Dreading the Annual Fund Drive

This congregation faces the annual fund drive with even more dread than others I have known.

This is a low-wage area, and many people have settled here who simply love the beauty of the country, never mind the opportunity or lack thereof.  It's also a place where people retire, despite the winters. Some of their working families are doing well, financially, but others not so much.  Some of their retirees are comfortable, while others are having to skimp. It's hard to tell who is who, financially. So it's hard to find the right tone for the annual fund drive... On the one hand this is a good thing for a Unitarian Universalist congregation, this diversity of income and wealth, and on the other it presents a real challenge.

This congregation deals with the challenge by hiding from the annual fund drive. They hope it will happen without them.  But it won't.  Last year, they did a sketchy job of it and got results that won't sustain them.  How will it be this year, working with their interim minister?  We'll see!

This process has parts, of course.  Some of them know a lot about what it takes to keep a congregation going.  Others are clue-free. People need to be told about what it needed, in a way that allows them to understand it is possible to reach their goal when everyone contributes according to their means.  People need to be reminded that the congregation is an important part of their lives, from providing the children with a religious background that is not simply indoctrination to visits in the hospital to leadership in social action, as well as the expected spiritual deepening and/or intellectual experience on Sunday mornings.  (Of course, the congregation needs to BE an important part of families' lives -- it must be doing a good job of doing what it does in order to deserve support.)  People need to be asked in a kindly and firm way.

Some places, they need a festive event.  Other places,it's best to downplay that part because the festivity has gotten out of hand and the message has been obscured.  I don't know yet what we have here, and these folk do love a good party.

Some places, they need to send folks out one at a time to meet with people in homes and coffee shops. Those one to one conversations can be helpful in reminding people about the relationships that the congregation provides as well as being a chance to share some of what they are thinking.  For others, a small group opportunity gives good results. Large group?  I don't think so.

Always, it's vital for the congregation to have a clear and energetic sense of direction, an idea they themselves have developed about why they are here and what they are doing. Can we get there in time for the fund drive to start in March? Maybe so.

There's no need to panic, I keep telling them.  But every time, panic is right on the other side of some door in my own mental living room.  It just has to be held at bay until the results are in!  So I'm bolting that door and plunging in for the next three months.  Wish us luck!

Christmas in a Humanist Fellowship

This is a complicated time in Unitarian Universalist congregations, this Christmas season, when so many of us want to hide from an oppressive Christian past, and so many others of us want to honor a culturally important tradition.  In congregations I have known, the solstice celebration helps with this --- much that is called Christmas celebration can be moved a few days earlier, because it really is about the winter solstice anyway.  The room is darkened to allow a few moments to experience the depth of the longest night.  Candles light a pathway of increasing light to symbolize the return of longer days.  The songs are not the same, but singing and dancing brighten the long night. A generic new beginning replaces the New Beginning foreshadowed by the birth of the Savior.

In one congregation after another, I have been part of beginning a return to celebrating Christmas Eve in addition to the Solstice, thinking that there are among any group of UU's a few people who cherish an older tradition. Yes, I am deep down a pagan myself, but there it is. In this congregation, among those who love Christmas Eve is a family with Unitarian roots going back many generations.  In the absence of a service at their fellowship, they have established a Christmas Eve tradition with another family that is so important to the kids, they could not give it up this year to be part of the new service at the Fellowship.  It is told in this fellowship that in the past, when someone wanted a Christmas Eve experience, they were referred to the many traditional Christian congregations in the area. I had to ask myself,  how welcoming is that?

So there we were, some twenty of us-- people who know all the verses to all the old (theologically incorrect) carols, and people who love the story of Christmas, people who want a little calm in the middle of the holiday madness -- together in the glow of candles and the music of the harp, allowing ourselves a little wonder and mystery.  Somehow, an Old Humanist was among us that evening.  He spoke to me warmly after, saying that something had come unstuck for him on this evening, that it had become clear you could do jazz riffs on any theme, and that the music could be beautiful and moving.  I was glad to hear the sound of a heart opening, and felt blessed to be in the presence of this shift of awareness.

So I say, God rest ye merry!

Appreciating Dark and Light

It's the Winter Solstice everywhere in the Northern hemisphere, a time for reflection on light and dark. I love the Winter Solstice! We have traveled a road of deepening dark nights and diminishing sunlight for the last six months, passing through ripening to harvest, into the time of gestation of new beginnings.

Today in Northwestern Montana.  There will be daylight today for eight hours and twenty minutes, a full half hour less than in Belfast, Maine, where I thought I was pretty far north.  In Belfast, the sun rises at 7 and sets at 4, while here, sunrise is around 8:30 with sunset just before 5, so the whole effect is a little different. Our day here begins in the dark in a way that is unfamiliar to me.  Meditation at 6 happens in the dark, rather than in that fertile just-before-dawn light.  Then the end is not quite so abrupt in the afternoon.  There's usually a chance to get home before deep dark has settles on us.

I think of my friends in Edmonton, Alberta, where today is yet another half hour shorter than here.  And in Washington, DC, where I have also lived, this shortest day will have nine and a half hours of sunlight, about an hour more than here.

I hope people in the parts of the world with less dramatic changes in the length of day throughout the year will forgive us northerners for getting obsessed with the sun's shifting attentions.  The gathering darkness really makes us sit up and take notice!  Will we have to keep living with this dimness and darkness? Is this permanent?  How would life be if it were?  Or, in a different frame of mind, what is starting to begin as we go into this womb-like time of darkness?  When the world turns again toward the light, what that is new will be growing in our lives?

The long, dark nights have a womb-like quality, and the dormancy of the rest of the natural world around us suggests waiting... Pregnancy with what?  Waiting for what?  Change can happen in the time around the Winter Solstice.  What will it be this year?  How will life be renewed and refreshed as it emerges from the time of dark? This is why I love this season... fertility and change, the mysterious process of creativity bringing new ideas and insights into the world.

Happy Solstice to you!  May there be blessings from this waiting in the dark as the world turns again toward light!

Mandela and Us

With the passing of Nelson Mandela, a truly great leader, we mourn the loss of someone who stepped into history and shaped it.  He bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice, as President Obama declared (using a phrase coined by Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, a hero in his own time).

I am so grateful for his passing at age 95, for his never having been mowed down by an assassin's bullet.  My own heroes as a young person suffered that fate, remaining forever young, their achievements forever unfinished.  It is good--if such can be said about mourning--it is good to mourn a life that has been lived to its natural end, lived fully and well.

Here is what I am thinking as I sit with the sadness of his passing and the joy of his having lived.  This man was there when his country and the world needed him.  He was ready.  Something had prepared him for the moment when he began and something allowed him to grow and do well as further challenges came.

Mandela was one of a group of people who learned to struggle and learned to lead, even as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of many engaged in a large scale effort, even as Daw Aun Sang Su Ki stepped forth from within a group to lead.  Today, many are engaged in a large scale effort to reclaim our democracy and stop the destruction of the planet.  The struggle deepens, as does the danger.  Are we creating among ourselves the readiness to step into history when the time arrives? No one knows who will be in the right place at the right time to be summoned.  It could be anyone.  Are we ready?

