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!