Happy Hanukwanzmas?

We Unitarian Universalists love holidays.  We love all the festivals of light in December.  We even have a new one of our own, Chalica, celebrating the UU seven principles at the beginning of the month. And people love that, too. At our congregation, we had an (early) Hanukkah celebration, to be followed by two Winter Solstice events and a Christmas Eve service.  We aren't celebrating Kwanzaa this year, but I hear they have enjoyed it in the past.

As an interim minister, I go from congregation to congregation, among other things helping them through the Winter holidays as best I can.  In the last congregation, we tried a Las Posadas holiday pageant, singing the songs in Spanish and getting a little out of our comfort zone.  I confess, it was my doing, and I am not sorry.  In this congregation, I was the instigator of the Christmas Eve service.  Historically humanist, this Fellowship had not gotten around to making a place for its Christians and others for whom that kind of Christmas experience is meaningful.  Turned out that some people who would have wanted it had by-now long standing traditions of getting together with friends and not going to church.  But for new people who haven't established their traditions...can it help?  We'll see..

The trouble is our diversity.  Maybe it's not trouble.  But you know... there are those for whom various December days have special meaning -- St. Nicholas, St. Lucia, the Virgin of Guadalupe -- all depending on the cultural makeup of the community.  With Buddhists in our midst, sometimes we pause to honor Bodhi Day. I have not served a congregation where Diwali was given more than a nod, but for some it's big. And always Hanukkah.  We celebrate the light that would not go out, and the struggle for religious freedom.  We sing and play dreidel and eat latkes. We pray for peace in the Middle East.

There are those who want to make a pagan ceremony at the solstice, and those who want to do something more humanist, celebrating science and truth.  Others just want to have a party.  One congregation did its own mini-Revels every year for which the whole town turned out.  And then it's on to Christmas!  People who are Christian Unitarian Universalists have a variety of theologies, and people who have moved on just slightly from being Christians do, too.  Somehow we weave all this diversity into a fabric of celebration stretches from one end of December to the other.

In the nearly all-white congregations I have been serving lately, Kwanzaa has not seemed like something we need.  Still, the values of Kwanzaa are things I would like to promote among Unitarian Universalists. I'll find a way without having to have white people pretend to be Black and without drafting the already conspicuous few Black people to show us what Black is like (when it's probably not like that).

We close out the season with a New Year's Eve fire communion.  Cast the things that no longer serve you into the fire on little slips of flash paper!  It seems a suitable finale.

With luck and effort, it does hang together and unify most of our theologies, leaving us feeling more whole as a community.  December ends.  The light returns.  There is unity in diversity, and all is well.
Blessed be!

Sometimes It's a Blue Christmas

            It was Elvis who sang a long, long time ago about a blue, blue Christmas, the kind that happens when what you thought was true love is no longer true.  It’s an apt name for the kind of season some of us may be having.  Maybe this is the first Winter Holiday season since a dear one in your family has died, when all the old traditions bring back memories of times when you were all together, sharing the special joys of the season.  Or maybe there has been a separation, estrangement, divorce from someone living—a partner, a child, someone else-- with whom you used to share these times.  Or maybe you are living in a different place, at loose ends when the holiday comes around, missing everyone who used to be around to share the holidays. 

For some people the holidays are always “hellidays,” a time to get together with people who routinely misconduct themselves, but whom you still love. 

Here are my basic suggestions --gathered from a variety of sources--if your holiday season is going to be a challenging one.

1.  Accept is as it is and plan accordingly.  If you are in a time of loss, do give yourself time for sadness.  Reflect on what traditions will bring comfort, and what will bring pain.  If the painful ones are important anyway, allow extra time before and after to deal with your feelings. If you know family members are going to misbehave, make plans not to expose yourself to the misbehavior by limiting time together.  Rehearse responses that will deflect the arguments you don’t want to have.

2.  Make time for spiritual practice and sleep.  If you don’t do meditation or other formal spiritual practice, plan to take a walk or go to the gym regularly.  Especially walk if you can.  Limit television viewing and other media  Plan to get to bed on time, and really try to make the last half hour before bed a relaxing one. Keeping your days and evenings on an even keel will help you manage your feelings and make good choices.

