One of the side effects of using a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine while sleeping is (for me) vivid dreaming. I see lush colors and get involved in deeply convoluted dreams about which I care very deeply.
I'm not going to share much about last night's dreams, but if there was theme among them, it was something about having lots of acquaintances around me, being barely understood, and wanting to rescue relationships that seemed to be fading away . . .
Last night Quincy Dobbs and I went out for a beer at Club MI (once the Mary Inn?) and had one of the funnest times we've ever had shooting the (excrement). We shared some deep stories, joked about being church staff, and talked about complicated families. And the gay families we've built.
I put a fiver in the juke box and played schmaltzy ballads by Myriam Hernandez and some old Milton Nascimento and some in-your-face Marc Anthony. I was pleased to hear that Mark, an owner of the MI, used to play in a salsa/merengue band. We plotted about establishing a Latin dance night at the club . . .
My last stab at summer vacation begins this afternoon. I'm planning on taking a couple of days driving north, and hope to find my way to Chicago for Labor Day. Possibly connect again with another friend . . .
Tired this morning. The sounds of the day seem fuller, closer (road sounds, train whistle, an airplane). Air clear, Rats! Other people have their trash out, and I don't. Gotta go.
Good morning.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
Reconnecting
Earlier in August, I had a week of electronics failures. It happened as I was beginning a week as Minister of the Week to the Family and Friends Conference (week two) at Ferry Beach Camp and Conference Center in Saco, Maine. My iBook began to freeze after a few minutes of work. Fortunately for me, my Musicians of the Week during the conference were Carol Thompson and Chuck Scheffreen--Church aka "The Mac Doctor." So Chuck spent a couple of days saving what he could off my increasingly frigid laptop, and then transferred everything onto a used PowerBook that is now mine. (Hurrah! Thank you!)
As the computer mess began to be resolved, my cell phone decided to die. Neither of the two rechargers that I have would fit into the phone (!?!) and so it gradually went to sleep. When I went to the Cingular Store (oops--AT&T Wireless Store; why did they trade a perfectly modern and fresh and even clever name for a corporate stamp?), they told me there was nothing that could be done . . .
So I bought a new phone, got a new contract, and began rebuilding my phonebook . . . that I had never committed to paper anywhere. (I am pulling my frequesntly called numbers from an old bill.)
One "contact" that I lost for a couple of weeks was my friend Elissa Leone. Now this was particularly unfortunate because Elissa is someone that I would regularly call when I was driving any distance. Having the new phone, with a bluetooth earset and all, was a perfect opportunity to call Elissa on the 750 mile drive back to Flint (which needed to be acomplished in one drive through if I were going to be able to get to church on Sunday morning in time to preach!). But I didn't have Elissa's number, I didn't have time to find it in my being reconstructed laptop contact file (eventually I located that and found her numbers) and I was n the road earlier than I had originally planned (Whoopee!) but without having stopped to get that number . . . So I missed a golden opportunity to connect with her and hear about her life.
Elissa is a chaplain of the hospice/nursing home/residential facility type. She does her ministry in the spaces where free-market health care, human aging and illness and corporate culture collide. This is not a ministry that is not defined by the space she works in (not a sanctuary) nor by the people she serves (patients, their families, staff, volunteers, etc.) nor even by a routine (study time, prayer and devotions, preaching preparation, office hours, calling hours NOT). No, this is a ministry that is discovered in the doing: providing some direct pastoral care, coaching social workers on her team, training volunteers to do pastoral work, documenting for other professionals the work she is doing and encouraging people to look at their clients as multidimensional persons, not as "living gangli[a] of irreconcilable antagonisms" (Ralph Rackstraw, from HMS Pinafore, of course).
Anyway, one of the parties in Elissa's life is her Committee on Church and Ministry, the instrument of the United Church of Christ that holds her In-Care as she prepares for ordination as a Minister of the United Church of Christ. (I was ordained a minister of the UCC in Rhode Island before seeking dual standing/plural fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association.) The Church and Ministry folk meet with a potential candidate, place them "In-Care" and assign them an adviser, and then follow a person's progress through seminary and whatever professional development must happen. The candidate prepares a fifteen page (or so) paper that shares their esential understanding of Christian theology and the polity and history of the United Church of Christ, and their own life story as it evidences their perceived call to ministry. The Church and Ministry Committee, when satisfied, will name a person "ordainable, pending call," and when the candidate is called to a ministry of Word and Sacrament, the committee will convene an ecclesiastical council, at which point a vote is taken by ministers and lay people to ordain the candidate.
The process is not a brief one, but its intentions are clear: to assure a learned clergy that can speak for the United Church of Christ in general and for a particular community; that is connected and accountable to the whole church and the ministerial tradition; and to test that the person's sense of vocation is shared by the church (and not--my great fear during the process--an expressionof some deep pathology of mine!).
Elissa has been about this work and this proces for quite some time. She was well into the second year of her classes at Andover Newton, where we were students together--when she realized that finishing her Master of Divinity at ANTS would be difficult due to the scheduling of classes; so she transferred to Meadville Lombard in Chicago (I helped her move) and to do her last year. It was, ironically, in the move from a United Church of Christ seminary to a Unitarian Universalist seminary that she began to decide to change her ordination plans from the UUA to the UCC. (I like that. I think this UUA/UCC dance is part of what connects me to Elissa.) Anyway, after finishing in Chicago, she came back to Comnnecticut (I think I helped her move then, too) to find work and to be with her mother. Since her mom died early in the summer a year ago, Elissa might be free to move again--once she is ordained.
What a joy it was that Elissa called me on Friday evening, and we were able to reconnect this weekend. She sounds so much happier than she has in a while. (New job, new challenges, but far less bureaucratic/corporate culture interfering with her ministry--so far!) It was wonderful for me to hear her voice, to try to encourage her and to listen to how she is doing.
I know that she has some anxiety about her upcoming meeting with the Church and Minsitry Committee of her UCC association. This is normal, in my experience. I remember that I showed up twice expecting that all my "ducks" were "in a row" when I saw my committee, only to discover that a letter from a church had not arrived, or that the composition of the committe had changed since the last annual meeting, and so there were people who needed to get to know me a little better brfore they could approve my ordination--which was, characteristically, to a non-traditional ministry. (I had a vital public ministry to a non-UCC congregation that, in the eyes of the UCC, did not require ordination; and linked that with a part-time sacramental ministry to an Alzheimer's center in the name of a small UCC congregation with a part-time minister and a Board that had a hard time getting a letter written, it seems.)
The process toward ordination took a couple of years longer than I thought it should; but when it finally was approved, when my ecclesiastical council was finally convened and when the date of my ordination was set--December 1, World AIDS Day, and the first Sunday of Advent that year!--it felt as if the stars were finally in alignment.
People considering ministry are often frustrated after talking to me. I encourage people to do something else, if they can. I ask that they not confuse going to seminary for their own spiritual fulfillment with using gradute school to prepare to minister to a world that desperately needs people willing to act in the name of God and the Universe and the Other. I ask them if they are prepared for the inevitable politics of human institutions, like the church. And I wonder whether they might be willing to see that seminary and ordination might simply be a wrong choice for them, and if they have an "exit strategy" for getting out of the process if they discover that it is the wrong choice or the wrong time. ("Can you hold your head high in church and say, 'I learned something about myself . . .'")
For Elissa, of course, I don't think it is the wrong choice. It may be that her Committee will put her through another hoop or two--ask for a re-write of parts of her paper, for example--but I think that she should persevere. "Back in the day" we might have mock interviews with a few trusted colleagues reading her paper and her resume and asking questions of her. I've encouraged her to be in touch with her adviser for some real time before her next Committee visit; to speak to members of the Committee with whom wshe has relationships to get their best wisdom about what the Committee needs to come out with the desired outcome, a date for an ecclesiastical council, and a process for drawing up a covenant with her agency that will keep her in a relationship of accountability back to the UCC.
The fullest outcome I seek, of course, is Elissa's happiness. She is a good chaplain, centered, interested, compassionate; she knows her work (Is it Charlie King who asserts "our life is more than our work, and our work is more than our job"?) and has the capacity to do it; she exhibits deep faith. And, in my opinion, she should be "set aside" through ordination to the vocation of pastoral ministry. I want to be there when she celebrates communion in the name of the church universal and in the company of many witnesses.