I'm thinking just now of our own Tim deChristopher, whose brilliant solo move to stop the leasing of sensitive Federal lands for oil and gas drilling has moved the hearts and minds of many.  Are there enough others to back him up?  Is something building that he is part of?  It looks different than it did in Mandela's or King's time, with TV appearances and a film about his story.  But it must be the same thing in the end -- people connecting with one another, backing each other up, stepping into history one at a time and together. We are weakened by the myth that the great historic figures stand alone.

The moment comes and the great historic one steps forward.  History shines a spotlight on her and looks past the others.  When we do this, we lose the truth about these great movements.  It's first and most importantly about networks of people, interconnected webs of care and action.  The annointed leader is essential, but simply part of what makes it happen.

Can we save the planet? To learn from the anti-Apartheid movement, we need to honor Mandela, and also to look past him to the way the people worked together to end apartheid, being democracy, and bring reconciliation. The movement behind the man will show us the way.

So Where Have I Been?

Yikes!  It's December and I have posted nothing for two months!  Where Was I?

Well, I was right here in the beautiful Flathead Valley, enjoying being part of a family while getting to know my new congregation. And learning to do ministry and family life at the same time, something many of my colleagues do all the time.  But it's new to me.  Ever since I went away to seminary, I have lived alone. Now, all of a sudden, it's all different.

I'm feeling a great deal of admiration for all those colleagues who have families.  I knew my previous monkish life gave me extra time to reflect on events in different relationships as well as lots of time to read, write stuff (blogs, poems), and just let my mind wander. Not so much, now that there's a six-year-old in my life.  And her 43-year-old dad, my son.  There are all these household details to share, all these physical comings and goings to coordinate, and a whole lot more moments awaiting reflection to be understood and made meaningful.  My head is spinning, trying to keep up.  I love it, but I'm swamped!

So I've been skipping my blog, but I don't like to do that.  Actually, it has been more than the blog.  For a little while, my journal was blank, my meditation practice was having more than occasional days off, and my yoga practice was all about going to class.  Little by little, I have been reclaiming these parts of my life and restoring a sense of balance.  Perhaps the swamp is starting to drain, so to speak.  Just in time for ski season to start!

But here it is.   I am grateful for the years alone, and hope all that reflection has made me quicker at knowing what's what about stuff that passes through my life and better at connecting with people on the fly.  My days are more diverse, which is a challenge.  And scheduling is more fluid, not my usual style. This is a new way for me, one that I trust is leading me on to a happier, more compassionate life.  May it be so!

Strong Lay Leadership in a Small Congregation

Yes!  The small congregation really is the work of the people who are part of it.  A minister can help, sometimes in crucial ways, but the congregation must "belong" to its people.  Without active participation of a broad spectrum of members and friends, the small congregation cannot maintain itself.  There is no staff to take care of things no one wants to do, so commitment at a deep level is key (for sure, the minister does not want to be stuck with those tasks, either).

The trick is for the small congregation to allow the leaders to lead, and not to get bogged down in theoretical discussions on what is required for the strong lay leadership to maintain its place in the order of things.  When it is new to have strong professional leadership, this is a particularly touchy matter.

In my experience, the focus of the lay people's concern is strongly focused on Sunday mornings.  They worry about the Sunday service more than anything else. Will the minister "take over" everything so they end up dying of boredom, silenced in the pews? Speaking from my own experience, a minister who can work with the people to make sure there are a variety of voices heard on Sunday mornings can proceed to lead assertively in other areas, because those are not what everyone is watching.  I'd love to hear what others have experienced!

The minister in a small congregation can provide a kind of "glue" that is hard for even the strongest cadre of leaders to provide on their own, the glue of talking to people, sharing social media and email, even putting people in touch with one another. Generally, leaders get so involved in the work of leading that they talk mostly with other leaders, rather than reaching out to the entire congregation.  This creates an in-group feel that is uncomfortable for newer people who want to be involved.  Someone needs to be in touch with everyone. An administrator or religious education leader sometimes does this when there is no minister, but it really is one of the minister's important roles in a small congregation.

Systems need to be put in place to help new people move toward leadership, if that is their bent, or to deepen their background through adult classes, or to reach out in social service or social action.  The lay leadership needs to lead on many of these, and it is the minister's job to encourage them and point them in helpful directions.  Collaboration is key. Improved sense of purpose and higher energy are the result.

Of course, the key to successful collaboration is mutual trust.  The people need to trust the minister's professional expertise and experience; the minister needs to trust the people's experience in their own community and the many skills they bring from their lives and work.  So at first, everyone involved is cautiously feeling their way. As an interim minister, I am pretty much always at the beginning, but still, trust is where it starts. I feel that being trustworthy is one of the foundational practices for small church ministers.  Everything depends on people coming to trust, and you are only able to lead the way through example. Sometimes it works, and other times, not so well.  The only way is to keep trying until good things start to happen.  I love small congregations, and doing ministry with the ones I have served has been a real blessing!

More Shooting and Less Hope for Change

Dr.Janis Orlowski said it (as quoted by Maureen Down in Wednesday's New York Times), and it really resonates:

“There’s something evil in our society that we as Americans have to work to try and eradicate,” she said, her voice stoic but laced with emotion. On the day when she announced only hours earlier that she had submitted her resignation to take another job, she continued: “There’s something wrong here when we have these multiple shootings, these multiple injuries. There is something wrong, and the only thing that I can say is we have to work together to get rid of it. I would like you to put my trauma center out of business. I really would. I would like to not be an expert on gunshots.”

Calling it “a challenge to all of us,” she concluded: “This is not America.”

Yet, somehow, it is America. 

Let's notice how many of these shooters are young, troubled, white, and male.  Seriously, what's up with that?  Here's another piece of information:  "successful" suicide is carried out predominantly by men.  Nearly 80% of suicides are male.  White and Native American men have the highest rates; Wyoming, Alaska, and Montana have the highest rates.  Suicide is not a choice of young men, though.  It's older men who shoot (and hang) themselves.  Half of suicides are by firearm.

Something is wrong with the way men are finding their way in this America we have these days.  

We have to work together to get rid of whatever it is, and a little legislation, whether gun control or mental health care improvements, will not give us the solution.  Why are white men in despair and expressing it in such spectacular ways?  Is it the loss of all that "white male privilege" some of the rest of us have been complaining about for a generation or more? Is it the erosion of living standards from what might have been expected a generation ago? Is it something more subtle? And what kind of answer will move us forward?

Yes, strengthen our mental health care systems.  Yes, let's restrict access to firearms in sensible ways.   Yes, let's organize to fight back against the threats and intimidation of the gun lobby.  But let's not stop there.  

I am so tired of this.  America can do better.

