Samhain and Hopelessness

It's hard to believe that it is already Hallowe'en, that All Saints/All Souls Day is upon us, that the Day of the Dead is here . . .

This is a time, the pagans tell us, when the barriers between the world of the living and the dead ae their thinnest. This liminal time, these few days, now is a time when it is especially apt to ponder mortality and eternity.

I've been thinking of Leonel for the past week. In preparing for last week's sermon (on Universal and All-Conquering Love), I was brought back to the last months of his life, the time when he was in such despair about his life and our life together. His miraculous recovery from Stevens-Johnson Syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis, the extensive killing of his skin due to severe allergy to peniciliin. And his dying in my arms.

I wonder where I'd be in my life if Leonel had not died when he did. He died just as "the cocktail" was beginning to transform AIDS from a death sentence to a manageable chronic illness. I resolved, in my first yar of grieving, that even if he had been put on the cocktail, it would have killed him (all those drugs are poisons, and every new drug brought him to the brink of death before there was any positive result), but I still miss him so.

And in missing him, I wonder if I am totally "stuck."

I look around my house. He would be so proud to be in this place . . . but he would also have insisted that we keep things ordered and uncluttered. Not that his homes didn't have an abundance of "stuff," but his furniture and plants and prints and statues and stained glass were cared for, polished, ready for company.

And then I look at my place, and my life. Large and sprawling, cluttered, weary and weary-making. Hmm.

At this liminal time, can I ask Leonel to be with me for a couple of days, to consider what it is I am up to, and to recommit myself to a simpler and more manageable life, to a focus on the really important and a detachment from that which is less significant?

May I ask Leonel to help me find patience for myself? And may I ask him to help me remember my vocation, both my general vocation to live a considered life, and my special vocation to ordained ministry, and my temporal vocation to this challenging community. And to be open to learn what I need to learn at this time in my development, to allow me to life in ways that are more nurturing and generative . . .

Hallowe'en. Need to clear the front steps and organize the front hall. Get the right bulbs into the sconces on the porch. And figure out my own costume?!?!?

Blue patches emerging among clouds outside. Heart lifted. (Cindy Kallet singing now, "Come on, get your oars and row, darling.") Breathing deeply.

Good morning.

Songs in my Head

It is not uncommon for me to awaken with a song in my head. This morning, it was a song that I love when Music Week conferees at Ferry Beach sing it at least once during nightly sing alongs. My friend Dean Stevens sings it on his album, "Love Comes to the Simple Heart."

Passing Through
by Dick Blakeslee, as sung by Dean Stevens

I saw Adam leave the Garden with an apple in his hand,
I said "Now you're out, what are you going to do?"
"Plant some crops and pray for rain, maybe raise a little cane.
I'm an orphan now, and I'm only passing through."

"Passing through, passing through.
Sometimes happy, sometimes blue,
Glad that I ran into you.
Tell the people that you saw me passing through."

I saw Jesus on the cross on a hill called Calvary
"Do you hate mankind for what they done to you?"
He said, "Talk of love not hate, things to do, it's getting late.
I've so little time and I'm only passing through."

"Passing through, passing through.
Sometimes happy, sometimes blue,
Glad that I ran into you.
Tell the people that you saw me passing through."

And I shivered next to Washington down there at Valley Forge.
"Why do the soldiers freeze here, like they do?"
He said, "Men will suffer, fight, even die for what is right
Even though they know they're only passing through"

"Passing through, passing through . . ."

'Twas at Franklin Roosevelt's side just a while before he died.
He said, "One world must come out of World War Two,
"Yankee, Russian, white or tan, Lord, a man is just a man.
We're all brothers, sisters, only passing through."

"Passing through, passing through . . ."

Gandhi spoke of freedom one night, I said, "Man, we gotta fight!"
He said, "Yes, but love's the weapon we should use,
For with killing, no one wins, its with love that peace begins,
It takes courage when you're only passing through,

"Passing through, passing through
Just a stranger passing through, glad that I made friends with you
Tell the people that you saw me passing through,
Tell the people that you saw me passing through."