Sun is bright, the air is clear. Oops, the grass needs mowing.
Good morning.
As the computer mess began to be resolved, my cell phone decided to die. Neither of the two rechargers that I have would fit into the phone (!?!) and so it gradually went to sleep. When I went to the Cingular Store (oops--AT&T Wireless Store; why did they trade a perfectly modern and fresh and even clever name for a corporate stamp?), they told me there was nothing that could be done . . .
So I bought a new phone, got a new contract, and began rebuilding my phonebook . . . that I had never committed to paper anywhere. (I am pulling my frequesntly called numbers from an old bill.)
One "contact" that I lost for a couple of weeks was my friend Elissa Leone. Now this was particularly unfortunate because Elissa is someone that I would regularly call when I was driving any distance. Having the new phone, with a bluetooth earset and all, was a perfect opportunity to call Elissa on the 750 mile drive back to Flint (which needed to be acomplished in one drive through if I were going to be able to get to church on Sunday morning in time to preach!). But I didn't have Elissa's number, I didn't have time to find it in my being reconstructed laptop contact file (eventually I located that and found her numbers) and I was n the road earlier than I had originally planned (Whoopee!) but without having stopped to get that number . . . So I missed a golden opportunity to connect with her and hear about her life.
Elissa is a chaplain of the hospice/nursing home/residential facility type. She does her ministry in the spaces where free-market health care, human aging and illness and corporate culture collide. This is not a ministry that is not defined by the space she works in (not a sanctuary) nor by the people she serves (patients, their families, staff, volunteers, etc.) nor even by a routine (study time, prayer and devotions, preaching preparation, office hours, calling hours NOT). No, this is a ministry that is discovered in the doing: providing some direct pastoral care, coaching social workers on her team, training volunteers to do pastoral work, documenting for other professionals the work she is doing and encouraging people to look at their clients as multidimensional persons, not as "living gangli[a] of irreconcilable antagonisms" (Ralph Rackstraw, from HMS Pinafore, of course).
Anyway, one of the parties in Elissa's life is her Committee on Church and Ministry, the instrument of the United Church of Christ that holds her In-Care as she prepares for ordination as a Minister of the United Church of Christ. (I was ordained a minister of the UCC in Rhode Island before seeking dual standing/plural fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association.) The Church and Ministry folk meet with a potential candidate, place them "In-Care" and assign them an adviser, and then follow a person's progress through seminary and whatever professional development must happen. The candidate prepares a fifteen page (or so) paper that shares their esential understanding of Christian theology and the polity and history of the United Church of Christ, and their own life story as it evidences their perceived call to ministry. The Church and Ministry Committee, when satisfied, will name a person "ordainable, pending call," and when the candidate is called to a ministry of Word and Sacrament, the committee will convene an ecclesiastical council, at which point a vote is taken by ministers and lay people to ordain the candidate.
The process is not a brief one, but its intentions are clear: to assure a learned clergy that can speak for the United Church of Christ in general and for a particular community; that is connected and accountable to the whole church and the ministerial tradition; and to test that the person's sense of vocation is shared by the church (and not--my great fear during the process--an expressionof some deep pathology of mine!).
Elissa has been about this work and this proces for quite some time. She was well into the second year of her classes at Andover Newton, where we were students together--when she realized that finishing her Master of Divinity at ANTS would be difficult due to the scheduling of classes; so she transferred to Meadville Lombard in Chicago (I helped her move) and to do her last year. It was, ironically, in the move from a United Church of Christ seminary to a Unitarian Universalist seminary that she began to decide to change her ordination plans from the UUA to the UCC. (I like that. I think this UUA/UCC dance is part of what connects me to Elissa.) Anyway, after finishing in Chicago, she came back to Comnnecticut (I think I helped her move then, too) to find work and to be with her mother. Since her mom died early in the summer a year ago, Elissa might be free to move again--once she is ordained.
What a joy it was that Elissa called me on Friday evening, and we were able to reconnect this weekend. She sounds so much happier than she has in a while. (New job, new challenges, but far less bureaucratic/corporate culture interfering with her ministry--so far!) It was wonderful for me to hear her voice, to try to encourage her and to listen to how she is doing.
I know that she has some anxiety about her upcoming meeting with the Church and Minsitry Committee of her UCC association. This is normal, in my experience. I remember that I showed up twice expecting that all my "ducks" were "in a row" when I saw my committee, only to discover that a letter from a church had not arrived, or that the composition of the committe had changed since the last annual meeting, and so there were people who needed to get to know me a little better brfore they could approve my ordination--which was, characteristically, to a non-traditional ministry. (I had a vital public ministry to a non-UCC congregation that, in the eyes of the UCC, did not require ordination; and linked that with a part-time sacramental ministry to an Alzheimer's center in the name of a small UCC congregation with a part-time minister and a Board that had a hard time getting a letter written, it seems.)
The process toward ordination took a couple of years longer than I thought it should; but when it finally was approved, when my ecclesiastical council was finally convened and when the date of my ordination was set--December 1, World AIDS Day, and the first Sunday of Advent that year!--it felt as if the stars were finally in alignment.
People considering ministry are often frustrated after talking to me. I encourage people to do something else, if they can. I ask that they not confuse going to seminary for their own spiritual fulfillment with using gradute school to prepare to minister to a world that desperately needs people willing to act in the name of God and the Universe and the Other. I ask them if they are prepared for the inevitable politics of human institutions, like the church. And I wonder whether they might be willing to see that seminary and ordination might simply be a wrong choice for them, and if they have an "exit strategy" for getting out of the process if they discover that it is the wrong choice or the wrong time. ("Can you hold your head high in church and say, 'I learned something about myself . . .'")
For Elissa, of course, I don't think it is the wrong choice. It may be that her Committee will put her through another hoop or two--ask for a re-write of parts of her paper, for example--but I think that she should persevere. "Back in the day" we might have mock interviews with a few trusted colleagues reading her paper and her resume and asking questions of her. I've encouraged her to be in touch with her adviser for some real time before her next Committee visit; to speak to members of the Committee with whom wshe has relationships to get their best wisdom about what the Committee needs to come out with the desired outcome, a date for an ecclesiastical council, and a process for drawing up a covenant with her agency that will keep her in a relationship of accountability back to the UCC.
The fullest outcome I seek, of course, is Elissa's happiness. She is a good chaplain, centered, interested, compassionate; she knows her work (Is it Charlie King who asserts "our life is more than our work, and our work is more than our job"?) and has the capacity to do it; she exhibits deep faith. And, in my opinion, she should be "set aside" through ordination to the vocation of pastoral ministry. I want to be there when she celebrates communion in the name of the church universal and in the company of many witnesses.
Sun is bright, the air is clear. Oops, the grass needs mowing.
Good morning.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
My First Tornado?!?
I was surprised, last night, trying to get out of Fenton, Michigan. Every direction I traveled was blocked by trees down--including a few very large trees--and there were cables down everywhere, and large puddles. It took about forty minutes to find a way out of that small town.
When I got home, I heard on the news that we had had a tornado.
I was in Fenton in the back yard of two men who are having a commitment ceremony today. Friends and family were putting up tents, setting up tables and a bar, unpacking bags and boxes of bows. This will be a grand and friendly wedding!
I was going over the order of things with the grooms, assuring myself that the readers they had selected would be prepared, trying o be sure I had the right name for the right mom. As I was going over my "stand tall, proud and expectant, but don't lock your knees, or you might faint" advice, dark clouds moved in, and the wind started to pick up. Just as a friend was finishing tying off the smaller tent. Then the rain started, quickly becoming a donpour. Lighting began to flash, and then the direns began.
Tornado!
I've heard the sirens before. They are tested on the first Saturday of the month)I think) at 1:00 p.m., ad the first time I heard them I had to ask. Since then, I've heard them on a couple of occasions, most recently at a spring Board meeting at the church. (I discovered that the pantry between the kitchen and the large store room is the tornado safety spot in the church.) But last night was the first time that I was in an unfamiliar locale, and away from the mile between my home and the church.
We ignored the sirens for a few minutes, sitting in the large tent and avoiding the torrents. The sky lightened up substantially, and the rain slowed a little bit, even as the wind picked up. And so we ran for the house and went in just as the electricity failed.