A New Beginning

This is the time of year in Jewish communities when people go to one another to apologize for things they have done.  It's a custom observed with varying degrees of seriousness, but a time when relationships can really be repaired if people want to do it.  I'm thinking this is something we could be doing in Unitarian Universalist communities.  After all, most of us emphasize human relationships in our spiritual practice, rather than seeking a disembodied Holy.What could be more appropriate than taking time to strengthen and soften our human connections from time to time?

Taking time to notice how you have contributed to the messes in your relationships is a good way to begin..  Me, I like to plunge headlong into the next thing, leaving behind whatever might have been mended.  But even for me, there are some relationships that don't allow that.

Here we are, all together on this planet, getting more and more numerous, ever closer together, and the awful truth is there is no exit.  If we really believe in the "Family of Humankind," the love that erases all borders, and all that, what does that mean for the way we live?  Don't we have to seek reconciliation with those we have wronged and those who have wronged us?  Personally?

And why don't we do that as a religious practice?

I'm thinking this has everything to do with our origins in Protestant Christianity.  When we stopped believing we had to be good in order to please a God who would send us to hell if we weren't, we stopped repenting and atoning.  Guilt-free religion was our gift to the world.  Let those others grovel before their stingy God, repenting, hoping for salvation from on high.  We don't do that.

But there are real reasons for us to be good and to seek reconciliation with humans --indeed, with all beings -- reasons that have everything to do with our evolved, non-Protestant theology. The short form would be to say, if there is a God, we see God in all there is, and if we are not in harmony with any part of that, we need to make it right.  If there is no God, we still know we are connected with all that is, and desire for the connectivity to be harmonious invites us to reconciliation.

Turning from destructive behaviors in relationships (including our relationship with the planet herself) is of key importance.  No need to feel guilty about it.  Just do it.  I say, let's set aside a time during the year for this and get on with it.  Any suggestions?

An Inventory of the Soul

Awhile ago, I stopped actually subscribing to Tikkun magazine, but there are some things I learned there that stay with me.  Specifically, Rabbi Michael Lerner suggests we update the practice of Cheshbon Hanefesh, the inventory of the soul, undertaken in preparation for Yom Kippur.  If we want to do it, we have to hurry, because the High Holy Days begin today!  In this time of "repentance" (the Hebrew word means "turning"), a spiritual inventory is the basis for making changes and making amends.

Lerner's Repentance Workbook is beautiful and compelling.  See: http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/tik15628.html

Here is the suggestion, in brief form:
Divide your life into broad categories, and review the quality of your living in each of them for the past year.

What is in and out of spiritual alignment ouin your relationships with
Parents

Spouse or partner

Friends

Others

A serious reflection on these would be a lot, and worth doing even if it's as far as you get.

Other provocative questions follow:

How spiritually nourishing is your work?  (and what can you do about it?)
     What about your relationships at work?
Have you been showing respect for your body?
Are you taking enough time to nourish your soul?
Are you putting enough of your energy into healing the world?

What would you change in the coming year?  How will you hold yourself accountable?
Lerner suggests having a partner for this work, so it won't be totally solitary and agonizing.

Making this an annual practice would help us keep our relationships with ourselves and others tuned up, spiritually.  Wouldn't that make life richer and more rewarding?  I'm seriously going to attend to this over the next ten days, maybe longer, and see what happens.

A Recycling Puzzle

So here I am in the Flathead Valley, surrounded by magnificent scenery that's punctuated by a variety of human made additions, some that harmonize with the scenery and others that just highlight the difference between human fabrications and the work of Nature.

Being human and a participant in the economy we have, I use things and then find I have leftover material to throw away.  The puzzle:  people here in this amazing, almost pristine valley just throw things away..And the things they throw away end up in a landfill. That they have a program to recover gases from the landfill to make electricity is definitely a plus!

Apparently only hippies recycle.  Indeed, the Unitarian Universalist congregation has a system for helping people recycle, and we all know "they" are a bunch of hippies!

Actually, it is starting to change, maybe.  There is a limited recycling program sponsored by Flathead County.  When I go to the transfer station, in addition to the long row of containers waiting to be loaded on trucks and taken to the dump, there are other containers for cardboard (flattened, no milk cartons), paper (no brown paper grocery bags),  plastic (#1 and #2 only),and all kinds of metal cans.  Glass can be recycled by going to a container placed behind the Target store, some distance away. I was not alone when I last went to the recycling facility, and the others looked like ordinary people, not hippies.  That is encouraging.  So is the fact that recycling pickup is available.  It is provided by a private company separate from the regular trash pickup, and apparently people are using it.  

Flathead County landfill gas to energy project

Being aware of our waste and trying to send it back for reuse is surely the first step toward using less in the first place, to living more in harmony with the world around us.  Step by step.  But can there be enough steps, soon enough?

Why Not to Begin with the Water Service

Once again,  I find myself among people whose custom is to begin the church year with the water service, an event I struggle to find meaningful. Once again, I asked them to move the water service away from Opening Day, to make room for something a little different, just as an experiment.  And once again, they are willing to try. I am grateful. I hope they like doing it a little differently.

Mainly, I don't really like starting the year with a ceremony that is (a) backward-looking and (b)individualized, though there's more, of course.

To gather and spend the opportunity of a service looking back over what has happened during summer seems an odd way to energize the congregation for the year's challenge. Yes, those who were away for the summer have stories to tell, and many of them have important spiritual content.  But.here in Montana, the geese are getting ready to fly south, the late harvest of hay is being gathered in, the race between the ripening of tomatoes and the coming of frost is on...  and many things are beginning.  Like school.  And what we call Sunday School. Like all the programs the congregation has planned for the season.  Isn't that exciting? Shouldn't we be talking about that?

And this is a time of gathering, of knowing the congregation as a gathered body.  Why would this be a time to share individual stories for an hour?  If we must look back, how about a moment of congregational history, a golden story of why this institution is important?  It is challenging for me, and I suspect for others, to listen through the water ceremony's litany of summer vacation stories for threads that connect them to the spiritual life of the fellowship.  True, the symbolic pouring of waters into a common bowl can be made a strong symbol of the gathered community, but the words and the gesture of the common bowl do not work well together. "This is water from the South Pacific, where I had a unique and wonderful adventure.  I am glad to have gone, and glad to be back..." The uniqueness of the experience competes with the joining of the waters.

Once upon a time there was a First Water Ceremony.  It happened, according to legend, in Michigan, when a gathering of women convened to change the world.  They brought waters from their home places, from the places that watered their roots.  They mingled the waters together for their time of meeting, blessing the mingling with the energies of their work together.  At the end, they took the mingled waters back with them. This First Water Ceremony joined water from the far flung places where people actually lived, rather than the far flung places where they went on vacation. And it was a temporary thing.  It was appropriate to gather up the water again and send it back blended to the places where it had started, unblended.

I came into ministry from a congregation that started the year with the Water Ceremony.  I thought that was what we did.