I'm not entirely sure why this is the song I'm reaching for this morning. We has a day of drama on Sunday at church, and I completely lost my "non-anxious presence" and slammed a door in high dudgeon. It has been deeply unsettling and I'm trying to chart a way forward.

And so it appears my heart has gone to (another kind of) church!

A favorite quotation about Dean and his music is on his website from a review in 2004, when I was still in Boston. "Seeing and hearing Dean Stevens live on stage is proof that sanity, literacy, love, hope, and the forces of good are still alive and well and at work in the universe.

"Losing your faith? Go to a Dean Stevens concert!"

(Geoff Bartley, February 12, 2004--the night before my 50th birthday!)

One of the things I've missed most in Flint is the folk music scene, which happens in Flint, of course, but not much at our church. (Back home, there's a coffeehouse in every town, often centered at, although autonomous from, the Unitarian Universalist church.) "Back in the day," I could count on going to a folk music concert on Saturday night, sit in the corner alone or among friends, and allow myself to be moved by the message. This has sustained me in ministry, this public sharing of sentiment among people, mostly folk who are out trying to make the world a better place. This has given me hope, and moved my soul.

I'm thinking of concerts by Dean, of course, but also Magpie and Cindy Kallet and emma's revolution. I'm thinking of Jon Fromer, and being "on the line" at Fort Benning. I'm thinking of my dear friend Suzy Giroux, and many memorial services. This tradition of social/political acoustic music, this makes me want to live in spite of challenge.

Gray outside . . . but it is still a little early.

Good morning.

Herman Miller GreenHouse

With a big memorial service (for Flint community leader Hugo Pinti), and a wedding for a couple where the bride was facing significant health issues, and the extended period of working with my new Music Director Pia Broden-Williams (yes!), I didn't get
a day off last week, so moderator Lucy Mercier "suggested" that I needed to take a day off. So I decided to take a day away on the "West Coast" of Michigan, and got a motel room in Holland (Michigan, that is) and planned to see the Herman Miller factory there, The GreenHouse.

. . . and the "Dayne"

On Tuesday morning, I met Dayne Walling, candidate for Mayor of Flint. The contrast with the previous morning with mayor Don Williamson was like night and day. Which, of couse, is expected.

Incumbents have something on which to run--their records. And so for Mayor Williamson to cite statistics about streets paved and city trucks standardized is normal, expected. Opponents need to craft a visionof change--and Dayne Walling certainly did. He projected an openness to collaboration with people, and expressed a confidence that people can tell what they want and need, and that there need to be more, not fewer, voices incolved in decision making.

I was pleased that when I asked him my question about the schools, he was willing to engage the question with some knowledge of not far distant history. Flint was once a model for community education. School buildings, run by the School Board independent of city government, also functioned as community schools, and were often built with City Parks attached. The C.S. Mott Foundation funded the community schools, education taxes funded the public schools, and the city maintained facilities that enhanced public life. The partnership created a system which was admired and emulated.

This partnership is long since ended, but the fact that the city expects to be investing resources in specific communities, as it is able, is impetus to see that the city and the schools are on the same page. Because the capacity of schools far exceeds enrollment, and because of the deterioration of many public facilities, some schools probably need to be closed; but it would be disastrous to have a community targetted for development by the city lose its school. It was refreshing to listen to someone spin a vision of cooperation.

I also was struck with Mr. Walling's confidence that not everything in Flint's governmental history is bad. Where the Mayor tended to express that everyone who comes to City Hall with an idea is looking for a handout at the expense of the taxpayers, and especially the police union, Walling shared a confidence of prior cooperative efforts, such as community policing. He eschewed a "one size fits all" approach and, in the area of policing, called for a mixture of car patrols, bike patrols and walked "beats."

Clearly he is a candidate, and clearly he needs to paint the "big picture" of what might be possible under his leadership. I relate to this, because I'm a "big picture" kind of guy. I also shoot myself in the foot if I don't have the right people around me to make sure the details get managed, bacause when I try to manage details, I sometimes get alternatively distracted and bored or side-tracked and overwhelmed. It will be intersting to see what kind of team he assembles, should Dayne Walling win.

