By |

You never know what a casual, off-handed comment will lead to.

Three times on Saturday, I made a casual comment about who I am, where I work, and what I do, and three times, I found myself sharing the good news of Unitarian Universalism.

The first was outside our congregation’s yard sale. I must have looked like I belonged there, because a man stopped me and asked “what is this place?” I replied, it’s a Unitarian Universalist church. He seemed hesitant at first, and then said, “Wait, are you the love people?” I smiled as he explained he’d been to a marriage equality rally in another state and saw our big yellow Standing on the Side of Love banners. He said “Y’all are all right. I will definitely buy something.” I smiled again and said, “if you’re around on Sunday, you should come to a service.” He frowned for a moment, and I followed up with “we are all about love here. Doesn’t matter what you believe, only that you act in love.” He smiled finally and said, “now this is a church I could dig.”

I don’t know if he came on Sunday (I had a rare Sunday off), but I know he bought something.

—

The second was at The Gardens, where my friend Will Johnson plays piano on Saturday afternoons. I try to go every week, to have a glass of wine and listen to some wonderful music. It’s become a spiritual self-care practice for me and I miss it the weeks he’s not playing or I can’t attend. Because I am a Saturday regular, I have gotten to know some of the staff, including Amber, who runs the wine gallery. I came in to get some wine, and I said something offhand about how some weeks, this is as close to going to church I get, since I am a minister. Of course, she asked where, and then asked me what we believe. I got to share the good news of our non-creedal, covenantal faith. She smiled and said “I really miss going to some sort of church, but I am more Buddhist now and feel uncomfortable elsewhere.” I told her how we draw wisdom from the world’s religions, and how, as Francis David said, “we don’t have to think alike to love alike.” She hugged me with relief and said, “I’ve been looking for you for years… and you’re right around the corner.” I promised to meet her next Sunday morning for coffee and bring her to the service.

 

—

The third happened just a few hours later. Because I didn’t have to preach, I decided to stop by another local establishment to see some friends and have one more glass of wine. Shortly after I arrived, a 30-ish couple, Harold and Leann, sat at the bar near me. We chatted lightly as they ordered some unconventional cocktails, and in the “where are you from” part of our small talk, I mentioned I serve a congregation in Key West and am here for a year. That led to the inevitable “where” and “what do you believe” questions, as well as questions about how to be loving to those who don’t believe as you do. We spoke for over an hour, and they began to identify more than a couple of friends who attend a Unitarian Universalist congregation in their home town of Milwaukee. I found their friends’ congregation online and gave them the service information. At the end, Harold asked me for my card, and said “I’ll email you after our first visit.”

—

Evangelism isn’t difficult. People are longing to hear our good news – radical hospitality, freedom to search for truth, respect and regard for the earth and every living thing on it, space to explore and breathe and connect and do good in the world without threat of damnation. Almost by accident, I testified to our saving message to four different people, each of whom was hungry for us, searching for us, needing to hear about us. Sure, I didn’t start Saturday expecting to evangelize, but I am glad I did. I won’t know the long-term effects of these conversations, but it mattered in those moments.

By |

What started as a silly exclamation after drinking at the pub one night turned into two major projects that I undertook at seminary.

The exclamation – interjected as a group of us at Union Theological Seminary discovered a mutual love of musical theater – was “we should do a Broadway Revue!” A few months later, we were making that silly notion a reality, and we created and produced “In the Beginning: A Broadway Revue Inspired by Genesis.” A year later, we created and produced “The Other Side” which was inspired by Exodus – complete with a three-credit course led by one of the world’s top Biblical scholars.

It was really a silly idea. We had heavy work loads, field education, other interests. Yet it sparked a creativity that would not be relegated to ‘silly idea.’

TheGoldenGirls_GroupFast forward to now: a colleague’s son is in the hospital with a sudden illness; to cheer her up, another colleague suggested we post funny/made up memories of her on Facebook. The entries were funny, sweet, and sometimes fantastical. But one of them – suggesting that they were doing a service that was replaced by a Golden Girls script – was the silliest of them all. And sparked an incredible conversation that is now leading us to create a “Thank You For Being a Friend” Sunday – coordinated worship services across the country, focused on the wonderful lessons of friendship, generosity, acceptance, worth, family, storytelling, cheesecake, and shoulder pads.

A silly idea. A REALLY silly idea. But now we’re plotting and planning and, as I experienced in the Broadway revues, feeding and being fed off others’ creativity, spirit, and yes-and attitude.