Down in the basement, we walked out to the garage, where we had a view of things blowing around in the driveway and side yaard, even as we were unable to close the electrically operated garage doors. Things were blowing around, the rain was coming and going, and the lightning was erratic and powerful. And then it was over.
The guys really needed to figure out what they'd have to do today if the power were not restored, and we had covered just about everything I needed to go over with them; so I left.
The large trees uprooted, the enormous metal and concrete signs that had been lifted, the people coming out of their houses and shaking their heads as they walked around, the ominous looking power lines hanging from tree limbs or lying in the puddles that I felt I neded to avoid . . . it was shocking and surreal.
Thnakfully, while there was significant damage to some homes and businesses, there were few reported injuries, and no fatalities. Still, the power is down for a few hundred homes in Fenton (as well as in other parts of Genesee County), and I haven't yet checked with the men about their status. I'll find out this afternoon!
I'm hearing noise on the street. The Crim must be starting soon. (My first as a spectator, I'm not quite yet ready to run.) Some rain outside, fully overcast. Supposed to clear up by noon.
Good morning
When I got home, I heard on the news that we had had a tornado.
I was in Fenton in the back yard of two men who are having a commitment ceremony today. Friends and family were putting up tents, setting up tables and a bar, unpacking bags and boxes of bows. This will be a grand and friendly wedding!
I was going over the order of things with the grooms, assuring myself that the readers they had selected would be prepared, trying o be sure I had the right name for the right mom. As I was going over my "stand tall, proud and expectant, but don't lock your knees, or you might faint" advice, dark clouds moved in, and the wind started to pick up. Just as a friend was finishing tying off the smaller tent. Then the rain started, quickly becoming a donpour. Lighting began to flash, and then the direns began.
Tornado!
I've heard the sirens before. They are tested on the first Saturday of the month)I think) at 1:00 p.m., ad the first time I heard them I had to ask. Since then, I've heard them on a couple of occasions, most recently at a spring Board meeting at the church. (I discovered that the pantry between the kitchen and the large store room is the tornado safety spot in the church.) But last night was the first time that I was in an unfamiliar locale, and away from the mile between my home and the church.
We ignored the sirens for a few minutes, sitting in the large tent and avoiding the torrents. The sky lightened up substantially, and the rain slowed a little bit, even as the wind picked up. And so we ran for the house and went in just as the electricity failed.
Down in the basement, we walked out to the garage, where we had a view of things blowing around in the driveway and side yaard, even as we were unable to close the electrically operated garage doors. Things were blowing around, the rain was coming and going, and the lightning was erratic and powerful. And then it was over.
The guys really needed to figure out what they'd have to do today if the power were not restored, and we had covered just about everything I needed to go over with them; so I left.
The large trees uprooted, the enormous metal and concrete signs that had been lifted, the people coming out of their houses and shaking their heads as they walked around, the ominous looking power lines hanging from tree limbs or lying in the puddles that I felt I neded to avoid . . . it was shocking and surreal.
Thnakfully, while there was significant damage to some homes and businesses, there were few reported injuries, and no fatalities. Still, the power is down for a few hundred homes in Fenton (as well as in other parts of Genesee County), and I haven't yet checked with the men about their status. I'll find out this afternoon!
I'm hearing noise on the street. The Crim must be starting soon. (My first as a spectator, I'm not quite yet ready to run.) Some rain outside, fully overcast. Supposed to clear up by noon.
Good morning
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Unitarian Universalism
Today I will host the monthly meeting of the Steering Committee/Sponsoring Committee of Flint Area Congregations Together, the congregation-based community organization we are creating in Genesee County among a couple of dozen congregations. The organization is overwhelmingly Christian, as one would expect, and in my faith reflection today I want to think about our work tohether from the UU perspective of my people.
Largely, then, I need to reflect our pluralism. But I think that that needs to be done less by listing a number of hyphenated UU identities. I'm thinking, rather, of a brilliant presentation (lengthy, quite academic, surely Orthodox) by Archbishop Demetrios, where he made reference to Christian thought from the first, third, eighth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries (of the Common Era). This broad approach to what it means to be "the Church" was pluralistic, charitable, breathtaking.
What I can say in four or five minutes will contain nothing of Demetrios's impact. But it is his intention that I look toward, and I too hope to display charity, pluralism and a little movement of the soul.
My "impromptu" speech about Unitarian Universalism (not my twenty-five second elevator speech, but my "a couple of sentences" remarks) usually says something like this:
Our Unitarian ancestors may have been obsessed with the question of Unity. The unity of God has been a very important question for our Unitarian Christian forbears; but the unity of the human family, the unity of the one planet we inhabit, the unity of experience in the one cycle of life we are called to share; these perhaps are the Unity that now animates our unitarianism.
Our Universalist ancestors gave us a faith that says that God is Love, and their Christian faith knew a Love so powerful that all will be reconciled: in history, that all souls will be saved, yes; but in our work with one another, that each soul is precious, that each person is inherently worthy, each has inherent dignity; and that the living into Love that we are graced to exhibit happens as each of us responds to "the Love that will not let us go, that will not let us down, that will not let us off" (R. Hardies).
Unitarian Universalism calls us, in society, to make real the ethic of the interconnectedness of all existence, knowing that all we do has effects in the real world, and the inherent worth and dignity of each person, including ourselves, our families, our neighborhoods. Thus we act in the world to raise up all of us, and to build together a more blessed and beloved community.
The morning, after an evening of loud and bright thunderstorms, is clear, crisp. Humidity remains, and clouds overhead. But how green the grass! How red the tomatoes!
Good morning.
Largely, then, I need to reflect our pluralism. But I think that that needs to be done less by listing a number of hyphenated UU identities. I'm thinking, rather, of a brilliant presentation (lengthy, quite academic, surely Orthodox) by Archbishop Demetrios, where he made reference to Christian thought from the first, third, eighth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries (of the Common Era). This broad approach to what it means to be "the Church" was pluralistic, charitable, breathtaking.
What I can say in four or five minutes will contain nothing of Demetrios's impact. But it is his intention that I look toward, and I too hope to display charity, pluralism and a little movement of the soul.
My "impromptu" speech about Unitarian Universalism (not my twenty-five second elevator speech, but my "a couple of sentences" remarks) usually says something like this:
Our Unitarian ancestors may have been obsessed with the question of Unity. The unity of God has been a very important question for our Unitarian Christian forbears; but the unity of the human family, the unity of the one planet we inhabit, the unity of experience in the one cycle of life we are called to share; these perhaps are the Unity that now animates our unitarianism.
Our Universalist ancestors gave us a faith that says that God is Love, and their Christian faith knew a Love so powerful that all will be reconciled: in history, that all souls will be saved, yes; but in our work with one another, that each soul is precious, that each person is inherently worthy, each has inherent dignity; and that the living into Love that we are graced to exhibit happens as each of us responds to "the Love that will not let us go, that will not let us down, that will not let us off" (R. Hardies).
Unitarian Universalism calls us, in society, to make real the ethic of the interconnectedness of all existence, knowing that all we do has effects in the real world, and the inherent worth and dignity of each person, including ourselves, our families, our neighborhoods. Thus we act in the world to raise up all of us, and to build together a more blessed and beloved community.
The morning, after an evening of loud and bright thunderstorms, is clear, crisp. Humidity remains, and clouds overhead. But how green the grass! How red the tomatoes!
Good morning.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Spiritual Hospitality
Well, it had to happen one morning or another . . . and today was the day.
I didn't see the sun come up.
I was entirely "tuckered out" after meetings last night, had a very late bite to eat and then hit the sack. I got up at 8:45 this morning. Whoops.
Anyway, I did my morning writing, but it was aimed at a particular use: my monthly newsletter column. You'll forgive me, even as you trust that I did my breathing and said my prayers.
=====
Dear congregation, dear community,
Summer passed so quickly! Is it true that, so soon, we're at the start of a new program year?
I hope you are ready for our Ingathering on September 9. Director of Lifespan Learning Amy Derrick and Music Director Pia Broden-Williams and I are creating a worship service that will be intergenerational, musical and dramatic. We hope that every family will attend; that adults and children together will share brief stories of the summer, and that we will gather together around a vessel into which we will pour water that we have brought with us from our summer's rest and recreation.