3. Moderation.  It’s easy to eat and drink too much at the holidays, and if you are feeling troubled, it’s even easier.  Make plans to find alternatives to overeating and over-drinking and stick to them.  Remember, alcohol is a depressant.  If you are depressed already, it will not help. Oh, yes, and avoid overspending, too.  The stuff you buy will not fill the hole in your life any more than another helping of mince pie will. 

4.  Find new traditions.  If there’s an empty place in your holidays, or a gap created by deciding not to spend time in unpleasant company, look around for new traditions.  A good place to look is to volunteer opportunities.  Can you help at the soup kitchen or the food pantry, or join the crew for a community dinner?  Helping others has two benefits – yes, it really does help others, and then, too, it helps you by turning your attention away from yourself. 

5.  Do take time for mourning whatever loss is involved in your blue holiday.  But also take time for gratitude.  Even the worst of times has some blessing in it.  The sun still rises and fills the sky with beauty.  There is much to think about with gratitude, even now.  Allow your sorrow and pain to be interwoven with gratitude and even joy.   It may not be a happy season, but it can at least be mixed!

What White People Can Do

              We think now about the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., and wonder what he would do.  I think now, too, about what white people might do that would be truly helpful.  Here is a reflection I wrote some time ago about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It was Martin Luther King’s first entry into leadership of the civil rights movement.           

           

 The year was 1954. Things in Alabama had started to change. The determined action over a very long time of a large number of people who were tired of Jim Crow laid the foundation for what started when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus. 

Some of those were white people.  There was Myles Horton, founder and director of the Highlander Folk School.  There was Robert Graetz, the Lutheran minister who, with his wife and two small children, served the small Trinity Lutheran parish, ran its school for Negro children, and lived in its parsonage in the Negro neighborhood.  There was Clifford Durr, a white lawyer and Rhodes Scholar from a prominent Alabama family.  Durr had been influential in the founding of the Highlander Folk School, and he had important connections in government circles in Washington, DC.

            The Highlander Folk School was widely regarded in conservative white circles as suspect, and indeed it was having a radical impact on those who participated, bringing people of different races together for conversation and training.  It became the subject of Congressional hearings during the McCarthy era, and Clifford Durr defended it vigorously, with the result that he lost all his white clients in Montgomery.  He and his family paid a high price for advocating change.  But they did it anyway.

            Myles Horton, at Highlander, lived in isolation deep in rural Tennessee, and even though a community formed around the school, it was risky to be such a small island of tolerance in a vast sea of Southern racism.  People simply disappeared sometimes in those days.  Fires sometimes mysteriously burned people's homes. It could have happened at any time to the Hortons, but they did it anyway.

            Robert Graetz, the idealistic young Lutheran pastor from the North, found that he and his family simply had to live as if they were black, partly because they were so completely unaccepted in white society, and partly because it was their choice to do it that way. When they went to the movies, the Graetzes chose to sit in the Negro balcony.  Since is was illegal for the cashiers to sell white tickets to black people or black tickets to white people, the theater staff just let them in for free.  The Graetzes, too, paid a price for their commitment to racial justice.  All of them did it anyway.

            It remains a mystery that the mass movement in Montgomery was not stamped out, that its leaders were not immediately killed or scared out of town, that the longstanding, usual repression was not quickly brought to bear, as had happened so many times in so many places throughout the South for so long. There was constant danger of death.  Stories are still coming to light of those who gave their lives to the work of opposing racial oppression in the South.  Rosa Parks herself was forced to leave town in order to live without fear for her life when it was all said and done.  Black churches continue to be burned from time to time, just because…. 

There was no reason to believe at the outset that this boycott in Montgomery was going to be any different than the protests that had been made elsewhere.  Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that the black community in Montgomery just went ahead, knowing what the odds were, prepared for the heavy-handed response they knew all too well from long experience. 

The white families whose names are recorded in relation to the Montgomery Bus Boycott did five things we would do well to remember.