Fortunately, I learned in my internship with David A. Johnson (Rhode Island) that there is another way.  He invited the congregation to gather outside the building on Opening Sunday.  There was a procession into the church, bringing objects of symbolic value to be placed appropriately inside.  There were words about the congregation's past, present, and future.  There were familiar hymns.  There was a feeling of "it is good to be together."  Now I try to do this, carrying the message to whatever corner of the Unitarian Universalist village I visit.  And now I have told you, so you can consider it.

Small Church, Small Steps

I'm excited to be starting with another small church, and excited that there is an inclination toward change in the air.  Different people are suggesting different things, including going back to the way it was "before." Still, the interim minister senses an opportunity!

For what?  Probably not the big all-congregation behavioral covenant, detailing all the agreements people make among themselves here, though that is one of the suggestions.  I'm thinking the little, informal, changeable covenants are a more likely possibility.  The kind that are posted on newsprint pads in the meeting rooms by the people at different meetings. We might have done this in the last congregation, but I didn't think of it in time.  That, and saying the congregation's mission statement at the beginning of each meeting. Oh, and lighting a chalice at the beginning of the meeting and having a formal closing.

What good are all these little adjustments?  I'm not sure. But I know they make a difference.  Something starts to shift.  Social hour takes on a busy hum.  People come forward with things they want to start or bring back to life.  Conversations are deeper and sometimes include resolving disagreements. Still, there is no clear cause and effect. Besides, I have just started with these folks, and I don't know what will happen until it unfolds.

So much of my congregational ministry is about little stuff:  getting signup sheets out and getting volunteers slotted into particular days for particular jobs, noticing what bylaws are no longer being followed, encouraging job descriptions for committees, boards, and roles, and more. Sometimes it seems as if I'm all about bureaucracy, when in my own mind it is anything but that.  Little by little, people come to understand what  is expected of them, to see each task as having a beginning, middle, and end.  That creepy feeling that if you sign up for this or that, there will be no end of one thing after another, that creepy feeling begins to fade.  After all, it is not my job to figure out what they want to do in a larger sense, what their role as a congregation in the community will become.  That sort of thing is really their work.  I can help, and the little stuff I suggest is helpful.

And I can love them.

Still, as some relationship or parenting advice book I read long ago pointed out, love is not enough.  Skill is required to turn that love toward congregational thriving. Skill in helping people unlock their love for one another and for the congregation's ministry.  Will I have the skill this time? A book I just read, Switch, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, encouraged me with the little steps in my small congregation.  I cautiously take small steps forward, hoping for the best.

Misappropriating Yoga

I guess I was a couple of years shy of 50 when I had a chance to take a yoga class at church.  I had a vague thought that yoga would be the kind of exercise that could help me into older age without hurting me, and indeed that has turned out to be the case.  I lived in the Northeast at the time, so the Mother Ship of yoga for me was the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health.  I attended a number of workshops there and went faithfully to local classes, gradually settling in to a daily practice that has been a key part of my physical health and spiritual grounding for longer than I care to admit  (Oh, all right, it really has been over 20 years). I have a subscription to the Yoga Journal, which goes through seasons of alternately being helpful and being a vapid women's magazine.  I read books about yoga.  At this point I have that early background in Kirpalu style yoga plus several years of practice guided by teachers in the Iyengar tradition.

None of this has made me svelte as the woman whose photo I grabbed off the web,

but it has made me comfortable in my own body; more aware of the connection of body, mind, and spirit; and happier.

By some lights, I have been misappropriating this tradition. My practice is based on the very Americanized yoga that begins with asanas -- postures -- including meditation and breath control as "extras."  This is backwards from the way Patanjali would have practiced, using asanas as a warmup for pranayama -- breath work -- and meditation.   Never mind that I have learned the Sanskrit names for some postures, have come to love Kirtan chanting, actually do meditate (though I learned it in a different tradition), and have benefited from breathing practices.  It is not the Real Yoga of India.

There are people who do things they call yoga that are even less like the Real Yoga of India than mine.  In Christian church basements, they have to pretend it has nothing to do with some other religion.  In Public schools, they have to pretend that it has nothing to do with spirituality at all.  To me, that's okay.  The vocabulary of the asanas is a spiritual language that uses the body to shape the energies, the mind, and the spirit without words.  It has power that transcends culture, in my opinion.

Furthermore, today's yoga of asanas is an intercultural tradition.  It can be traced to the nineteenth century, as Mark Singleton has shown in his exploration of the origin of postures, Yoga Body, Oxford, 2010. Singleton found that the revival of asana practice was intimately connected with the international physical culture movement of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.  The YMCA, with its emphasis on "muscular Christianity," was a key agent in promoting a Scandinavian system of gymnastics throughout the British Empire, including India.  When the YMCA physical culture men met the indigenous system of asana practice in the Indian subcontinent, they melded the two so as to make their program more attractive to the locals. It worked beyond their wildest expectations.  Body builders and freedom fighters adopted the new asana regimes --including some clearly Scandinavian postures-- as their own.

In the 1930's, European and United States women began to take an interest in yoga for grace, suppleness,and poise.  It was only later that Indian women began to take advantage of their indigenous exercise tradition for the same goals. The traditions of yoga asanas have remained somewhat gendered, with emphasis on strength for men and poise for women, "muscular" Christianity for men and pseudo-Christian mysticism for women.  Gradually, the Hindu roots of the spirituality associated with yoga asana practice have been reasserted.  In U.S. yoga classes, teachers feel called on to begin and end class with Sanskrit chants, if not uniformly to guide the practitioner toward Hindu sources for more learning. Some "real" yogis, both from India and indigenously grown, are even now deepening the spirituality of yoga practice on our continent.

Misappropriation?  I'm thinking it's a little more complicated than that.

Date with Deer

Mike's prize lettuces were being munched.  He actually saw a couple of deer crossing the road, heading toward his garden yesterday as he was driving to work.  Then, it was too late to swing by the feed store to get the deer repellent after he got off.  Would I...?  Well, I started living in the apartment upstairs in his house partly so I could help out, and I could indeed go get the deer repellent.  But for one more  morning the lettuces would be vulnerable.

Endangered Lettuces

Deer are pretty shy, I was thinking, so I offered to go sit by the lettuces at the appropriate hour of the gray light of dawn.  He had seen them crossing the road at 6:00, pretty early for me, but not unmanageable...
So I got up, put on warmish clothes, made coffee, got a flashlight just in case, gathered up my folding chair, and headed out in the earliest morning twilight.  "Probably they'll smell you and stay away," he had said.  I tried to think smelly thoughts as I sat in the quiet garden.

It was a wonderfully peaceful time. A rooster crowed in the distance.  The horses in the neighbors' pasture started waking up, making little horsey snuffling noises, birds flew quietly. Gradually the light increased, bringing colors to the streaks of clouds in the Eastern sky. Full light and more cars going by as people got going for the day.  I decided the deer were probably not coming  this morning, and went in for a little, then back out to walk around and take some pictures.  The sun is still not over the mountain, but I believe my date with deer is over.