We will also float on the water our candles of celebration and concern. We'll take a deep breath together, and meditate for a moment, and sing. Our children will pour the vessels of our water into the Memorial Garden, a recognition of those who have gone before. And we will offer a blessing to one another, even as we bless together our Pot Luck--and the church's new year!
What a new year we will share! We're opening the doors of our church to the community in a special gesture of welcome. Our services, beginning in mid-September and running though Hallowe'en, will aim to be directed to the community and to those who may be unfamiliar with us. With special music, including many special appearances by the talented members of our congregation, and with a spirit-centered musical prelude at the start of each service, we hope to set a tone of diverse spirituality and spiritual hospitality.
There is a challenge in diversity. Political scientist Robert Putnam observes that "in the presence of diversity . . . we act like turtles." In neighborhoods that become more diverse, some connections between people and especially commitments to key institutions may decline in the transformation process. People retreat to the familiar in the face of the foreign.
This is why I call what we are attempting a kind of "spiritual hospitality." Our universalist convictions tell us that there are universal principles that we share; our unitarianism tells us, in our very bones, that we are but one human family, sharing one holy cycle of living, dwelling on one little world.
In my conversations with some of our members this summer, we've shared our thought that the challenge of hospitality that makes it spiritual, makes it more than mundane, is that it presumes that the hosts give to the guests, but that in an open interaction, the host also receives what the guest gives by their presence. In so doing, we become co-creators with one another of a community neither of us yet knows.
Sometimes we call such openness "radical hospitality." This is not just being welcoming of political radicals! It is saying that at the roots of who we are, at the roots of our intentionality, we know that we are not our own for ourselves. We are, in our roots, members of one another, growing from the same turf, even if we do not yet know each other directly.
More information is available at the church, and we will share more about it at the Ingathering; but I hoe that you will want to be in church this fall, bringing friends and family, and being ready to welcome guests into our congregational center.
Let's welcome eachother back!
Fondly,
(Rev.) David Carl Olson
P.S. This article is also available at www.coffeecabinet.blogspot.com
=====
Well, I guess that about does it! Morning is dry, growing sunny. I'm smiling.
Good morning.
I didn't see the sun come up.
I was entirely "tuckered out" after meetings last night, had a very late bite to eat and then hit the sack. I got up at 8:45 this morning. Whoops.
Anyway, I did my morning writing, but it was aimed at a particular use: my monthly newsletter column. You'll forgive me, even as you trust that I did my breathing and said my prayers.
=====
Dear congregation, dear community,
Summer passed so quickly! Is it true that, so soon, we're at the start of a new program year?
I hope you are ready for our Ingathering on September 9. Director of Lifespan Learning Amy Derrick and Music Director Pia Broden-Williams and I are creating a worship service that will be intergenerational, musical and dramatic. We hope that every family will attend; that adults and children together will share brief stories of the summer, and that we will gather together around a vessel into which we will pour water that we have brought with us from our summer's rest and recreation.
We will also float on the water our candles of celebration and concern. We'll take a deep breath together, and meditate for a moment, and sing. Our children will pour the vessels of our water into the Memorial Garden, a recognition of those who have gone before. And we will offer a blessing to one another, even as we bless together our Pot Luck--and the church's new year!
What a new year we will share! We're opening the doors of our church to the community in a special gesture of welcome. Our services, beginning in mid-September and running though Hallowe'en, will aim to be directed to the community and to those who may be unfamiliar with us. With special music, including many special appearances by the talented members of our congregation, and with a spirit-centered musical prelude at the start of each service, we hope to set a tone of diverse spirituality and spiritual hospitality.
There is a challenge in diversity. Political scientist Robert Putnam observes that "in the presence of diversity . . . we act like turtles." In neighborhoods that become more diverse, some connections between people and especially commitments to key institutions may decline in the transformation process. People retreat to the familiar in the face of the foreign.
This is why I call what we are attempting a kind of "spiritual hospitality." Our universalist convictions tell us that there are universal principles that we share; our unitarianism tells us, in our very bones, that we are but one human family, sharing one holy cycle of living, dwelling on one little world.
In my conversations with some of our members this summer, we've shared our thought that the challenge of hospitality that makes it spiritual, makes it more than mundane, is that it presumes that the hosts give to the guests, but that in an open interaction, the host also receives what the guest gives by their presence. In so doing, we become co-creators with one another of a community neither of us yet knows.
Sometimes we call such openness "radical hospitality." This is not just being welcoming of political radicals! It is saying that at the roots of who we are, at the roots of our intentionality, we know that we are not our own for ourselves. We are, in our roots, members of one another, growing from the same turf, even if we do not yet know each other directly.
More information is available at the church, and we will share more about it at the Ingathering; but I hoe that you will want to be in church this fall, bringing friends and family, and being ready to welcome guests into our congregational center.
Let's welcome eachother back!
Fondly,
(Rev.) David Carl Olson
P.S. This article is also available at www.coffeecabinet.blogspot.com
=====
Well, I guess that about does it! Morning is dry, growing sunny. I'm smiling.
Good morning.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
What was Lost is Found
I've been finding music!
I've been unpacking at my house for over a year now. It was only a month ago that I realized why some of the boxes were such a hodge podge, and why others seemed to be so unfamiliar.
The unfamiliar ones are easy. I packed them in June and July 2005 and put them into a PODS container, where they sat for a month, and then unloaded them into my Bradley Avenue apartment "for the duration" until I found a new house. Then they were moved into the garage in June 2006, and only now am I getting to them.
The hodge podges?? On the weekend I was going to do the "final pack" of my apartment, after the furniture had been moved, and while all my "stuff" was lying around in piles, I got the news that my dad had died. Within a few hours, volunteers from the church had showed up to move all my stuff to the new house so that I could catch a plane back to Rhode Island and family.
I worked like a demon to throw things into boxes that were brought out to vans and then packed into the garage. Things were mislabeled, poorly sorted, full of numbness and shock and grieving.
And now I'm opening up to find things that I've been missing.
A box of piano music brought back many fond memories. Mrs. Liffmann, my piano teacher (as a college student) in Providence had had a huge studio of children. In her last years of teaching, I walked to her home off Hope Street once a week to work on the most elementary music. (Ah, my sonatina album!) A little funny, and embarrassing, when people heard me practicing in the rehearsal hall; but hey, "you gotta start somewhere."
I found piano music from when I studied with Debi Fishbein (now Adams). Debi was a friend, and after she finished her Bachelors degree and while pursuing her Masters in Piano Performance at Boston University, we ran a music studio together at Steinert Hall in Boston. She taught piano, I taught voice, she sometimes accompanied me, and we rehearsed together. It was a hoot. It was Studio 54, and the nightclub Studio 54 was big then. (Also Studio 54 Jeans which, we discovered, were headquartered in Boston. A fan of the jeans sent a letter to the studio, once, requesting a copy of the poster of the naked guy putting on a pair of jeans. We joked about getting out a camera and . . . )
My music is on the piano now, and bringing great joy.
I also discovered a treasured set of audiotapes from the German Democratic Republic. They were a gift from my friend Ginga Eichler on the occasion of my work as a volunteer press agent for GDR Days, which just happened to fall in October 1989 during the period in which the Wall was opened, the Council of Ministers resigned, Erich Honecker resigned and was replaced by Egon Krentz, and the old East German state prepared to implode and be overrun by the German Federal Republic.
Gisela May is one of the great interpreters of Bertolt Brecht, and I believe the recordings I have date from the mid 1970s (just after she recorded "Hallo Dolly!"). They are (she is) magnificent, full of nuance and forthright "gestus." They remind me of the time I saw Ms. May perform Mother Courage at the Theater auf dem Schiffbauerdamm around the corner from Ginga's apartment at nr. 1 Chauseestrasse.
I think that this music puts me in touch with a deep woundedness I have around being born workingclass. Well, not about being born where I was born, but my awareness of the oppression that workers experience in this culture. This awareness grew in my years at Little Flags Theater, a proletarian political theater that celebrated working people and the struggle for social change. David Jernigan, I believe, was the stage manager who said that two emotions were at work in creating workingclass characters. One was pride: overwhelming pride that everything that exists in the world happens because a worker went to work. Every crop that is harvested, every metal that is mined and smelted and fashioned in to something useful, every tree that is felled and hewn and used to build--everything that is is either given in nature or made available to us all because a worker worked. And the second emotion is rage: rage that over the years milions have died, that laborers have been forced in to chattel slavery and wage slavery, that working class kids receive inferior education and are prepared for lesser jobs, that mental work is elevated over physical labor and that leisure without labor is the most highly regarded and rewarded. These two emotions are dynamically interrelated, which can give working class culture such power, such truth.
