorite part of being a UU”? What of the UU who says “I dislike music in a service. I’d rather just hear a sermon and some readings”? What of the UU who says “I don’t want spiritual experience, I want to do social justice”?

If we followed their lead, we probably wouldn’t need to come together for services.

If we followed their lead, we could sell off the beautiful buildings and instead build server farms where we host blogs and online books and occasional chats.

If we followed their lead, we would stop being a religion.

Obviously, I am not saying we don’t need all the words and intellectual stimulation. But I don’t think it’s enough.

In 2009, I chaired our congregation’s Stewardship campaign; part of our campaign included a call for pledges of  Time, Talent, and Treasure. In our planning, we all agreed that members should be willing to make an investment in all three, but what did Time mean, exactly? Was time the hours spent in Sunday services and at church-wide events? Or was it okay if someone didn’t come to church but attended a small group ministry once a month? Do we ask for a commitment to the one hour a week that everyone shares (as opposed to the many more hours we share in small groups, committees, task forces, etc.)? What of the people who feel like the Sunday worship was a waste of time – a wasteland of intellectual stimulation?

To them I say that worship still matters, whether you think you’re getting anything out of it or not.

Without worship, we are nothing more than an intellectual social club with a service focus. Without worship, we forget how to enact the deeper parts of ourselves, which long remember the rituals of our ancient ancestors. Without worship, we become isolated, away from the interconnected web of which we are a part. Without worship, we lose touch with the sacred.

And more…without all the elements of worship – sights and sounds, touch and scents, words, music, movement, and silence – we are missing ways to access our own Divine spirit, as well as that which we define as Divine that is outside ourselves. We can think about, write about, talk about, intellectualize about this spiritual dimension all we like. But that thing inside us – the divine spark, the soul, the spirit, the human consciousness – that thing needs to be activated and engaged for us to really understand. There’s a scene in The Matrix, where information is uploaded to our hero’s brain:

The scene doesn’t stop there. Lawrence Fishburne’s character, Morpheus, takes Keanu Reeves’s character, Neo,  into a room where they actually fight.

Engagement matters. And for most of us, we find that the habit of weekly worship provides the best chance we have of that engagement. And it’s not just about our individual selves getting engaged; it’s about the group experience. For several years, I was what they call a solitary practitioner in the pagan tradition. I held rituals, by myself. I meditated, sang, danced, incanted, by myself. And half the time, I gave up before I had finished, because it felt empty or I felt silly. When I was in ritual with even one other person, suddenly there was meaning. A shared experience. A connection. What I read and studied suddenly became real.

It’s this connection that then leads me on to act. just being with other people in scared space makes me want to be a better person, more engaged, more connected. They don’t tell me to, I feel it. I sing it. I smell it and touch it and taste it. All the books and blogs and discussions in the world cannot replace that.

So what do we do about it? How do we create communities that have room for all of it, such that  even the woman who dislikes worship can find and make meaning?

I think back to the question my stewardship team wrestled with – what we mean by Time. As we reimagine what congregations look like, when and where they meet, we need to recognize that every opportunity to gather is both an opportunity to engage our intellects and to worship. And this is more than lighting a chalice before a committee meeting starts. It’s about action – doing something besides talking (like singing or meditating to start the meeting), or taking an intellectual idea and physically applying it to the world (like going down the street and showing the homeless woman you value her inherent worth and dignity). Every time we gather, we should be making meaning, engaging our minds and our bodies. Every time we gather, we should be engaging in worship – in making worth and meaning.

This isn’t easy. it’s one thing to say that the Buildings and Grounds Committee are “stewards of our sacred space” – it’s another to make taking out the trash a spiritual endeavor. It’s one thing to say the pot-luck should be a communing of our spirits – it’s another to let go of the random gossip and griping and actually show care for each other.

But it can be done. We need all the words – and touches and tastes and actions and images – we can get our hands on. Our souls demand it. Our denomination’s future depends on it.

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seedstrees, in general; oaks, especially;
burr oaks that survive fire, in particular;
and the generosity of apples…
seeds, all of them: carrots like dust,
winged maple, doubled beet, peach kernel;
the inevitability of change
frogsong in spring; cattle
lowing on the farm across the hill;
the melodies of sad old songs
comfort of savory soup;
sweet iced fruit; the aroma of yeast;
a friend’s voice; hard work
seasons; bedrock; lilacs;
moonshadows under the ash grove;
something breaking through
-Patricia Monaghan

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New York City drops a ball; Key West drops a drag queen in a ruby slipper.
New York City drops a ball; Key West drops a drag queen in a ruby slipper.