I also have to say that I was annoyed that he was late for our meeting. We were only a half dozen pastors and a couple of staffmembers, but we were kept waiting first as he arrived late and then as he sat in his car and finished some telephione business. My acute annoyance is probably related to my own sense of guilt when I schedule 75 minutes of activity in every hour , , , can I grow in empathy? Even as I express a little annoyance?

I made a decision that as a public figure whose church includes both supporters of the Mayor and those who are working for Walling (and more than a few who are just disgusted that both candidates are White men!), I won't publicly endorse a candidate. Still, I have my opinions which I will share with individuals, and I certainly expect to vote, and will work for change in Flint, either under the present administration or with someone new.

Gray and rainy, and I still have to get a tree into the ground.

My back is very much better, thank you.

Good morning.

Meeting "The Don"

After a very long Sunday (morning service, pot luck luncheon, check in with the leaders of our campus ministry, PFLAG forum, campus ministry forum--WHEW!), you may imagine that I might be looking forward to my Monday morning "sleep in" until 9 a.m. or so. But opportunity knocked in another direction, and I rose early to take part in a conversation between the steering committee of Flint Area Congregations Together (FACT) and Flint Mayor Don Williamson.

I was happy to walk through the door to the Mayor's Office and see June Urdy's smiling face. June is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint, a leader of our Worship Committee and a Board member. June and her husband Steven live downtown in the Cul-de-Sac neighborhood just west of the Cultural Center. June has been working in the Mayor's Office in an appointed position for as long as I can remember, and it was June who asked Patsy Lou Williamson to lend my parents a car for a week when they came to Flint to witness my Installation as Minister of the Flint UU congregation. (My parents and aunts Peachy and Betty loved the SUV.)

The meeting itself was relatively low-key. We wanted to introduce our fledgling organization to the Mayor) and tomorrow to his opponent in the upcoming election) and ask him where he felt he was leading the city. (A speculative question was "What would you like your legacy to be?" but I'm not sure that we asked the question that clearly.)

It was interesting to listen to this man. He wanted to make a connection with us, I think, as he began his remarks by talking about himself as a person who grew up in the church. He didn't describe his faith, but his experience and formation. I liked that. It was clear in his presentation that he knows "how to go to church." Indeed, just about every Sunday he goes to church, and often not his own congregation but one of the larger Black churches in the city. He arrives a half hour early, he told us, and he stays through the whole service. This was one of the few instances I remember in our meeting where he seemed to be a "politician."

The rest of his self-presentation was as a manager. He can tell you how many miles of streets have been paved, and how long our sidewalks are, He could talk in general but specific terms about the deficit he inherited and the balanced budget we now have. He could spew out the numbers of contracts he cancelled to be able to give more work to city agencies and city workers. And he talked about the higher morale among city employees,

He was quickly brought outside his comfort zone when we asked about a couple of issues. Rev. Sims of Quinn Capel AME asked a question about health care, the Mayor paused for a moment and then seaid that he had something to unveil, very soon, but that he hoped we would understand that he wanted to reveal his plan in his own time. A little mysterious, I guess. but not outside my exoerience with other mayors.

I aksed hime to speak about the Flint Public Schools, and it was here that it felt to me that "the manager" was most activatyed. While I know from colleagues that the Mayor is very frustrated by the state of the schools, because we have an independently elected School Board wiht its own funding, the Mayor has no formal role, even as the state of the schools is a crucial element in the revitalization of our city. But the Mayor, as manager, was able to set the questions aside because it isn't in a "department" that is under his supervision.

That was telling to me. It is not that the Mayor has no vision for the city; rather, I think, his area of strength is to manage problems, maybe even to micro-manage problems, and to come up with practical solutions that get the streets paved, limit the number of garages needed to maintain a fleet of city cars and trucks, standardize some procedures so that there is greater efficiency, etc. And he can complain that there simply isn't the revenue through taxation to get all the work done that needs to be accomplished.

