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!