Here are my bold predictions for 2014:

A popular celebrity will die unexpectedly; another will cause a scandal; a third will come out (to the shock of some and to a “duh” to others); the midterm elections will “send a message”; a weather event will cause deaths; so will gun violence; a well-known fundamentalist will blame something they don’t like on the gays; the top ten movies will fail both Bechdel tests (for women and for race); some politician will be caught in a compromising position; laws will be passed that will enrage someone; people will spew anger and hate; some will lose jobs and homes; others will become richer and more entitled; we will all be sure this has been an extremely unique year in the news and nothing has ever been so bad.

On the other hand, I also predict love will spark; babies will be welcomed into loving arms; people will take small and large steps toward their dreams; some will write books; more will read them; some will write songs; more will sing them; someone will kick a bad habit; someone else will pick up a healthy one; someone will feel more compassion and act on it; another will finally get off the couch and make a difference; someone will finally feel secure; people will smile and laugh and spread joy; others will hold and comfort and provide solace; love will win.

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A few weeks ago,  I attended a Women at Union dinner in the home of Dean Mary Boys; during the evening, 15 smart, capable, and energetic women shared stories and raised questions about bringing the lessons we learn at Union about creating community, asking hard questions, and general ideas about liberal theology back into the world – a world that for some is conservative in thought and dubious of women in religious authority. Now I am an unabashed feminist and have been since learning about “women’s lib” and the ERA as a young teen in the mid-1970s. I think it is vital that women’s voices are not just acknowledged, but heard as contributing to the whole conversation, not just the feminine aspect of it. Sadly, there are still times even at Union where the fact that women have anything to say at all on a topic is treated as surprising, and more often are treated as “from the feminist perspective” – thus safely contained on the sidelines so that the serious men didn’t have to let it soil their serious theological discussion.

Yet when I raised this concern, some women in the room seemed worried that I wasn’t preferencing women’s voices, or not making it notable enough that a woman’s voice was even in the room. There was, from some, a sense that women’s voices in religion was still so new it had to be pointed out and treated as precious. Now I recognize my own privilege here, raised up by the sisters of second-wave feminism and enmeshed in a denomination whose women’s voices have been (by and large) honored as vital additions to the whole of our faith (with noticeable emphasis in the last 30 years). I also recognize that even in that privileged space, there is work to be done as regards women; for instance, I have growing concerns that the increase in female ministers means a diminishment of ministerial authority and reduced salaries, that “minister” joins “teacher” and “nurse” in the realm of “women’s work” and thus gets sidelined. I also worry that as the number of women in theological scholarship grows, the more anxious other theologians – even those considered liberal or progressive – will get about new directions of thought and will seek to contain them in the box marked “feminist.”

harknessThese thoughts bring me to Georgia Harkness, an early 20th century theologian who fought exactly these attitudes. I encountered her in a class on American Theological Liberalism, taught by Gary Dorrien. To Dorrien’s credit, Harkness is not treated as special because she is a woman. She is not an afterthought; rather, in a lecture and chapter on those who brought 20th century liberal Christianity to the people,  her voice is as important as the voices of Harry Emerson Fosdick and Rufus Jones. And in fact, Harkness did add to this important part of the conversation, namely: how do we make these theological advances real to the faithful? Her book Conflict of Religious Thought was intended to popularize the more esoteric ideas of Brightman and Hocking. And, at least among her colleagues (Brightman, as well as Niebuhr, Tillich, and Mays, among others), she was seen as one theologian among many.

And yet, it was clear she was a woman in a man’s world. Harkness noted in the early 1920s that “Practically every avenue of leadership today is open to women save for the Church.” Her life’s story is an all too familiar one – from being excluded from certain educational programs, to her not being fully ordained as a minister, to the not-so-subtle put downs about her appearance and manner – all indignities suffered solely because of her gender. That Harkness was able to meet fellow male theologians on intellectual grounds at all must have been a relief to her.

Yet, like many who came before and have come after, being a member of a marginalized group and having the opportunity to be heard compelled Harkness to speak up on the role of women. Enduring decades of both implicit and explicit sexism in the field of religion likely kept her ire up enough to speak out rather than stay silent. Her writings in the Christian Century and her speech at the Oxford Conference in the 1920s may have fallen on deaf ears at the time, but they were certainly notable for their explicitness about the subjugation of women in the field of theology and religion. It was indeed a vital move for the advancement of women that she take on this part of the establishment; I wonder how much of her work for the cause of women eclipsed her more intellectual and philosophical work.

And so, back to the first part of this reflection, my question is this: is Georgia Harkness a notable personalist theologian of the 20th s a woman, despite her being a woman, or along with being a woman? And, perhaps more importantly, why is she not as notable as other members of her cohort? Why are her books no longer in print? Why is it that I only just learned about her?[1]

And so it goes; for all the progress we have made in feminism – the goal of which is equality of genders – we still have far to go.