It was a great change for me not to have a Mayor breaking out into a tirade at me (loke the Mayor of Boston used to do during the Janitors strike in 2005). The grandfatherly figure trying to do his best . . . left me feeling "warm and fuzzy."

My hope, of course, is that this experience of being in the public with one another will allow FACT as an organization to mature in our relationships and to focus in our work together. Mayors come and go, but the organization we hope to build ought to remain.

Cool this morning, and grey. My back is killing me, but I am awake!

Good morning,

Long Night, Early Morning

Yesterday morning, I was rather relaxed as I prepared to go to work. I had written in the blog, had processed some of the previous week, had sat still and breathed a while. After a shower, but not a shave, I put on pretty casual clothes to get to church for a 10 o'clock Membership Committee meeting . . . and noticed that there was a message waiting on my cell phone. (Must have caught me during the shower.) I returned our Sexton's call, and learned, as I turned the corner onto Ballenger Highway, that the church had been burglarized.

A police car from Flint Township was out front, and a group of members were congregatiing around Cheryl, our office assistant, and looking at the mess. All the computers--including my one month old Duo Core iMac--had been stolen, the doors into the office and the communicating door to my study had been kicked in, a mirror on my door was broken, the Brown University chair my parents bought for me was upturned . . . and even my 250 GB external hard drive--with all my backups--was gone. Whew! I was stunned. (But growing angry.)

It's hard to reason this through. The value of the old computers was minimal. What someone might get from a pawn shop (or fence?) would be so little compared to the inconvenience of replacing doors, changing locks, closing bank accounts, cancelling credit cards . . . to say nothing of the dozens of forms on the office computer, the sermons and newsletter articles and the lecture series I worked on for seven months (oh, God!). What a pain this will be to recover where possible, to recreate where necessary, to give up where lost.

The day then was topsy-turvied with visits to the bank, calls to the insurance company, alternative arrangements to get out the church's weekly e-mail update, and preparation for Monday School. Monday School itself was touching, emotional and satisfying for me, and I hope it was for the students, too. We shared more of our spritual journeys, and considered the ways we humans develop our spirituality and for our ideas about God and humanity and religious community and ethics.

Late at night, as the door to the office could not be reliably secured, two members of the Church Board and I spent the night in the church. I slept (peacefully!) on the sofa bed in my study (a gift of Val Neumann, second from the right) and her husband Tom Weslowki; Jennifer Howard (on the left) and Linda Campbell (on the right) slept on cots in the office. They spent time puttering around the church while I was at home trying to pull up my electronic calendar and restore my e-mail accounts on the old iMac at home. when I got there, we watched a couple of episodes of Season 1 of "Absolutely Fabulous," and I laughed away a bit of my anger and anxiety.

Early this morning, Jennifer got up to bring a new key to the sunrise AA group (they start to show up at 6:30), and Linda went home to begin her motherly schedule of getting the boys off to school before her own work day. I didn't hear them leave, but got up, I'm sure, just minutes after they left. I watched the sun rise, spoke to a few guys from the Early Birds, and then tried to arrange these few thoughts.

I slept well last night. Slept with my CPAP machine rather soundly. Woke with the sheets in a ball--as usual. Was a little sad and, well, weary, I guess. Then checked to see if the schedule is clear this morning to get off to the computer store to figure out what's next.

Through the sadness, still the morning is clear. A little too warm. Wondering if it will be muggy.

Step by step.

Good morning.

Where Did the Week Go?

I wish I could figure out how to download a photograph from my cellular telephone. Last Tuesday morning, I got a phone call from Amy Derrick, Director of Lifespan Learning at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint, Michigan. She sounded radiant, and announced the birth of Alexandra Elizabeth Derrick that morning, a little before 3 a.m., a few ounces short of 8 pounds. Within a few minutes of our phone call, she had taken a photo of a little agnel sleeping peacefully, and sent it to my cellphone where it sits in my "saved messages" folder . . . but where I can't figure out how to e-mail it to myself or otherwise download it.