—

Just yesterday, I was remarking to my internship supervisor that I felt a bit exiled – not just the geographic exile of being at the end of an archipelago where the Atlantic meets the Gulf of Mexico, but also exiled from my support systems, from connections, and most of all, from my own – and others’ – creativity. Somehow being physically separated from the people who stir my creativity led me to being separated from my own.

But a silly idea has brought me back from the brink.

A silly, creative, meaningful idea that can be accomplished and activates all that I love about the creative process – collaboration, expansive thinking, inspiration – has brought me back from the brink.

Saying YES-AND to this silly idea has reminded me to say YES-AND to myself, to that which I call God, to the universe, to others, and most of all, to my call.

But it’s not just personal; as career coach Bob Proctor points out, it’s the silly ideas that are “the most stunning, spectacular concept you could possibly imagine. Something there’s an enormous market for. Something that millions of people are absolutely crying for someone to provide them with.”

Imagine what happens when we use the power of silly in our spiritual settings… we might get a raised eyebrow or two, and hear the seven deadly words “but we’ve never done it this way.” But we may often have found the most spectacular concept we could possibly imagine, something millions are absolutely crying for someone to provide them with – healing, comfort, joy, awakening, enlightenment. It happened for me, and it keeps happening.

I’m in.

Bring on the silly.

By |

Ever since the shootings in Santa Barbara, California that sparked the powerful hashtag #YesAllWomen, I’ve been paying more attention to the so-called men’s rights movement; men who follow this perspective believe we are actually in a matriarchal society, that women have significant control over men, and that women should abdicate authority – particularly when it comes to who they date. We have seen this movement become violent, not only in Santa Barbara, but in the threats some female game designers, critics, and players have experienced in #Gamergate.

Others have written eloquently about the foundational ideas behind this movement, the personalities who are stirring up the movement, and the day-to-day anger and violence against women that this movement seems to encourage. With every article and news report, I get angrier and more frustrated. I have shaken my head in disgust so much I have a permanent crick in my neck. I have dropped my jaw in shock so much I have TMJ.

But one day, after reading profiles of Warren Farrell and Paul Elam, I began to feel something like pity and compassion. I began to wonder how we have failed these men. What did we miss in our care for them that they turned to petulant anger? What messages have we mistakenly sent to suggest that they are victims? Is it because we haven’t sufficiently addressed the issues Susan Faludi wrote about in Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Male – the standards by which we measure men? How did we blow it? Were we not supportive enough in our classrooms and churches and extracurricular activities and home life? How did we fail them?

I have no answers; I watch what were decent, everyday men get sucked into a spiraling frustration that is fed by others. Their reasoning is circular, their reactions to women are baffling, their compulsion toward violence even more so. I know there’s some sense of a loss of privilege – but I can’t help but wonder if somewhere in our work toward equality, inclusion, and justice, we forgot to teach those with privilege how to both recognize and use their privilege to help everyone up.

In a perfect world, everyone sees the fullness of their identities, and recognizes that others’ identities do not threaten but rather enrich their own. But we’re not there. I pray every day that one more man who’s sucked into this destructive movement gets what he needs to see his own inherent worth – and everyone else’s. And I pray we are there to help them, not give them reasons to stay in a cycle of anger.

By |

This is a post I should have written a month ago, when Rev. Jennifer Slade took her life – a beautiful, brilliant, humanity-affirming life. Her death was shocking and jarring. But I didn’t write then, perhaps because while she was a colleague, I didn’t know her personally and didn’t know how to parse it. I didn’t know what to say then.

It’s been a couple of days now since Robin Williams took his own life – also a beautiful, brilliant, humanity-affirming life. And while I didn’t know him personally either, somehow I think we all did on one level – we knew him through his antic comedy and his moving drama. He came into our living rooms and our movie theatres and we knew him. After hearing the news, my cousin wrote, “if he only knew how we felt… really felt.”

And suddenly, I know what to say – to those who loved Jennifer, to those who loved Robin, and to those who love anyone.

It might not have been enough, knowing how people really felt. I know, because I have lived it.

I have lived that moment when, despite having some success and security, I could see no way out.

I have lived that moment when, despite knowing that there were people who would miss me, I thought they would be better off without me.

I have lived that moment when, despite being knowledgeable about mental illness and the tragedies of suicide, it just didn’t matter.