Listening to Gisela May brings me to the Memorial Stone for Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht; to standing before the Memorial for the 26 Commissars in Baku; to laying flowers at the Tombs of the Unknowns in Washington DC and at the Kremlin in Moscow. To standing before Mother Jones's grave in Illinois, seeing pictures of miners and their "Mother," reading tributes by "the faithful" and even recognizing a name of a recent visitor. To my tears, yesterday, reading in the People's Weekly World that Moe Fishman is dead--not a person I new personally, but a persom I know in the movement, a comrade fallen, one who believed that another world is possible, and who was willing to go to Spain in the 1930s to make it happen. Listening to Gisela May brings me to the recent death of Laura Ross and to the heartbreaking truth of my own life, one of pride and rage, disappointment at failures but deep confidence in the ultimate course for humankind; that, through struggle, we will evolve to the next level of human existence, that we will eliminate the profound oppressions inherent in capitalism; that human history will, one day, begin.
I've been listening to Dean Stevens these past few days. "Eyes of Wonder" is, perhaps, my favorite CD--certainly it is the most played in my iTunes library. Dean is the best of the best, an incredibly smart musician with good politics and a balanced life of activism and institution building and family life and relationships of solidarity and bridge building between communities . . . His music is insightful and spiritual and his mode of operations with other musicians is one of inclusion and celebration and learning. I miss having Dean in my life. (And now he's become a hurricane attacking the Caribbean and Mexico!)
It is wonderful to see the sky not so overcast today. A luminous gray, I know the sun must be there somewhere!
Good morning.
I've been unpacking at my house for over a year now. It was only a month ago that I realized why some of the boxes were such a hodge podge, and why others seemed to be so unfamiliar.
The unfamiliar ones are easy. I packed them in June and July 2005 and put them into a PODS container, where they sat for a month, and then unloaded them into my Bradley Avenue apartment "for the duration" until I found a new house. Then they were moved into the garage in June 2006, and only now am I getting to them.
The hodge podges?? On the weekend I was going to do the "final pack" of my apartment, after the furniture had been moved, and while all my "stuff" was lying around in piles, I got the news that my dad had died. Within a few hours, volunteers from the church had showed up to move all my stuff to the new house so that I could catch a plane back to Rhode Island and family.
I worked like a demon to throw things into boxes that were brought out to vans and then packed into the garage. Things were mislabeled, poorly sorted, full of numbness and shock and grieving.
And now I'm opening up to find things that I've been missing.
A box of piano music brought back many fond memories. Mrs. Liffmann, my piano teacher (as a college student) in Providence had had a huge studio of children. In her last years of teaching, I walked to her home off Hope Street once a week to work on the most elementary music. (Ah, my sonatina album!) A little funny, and embarrassing, when people heard me practicing in the rehearsal hall; but hey, "you gotta start somewhere."
I found piano music from when I studied with Debi Fishbein (now Adams). Debi was a friend, and after she finished her Bachelors degree and while pursuing her Masters in Piano Performance at Boston University, we ran a music studio together at Steinert Hall in Boston. She taught piano, I taught voice, she sometimes accompanied me, and we rehearsed together. It was a hoot. It was Studio 54, and the nightclub Studio 54 was big then. (Also Studio 54 Jeans which, we discovered, were headquartered in Boston. A fan of the jeans sent a letter to the studio, once, requesting a copy of the poster of the naked guy putting on a pair of jeans. We joked about getting out a camera and . . . )
My music is on the piano now, and bringing great joy.
I also discovered a treasured set of audiotapes from the German Democratic Republic. They were a gift from my friend Ginga Eichler on the occasion of my work as a volunteer press agent for GDR Days, which just happened to fall in October 1989 during the period in which the Wall was opened, the Council of Ministers resigned, Erich Honecker resigned and was replaced by Egon Krentz, and the old East German state prepared to implode and be overrun by the German Federal Republic.
Gisela May is one of the great interpreters of Bertolt Brecht, and I believe the recordings I have date from the mid 1970s (just after she recorded "Hallo Dolly!"). They are (she is) magnificent, full of nuance and forthright "gestus." They remind me of the time I saw Ms. May perform Mother Courage at the Theater auf dem Schiffbauerdamm around the corner from Ginga's apartment at nr. 1 Chauseestrasse.
I think that this music puts me in touch with a deep woundedness I have around being born workingclass. Well, not about being born where I was born, but my awareness of the oppression that workers experience in this culture. This awareness grew in my years at Little Flags Theater, a proletarian political theater that celebrated working people and the struggle for social change. David Jernigan, I believe, was the stage manager who said that two emotions were at work in creating workingclass characters. One was pride: overwhelming pride that everything that exists in the world happens because a worker went to work. Every crop that is harvested, every metal that is mined and smelted and fashioned in to something useful, every tree that is felled and hewn and used to build--everything that is is either given in nature or made available to us all because a worker worked. And the second emotion is rage: rage that over the years milions have died, that laborers have been forced in to chattel slavery and wage slavery, that working class kids receive inferior education and are prepared for lesser jobs, that mental work is elevated over physical labor and that leisure without labor is the most highly regarded and rewarded. These two emotions are dynamically interrelated, which can give working class culture such power, such truth.
Listening to Gisela May brings me to the Memorial Stone for Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht; to standing before the Memorial for the 26 Commissars in Baku; to laying flowers at the Tombs of the Unknowns in Washington DC and at the Kremlin in Moscow. To standing before Mother Jones's grave in Illinois, seeing pictures of miners and their "Mother," reading tributes by "the faithful" and even recognizing a name of a recent visitor. To my tears, yesterday, reading in the People's Weekly World that Moe Fishman is dead--not a person I new personally, but a persom I know in the movement, a comrade fallen, one who believed that another world is possible, and who was willing to go to Spain in the 1930s to make it happen. Listening to Gisela May brings me to the recent death of Laura Ross and to the heartbreaking truth of my own life, one of pride and rage, disappointment at failures but deep confidence in the ultimate course for humankind; that, through struggle, we will evolve to the next level of human existence, that we will eliminate the profound oppressions inherent in capitalism; that human history will, one day, begin.
I've been listening to Dean Stevens these past few days. "Eyes of Wonder" is, perhaps, my favorite CD--certainly it is the most played in my iTunes library. Dean is the best of the best, an incredibly smart musician with good politics and a balanced life of activism and institution building and family life and relationships of solidarity and bridge building between communities . . . His music is insightful and spiritual and his mode of operations with other musicians is one of inclusion and celebration and learning. I miss having Dean in my life. (And now he's become a hurricane attacking the Caribbean and Mexico!)
It is wonderful to see the sky not so overcast today. A luminous gray, I know the sun must be there somewhere!
Good morning.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Circadian Rhythm
One reason I decided to start a sunrise blog was better to pay attention to the state of my day. I wanted to be sure to rise with the sun as a way of adjusting my day to "this time and place."
You see, I have lived my entire life in New England. Riverside, RI, where I lived from age 4 to 18, is at 71 degrees 21 minutes West of the prime meridian; Boston, MA, where I lived from age 23 to 51, is at 71 degrees 1 minute West; Flint, MI, where I live now, is 43 degrees 2 minutes West. This means that while the sun, today, rises at 6:46 a.m. (EDT) in Flint, it rose over Boston at 5:56 a.m. In my old habit, getting out of bed at 7:00 this morning would have meant rising an hour after the sun had risen. In Flint, the same 7:00 "out of bed" would be only fifteen minutes after the sun had risen.
In the summer, this is not the greatest challenge. But when winter comes around, it can be very dificult to get up. On December 21, for example, in Boston the sun will rise at 7:09 a.m. (EST), and in Flint it will not come up until 8:02 a.m. (EST)
This is because Flint is on the western edge of the Eastern time zone. (Boston is on the eastern edge of the same zone.) I'm not sure where the center of the Eastern zone is (maybe I'll look that up another time), but all times to the east and west of center are shifted up to half hour off of "natural" time. "High noon" by the sun will happen at 12:00 noon at center; but high noon at the eastern edge (in a perfect 15 degree wide time zone) occurs at 11:30 a.m. on the clock, and in the west at 12:30 p.m.--which edge will also be the beginning of the next time zone. So straddling the time zone when the sun is directly overhead, it will be 12:30 p.m. on the eastern side of the line just as it is 11:30 a.m. on the western side.