Coming Dawn

Descansos

One feature I notice in my new surroundings in Montana is the little white crosses they use to mark the places on the highway where people have died.  It's helpful, in a way. One intersection where I turn from a speedy highway onto a country road is marked with three of them.  I take extra, extra care. In the photo they look like ghosts.

Some of the crosses have become little shrines.  They are decorated with flowers and ribbons, clearly kept fresh by people who visit regularly.  I have not had the experience of living in a place where I must drive by the site of a loved one's fatal accident every day.  This seems a very sweet response to the reality of having to revisit a sad loss on a regular basis. This photo is of a shrine to Betty, born 1954, died 2011. It has a bird house overlooking a wetland and a collection of dolls nearby, graduually fading in the weather.

The person who loved Betty comes and mows the place, keeps the bird

house painted, and brings fresh mementos.  There's a rose bush by the
little angel statue.

It reminds me of having read a long time ago in Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book, Women Who Run With the Wolves.  She suggested an exercise for women - and these days I would not confine the suggestion to women --in which we make time lines of our own lives, and mark the descansos, the moments of loss and change, with little shrines that reflect our feelings.  Life sends us events that we can't run away from.  Each day we drive by the spot, so to speak.  And trying to pretend it never happened is simply not effective.

There was the divorce.  Or the job loss.  Maybe a falling out with a relative.  A bad situation with someone at work that you handled clumsily.  They don't go away.  They are bits of the stalagmites we are, maybe a little sulfurous, but only a layer here and there in the developing story of who we are.  How are these memorialized in your being?  Do you mark an anniversary?  Do you create art from it?  Is there something you cook that brings it to mind and helps you heal?  If no one has placed a white cross by the side of your road for you to decorate, you can place it yourself, so it need not be white, and need not be a cross.

I invite us all to contemplate these moments of our own lives and to mark them in our own ways.  Let us be who we are, losses and all.  Our stalagmite selves need this affirmation.

The shrine for Angela is in the front yard of a gas station next to a Wendy's just off the corner of LaSalle and Reserve in Kalispell.  In our privatized world, the attendant at the gas station had no idea who she was, even though someone obviously comes and cares for this little monument regularly. May she rest in peace.

God's Ten Commandments

There is some mysterious force here in the Flathead that drives landowners to put up big signs, the size of a full sheet of plywood, signs that all feature the same basic graphic displaying "God's Ten Commandments" in the customary tablet-like form, with a ribbon at the bottom containing some other biblical wisdom.

I think these guys are giving religion a bad name.

Over and over I tell people in my congregations, "The bible is not God's little instruction book."  To get the good out of it, we need to read carefully, consider the context --both cultural and literary-- and reflect deeply in conversation with others not just on the one part at hand but on all the related pieces.  And here are these mini-billboards, sort of like big versions of election yard signs, asserting just the opposite, or so it seems.  Just follow these ten rules, and you'll be okay.

Then there's the tone.  "Thou Shalt Not..."  is hardly an invitation to a joyful life.  Yet I keep telling people that we are invited to live in love and joy and gratitude, and I am not alone among religious leaders in doing this.  The sign-makers convey a very different vision of a religious person's proper orientation to the gift of life.  "Watch your step, or else!"

Do we need to put up signs on our lawns, too, with messages about hope, love, gratitude, and joy?  I'm tempted to start a campaign, though there is so much else to do.  We all drive everywhere here in this valley, past fields of hay and wheat and potatoes, past cattle and horses, and at dawn or dusk maybe some deer or elk, everywhere watched over by a sweeping arc of majestic mountains.  Maybe we can trust people to look beyond the signs and see the handiwork of Nature, sense the astonishing interconnectedness of all that is, and fall into reveries of awe, joy, and thanksgiving.

But will they know that's what our church is about?

Reflections on Three Forks

It's a convenient place to stop for overnight camping, close to the Interstate, but not too close, primitive enough so it's not likely to be full.  If I had lived in Colorado longer, it would have been part of my regular route from there to Northwestern Montana.  But this time I was moving to Northwestern Montana, so it was a time for deeper reflection, knowing I might not be coming this way again.

This is the place where the Madison, Gallatin, and Jefferson rivers come together to form the Missouri.  The joined rivers then flow northward before turning south and east to cross the plains.  These rivers have their names because it was the end of following the river westward for the Corps of Discovery,  the Lewis and Clark expedition.  The three leaders after whom the rivers are named had made the expedition possible.  Still, coming to his place brought the beginning of the realization that the mountains would have to be crossed on foot or horseback, and how could they get horses?

Sacajawea, the young Indian woman who was with the Corps, was thrilled to arrive at the place where the Missouri is formed.  She recognized it as the land of her people, from whom she had been stolen and sold into slavery,  eventually ending up with the French guide who accompanied the Corps.  And indeed, her people and the horses were eventually found.  The mountains were eventually crossed, and the Clark Fork, which flows to the west, became their guiding stream.

This place where I was camped marked a spot where preconceived ideas were released -- the idea of a river connecting the two oceans had to be discarded for good.  (Had they really believed that? ).  It was a place where they might have decided to turn around and go home.  But they found a way to move forward, driven by a desire not to spend the winter in the surrounding mountains or back out on the prairie, as well as a determination to complete their mission.  It must have been hard to figure out which way "forward" was -- as the rivers grow smaller, following upstream becomes an uncertain business -- for sure each one rises in the mountains, with an unknown wilderness of mountain pass beyond, and an unknown beginning of a new stream to follow on the other side.  Would they find their way west beyond the mountains?  Could they find a guide who actually knew the ways of this craggy wilderness?

These days, I'm thinking we are at the three forks on a larger scale.  The way of extracting things from the earth and using them up, that seems to be like the mighty Missouri, growing smaller and smaller as we go upstream with it.  Now we come to a place where it is clear that there is no easy way through.  We have to find horses and a guide, and use our wits to find the way forward.  Which of these smaller streams, if any, should we follow?  Once we cross the mountains, it will presumably be a downhill road, though more challenges are to come, for sure.  Meanwhile, we camp, arguing, trying to find new information, trying to locate a different mode of travel and someone to help us find the way.

Fear of what will happen if we stay here should be driving us forward.  Determination to build a better life for everyone should be, too.  Can we take hope from the example of Lewis and Clark?  Maybe.

I pack up my tent, still wet with morning dew, and head for the pass.

Taking Photos with the Mind

Yesterday I drove from Denver to Buffalo, WY, a straight shot north on I-25.  After clearing the Colorado Urban sprawl, it was a wonderful visual experience.  I was wanting to get to Buffalo, and I had gotten a bit of a late start, so stopping was not on the agenda.  Still, I took photos with the mind.

Entering Wyoming on this route is a fun moment.  There's the sign welcoming you to Wyoming, then a view of a herd of bison grazing with a couple of oil well pumps in the background.  Sweet.  And every now and then some thoughtful agency has placed a silhouette figure atop a hill-- a bison, a steer, a triceratops.