Now obviously, I didn’t commit suicide. Instead, like a robot, I went to work, and thankfully the better angels in my head compelled me to say something to someone. They got me to a doctor, who got me to a psychiatrist, who got me treatment, which helped me get well. I now know better how to manage the sadness, how to reach out, what to look for in my own life so that I won’t go down that road again.

But I have lived that moment, when a decision is made. For me, the delay was largely because I couldn’t come up with a method that I thought would work. But I had made a decision.

There’s a scene in an episode of M*A*S*H, where psychiatrist Sidney Freedman spends some time at the 4077th because he had lost a patient. He explains the moment to Hawkeye:

Actually, the straw that broke my back was a kid who was hearing voices telling him to kill himself. After some time with him, he got very quiet, sometimes that’s a sign they’ve made up their minds. Only somehow, I missed it. And then that night, after we all went to sleep, that sweet, innocent, troubled kid… listened to the voices.

I know that moment of quiet. And I imagine Jennifer and Robin probably seemed calmer to family and friends in those last days than they had leading up to it. It’s impossible to know exactly what was in their mind, but I can imagine, because I’ve lived it.

—

So what do we do? If I hadn’t said something to a coworker, I might not be here today. The truth is, no one asked me. I put up a front of being very together, very self-assured, very competent and confident. I was (and still am) the person others came to for problems.

What we do is engage.

What we do is talk to people, not about their accomplishments, but about their lives.

What we do is ask “how are you” and stay present as we hear the answer.

What we do is not assume the confident person has a busy schedule and wouldn’t possibly be interested in going to lunch or a movie or helping with a project.

What we do is be present to those who otherwise might be outside our close circle.

What we do is be in covenant.

“Love is the doctrine of this church,” we recite, “to the end that all shall grow into harmony… thus do we covenant with one another.” Not contract, not promise, not lawfully abide. Covenant. Be in right relation. With everyone.

It’s possible that Jennifer had good, strong people in covenant with her and like Sidney Freedman, they still missed the signs. It’s possible Robin was surrounded by people who genuinely loved him, not his celebrity or his genius, and they still missed the signs.

But then I remember the viral stories of the men – one a police officer at the Golden Gate Bridge, one an Irishman who lives near a cliff – who talk to people who look like they’ve made a decision, and encourage them to keep living. They have an unspoken covenant with these people – to know them. To relate to them. To care for them. To listen when no one else will. Sometimes it isn’t the people closest to us that make the difference but simply the people who take seriously the care of being in covenant with one another.

A decade ago, Jeannie Gagne wrote an incredible, haunting piece (available to all of us in Singing the Journey) called “In My Quiet Sorrow,” written to honor those times when we carry “sorrows in our hearts that sometimes go unexpressed—with a prayer for support, love, and guidance. We all have times in our lives that are challenging; sometimes we need to ask for help, but we don’t know quite how or when.” (from the UUA’s song information page) Our covenant to one another is to hold each other and be present for each other in these times:

I am worn,
I am tired,
in my quiet sorrow.
Hopelessness will not let me be.
Help me

I won’t speak
of this ache
inside, light eludes me.
In the silence of my heart,
I’m praying.

I keep on,
day by day,
trusting light will guide me.
Will you be with me through this time,
holding me?

You’re my hope
when I fear
holding on, believing.
Deep inside I pray I’m strong.
Blessed be.

You may not know what to say exactly. But say something. And genuinely listen.

You never know, and you still may miss some of the signs, but you may also make all the difference.

By |

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.

By |

REMEMBER me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

–Christina Rossetti

 

I for one would rather forget that my father died suddenly at age 60 and remember that try as he might, he could not stifle the explosive guffaws when watching the movie Airplane. I would rather forget that my mother’s last hours were spent suffering in a hospital and remember that she would sometimes pick me up from school and stop by the video store so we could indulge ourselves in a classic movie before Dad got home from work.

It’s easier – and more comforting – to remember the fun, the loving and touching moments, the happiness our loved ones brought to us in life. Yet we memorialize their deaths. We go to gravesites, we build makeshift altars at sites of their deaths, and on a larger scale, we build memorials – often of granite and marble – to mark the moments of death.

Are we obsessed with death?  I don’t think so… I think exactly the opposite is true. We remember when and how people died because we are obsessed with life.