            The Graetzes went to live and minister with the black community, fully committed to being with black people as equals.  In the struggle for economic justice, some middle-class people can go live and work among the hardworking poor as equals.

            The Durrs used their money and influence to bring a liberalizing institution into existence, and fought for its survival, fully committed to making resources available for black and white people to get to know each other and learn how to work together.  Some of us can do that.  We can support organizations that work with those who are struggling and cannot get ahead, and fight for the survival of those organizations. 

            Clifford Durr put his professional expertise as a lawyer and his important connections at the disposal of the cause.  Some of us can do that.

            And the Hortons put their lives on the line to lead a school that advocated peaceful change by empowering people to speak for themselves.  Some of us might do that.

            All three families retained connections to the white world and shared their stories in the white community.  We can do that -- create the bridges of understanding between the people hardest hit by this economy of injustice and the rest.

            So in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., let us do these things.  Let us make a commitment to be with all people equals, to use our money and influence to assure the availability of liberalizing institutions, to use our professional expertise to help in the struggle, to participate in programs that advocate peaceful change, and to share our stories.  

Highlander Folk School

The Small Congregation Prepares for Annual Meeting

Annual Meeting is coming.

The idea of preparation is a little new.

The budget must be prepared, but just this week, the Religious Education Committee decided to charge a small fee to help cover the cost of supplies, and never told the Treasurer.  Not really a problem, since it's a wash, but still...

And nobody actually put together a budget item for the 50th anniversary celebration next fall.

But the budget will be presented, probably line by line, and passed.

The nominating committee (known as the Recruitment and Recognition Committee) has managed to find enough people to staff the Board of Trustees, but not to replace themselves.  There may or may not be people who want to nominate for Nominating from the floor.

Most committees have affirmed that they have chairs for the coming year.

There is "always" a pot luck lunch beforehand, although this has not been mentioned so far in the publicity for this event.

The interim minister (that would be me) has instigated a printed booklet of annual reports on the congregation's activities.  The Building and Grounds Committee is alone in declining to participate.  This is a positive development!

The main event is that the part time minister and the part time religious education coordinator-and-administrative-coordinator will be working with this congregation for another year.  This is implicit in the budget and will not be discussed separately, thank goodness!

People are happy about the way things are going.  This is good, because apparently there is no parliamentarian, either official or unofficial. And little knowledge of how to use Robert's or another system to guide discussion to a vote.

Moving to a more formal way of being in the world is happening.  But this congregation is not quite there yet.

That's okay.  In fact, it's fine.

No, this is not the congregation in question....

American Nations and My Religion

It's really true.  My religion is firmly rooted in New England. Unitarian Universalism is an expression of the New England way.  Our central offices are in Boston.  Our people were intimately involved over two centuries in the great project of exporting New England values through educational institutions, publishing, writing, and speaking.  Our people went West in the nineteenth century to participate in that project of cultural evangelism.  To St. Louis, to Minneapolis, to San Francisco, and more.  People with Boston names were their ministers, at least at first.

When I started reading Colin Woodard's American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America, I was pursuing a thread I had picked up in my political reading.  I had gotten interested in the political evolution of Scots-Irish culture in Appalachia and beyond, since I personally have that heritage.  And since I had been living in the northern marches of the part of our country that once was in Mexico, the political implications of that very different cultural background were also on my mind.  Politics: red, blue, and purple, that was what was thinking about.  Not religion.

But then it struck me: The eleven nations Woodard identifies have very distinctive ways of faith as well as very distinctive ways of politics.  He writes about the private protestants, interested in personal salvation versus the public protestants, interested in doing right in this world for everyone.  We're the apotheosis of public protestants, I thought.  It's a good place to stand -- or was, maybe, in the 20th century-- but kind of limited on a continent with eleven different "Nations." We stand in the very center of Yankeedom, as Woodard calls our nation of greater New England.  Maybe we have reached out into the upper Midwest to the point that it is part of our nation.  And maybe we have strong allies in New Netherlands and the Left Coast, but culturally we are not doing so well in the Deep South, Tidewater, New France, El Norte, Greater Appalachia, the Midlands, the Far West, or the First Nations.