Flint lying north of Boston (43 degrees 2 minutes vs. 42 degrees 22 minutes) changes the lengths of days only slightly. On December 21, a Boston day lasts 9 hours and 5 minutes; Flint's is just 9 hours. On June 21, Flint's day lasts 15 hours and 22 minutes, while Boston's is nine minutes shorter. So there are a few extra minutes of daylight in Flint due to its more northerly location.
But only a few. The greatest reason for our long summer afternoons (and short and late mornings) is the combination of Daylight Savings time and our westerly location in the time zone--and this continues to be a real challenge to me.
A few weeks ago, I got to spend a week on the coast of Maine at Ferry Beach Camp and Conference Center as Minister of the Week at "Family and Friends," an annual conference over thirty-five years in the running. Each morning, as the sun rose early (or, as I'm prone to say, "normally"), I could luxuriate in her warmth, take my time in getting out of bed, actually have a drink of water, wash my face and read a little before going to the dining room and enjoying breakfast at 7:45 or so before morning choir practice at 8:45 and chapel at 9:00. This felt so relaxed, so "civilized."
In Michigan, such activities, if dictated by the sun, would all need to be changed by 45 minutes or so: breakfast at 8:30, choir at 9:30, chapel at 9:45 . . . and then the day's activities would begin at 10:30 or so. Which, somehow, just feels "wrong."
Of course it wouldn't be and isn't wrong, and my difficulties in adjusting to the rhythms of the day here are not signs of my weakness, nor Michigan's incorrect time zone assignment. It is just something that I need to better integrate into my life and its patterns.
And so, each morning, for a season, I'm trying to rise and meditate, to write and post to this blog, to feel what it feels like and to pay attention to how I'm doing.
Raining outside, still. Cold and wet. Gray outside, even as bright yellow and pink and red tomatoes peek out of green and greyish foliage. A little chill on the floor; perhaps it is time to bring out my slippers. A big yawn, just now, and grumbling of stomach. Time for breakfast.
Good morning!
You see, I have lived my entire life in New England. Riverside, RI, where I lived from age 4 to 18, is at 71 degrees 21 minutes West of the prime meridian; Boston, MA, where I lived from age 23 to 51, is at 71 degrees 1 minute West; Flint, MI, where I live now, is 43 degrees 2 minutes West. This means that while the sun, today, rises at 6:46 a.m. (EDT) in Flint, it rose over Boston at 5:56 a.m. In my old habit, getting out of bed at 7:00 this morning would have meant rising an hour after the sun had risen. In Flint, the same 7:00 "out of bed" would be only fifteen minutes after the sun had risen.
In the summer, this is not the greatest challenge. But when winter comes around, it can be very dificult to get up. On December 21, for example, in Boston the sun will rise at 7:09 a.m. (EST), and in Flint it will not come up until 8:02 a.m. (EST)
This is because Flint is on the western edge of the Eastern time zone. (Boston is on the eastern edge of the same zone.) I'm not sure where the center of the Eastern zone is (maybe I'll look that up another time), but all times to the east and west of center are shifted up to half hour off of "natural" time. "High noon" by the sun will happen at 12:00 noon at center; but high noon at the eastern edge (in a perfect 15 degree wide time zone) occurs at 11:30 a.m. on the clock, and in the west at 12:30 p.m.--which edge will also be the beginning of the next time zone. So straddling the time zone when the sun is directly overhead, it will be 12:30 p.m. on the eastern side of the line just as it is 11:30 a.m. on the western side.
Flint lying north of Boston (43 degrees 2 minutes vs. 42 degrees 22 minutes) changes the lengths of days only slightly. On December 21, a Boston day lasts 9 hours and 5 minutes; Flint's is just 9 hours. On June 21, Flint's day lasts 15 hours and 22 minutes, while Boston's is nine minutes shorter. So there are a few extra minutes of daylight in Flint due to its more northerly location.
But only a few. The greatest reason for our long summer afternoons (and short and late mornings) is the combination of Daylight Savings time and our westerly location in the time zone--and this continues to be a real challenge to me.
A few weeks ago, I got to spend a week on the coast of Maine at Ferry Beach Camp and Conference Center as Minister of the Week at "Family and Friends," an annual conference over thirty-five years in the running. Each morning, as the sun rose early (or, as I'm prone to say, "normally"), I could luxuriate in her warmth, take my time in getting out of bed, actually have a drink of water, wash my face and read a little before going to the dining room and enjoying breakfast at 7:45 or so before morning choir practice at 8:45 and chapel at 9:00. This felt so relaxed, so "civilized."
In Michigan, such activities, if dictated by the sun, would all need to be changed by 45 minutes or so: breakfast at 8:30, choir at 9:30, chapel at 9:45 . . . and then the day's activities would begin at 10:30 or so. Which, somehow, just feels "wrong."
Of course it wouldn't be and isn't wrong, and my difficulties in adjusting to the rhythms of the day here are not signs of my weakness, nor Michigan's incorrect time zone assignment. It is just something that I need to better integrate into my life and its patterns.
And so, each morning, for a season, I'm trying to rise and meditate, to write and post to this blog, to feel what it feels like and to pay attention to how I'm doing.
Raining outside, still. Cold and wet. Gray outside, even as bright yellow and pink and red tomatoes peek out of green and greyish foliage. A little chill on the floor; perhaps it is time to bring out my slippers. A big yawn, just now, and grumbling of stomach. Time for breakfast.
Good morning!
Sunday, August 19, 2007
"I have heard you calling in the night"
A decade ago, Andover Newton Theological School advertised with a question, something like, "Is God keeping you up at night?
I didn't sleep well last night. It may be that at the end of vacation, like the last hour of a silent retreat, my mind finally frees the things to which I have been holding on, the things that my vacation really needed to "vacate." Anyway, it seems as if that last hour before leaving the retreat house is the time where I finally figure what the retreat has really been about.
And so I slept on and off last night, an hour at a time. Too much watermelon too late last night, perhaps, requiring too many trips to the bathroom.
But my mind was also full of ideas from yesterday's reading of The New Yorker (Aug 20), David Owen's article on dark skies. I realized how light my house is in the middle of the night, that even my bedroom is filled with light reflecting through my blinds from my neighbor's back porch light. My own halogen "safety" light turns on automatically when the sun goes down, and stays on until sunup. Another neighbor's back yard light spews light every which way in a half dozen back yards.
I was more aware of my night/sleeping conditions when I lived on Boylston Street in Boston. The house was seldom dark--the light levels of Copley Square (out front) and the service alley (out back) left the apartment full of gentle light and many shadows all night long. I remember how I responded to sounds in the apartment--skateboarders who would skate the fountain until 2 and 3 in the morning, and then garbage trucks that would empty dumpsters between 5 and 6. I developed a pattern of sleeping in the back bedroom until my 4 o'clock pee, and then move to the front bedroom until daybreak.
When I got a roommate for the back bedroom, that pattern had to change. I slept only in "my" bedroom--the small one out front--and learned to tolerate the sounds of the street, park, fountain and skateboarders. But part of the new conditions was that I painted my bedroom a deep blue-black, almost like a Waterman fountain pen's ink. I got light concealing drapes to block out the streetlights and spotlights. And I began to sleep through the night.
Last night, every hour or so, I'd make my home a little darker. Turned off the safety light outside. Drew the shades in the sun room. Pulled the shades lower, past the air conditioner, in my bedroom window, and closed the drapes tight. Finally realized that the darkest room, perhaps, is the living room. Curled up on the couch for a little nap before rising for some quiet time.
I turned on the television (bad habit) and found the Mass for Shut Ins. This was the first televised Mass I've seen in Michigan, and it was very interesting to me. I used to watch the daily Mass from time to time in Boston, and this Detroit program had higher performance values, in my opinion. Better integration of the group who participated, more professional readers, a pretty fine homily by a priest with a great singing voice. And the camera work was more tightly focused with tighter transitions. Satisfying.