We mourn the loss of life. When it’s a closed loved one, it cuts us in intimate ways – the death of my partner in 1998 was like losing a limb. When it’s a little more distant, like the recent deaths in Moore, Oklahoma or the constant barrage of mass shootings in New Orleans, Newtown, Aurora, Tuscon, Columbine – it cuts into our understanding of thriving in global community and leaves an existential feeling of loss. When it’s a soldier – especially one who lost their life in combat – it’s more complex. We hate war and how it rips apart our planet; yet we respect deeply those who have chosen to serve.

It’s all so difficult – these memories tied to life and death. We grapple internally with loss, with pain, with the deep well of sorrow that drowns us in cold unsettling grief; yet while much of our personal mourning is private, we publicly memorialize. Why do we take time to memorialize? Why do we ritualize it? We do, after all – we have services and parades and graveside markings and songs. We’ve been doing this for millennia – we see evidence of it in the psalms written during the Babylonian exile in the 5th century BCE: “by the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down, and there we wept when we remembered Zion.” There are ancient markers where battles where fought, and stories passed down about Badon Pass and Hannibal and the 300. Today, we see evidence everywhere; even in my little hometown of Taborton, the veteran’s group puts fresh American flags on all the graves of veterans in the little cemetery on the hill overlooking Little Bowman Pond, complete with a brief ceremony at each stone. Round Lake holds a ceremony at our little war memorial – if you come to the service next week, you can see our memorial across from the municipal building. And even today – in a few minutes – we will also memorialize through the ritual of lighting candles for those we have lost. We will speak their names…remember their faces…make sure that others know who they were. Memorializing formally, as ritualist Brigitte Sion says, creates a space where we can claim our right to grief and mourning; we can’t just ‘get over it’ – we need to make space for our memory. And when that space isn’t provided, we find ways to make it.

One of the most powerful memorials I have ever experienced is the AIDS quilt. Unlike a large, permanent memorial, like the Wall or the Holocaust Museum or the striking Korean war memorial, that is planned and sanctioned and funded – it is organic, and surprising, and moveable. Adding to the quilt is a given, for it is also ever-changing. It begins with friends, sitting together, sewing and painting and gluing – and talking. Sharing memories, tears, and Kleenex. And then it’s added to a larger quilt, where more memories are shared as it’s attached to quilt pieces from others; there, our memories become attached to other memories. And then, it is displayed…and others have a chance to remember, to see these lives. And when it is displayed, the names are read. We hear those names – those lost to this horrible disease, those who initially were marginalized even as illness decimated an already marginalized community. I’m sorry to say I have worked on more than one quilt piece – but I am glad that I can remember, and that others can share those memories.

In memorial, the act of remembering is a physical act, that connects us with the past, that connects us with life, that alters time so that past and present can meet, even for a short while. And we find strength in the remembering. Director Anne Bogart says “As a result of a partnership with memory and the consequent journeys through the past, I feel nourished, encouraged, and energized. I feel more profoundly connected to and inspired by those who came before.”

Connected and inspired.

This, especially, when remembering those who served their country in the military, is key. It’s hard now – we have such a difficult relationship to war; misguided policies led us into controversial conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, Panama, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan. Remembering those wars requires us to grapple with larger, difficult issues. And I would say we had an easier relationship to war prior to Korea – certainly some of the reasons we fought in the World Wars are more cut and dry. But even those wars – and the Spanish American War, the Mexican Wars, and the Civil War, where the seeds Memorial Day began, are much more complex than simply fights between good and evil.

Yet we cannot help but remember with some admiration the people who have chosen to put themselves in harm’s way – not for personal interest – but for their community and their nation. The first Memorial Day celebrations – and many places claim “first”, including black children in Charleston who honored the US Colored troops who died in the Civil War  – those first celebrations were about remembering sacrifice and honoring the lives of those people who died. And it was such a right and remarkable act, that we institutionalized it and continue to remember and honor those who have served – not just in uniform but in the many ways we understand service to our nation and our world community.

We acknowledge their service, we recall the circumstances of their deaths, and we dwell in the quiet sorrow of our loss … but mostly, we remember their lives. We connect with the living – and we journey with them, even if only for a moment. We recognize the souls that walked among us, while they lived. We hear their names, and we see their spirits in those who bring them to our table today – they live in us. As Kathleen McTigue writes – and we will read together responsively (No. 721, Singing the Living Tradition) – they are with us still.

As we complete our reading, I invite you to come forward to the table as you are so moved, to light a candle and speak the names of those you wish for all of us to remember today.