 

 

[1] If nothing else, I wish I had known about her book The Dark Night of the Soul when I went through my own a decade ago.

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When I first formed Word Alchemy five years ago, it was with an eye to being able to work anywhere in the world. While I was comfortable in upstate New York, I quickly set my sights on working on a tropical island, and I would joke about working “the Nassau Way”… complete with wifi and electricity that extends to the hammock near the water and an administrative assistant well-versed in bookkeeping, organization, and daiquiri-making.

I dreamed into this further as I worked with Ray Patterson and his brilliant strategic life visioning process. And for Christmas 2009, Carl Eeman gave me a poster of that hammock by the sea. When I got the poster, I taped it (I thought temporarily) over a framed print of “Night with her Train of Stars” that hangs on the wall across from my bed. Since that Christmas day in 2009, I have looked at that poster every day I have been in that room. This is my view:

dreamonmywall

Since then, of course, I heard the call to ministry and am well on my way. Part of being on my way is seeking an internship position in a congregation for the year after I graduate from seminary.  As early as this past August, I started haunting the UUA’s Internship Clearinghouse… and was delighted to discover a new teaching congregation in Key West, Florida. Key West! That seemed so fantastical… yet what an opportunity! While other congregations began to fill the page, I found myself not willing to let go of my initial thrill, and added Key West to the sites I applied for.

Now I will admit – at some point, in the midst of interviewing with some large congregations with well-established intern minister programs, I began to think Key West might be too small and too green. And then I heard someone at another seminary say “everyone is applying there!” and I figured the pool would be too large and I would get lost in the mix anyway.

I am happy to say I interviewed at all the sites I applied for.. but after each of the first three, I felt a little uncomfortable, doubtful, and worried. I knew I’d be happy at two of them but it was clear I wasn’t a really good fit.

And then I talked to the intern search committee in Key West. It was an incredibly fantastic conversation. I heard places where my gifts would meet their needs … and of course where their strengths would teach me and help soften my growing edges. We laughed together, we spoke in first person terms, we engaged each other. And when I hung up I thought “this is it.” I then heard from my references that they’d had amazing conversations with the committee as well.

On Wednesday, December 18th, Rev. Dr. Randy Becker and board president Joy Taylor called to offer me the position as their intern minister, starting August 1, 2014… and now I am a part of One Island Family, the Southernmost Unitarian Universalist Congregation.

A day later, I traveled back to Round Lake for the holidays, and as I sat on my bed, I looked and saw that poster.

The dreaming… the imagining…the visioning.

Made manifest.

Sure, not precisely as I imagined it five years ago… but five years ago, I knew I wanted to live and work on a tropical island. And in about seven months, I will be doing exactly that… in a more meaningful, heart-felt, missional way.

Can dreams come true? Bet on it. And if you are open to how they will manifest, they may surprise you and be even better than you imagined.

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As I entered my 50th year on this planet, I realized that it is my Year of Jubilee; it is certainly going to be an exciting year; I have several major creative projects coming up, will receive my M Div, will start an internship, and who knows what else? So many possibilities are on the horizon.

I am discovering each day what this Year of Jubilee means… there are biblical and historical Jubilees, which I’ll write about at more length. But there is also a personal aspect, which – at least to start – is a time of letting go, returning, delving into who I am and all I am meant to be.

I’ve decided to collect insights and inspiration on a Tumblr, cleverly called Kimberley’s Year of Jubilee. There I’ll put photos, quotes, songs, and thoughts about this journey. This blog will largely remain focused on Unitarian Universalism and UU ministry; the Tumblr will let me keep this year’s exploration delightfully collected in one place.

I hope you’ll join me in both places for the adventure to come.

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self talkA few days ago, a dear friend rightly called me out on a bit of negative self talk. And while the moment passed, it’s been sitting with me since. I know that I’m a lot better about self talk than I used to be – I recognize my gifts and talents and don’t measure myself against others the way I used to. But still, I can get pretty down on myself, especially when it comes to things I think I should have more control over.

And I know negative self-talk – even in little bits – can erode confidence. This is the last thing I need, knowing I am applying for internships and seeing the RSCC soon. I need to believe in myself, authentically and realistically.

So starting today, and at least until October 31, I am on a focused mission to eliminate negative self talk and say something nice about myself out loud, within earshot of beloved friends, each day… and post some sort of affirmation about my self on Facebook. I’m not going to brag, or say things that aren’t actually true – or even things I suspect might be true but can’t be sure of yet. I simply wish to speak the positive truths that I know about myself, to myself.

I am either going to become more confident and breathing into the fullness of who I am – or an insufferable fool. Either way, by Halloween I suspect I’ll know something about myself.

And so it begins….