This visit, the wonderful grasslands are all green.  They were green two years ago when I came, but toasty brown last summer at approximately this time.  The North Platte was full of water, as were the various lakes and ponds and sloughs along the way.  I love this countryside of rolling grassland, with now an then a break for interesting rocks -- outcrops in fantastic shapes, over there a formation that looks like a castle, and over here a crennelated wall.

At highway speed, you only get to glimpse the animals.  Lots of horses grazing in fields.  Lots of beef cattle, too.  And I was pretty sure I saw a group of antelope.  Yes, deer, too.  Geese and ducks, the geese lookeding as if they were already practicing to fly south.

And on the left, west of the highway, a row of hills, sometimes with mountains in the back.  As I came close to Buffalo, there was a quick peek at the Cloud Peaks.  Route 16 travels up into them, and Buffalo is a place for people who are going there to stop and reconnoiter.  But this time, I am taking the road more traveled by; the Interstate is my destiny.  I have said this before when I stopped here that I want to come back, to take time to explore this country and its mountains, but knowing how way leads on to way, I doubt that I shall ever come back.  Just a quick look as I continue on my way to the life I have chosen.

So I have these pictures of the mind, gathered at somewhere north of 75 miles per hour, of a place I will never really visit.   It is good to have done this much.

Real Democracy, Part 2

I was intrigued to hear in a radio interview with Steven Cook, an expert on politics and governance in Egypt, that he believes the army's goal is to rule without governing.  They are a large and complex institution that owns many businesses and employs many people.  They have created a system where it is hard to distinguish between public and private enterprise.  The "government" is a sort of facade.  It needs to do important things that the army wants, and otherwise to look like they are doing justice, providing education and health care, conducting foreign relations, all the messy, detailed work of day to day government.   But the army is not to be disturbed.  It reminds me once again of the "Student Government" effect, though in a much more sinister way.

That governments we know do not actually serve the will of the people is a given.  We have been inclined to blame the people for apathy -- for not getting out and expressing themselves with passion, persuasiveness, and persistence.  Or we blame redistricting, settling boundaries so that many of us are in districts that have a definite political coloration that is not likely to change any time soon.

But we were all trained back in school, back in student government days.  We know the principal is in charge, and everything the student government does is according to what he or she wants.  We may not be totally sure who the principal is in our big grownup world, but we act as if there is one.  In most of our workplaces there is one, the boss.  We are trained to wait to find out what the boss wants before expressing an opinion. So our work settings train us too.

I wrote earlier about the difficulty of bringing real democracy to the UUA, since we have such a long history of electing charismatic people to follow rather than providing the leadership of peers that true democracy requires.

Now I am looking at the news coming out of Egypt and thinking of the sorry state of democracy in our  country.  It's not the army, but all those corporate lobbyists seem to be ruling without governing.  In Egypt, the army has been entrenched so deeply for so long that the people turned to them when the experiment in democracy seemed to be foundering.  It's scary.  What about here?  I am cautiously optimistic.

Yes, My Heart Really Does Break

I really do love interim ministry.  It's like being on a cruise with a whole bunch of people and falling in love with them all.  As the ship pulls into port, we all hug and say goodbye.  I head up the road to my next assignment, and yes, I do it with a broken heart.  The excitement of the next adventure does draw me on, but the thought of never seeing these people, the ones with whom I worked so earnestly for two years, never seeing them again except maybe at General Assembly, that brings real pain.

Pain is not a totally bad thing.  I had to sympathize with a young facebook friend who posted that she was sad after the end of camp at Ferry Beach.  I really think the sadness is deeper when we have been having a deeply wonderful time.  Since things end, deep and wonderful things as well as shallow and boring things, those times of sadness, deep sadness, are an inevitable part of living a full and open life.  So how bad could that be (she said, reaching for a tissue...)?

It could be so bad that the person who has suffered the loss abandons all will to go on.  I have seen this in long-married couples when one partner dies.  I have seen others who after great loss find something within that wants to continue.  I'm thinking the sorrows on my mind just now -- of saying goodbye to a congregation or a minister or the special friends at camp --real as they are, these may also be rehearsal for the inevitable really big losses.  No, we don't get used to it.  A broken heart is a broken heart.  What we can draw into deep awareness is that after the heart breaks, something new can happen.  Something comes to sing deep in the core of our being, assuring us that there is some new dawn on the other side.

I'm coming to believe that for me, and I hope for most of us, love calls us on.   Faith calls us on.  Life calls us on.

Here's a link to Jason Shelton leading a congregation in "Life Calls us On"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XhJiWgbrP8

Democracy for Real

Fake democracy, you know it, we all grew up with it,,,remember Student Government?  What could the students decide that mattered?  Not much.  It was a chance to "gain recognition," or some such thing, and people who saw that as a good thing went for it.  The Principal was in charge of everything we really cared about, and just forget talking to him (occasionally her).

When I first became aware of the Unitarian Universalist Association, it was perfectly clear that it was the same deal.  We elected a Leader, who then proceeded to implement his (conceptually possibly her) own ideas about what was needed.  Administrations changed, new ideas came into view, and new policies were adopted.  The General Assembly was mainly a gathering to hear things.  Not so different from high school.

Well, church is a lot like high school anyway, and the churches I knew as a young person had arrangements that seemed to be a lot like that.  They had Ministers, and basically everything revolved around him (not even in those days conceptually her, at least in my part of the world).  I'm not sure this was really true, because I was young and not involved in governance, and mainly only had student government as a point of reference. Yes, totally circular, but that's part of the point.

Now I am old, and a minister myself, and one of the things I try to do with congregations is help them find their own futures and take possession of their own possibilities. And an interim minister, this really is my role -- someone else will come to lead them into that future, and I want to be sure they go forth to find a new leader with their own possibilities in mind, rather than following the Student Government way.  But it's hard.  We all come to church with a background of work, where a meeting is not a chance  to be heard, but an opportunity to be told. Where leadership is a matter of operating within parameters set from above, not of working with what people around you want to have happen.

There is much countercultural about the way things work in a Unitarian Universalist congregation, if we're getting our Fifth Principle (the one about democracy) right.

And now comes the news that the Unitarian Universalist Association itself is trying to change its culture.  The outgoing Moderator wants us to stop with the thing of voting our leaders in and then just following the things they think up to have us do.  Or complaining about them.  Or ignoring them.

But real democracy is truly not the culture of the UUA.  I have been wishing it would be different for a long time.  And now I want to just say that truly, we can't just say we want it and expect it to happen.  Any more than I can just say to the chair of Committee X in the church that he or she can't lead by decree, that meetings need to be gatherings of peers to work things out, and expect it to happen with no further ado.  This is a big deal.  An important deal.  Our world needs real democracy, not Student Government. So does our Association. So let's get on it.