From American Nations, by Colin Woodard

The impact of our impressive reach into education and the printed word has been eroded by changes in media.  Once, it might not have mattered if no one had heard of Unitarian Universalists, for they were reading what we wrote. Now, fewer people read. And reading has a different social meaning.  Instead, people watch things produced in places culturally distant from us.  We need to reach out again to find  places to stand that can reach into all these nations. For our message is not identical with the culture of Yankeedom.

Maybe that's what's important for us about reaching out into nations that are actually in different countries. Maybe we need to do that to understand how to establish our faith in places that are culturally not part of Yankeedom.  There are people building congregations from Catalunya to Burundi. from Rural Northeast India to urban Czech Republic.They are very different from us, and yet have some things in common. Some of them -- with Uganda the chilling example of the moment -- are risking their lives for principles we share. There's always the intriguing question -- what things do we need to have in common, and what can we let go?

I'm thinking our practice of asking and answering that question in an international framework can help us find the way into a Unitarian Universalism that speaks broadly in the Far West, El Norte, and New France, maybe even in the Midlands, Greater Appalachia, and the Deep South.  I believe this is something we need to explore. What do you think?

What They Believe, for Now...

What can I say about this wonderful Coming of Age group?

They are all wonderful, year after year, congregation after congregation, and I never get tired of the presentations on Coming of Age Sunday.

Godzilla, this year.  An awesome way to start a reflection on God and heroes and making meaning.

And the two kids who appeared by video because they had to be at a soccer tournament in Coeur d'Alene.
(I hate Sunday soccer tournaments.)

Some believe in God, some are not sure, and some for sure don't.  Interesting riff on the Big Bang and who might have started it. Or not.

All speak well and radiate the glow of youth, filling me with hope for the future of our world, or at least some corner of it.

We only see the tip of the iceberg.  It has been a struggle in this congregation to persuade these youth and their parents that this program is worth it.  But they mostly came on Sundays and were part of it, maybe absorbing more passively than an observer would have liked, but mostly, they were there.  And so much effort from some of the mentors to engage them more fully!

A cold-water plunge in November before the lake froze, taking their instructions from the way of certain Northwest indigenous people.

Afternoon hangouts at the coffee shop, talking about life, the universe, and everything.

And the Sunday service affirmed it had been worth it! Yes, the presentations of their faith statements, of course.  And so many people!  So much food!  So many pictures being taken!  Gifts exchanged!
And so much talk.

Much later, people went home, smiling.

It won't happen next year in this congregation, but looking at the population of the lower grades in Sunday school, they're into a time of doing this every other year.

This is a blessing.

Is a Small Congregation a Black Hole?

The woman sat in my office and tried to explain.  It was just too much, she said.  One leadership commitment always led to two more.  Or worse, when she signed up to do a piece of a project, she often turned out to be organizing the whole thing.  "It's a black hole," she said. "It sucks you in and never lets you out."  She had done it long enough.  She was going to find an alternative to church, something that did not require her to give up her life.  I wished her well, and told her I hoped she would be back in time.

In a small congregation, it's hard to find the people to fill important leadership roles.

It's one real reason to find ways to grow just a little larger. But you can't just  grab the first newcomer and make them committee chair, board member, board officer.  Sometimes you might get lucky, but not often.  I remember the congregation where the secretary of the board had been serving for too long.  A brand new member was selected to replace her.  She lasted three months before bolting.  She left the position and left the congregation, never to darken the doorway again.  The previous secretary returned, and as far as I know is still serving that role, lo these many years later. Complaining proudly that she is the only one who can do the job.  I don't believe this is a good way.

As people get tired, things get sloppy and functions are pared down, a faded feeling of weariness permeates all activities. Potluck suppers feature things people bought at the supermarket on the way over. A certain odor in the building speaks of not quite thorough cleaning. People no longer take time to check in with each other.  Little silos of different functions develop and operate independently.  Efforts to collaborate or even communicate just flutter and die. Children grow up and classes in Religious Education are no longer needed. 