The theme of prophets coming not to unite but to divide, not to maintain but--like a fire--to transform was compelling. The notion that prophets get in trouble--thrown into wells, crucified--quickened my heart, and made me want to call friends and do something real in this city. But it was the anthem that seemed to bring everything--my night/morning and the Mass--together.
"Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, Lord, where you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart."
This song was a favorite of folk when I was in seminary, and it was a farewell song for my mentor Rev. Raymond H. Bradley (Jr.) when he retired from the ministry at the Riverside (RI) Church. (Tommy Gleadow and Othneil Clark and I sang it in a dueling tenors version that had us singing tight and high harmonies on the chorus that blew the roof off of that little New Engloand church!)
So as it was sung this morning, I looked backward, of course, and forward (on Thursday I host the Flint Area Congregations Together steering committee). But I also looked within, within. And that, I think, is what vacations are really about, for me. A chance to stop and breather and think and weep, and consider the worth that is deep, deep within.
Rained last night, gently. A little chilly this morning. Sun is hidden, if risen. Day beckons.
Good morning.
I didn't sleep well last night. It may be that at the end of vacation, like the last hour of a silent retreat, my mind finally frees the things to which I have been holding on, the things that my vacation really needed to "vacate." Anyway, it seems as if that last hour before leaving the retreat house is the time where I finally figure what the retreat has really been about.
And so I slept on and off last night, an hour at a time. Too much watermelon too late last night, perhaps, requiring too many trips to the bathroom.
But my mind was also full of ideas from yesterday's reading of The New Yorker (Aug 20), David Owen's article on dark skies. I realized how light my house is in the middle of the night, that even my bedroom is filled with light reflecting through my blinds from my neighbor's back porch light. My own halogen "safety" light turns on automatically when the sun goes down, and stays on until sunup. Another neighbor's back yard light spews light every which way in a half dozen back yards.
I was more aware of my night/sleeping conditions when I lived on Boylston Street in Boston. The house was seldom dark--the light levels of Copley Square (out front) and the service alley (out back) left the apartment full of gentle light and many shadows all night long. I remember how I responded to sounds in the apartment--skateboarders who would skate the fountain until 2 and 3 in the morning, and then garbage trucks that would empty dumpsters between 5 and 6. I developed a pattern of sleeping in the back bedroom until my 4 o'clock pee, and then move to the front bedroom until daybreak.
When I got a roommate for the back bedroom, that pattern had to change. I slept only in "my" bedroom--the small one out front--and learned to tolerate the sounds of the street, park, fountain and skateboarders. But part of the new conditions was that I painted my bedroom a deep blue-black, almost like a Waterman fountain pen's ink. I got light concealing drapes to block out the streetlights and spotlights. And I began to sleep through the night.
Last night, every hour or so, I'd make my home a little darker. Turned off the safety light outside. Drew the shades in the sun room. Pulled the shades lower, past the air conditioner, in my bedroom window, and closed the drapes tight. Finally realized that the darkest room, perhaps, is the living room. Curled up on the couch for a little nap before rising for some quiet time.
I turned on the television (bad habit) and found the Mass for Shut Ins. This was the first televised Mass I've seen in Michigan, and it was very interesting to me. I used to watch the daily Mass from time to time in Boston, and this Detroit program had higher performance values, in my opinion. Better integration of the group who participated, more professional readers, a pretty fine homily by a priest with a great singing voice. And the camera work was more tightly focused with tighter transitions. Satisfying.
The theme of prophets coming not to unite but to divide, not to maintain but--like a fire--to transform was compelling. The notion that prophets get in trouble--thrown into wells, crucified--quickened my heart, and made me want to call friends and do something real in this city. But it was the anthem that seemed to bring everything--my night/morning and the Mass--together.
"Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, Lord, where you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart."
This song was a favorite of folk when I was in seminary, and it was a farewell song for my mentor Rev. Raymond H. Bradley (Jr.) when he retired from the ministry at the Riverside (RI) Church. (Tommy Gleadow and Othneil Clark and I sang it in a dueling tenors version that had us singing tight and high harmonies on the chorus that blew the roof off of that little New Engloand church!)
So as it was sung this morning, I looked backward, of course, and forward (on Thursday I host the Flint Area Congregations Together steering committee). But I also looked within, within. And that, I think, is what vacations are really about, for me. A chance to stop and breather and think and weep, and consider the worth that is deep, deep within.
Rained last night, gently. A little chilly this morning. Sun is hidden, if risen. Day beckons.
Good morning.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Japanese Maples and reading The New Yorker
Okay, this is not about anything in The New Yorker about Japanese maples. They are two different topics.
It is just that this morning I was reading The New Yorker and, as I usually do, needed to look up a couple of words. So I created the "Words I Looked Up Today" list in the column, just for fun. (Please don't give me a hard time for looking up easy words. I'm curious, and always ready to doubt that I know what I think I know. And sometimes I want to feel that I get what the writer is trying to say.)
That's it for The New Yorker title.
I planted two Japanese maples in the back yard (end-of-season half-price at Bordine's on Torrey Road), and thought I'd learn a little more about the trees, and share it with you.
The tree I planted farthest back in the yard is a Coral Bark Japanese maple, Acer palmatum "Sango-Kaku." It is the more upright of the two trees, but should grow into a pretty rounded shape. Slowly. Its distinctive featue, I understand, is its red bark in the winter. Here's a link:
Coral Bark Maple
The other, planted at the back of my hosta garden, is a Katsura Japanese maple, Acer palmatum "Katsura." It spreads as wide as it is tall, and grows only a few inches a year. It leaves early with a very bright green leaf with red tinges in the spring. The plant yellows out in the summer. Another link:
Katsura Maple
Well, time to water the new plants.
Good morning (just barely)
It is just that this morning I was reading The New Yorker and, as I usually do, needed to look up a couple of words. So I created the "Words I Looked Up Today" list in the column, just for fun. (Please don't give me a hard time for looking up easy words. I'm curious, and always ready to doubt that I know what I think I know. And sometimes I want to feel that I get what the writer is trying to say.)
That's it for The New Yorker title.
I planted two Japanese maples in the back yard (end-of-season half-price at Bordine's on Torrey Road), and thought I'd learn a little more about the trees, and share it with you.
The tree I planted farthest back in the yard is a Coral Bark Japanese maple, Acer palmatum "Sango-Kaku." It is the more upright of the two trees, but should grow into a pretty rounded shape. Slowly. Its distinctive featue, I understand, is its red bark in the winter. Here's a link:
Coral Bark Maple
The other, planted at the back of my hosta garden, is a Katsura Japanese maple, Acer palmatum "Katsura." It spreads as wide as it is tall, and grows only a few inches a year. It leaves early with a very bright green leaf with red tinges in the spring. The plant yellows out in the summer. Another link:
Katsura Maple
Well, time to water the new plants.
Good morning (just barely)
Friday, August 17, 2007
Taking Care of Taking Care
"Taking care of business," is what I first thought I'd title this morning's post. But, really, this is more about the business of taking care of distracting things in my life. "De-cluttering" my mind, as it were, to be able more fully to be present to being in the present. (Did I really type that?)
Yesterday I celebrated beginning my third year in Flint by taking care of two things. I had my first session with a counselor whom I expect to see twice a month . . . forever. Or at least as long as I'm trying to provide pastoral care to a congregation. (Oh, and since this was my first visit, I am tolerating the tension between my intuition that this relationship will be a good fit and the reality that it will need time to prove itself.) I had a great time driving to a town I don't know well, clearing space out in my car and head, even getting dressed more intentionally than I otherwise might while on vacation.
I was satisfied with our first session. I feel like I have a little space, now, and more freedom to deal with pastoral care issues that will arise.
Second, I shared a beer with neighbors to celebrate the start of year number three. Good beer, the original pilsner from Plzen. Told dumb stories about brewing. Talked about stuff in the house. Showed neighbors the two new trees I planted in the back yard near Durand Street. (Where my neighbors sometimes hear me talking to my plants in the early morning.)
An intentional professional conversation, a friendly celebration with a little good beer. That sounds like self-care to me.
And today? I'm taking my old iMac G3 in to have its contents downloaded to an external drive (that also has the contents of my Powerbook G4). I corrupted the G3 when I first moved to Flint when I tried to install a new operating system without checking out the memory requirements. (I had driven for hours! I was tired!) I have been living off my laptop since, which is fine, but puts a strain on the laptop.