SCOTUS Watching and Quidditch

They reduced workers' rights and gutted the Voting Rights Act.  Then they turned around and made it much easier for same-sex partners to marry.  Do they want us to forget that this is the court that brought us Citizens United, the court that believes money is speech?  I think the marriage equality cases, important as they are, should be seen as an aberration that is incidentally distracting us. In the same week they reduced workers' rights again, this time making it harder to sue over retaliation (as in, losing your job because you tried to form a union).

People have been quoting Theodore Parker about the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice, but I don't see it.  It is worth noticing and celebrating that in one specific, really important way, something good is happening.  Still, from Miranda rights to abortion rights, the climate of this court is not inclining in the direction of what I would call justice.

I'm thinking less of Theodore Parker than of J.K.Rowling. Maybe it's like Quidditch, the game played by students at Hogwarts School of Wizardry.  It is played in the air, riding broomsticks. There are two normal-seeming goals, but there are several balls in play at once. There are the bludgers, which can be used for normal scoring, getting one to the appropriate goal.  And there's one special small,, golden, winged thing, the Snitch, whose capture brings so many points all at once that all the bludger goals are irrelevant.  So, say, Citizens United counts as a Snitch capture, making it impossible for normal folk to win elections without the help of billionaires.  Did Griffindor get the Snitch with the two marriage cases this season?  I think the tournament is far from over.

I worry that we might be a team of innocent losers, slogging along, making goals with the bludgers while someone else is catching the snitch.  It's the snitch that decides the game, in the end.  Do we have our eyes on all the balls?

Slytherin might have decided that we can win the culture wars while they complete their control of the wealth.

At the Border Between God and No God

Our message rocks.  It shifts easily into gospel gear, and soars gracefully into language that has no echoes of academia.  We can go there, we are going there, and we have a wonderful new crop of young ministers to forge the way.  I have just a bit of concern, though, as our language shifts with more references to God, the bible, and Christian traditions.

I have a couple of concerns about all this God talk.  One is that while it's a simple way to find common ground with people of other faiths, it's not totally honest.  As Christians, we mostly have such a low Christology that many would say it's not "real."  Furthermore, a lot of us are not into any kind of Christianity, or actually not theism at  all.

Are we teaching our energetic young ministers about the rich tradition of humanism that is part of our way?

Many of the "nones" we want to reach say they are atheists, agnostics, and other variations of nontheistic posture.  Some of us have spent years learning to talk to congregations with nontheists, Christians, and people who started out with other religious traditions, especially Judaism. It's not easy. It's a skill we need to refine and expand in this new time of turning, I'm thinking.  Sure, our congregations are plagued by elderly humanists who have a "culture of umbrage," reacting intolerantly to any mention of the G-word.  How easily we slip into a reactive affirmation of the importance of using it!

I'm thinking that rather than turning away from a humanism that has become unfashionable, we need to embrace it, shifting to disarming that umbrage rather than casting aside the underlying theology, or should I say, a-theology. And then we can hope to make a home for the young atheists and agnostics who might come our way.  Embrace them.  Love them.  Learn from them.

And rock on!

A Day of Challenge

So here I am at the Unitarian Universalist General Assemby thinking about how to do church, and they are disturbing our peace with talk of climate change.

I know what Wendell Berry says.  He said it in his poem, "Questionnaire,"

Wendell Berry wrote this poem for The Progressive Magazine.  

1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill. 

Well, here is what I say:

Time to stop removing mountaintops to get at those skinny vein of coal. Time to stop wasting water on getting gas out of those fractured rocks.Time to stop sending garbage into that giant gyre in the Pacific.  

Time to admit that the oceans themselves are being harmed by increased CO2 levels.  That we don't know how many species will be lost or how the shapes of continents will change or anything much about what will happen.  We could be taking charge of what we can take charge of, letting go of what we don't need to contribute to the poisoning of our planet.  We could start thinking about how everything is connected to everything else and what it all means.  

Which poisons will we take?  Which monuments will we destroy?  What landscapes forever blotted off the face of the earth?  Which children will we kill?  

Or, what about our lifestyles of today will we release?  How will we make a good life that doesn't revolve around poison and death and destruction?

Are we all one family or not?

A Wildfire Not Far Away

The wildfire in Colorado Springs is actually at the north end of town, closer to the south suburbs of Denver, where I live and minister.  Some Columbine people are even closer.  It's national news.  And at the same time for us, it's a neighbor kind of thing.  The two are really different, national news and word about neighbors' troubles.

To the national news media, this messy, uncontrollable, spreading damage machine is something for people to look at, something for them to be engrossed in as they see how hard it is to work with and how much personal devastation it leaves in its path.  My people, at least some of them, know about what happens when your disaster is national news.  They lived through the Columbine High School shooting back in 1999.  And they also know the personal side, the neighbor side, is different.

Our hearts go out.to the evacuated families waiting or knowing about the fate of their homes.  And to the animals who may not have been able to be evacuated.  We have a sister congregation right in the neighborhood where it is happening.  Three (so far) of the families who lost their homes are congregation members there. They will gather this weekend to assess the situation for them as a congregation.  Many have been evacuated.  Others were evacuated and/or burned out last year about this time in the nearby Waldo Canyon area.

I asked if there was anything they needed, and they don't know yet.  At the moment, one family with mobility issues is staying in a hotel, and help with paying for that would be good.  Some people left with just the clothes they were wearing -- it might help to have a gift card so they could buy some new underwear or a change of clothes.  Later, there may be more to do.  "You just get tired of shopping," said my colleague, remembering a time when she herself had gone through a house fire.  Maybe the insurance will cover it, but there is just so much.... that's when a gift of housewares or linens or tools or sewing equipment would be a blessing.  In the meantime, members of her congregation are putting together packages for the kids who have been evacuated so they will have some books to read and games to play.

People in Columbine remember the (literally) tons of stuffed animals and things that arrived in the wake of the shooting at the high school.  Too much, and it just kept coming.  They want to give thoughtful assistance, not to create a burden, and we are blessed to be able to be in touch with our brothers and sisters in Colorado Springs so they can tell us what to send and when.  Those tons of stuff, that's the price of having your disaster on National news.

In the meantime, money is good... it can wait or be spent at once, and it can be used for what is needed.  I will carry this lesson with me as I go from here to Northwest Montana, a place where they also have wildfires. I will also remember to be in touch with people all around the big area my new congregation serves, so when it's time to reach out in a neighborly way, there is someone to call.  National news or not, it's good to be able to give help that is really helpful and encouragement to people you really know.

When Does a Beginning Begin?

I have been in conversation with the Glacier UU Fellowship since April,  I think, about their possible opening for an interim minister.  There was some conversation about what shape their next ministry might take, and I explored it with all and sundry of the Powers That Be.  That was the beginning of the beginning.

On a visit to Montana for another purpose, I met some of the leadership and talked about how we might minister together.  That was a step toward beginning.

They made an offer verbally and informally through email, and I verbally accepted.  That was a kind of beginning.