The leaders are just too tired to get to know anyone new.  Sometimes they say "I have enough friends; I don't need to meet people."  Other times, they are just discouraged and can't find positive things to say to newcomers.  

And of course, if that's the way your congregation is operating, growth is unlikely.

Some congregations find a way to suck it up and get through the slump.  Others do not.

I try to encourage leaders in congregations to remember why they are doing what they do, to get to know whatever new people are coming through the doors, and to coach them to get involved without foisting leadership on them too soon.  It's more effort, but signs of positive change begin to emerge very soon, so it doesn't seem like effort for nothing.  What are the resources that can be drawn on for the required added effort?  Each congregation has its own story.  I am convinced that it can most often be a story with a happy ending.

Does a Small UU Congregation Matter?

A small congregation does matter, I say.  They should just be the best small congregation they can be, letting go of the idea that they "should" in some way "grow."  Even if there are other congregations that are a lot bigger and denominations that are a lot stronger, or something, it's not necessarily true that if they stay small, there is something wrong with them.

The smallest of the UU congregations I know has some history of people holding grudges and making life difficult for them.  They also have a couple of difficult members whose ways of relating to newcomers are off putting.  But for all that, they are a good hearted group, capable of putting on a meaningful worship service, producers of very good children's religious education, providers of excellent pastoral care to their members in need, and participants in substantial social service projects.

I enjoy leading worship with them.  They are responsive.  They sing.  They hang out after service and visit with one another and with me.  Coffee hour has a pleasant hum of people engaged with one another. This visit, there was home made cheesecake. (The quality of after-service food and the ambient sound of coffee hour are indicators to me of the general health of congregational life).

Will they grow?  They could, if they can work through the grudge thing and neutralize the members who repel visitors.  I believe they are in the process of turning these roadblocks into signposts, but it may take some time. While these obstacles to growth are being whittled away, they will remain small, embodying our  faith on a small scale, spreading themselves in a small way into their community.  To my mind, this small congregation does matter in our movement.

Let us encourage these small congregations.  It is not their fault that among us there are grudge-holders and people who believe the world revolves around themselves.  The difficult people are ours, too, and the struggle to deal with them in wholesome, loving, ways is our struggle.

When I visit, I extend a word of encouragement.  Connection to their larger movement seems to be important.  I'd like to see small, lay-led fellowships be visited often by religious professionals who are passing through their territories, maybe to lead worship with them, maybe just to stop in and talk with a few leaders about what's on their minds.

Maybe it will help them be the best small congregation they can be, holding up the light of our faith to the community around them.  And maybe that is enough. For now.

Learning at the Feet of a Master

Well, he stood in the front of the large room with the tables in rows, using power points some of the time, but mostly just talking.  But from the back of the room, I still had the feeling I was sitting at the feet of a Master. It was all very down to Earth, though.  Talk about the way things really work about the head and the heart as Roy Oswald unpacked what he knows about Emotional Intelligence with us.

Roy Oswald with Rev. Barbara Child

As I heard it, it seemed to me that emotional intelligence -- something that is partly innate and can also be learned -- is a key to both successful ministry and satisfying congregational life.  It was not surprising that it begins with self-awareness, something to be cultivated not only with meditation and journaling and such reflections of our own, but also with frequent receiving of feedback from others on their perceptions of us.  If we can see our emotional selves as others see us as well as knowing ourselves from the inside out, we've got the foundation.

It's a short step to be able to do effective self regulation, the ability to be responsive, authentic, and appropriate when connecting with others.  And a short step in another direction to have social awareness, the ability to figure out what is going on with others, the foundation for empathy.  Self-awareness on the one hand, empathy on the other, that's all you really need to have authentic and intimate communication without those troublesome "boundary" issues. Who knew?  It's both really simple and really challenging.

Oswald says meditate and keep a journal on a daily basis to promote self-awareness.  I'm going home from this conference with new determination to add to my little daily meditation practice a more robust journaling practice that includes how I really feel about stuff in my day (too many grocery lists in my past journal...) And I will be making more of an effort to solicit and receive feedback in many settings. It matters a lot to connect what I believe I know about myself to what others see and hear!