I had planned on getting the G3 looked at last summer (that was going to be some of last year's "self-care" project), but when my Dad died, everything got too jumbled up. "Self-care" was really just about coping, for too many months. In the late winter, I made appointments for a physical, and started getting more regular exercise. In the spring I joined Weight Watchers and dropped the first 20 of what will be many more pounds. And today, I will take that computer in . . .
The sun is up, and that's what life feels like just now, too.
Good morning.
Yesterday I celebrated beginning my third year in Flint by taking care of two things. I had my first session with a counselor whom I expect to see twice a month . . . forever. Or at least as long as I'm trying to provide pastoral care to a congregation. (Oh, and since this was my first visit, I am tolerating the tension between my intuition that this relationship will be a good fit and the reality that it will need time to prove itself.) I had a great time driving to a town I don't know well, clearing space out in my car and head, even getting dressed more intentionally than I otherwise might while on vacation.
I was satisfied with our first session. I feel like I have a little space, now, and more freedom to deal with pastoral care issues that will arise.
Second, I shared a beer with neighbors to celebrate the start of year number three. Good beer, the original pilsner from Plzen. Told dumb stories about brewing. Talked about stuff in the house. Showed neighbors the two new trees I planted in the back yard near Durand Street. (Where my neighbors sometimes hear me talking to my plants in the early morning.)
An intentional professional conversation, a friendly celebration with a little good beer. That sounds like self-care to me.
And today? I'm taking my old iMac G3 in to have its contents downloaded to an external drive (that also has the contents of my Powerbook G4). I corrupted the G3 when I first moved to Flint when I tried to install a new operating system without checking out the memory requirements. (I had driven for hours! I was tired!) I have been living off my laptop since, which is fine, but puts a strain on the laptop.
I had planned on getting the G3 looked at last summer (that was going to be some of last year's "self-care" project), but when my Dad died, everything got too jumbled up. "Self-care" was really just about coping, for too many months. In the late winter, I made appointments for a physical, and started getting more regular exercise. In the spring I joined Weight Watchers and dropped the first 20 of what will be many more pounds. And today, I will take that computer in . . .
The sun is up, and that's what life feels like just now, too.
Good morning.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Year Three, Day One
The Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint called me to become their minister beginning August 16, 2005. As I begin this third year in the Midwest, I'm relieved to be on vacation (!), I'm behind (of course) in getting the yardwork done that I had planned, and haven't quite finished painting the kitchen. (So what else is new?) But I'm happy. As I sit and think about the reasons I came to Flint and what still pertains in that decision and my life, I am happy.
I had been happy in Boston, Massachusetts, too. I served the Community Church of Boston as their Leader/Minister for seven years. The work was rewarding and I was especially pleased about my public ministry through the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, GBIO. Still, I had always planned on moving away from New England to see how our liberal religion was practiced in other parts of the country, and I wanted to grow as a "parson" and as a person.
Flint is and has been a tremendous challenge for me. First, it is a much smaller city than I had imagined--smaller than Providence, smaller than Worcester where I had done my clinical pastoral educaiton, and, of course, much smaller than metropolitan Boston. I have long known that I'm a city guy; being in such a small city has been a learning experience.
Second, the culture in Flint assumes a standard family arrangement that I don't have. Rather than ask what I do for work or where I went to school, questions that seemed pretty standard openers in New England, virtually every first question I got when I moved here was, "Who is your wife, and how many children do you have?" WOW! How much do people ant me to reveal? To say simply, "I'm not married," is such a diminution of the rich relational life that I aspire to. To say, "I'm gay," is to reinforce a notion that gay guys don;t have partners and children, which is not my experience, as well as to be too candid with strangers. To say, "My husband (!) died ten years ago of AIDS," sets off a whole pile of emotions that aren't the best conversation (or relationship) starters. So I just tolerate the question and say that I live alone. And watch a sadness grow in the eyes of the inquirer.
Finally, the gay culture in Flint feels hard to build relationships within. Being the minister of the UU church means that I develop public relationships with all sorts of LGBT people, and quickly; but it also means that I can only be the part of myself which aligns with my ministerial identity. (This, of course, is NOT unique to Flint!) I've been pleased to speak to the LBGT Center at University of Michigan at Flint; happy to think with Genesee County PFLAG leaders; excited to attend Triangle Foundation events and host an appearance by a gay speaker on a national book tour. But these are not dating opportunities. I haven't discovered the places that gay men go for Salsa dancing and speaking Spanish; or the gay-friendly gym with folk that enjoy camp humor; or the circle of gay Democrats (or Greens or Libertarians or Socialists, etc.) who want to critique culture and politics in a deep way and from a point of view that celebrates our marginality and its perspective (as well as holding healthy suspicion about the role of maleness or whiteness in my own development). Gay culture seems wed to bars and private parties, and I haven't found my way in.
I don't have reference points here that shape my sense of myself the way Narragansett Bay and the Lucy Parsons Bookstore and any number of political theaters and galleries do when I am "home" in New England. I know that such reference points for me can (and will) be found. But in these first two years, I have been working--and working hard--to be present fully to Flint and to my congregation. And it has been exhausting work, this worthwhile work that I have chosen. Exhausting.
I look forward to being able to be here more simply; to begin feeling at home in this home; to be able to relax among friends; especially to be able to talk politics and culture and spirituality and camp and sexuality and desire, and, and, and . . . and not feel like a stranger in a strange land.
So I rise and watch the sun . . . and breathe.
Good morning.
I had been happy in Boston, Massachusetts, too. I served the Community Church of Boston as their Leader/Minister for seven years. The work was rewarding and I was especially pleased about my public ministry through the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, GBIO. Still, I had always planned on moving away from New England to see how our liberal religion was practiced in other parts of the country, and I wanted to grow as a "parson" and as a person.
Flint is and has been a tremendous challenge for me. First, it is a much smaller city than I had imagined--smaller than Providence, smaller than Worcester where I had done my clinical pastoral educaiton, and, of course, much smaller than metropolitan Boston. I have long known that I'm a city guy; being in such a small city has been a learning experience.
Second, the culture in Flint assumes a standard family arrangement that I don't have. Rather than ask what I do for work or where I went to school, questions that seemed pretty standard openers in New England, virtually every first question I got when I moved here was, "Who is your wife, and how many children do you have?" WOW! How much do people ant me to reveal? To say simply, "I'm not married," is such a diminution of the rich relational life that I aspire to. To say, "I'm gay," is to reinforce a notion that gay guys don;t have partners and children, which is not my experience, as well as to be too candid with strangers. To say, "My husband (!) died ten years ago of AIDS," sets off a whole pile of emotions that aren't the best conversation (or relationship) starters. So I just tolerate the question and say that I live alone. And watch a sadness grow in the eyes of the inquirer.
Finally, the gay culture in Flint feels hard to build relationships within. Being the minister of the UU church means that I develop public relationships with all sorts of LGBT people, and quickly; but it also means that I can only be the part of myself which aligns with my ministerial identity. (This, of course, is NOT unique to Flint!) I've been pleased to speak to the LBGT Center at University of Michigan at Flint; happy to think with Genesee County PFLAG leaders; excited to attend Triangle Foundation events and host an appearance by a gay speaker on a national book tour. But these are not dating opportunities. I haven't discovered the places that gay men go for Salsa dancing and speaking Spanish; or the gay-friendly gym with folk that enjoy camp humor; or the circle of gay Democrats (or Greens or Libertarians or Socialists, etc.) who want to critique culture and politics in a deep way and from a point of view that celebrates our marginality and its perspective (as well as holding healthy suspicion about the role of maleness or whiteness in my own development). Gay culture seems wed to bars and private parties, and I haven't found my way in.
I don't have reference points here that shape my sense of myself the way Narragansett Bay and the Lucy Parsons Bookstore and any number of political theaters and galleries do when I am "home" in New England. I know that such reference points for me can (and will) be found. But in these first two years, I have been working--and working hard--to be present fully to Flint and to my congregation. And it has been exhausting work, this worthwhile work that I have chosen. Exhausting.
I look forward to being able to be here more simply; to begin feeling at home in this home; to be able to relax among friends; especially to be able to talk politics and culture and spirituality and camp and sexuality and desire, and, and, and . . . and not feel like a stranger in a strange land.
So I rise and watch the sun . . . and breathe.
Good morning.
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