I visited the congregation, met with more leaders, led worship, participated in a potluck lunch (eating is always key).  That was kind of a beginning, but still no contract.  My colleagues tell me not to go without a contract.  I wouldn't, normally, but I have other reasons for wanting to be in the Flathead Valley.Someone who lives in the area said, "Hey, this is the Valley.  You don't need a contract, just a spit and an handshake."  Nobody spat, but I'm trusting in the handshake. And I had to get special permission to lead worship before actually starting work there. It was important for them, said their leader.  So we had a sort of crypto-pre-beginning.

We did talk contract, and everything seems to be moving along for me to begin in August.  I will start working there on August 1, presumably, and actually lead worship as "their" minister on August 18.  So there's a beginning on August 1 and another beginning on August 18.  And then, a Grand Beginning on September 9, when the "church year" starts.

Beginnings, like endings, are not really binary.  There are steps and gradations.  Like growing up -- puberty, driving, high school graduation, voting, maybe military service, college graduation, finally a lower car insurance rate lets you know you have really arrived.   Even for an interim ministry.  Sometimes.  This has been an interesting experience of unfolding, and as is normal in the Valley, done in a somewhat different way than what "they" prescribe.

Some Thoughts on Endings

"When something sacred's sensed in soil or sky, mark the time,"  wrote Max Coots, sage of Canton, New York.  Beginnings, endings, anniversaries of beginnings or endings, that's when it happens, a certain feeling that something important is present, something that asks us to pause, breathe, and mark the time somehow.  Mostly, we don't do it.  But how wrong could it be to have some ceremony, small or large, as the pathways of our lives branch off from where they had been going?

It could be wrong if it is all by rote, without authenticity, a hollow gesture that does not touch the juiciness of the sacred.

But it could be right, too. We do it with beginnings. weddings, births, coming of age ceremonies. We do it with well-anticipated institutional endings -- graduations come to mind at this season -- though sometimes that's where we find the hollow, rote gestures.  Me, with my memories of playing in the high school band, I have only to hear "Pomp and Circumstance," to be deeply moved by the ending of educational chapters in other people's lives.  But then, when I sat in the sun with a large group of newly minted Ph.D.'s I found myself sitting next to a young woman chewing grape-scented gum and clearly unimpressed with the ceremony, just going through the motions one more time..I remember the gum, but I don't remember the speeches.  I remember being "hooded," and the congratulations of my family. How much on that day was meaningful, how much hollow rote routine?  Retirements face the same hazard --  a predictable gift, standardized speeches, toasts hauled out from old files of festive things to say, but no juiciness.  Marking the time in a sacred manner, that's the challenge. We do it at the end of life-- though sometimes people back away from the truth-- part rote, part juicy... how much of each?

There are exits that go unmarked.  Divorce. Children leaving home.  Leaving a job. Leaving one home for another.Quitting school without finishing  A miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion. An estrangement in the family. I suspect that for all of these, something sacred's sensed in soil or sky, but we don't know what to do or whom to invite..

Today was a day when I helped a family mark one of those difficult exits.  Shame and sadness filled them as they remembered what had happened.  Mostly, they were no longer angry, but years had passed.  And it had kept the family from being close for a long time.  Maybe marking this time was helpful, even now.  I hope so.

I'm sitting with the thought that we are maybe not paying the right attention to the exits that need our attention, letting the juiciness of the opportunity slip away with the ending unmarked.  I am resolving to let exits in my life be marked with all the wonderful mixture of emotions they have in them, and to encourage others to do likewise. Will you join me?

Loosening the Tent Ropes

I've started putting things in boxes to get ready to go to my next congregation.  I'll be striking camp soon, and the ropes that hold this little tent to the ground in Colorado are starting to loosen.

At this writing, I have just returned from Montana, where I visited with the Glacier Fellowship and caught up with my family. It's exciting to be planning a time when work and family will be in the same general area. Iris are blooming both here and in Colorado. The lilacs are more lovely in the damper climate of Northwestern Montana.  Everything both places is green, as is fitting in springtime.  There will be skiing this weekend in Colorado, though I will not go up.  Bike riding is calling.

I'm wanting to ride as much as possible on the lovely bike trails around Columbine/Littleton.  There are roads for riding in the Flathead, and I'll be out there, but there are no shoulders and as far as I can tell, no dedicated bikeways either on or off the auto roads.

After spending a few days with my 3 families in the Flathead, I can hardly wait to come back and just be there.  But I am dragging my feet when it comes to packing.  Books could leave the office.  Knick knacks and less used china and kitchen stuff could be packed...  Actually, it all has to go, and I'd better get started!

The not starting has everything to do with not wanting to leave the fabulous congregation in Columbine.  We have done great work together, and I need to do some emotional work to accept the fact that it's over.  Yes, I said --and I meant it-- that this would be a shipboard romance.  I said we would love each other for two years, but then the cruise would be over and I would move on.  Our ministry together really is done, the lovely valley a thousand miles away really is calling me, and yet my heart isn't quite letting go.

Time for acceptance.  It's a bit of a balancing act.  Acceptance grows as I pack the boxes.  Yet a degree of acceptance is needed before the body is willing to bend to the task.  The sun is shining.  The air is pleasantly cool.  What a good day to start a new adventure!

When the Middle is the End

Like many others of my generation, I turned to ministry later is life.  Now, with "normal" retirement age in the rearview mirror, I feel as if I am reaching the middle of my career in ministry.  This is a wacky place to be!

When speaking with my investment advisor about retirement, he said "Hold on!  You'll get there!" as if I must be eager to be finished working.  I assured him I am still having a lot of fun in my work and did not feel at all ready to retire. But retirement could present itself at any time at this age -- changes in health and energy could make it imperative. So the end is near... in some sense, I'm just stalling.

I have been working and learning and developing my judgment about how congregations work, what helps people pastorally, how to nourish myself and others spiritually, and much else.  I feel strong and competent, not old and tired.  And at the same time, I'm aware of being old and if not tired, at least a little less energetic. So there it is, the end and the middle at the same time!

I am tempted to ask, "What kind of capstone does this career arc have?"  But then I don't really answer.  Thinking too hard about this sort of thing has not served me particularly well.  I am drawn forward by the work itself, and so far, so good.  The challenge is to trust that the blending of middle and end will develop naturally.  I count my blessings, because this kind of thing can and does happen to people who started something at a "regular" age... When cancer calls, in particular, it can become necessary to wind things up just as the going seemed to be getting good. I truly am grateful to have this chance to have this problem.  I just want to handle it well.

My sermon this weekend has to do with the Odyssey. Quite apart from the message of the sermon, I'm remembering that when Odysseus finds his father for the first time as he is returning from being away for twenty years, the old man is tending some young fruit trees he has planted.  This is an image that guides me -- I may not be a party to all the harvests from the trees I plant and tend,. but I love the little trees and hope they grow, all the same.  Planting and tending.  It's a good way to make a life.  And there's no reason for an older person to stop doing it.