Will this make me somehow better?  The meditation makes a difference.  The yoga practice does, too.  It can't hurt to add the journal.  For me, the feedback will be the most challenging.  Is "better" what I'm looking for?  Better at making connections, better at doing authentic speaking and listening.  Maybe a happier life because of it.

Easter, Our Problem Holiday

Well, here in the Flathead, Easter comes as spring unfolds.  There are daffodils, for instance.  And baby bison. Bears have come out of hibernation.  The grass is turning green.

Easter could be about spring, yes?

Except that it isn't about spring.  Not if it's Easter.

We can still have an Easter egg hunt, though, right?

Of course!  That's one of the pagan traditions for the day.  And yes, really, then, well, it is about spring, because in Europe where so many of our ancestors came from, as well as here, Easter and spring come together.  The pagan and the Christian intertwine, and it's all Easter.

But for Christians, it is centrally about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the redemption of humankind.

We can recast resurrection as the renewal of life that happens in spring, but to do that, we would have to make Christ into a god of Nature.  What with the Eucharist, that's not totally out of the question -- the wheat is his body, the grapes his blood -- but we would make a lot of traditional Christians really angry.  And the reasonable-scientific part of our own Unitarian Universalist tradition would probably not like it much, either.  Let's not go there.

Our best refuge is to go metaphorical and shift into a more planetary plane.  I'm thinking global warming is a good place to go on Easter.  A planetary disaster is unfolding in slow motion like the disaster of the Roman Empire pressing down on the people of Israel.  We can have Good Friday, something lost when you recast Easter as spring.  I say, joy is rather pale when not preceded by anguish and loss, and we have plenty of real anguish and loss to deal with.

We need redemption from global warming, for real, and in a physical way.  Can there be an Easter of new hope as we turn from cooking the planet to nurturing it?  Is that worth an Alleluja?

What was lost is found, what was broken is lifted up, and tears of frustration turn to shouts of joy.

We still are not really Christians.  We follow the teachings and example of Jesus, who showed us how to live well even in the shadow of evil.  For us, he does not return to life on Easter, but rather continues to inspire us as he does every day.  Instead, on Easter, something planetary begins to happen, and the seeds of a new way begin to sprout.

I'm going to go there this Easter, starting with Good Friday at the beginning, because we don't have a tradition of remembering that part, and ending with joyful possibilities.  Alleluja!

Community at the Edge of the Earth

When the Mountain Desert District of the UUA gathered for its annual meeting in Sheridan, Wyoming, described by one attendee as "the edge of the earth," the congregations who sent representatives were overwhelmingly from the small to tiny congregations that populate this fringy area.  On Saturday morning, MDD Executive Nancy Bowen gave us our marching orders, and we headed out to see what we could share and learn in a really interesting selection of workshops.

Paige Rappleye and I offered a workshop on "Foundations of Growth for Small Fellowships," since  Glacier Fellowship is experiencing some growth, and since I have been gaining experience with the ups and downs of smaller congregations.  It was gratifying that thirty or so hardy souls packed into our little room AFTER the annual meeting to talk about this touchy and tender subject. We were alone -- no big congregations were represented!  So we could let our hair down.

The morning workshop on being a liberal church in a conservative area had helped us warm up -- somehow that session had drawn many of the same folks. Ours was act two of a conversation that was already under way.

We talked about how the real foundations for growth are in the way the congregation does its work, that the first thing needed is to be doing a good job of being a UU fellowship.  And how some simple things can make a difference, especially on Sundays.  Though come to think of it, they might not be so simple.  And how it's important not to make yourselves crazy trying to do things to attract newcomers, because if you're going crazy that really does defeat the purpose.  But a clean, neat room that is well set up to be a UU worship space (even if it's a borrowed facility) really is important.  And so are some basic rules of safety and decorum for the people who participate.