That morning, I was in Loveland, Ohio at Grailville, an intentional community that was hosting a three day meeting of the Heartland Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association. The Heartand includes most of the UU congregations in Michigan, a few congregations in western Ohio, most of the congregations in Indiana and all of those in Kentucky. Parish ministers, ministers of religious education and community ministers, as well as retirees and ministerial interns and students, are members of the Heartland Chapter, and we are all part of a continental Association of UU ministers.

Each year, we meet three times. In the fall, we convene for three days near where the states of Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky meet. In the winter, we spend five days together where the states of Ohio, Indiana and Michigan meet. In the spring, me meet for one day before the Annual Meeting of the Heartland District of the Unitarian Universalist Assocation, which meeting moves around the district. (in my first spring, it was in Indianapolis; last spring it took place in Grand Rapids, next year it will meet in Louisville.)

The Grailville meeting begins on Monday evening. Because I am teaching a course in our Monday School, and because Amy is on maternity leave (!), I felt I needed to miss the first evening of the Grailville meeting, and drove with my colleague Rev. Jane Thickstun, minister of the Midland, Michigan UU Fellowship after class, leaving Flint a few minutes before nine and arriving in Grailville a just before two a.m. And a few mimutes later, Alexandra was born, and a few hours later I got thr call!

Throughout the day on Tuesday, my ministerial colleagues and I shared hours of sitting and sharing around the Four Divine Abodes of Buddhism, metta (loving kindness), karuna (compassion), mudita (appreciative joy) and upekkha (equanimity). We shared in a style like the Covenant Circle small group ministry of my congregation, sharing readings and stories of our own lives, attentively listening to each other and sitting in silence, noting questions raised by our being with one another, and then leaving. The format of the day reflected an aspiration of our chapter: that we not only meet and learn together, but that we practice our spirituality with one another in a sustained way.

I have been without a laptop since I used my Powerbook as a toboggan in mid-August and broke its hinge. (I continued to use it as a desktop computer through the end of the month when the display began to flicker. Then I bought a shiny new iMac for my desk at church, along with this old iMac at home.) Had I had a lapotp in Grailville, I might have used it to blog. Instead, I took a few notes on paper (which are now in my study at church). But it is probably more important to me that I actually stopped for a day, sat still, let my emotions (fears and anxieties, you know) be present and then followed the breath to another, deeper place. That place, so distant in my everyday life. With even the feeblest intention, and a few very deep breaths, that place becomes imaginable.

I love maps. On the way down to Loveland and back, I wanted to be sure about where we were on the map, to be sure that I knew where Jeffersonville and Indianapolis are, places where I have colleagues whom I'd love to visit. I used to have an atlas by my bed. At night, as I prepared to dream, I loved to look at that atlas, to see the latitude of Mosow and l"Anse aux Meadows, of Reykjavik and Santo Domingo. I loved to see where I'd been in the world, places to which I longed to return, places I wanted to visit for the first time. I love maps.

Sitting with my colleagues, I longed for a fuller map of the soul, of my soul. For a richer, more descriptive pattern and plan for achieving some kind of illumination. Not that there haven't been moments on my life of deep "knowing," but how often they have come to me in dramatic, unexpected ways. I speak of the majesty of the world often, of the large bodies of water that put me in touch with everything, of the train-trek to Pilatus to enjoy a snowball fight in July, of the Grand Cayon where I sat and stared and wondered.

But I haven't shared with anyone, that I can remember, my story of being overwhelmed "by everything" when I visited the basilica of Sacre Coeur on Montmartre in Paris, or my varied experiences with pentecostal worship, or even the step by step climbing to the Oratory of St. Joseph in Montreal. How do these experiences fit into the map of me? How does my desire to study maps of the St. James pilgrimages in France and Spain mirror and more fully explain my desire to delve mor deeply into my spiritual path? And what does it mean that I "know" that my "knowing" has much to do with walking side by side with janitors and nursing hme workers and undocumented immigrants in their quest for full humanity and justice.