But mostly we talked.  It felt warm and friendly.  No, you shouldn't make people board members when they first show up, except sometimes in a small congregation you have to.  One of our group confessed to being in his second year as a UU and also his second year as Board chair.  We all laughed!  We know we shouldn't, because so often people treated like this burn out and run away.  So I think we learned to try hard to avoid it and give lots of support to the person recruited too early when that's the way it is.  We resolved to try to follow safe congregation guidelines even though "we're all family," remembering that often a child's abuser is a family member.  We shared strategies for having services in the summer without burning out the Sunday Service Committee.  I hope this group finds ways to get together and talk like this again before we forget how valuable it was.  These people are truly inventing liberal religious community in the places they serve, breathing life into it and making it work.

What a fine group of congregational entrepreneurs!  I felt privileged to be among them.  I want to be with them again, and I'm already contemplating how to make it happen.

Winter Magic

This week has been magical here in the Flathead... after a mild spell with light winds that felt almost springlike, Tuesday was a fairyland of frozen fog, with every tree branch lightly coated in frosty crystals.  As is my wont on Tuesdays, I went up to Big Mountain for a couple of hours in the morning.  Lo and behold!  The slopes were above the overcast that kept the lower elevations under wraps.  I skied in the sun, looking out across the mountains to the peaks of Glacier National Park, some wrapped in clouds, some sparkling in the sun.  I came back to earth with a little pink on my cheeks, ready to deal with laundry and liturgy and church politics. I think I'm liking this life.

Glacier park with clouds...

Yesterday, there was a little snow, a wet and clingy snow, so once again the trees were white until the sun and wind came to clear them.  The roads, driveways, and sidewalks continue to be glazed with ice.  Everyone is practicing their penguin walks, while some wise souls wear extra tread on their boots  (I have some, and somehow never remember to put them on).  And yesterday, there was the news that our local girl --Maggie Voisin --was picked for the Olympics!  I think of all those flocks of little kids who ski all over this mountain and marvel... how this kind of recognition can spring from their energy, enthusiasm, and time on skis.  And many lifetimes of happy enjoyment, recognized or not!

Today --can you tell?-- I'm supposed to be writing a sermon.  Fortunately, the sky is gray, and I am carefully not looking at the summit cams for the ski area.  Tomorrow, if I do my work today, I can ski again.  And maybe get that elusive photo from the summit, the one with lots of sun and not so many clouds, that shows the awesome wildness of that view into Glacier.

Whitefish town and lake

 ,

Token Day or Something Else?

The Sunday of the long weekend marking the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., poses a special problem for Unitarian Universalist congregations.  One of our regular attenders asked me a few days ago whether this was going to be "token Black" Sunday or something else.  If it was the former, he thought he would stay home.  It was something else, but his concern left me wondering.

We are mostly white.  All white, in this congregation, except for one Black man who comes every now and then. And we are big supporters of nonviolence.  We were in the old days big supporters of the Civil Rights Movement.  On a national level, when Dr. King called for people of faith to come to Selma, we responded. That was fifty years ago, but we remember.  Indeed, we have made efforts and experienced both successes and failures since then to become a less white community, because we care.  And some of our congregations are no longer quite so white.  But in the little congregations I have had a chance to serve,  the Anglo whiteness persists.

On Martin Luther King Sunday, and in February, when schools recognize African American history, what do we do?

Yesterday, we heard about the Montana Innocence Project, a statewide program that works to exonerate people who have been wrongly imprisoned.  In Montana, it does not usually have a racial component.  Just prodding the justice system to do its job.

Justice seems to be where it's at.  And being open to the arrival of new people in our midst, regardless of race, religious background, or whatever.  And watching that openness for spots where it's not.  I'm for inviting people of color and African Americans in particular to speak to us, not particularly on Martin Luther King Sunday and not particularly during Black History Month.  Just do it.  In these parts, it's also important to lift up Native peoples' voices and to listen to Asians as well.  I need to remind myself to find readings not just from women (a longtime interest) but from other less well heard groups, to lift up the examples of lives lived with courage and compassion by people of Native, African, and Asian heritage.  The songs of many cultures that made it into our hymnbook in 1985 need to be updated, but that impulse was good.  This needs my work and attention, too.  Openness.  Can it be done?