Wednesday brought the long ride home, and on Thursday lots of catching up. The study, e-mail and phone messages. The calendar. A delicious dinner with Marion Van Winkle and Dr. Van. A distinguished lecture at Mott Community College by Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Friday morning (on my day off) I met with Dr. Rayna Bick to cover last minute arrangements for Sunday's service, a special report by our congregational volunteers who went to New Orleans to do post-Katrina rebuilding. More tasks! Then on Saturday, the March for Peace in honor of Gandhi's birthday; and a wedding; and technical preparation for Sunday morning; and too short a night of sleep; and then a full Sunday.

And then some exhaustion.

What stops on the map of the week? Picking tomatoes. Watering newly planted birches. Harvesting a dozen gladioli, and sharing them with a neighbor. Walking to work this morning. (I'm just about to do this!)

And watching the sun rise. So late! Nearly eight o'clock before the sun is really up. (Almanac says sunrise was at 7:40.) Muggy morning, with the sound of buzz saw in the neighborhood. The "white noise" of the expressway in the distance.

And me breathing. Hmm.

Good morning.

Slept through the Alarm Clock

"Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on sleeping in." It was hard, after a very full weekend, to get up this morning. Rising on Mondays is always a little difficult for me. On Sunday, I usually rise quite early; I almost always take a nap at 3 on Sunday afternoon. If that nap goes longer than 45 minutes or so, I might have trouble getting to sleep . . . and then rising Monday becomes a chore.

Yesterday I learned in church that the Sk8boarding Exhibition at the church on Saturday had been the success we hoped it would be. Our Youth Group (and their advisors!) proposed last spring an exhibition by the Flint Skateboarding Team with ramps and an emcee from Captive Sports, the local skate shop. Kim, their manager, has been a great person iwth whom to work, and the excitement of our Youth Group grew as we finally chose a date and began to solicit volunteers in the congregation, and to promote the event at schools.

The volunteers certanly showed up, and from everyone I've only heard positive reports. I think the general feeling of excitement and good will is growing in our church around events like these, and I can only hope that we will continue to become involved with each other's lives in reaching out to the community. I think in my sermon yesterday I said something about learning, as a youth, that being part of our church actually meant something; that it provided a place of formation for me and my colleagues to know that our church ws about speaking publicly the truth that we are each other's keepers, that when a farmworker family hurts (as we learned when I was a kid), my family was hurting; when a farmworker was celebrating, I could be celebrating.

I'm told that families who came with their kids delighted in the playground behind our church; enjoyed strolling through our Memorial Garden; walked with their children our Labyrinth. This is only a start to introducing our congregation to the community, and it is only the most recent of many such starts; but it helped to embody our aspirations of being a welcoming community for children and families, a core statement of our vision for our church.

There was plenty of good energy at church on Sunday, and I'm discovering that we can create a rich and beautiful time together that welcomes the community in and sends the congregation out. I'm loving more and more our music. A participant in a "Theology Talks" discussion spoke of the magival moment when the children were ringing the welcome bell and an "Alleluia" sung by our Music Director Pia Broden-Williams joined the bells. That moment, its precious beauty, the wonder of happenstance, the sounds outside pouring in and inside singing out, all that symbolizes my hopes for our church, and for the ministry that I help co-create and lead.

Late yesterday afternoon, I arose from my slightly too-long nap soon enough to get up and get out of the house. I went to see "Ratatouille" (along with two other people in the theater, by my count) at the urging of a dear friend back East, Fran Early. The movie was wonderful, of course, and I loved the Parisian jazz throughout (reminded me of the appearance by Paris Combo, the first concert I heard when I come to Flint). But the "Oh-my-God" surprising moment for me was at the bite of the sour restaurant critic into the dish prepared specially for him. How a cartoon could telescpe back to the time of innocence and bring me with it to my own childhood, I can't understand or believe. And yet it happened, and I burst into tears. For a moment, I was with my Ma, and everything was going to be all right. (How Disney!) Wow.

Not a bad place to be.

Pale, gray skies. Crisp air. Some luminescence above the garage . . . perhaps the sun will indeed appear?

Good morning.