If we build a welcome, we invite ourselves to a better place.  And maybe others, seeing that, will want to join us.  And maybe some of them will be people who don't look just like we do.

When the Congregation is Family Size

Joining a family is kind of tricky.  They have a lot of ways of doing things that are well established and not explained at all.

The interim minister comes to shake things up and talk things over so things end up being slightly more intentional.  But it's hard...some of the stuff is pretty obscure.

I was in a small group talking with a long-established member about space for religious education classes. She spoke of a time when  space had been opened up in an outbuilding with the idea that a teen class could meet there, but it not been completed. In the context of finding a way to  have an office for the newly established position of administrator -- a spot more suitable than the space at the end of the kitchen -- this was an interesting piece of news.  Somehow no one had thought of that partially finished space.  The middle school group would need the space the administrator could otherwise use.  End of story.  Has another door opened?  To be continued...

I was in a meeting with a diverse selection of leaders.  The subject of fundraising had come up, and people were expressing opinions in a broad way.  "You've probably lost most of them," said a well-placed leader, "but there was a group of people who were really committed to doing something with the building."  First I'd heard of people being disgruntled over the failure of a building project...  I'd heard of something that might be related, but this was news.  In his mind, the minister and  building were competing for the same resources. This was not a principled opposition to professional ministry, which I was well represented in this congregation's conversations, but rather a practical one. His choice of pronouns ("you" have lost them) let me know he was one of them.  Now I can have a conversation with him and find out more, I hope!

I don't think people are holding back or being devious.  I think these two stories are typical of the way a family size congregation works.  There is no need to explain things because everyone already knows.  And it's not easy to identify people who have particular information because everyone has so many roles over the course of years of membership.  And of course, little is written down. That's part of what makes these congregation's fascinating.

New people who aren't ministers can find similar challenges about finding what's going on and what's expected.  It takes just getting in there and asking a lot of questions, something not every newcomer finds comfortable.  

A Time for Vision

The Winter Solstice has just passed, and now, the dark moon that followed it is behind us, too.  As the energies of earth and moon shift from ebb to flow, so do the energies of people and groups.  This time of shift is a time for vision.  I love that there can be times of just being, just not doing anything, after the celebrations of Solstice and Christmas are past. (With the dark moon on New Year's Day, I was not surprised that our plan for a family party collapsed -- our relatives just needed to be home, to hang out, not to get our and do anything, even come over to hang out with us! A little disappointed, yes, but not surprised.)

Then I had two conversations with leaders at the Fellowship I serve, one in person and one on the phone. The two spoke of different concerns in different ways, with different orientations to my work with them, and each spoke of vision.  One was an emerging vision of a congregation as a giving community, the beginning point for creating a giving community in the larger world, a microcosm of a world of cooperation and peace. The other was a long-held vision of things tried and struggles gone wrong, colored with fear that none of it would quite work out.  And yes, the optimism of a new leader and the discouragement of an experienced one, but something more...

The one leader, the hopeful one, spoke of learning from experience and moving forward.  The other leader, whose hope was in tatters, spoke of learning lessons that were finished, leaving little forward motion.  Is it finished, or is there something to build?  Is this as far as we can go in this spread-out community with the low wages and the discouraging distances?  I don't know.  I am committed to the way of the first leader, the one who is engaged with big  possibilities.  I am cautioned by the way of the second leader, for whom the basic survival of the institution is the key goal.

Each has learned and is learning.  What's the difference?  I have personally known experience that tells me things are going nowhere. So, too, I suspect, has the newer leader of this group, for he is not inexperienced in these matters. Something tells him-- and me -- that this case is not one of those.  At this moment, I don't know what that is.  Not just the not having been here to live through the discouragement.  Something else. What?

Okay.  It's a sense of the energy of the group when it gathers on Sunday morning.  I can feel it.  No more than that.  No less. This fellowship is alive. Vibrantly alive.  I'll go with that. And we'll see what happens.