Grailville

I returned from a retreat at Grailville last evening after a drive from Loveland, Ohio to Detroit, Michigan and then Detroit to Springfield Heights. I drove with my colleague Rev. Karen McFarland to Detroit, and then my colleague Rev. Leonetta Bugliesi to her Springfield Heights home. It was a crazy combination of ride sharing, both to Grailville and than back home, which gave me a chance to spend good hours in building collegial relations coming and going.

Grailville is the leading center of The Grail in the United States. The Grail is a women's movement based in Christian spirituality that seeks to promote interreligious relationships, community and power. Started in the Netherlands in the 1920s, it is an international community of women. 

I concluded my stay in Grailville with some private time before breakfast, walking the path beyond the barn-turned-chapel Oratory to the back pasture where the telephone pole installation "Poles" stands. Robert Wilson created "Poles" with the help of many volunteers in 1967, transforming the pasture into a performance space. Three arches--like a stage's proscenium--form a gateway to the open field. A collection of poles stands like the rows of seating in a theater facing a smaller portion of the open space, edged by the graves of members of the Grail and the Grailville community.

I read that "Poles" was restored in 2001; but since I began visiting Grailville in the fall of 2005, the monumental collection has again become overgrown with trees and vines. I am neither disheartened nor pleased by this development. I am, instead, led to wonder. I wonder what it looks like in the spring and summer, when the grass is coming back to life not coated with the heavy dew of autumn. I wonder what performances have happened on the site, and how the site is used in these days of a sober spirituality about sustainability. I wonder if anyone imagined what a star Robert Wilson became, and wonder how he came to know the Grailville community, and vice versa. And does he have a connection to them now?

For me, the quiet of the rock covered graves, the names of the sisters of the Grail and their companion brothers and sisters, the simple plantings and variously decorated gravestones . . . and the notion I feel that the Poles give witness to a performance that continues beyond their deaths . . . all these move me to find a moment, each year, to be alone with the Poles, to be alone with the weather (yesterday a cool drizzle) and to be lost in my monkey mind thoughts.

I am happy to be in the Heartland, to be among colleagues, to be on this human and Unitarian Universalist journey, and especially to be able to take a little time away from my routine.    

Hillary stumping for Barack

I was ever-so-pleased to be asked by the Genesee County Barack Obama campaign to give the opening Invocation tonight at Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's appearance in Flint. The gymnasium at Carman-Ainsworth High School was packed, and Senator Clinton was at the top of her game--sharp, funny, passionate, clear. The crowd loved her and loved her message.

After the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem, I asked that everyone hold someone's hand. "We're all in this together," I said.

Here's my prayer . . .

"O Thou whom no person at any time hath seen,

And yet who, in all the ages and places of the human story,

hath revealed yourself

in the hope of parents for their children

in the faith of all who care for our elders, for the infirm,

for the dispossessed and the abandoned,

and in the love that we know and we strive to share with others,

reveal yourself again to us.

"Be with us, divine presence, in our hearts, in our minds and in our actions

as we come together, a people in a blessed nation,

called to be each other's keepers,

and called to accept the challenge of democracy as our own.

"Let us believe in each other and in the common good.

Let us live into the promises of our nation

of equality, freedom and shared prosperity.

Let us consider wisely our selection of leaders

and the expectations we place upon them.

"O holy One, known in each house of worship, in all holy words,

in deeds of righteousness and mercy,

and in the beauty of this created world;

be with us and our nation in the weeks and days before us

  and even in this very moment.

Bless us and our nation that we might be a blessing to this word.

"By every holy name we pray, Amen."

10 Years, and counting

My church marked the 10th Anniversary of my ordination a couple of weeks ago. I was especially pleased that we invited Dean Stevens to come from Boston to present a concert. Dean invited two young musicians, Chloe and Chris, from Milan, Michigan to share in the concert. And then Dean stayed over to perform at our Sunday morning service.

The weekend of his visit was one of the rainiest we've had, and Dean made the choice not to drive to Grand Rapids and Indiana to visit family and friends, but rather to stay at my home, to practice and read and stare out the window.

One great gift Dean gave me was the observation that I live in a beautiful home. He shared that he could see the rooms where work was still being done, the rooms where work hasn't even started, and the mismatched furniture. Still, what a grand yard! What a relaxing library! What joy to have a pretty good piano in the living room! What a place to put your feet up and enjoy a book!

Of course, what he says is true. I don't look at my place and see its charm. Rather I'm weighed down by its expense, I'm sometimes immobilized by the thought of its declining value, and I so wish that the _____ (kitchen, living room, bathroom, you fill in the blank) could be finished. Cheaply. Soon.

I purchased a beautiful glass mezuzah when I was in Fort Lauderdale for UUA General Assembly in June. I finally got it up on the doorpost. I know that I'm appropriating someone else's culture, but I think it is the resident culture of the home I am only beginning to be owned by, and I mean it to honor the Golden family, not to dishonor Judaism. It has two scrolls in it, one traditional Hebrew scroll and another with the UU principles. It pleases me.

  

My friend Jack came to visit, and gave me a hand in putting up new curtains in the living room and sun room. They're somewhat sheer linens with a simple silkscreened pattern that is very Scandinavian. I need to get some more attractive rods, and raised them 10 inches or so . . . but they make it feel, more and more, like it is my house.

My dear friend Elissa showed up this weekend and spent a day helping me get my recyclables to the recycling center. We put up another coat of faux Venetian plaster, in a less red color, and I am so pleased. With just a little more of a skim coat, a good dry, cure and burnishing, the kitchen will be ready to be declared "done," at least for my living. (For selling, some day, it will need to be neutered, beiged, toned down!) But I'm close, I'm close.

The furniture has largely been rearranged. I have a new bed (from IKEA) that I enjoy. I need to figure out the dining room. But hey, it is a beautiful house, a great place to relax, a wonderful place to live, a supportive place to be. 

Midsommar

It has been seven and a half weeks since I last blogged, seven and a half weeks of drawing conclusions and hoping for a significant change in my life. I'm happy to say that, in the past ten days, that I feel a new "centeredness," a new energy for my work, and a clearer space for relationships with family, friends, my congregation and its leaders, and my own future.

Some of this has been about money. I have been financially strapped since before moving to Michigan, and month by month have been catching up. Except for the surprising news that my mortgage company did not pay my winter taxes in February (?!?), I have gotten caught up with just about everything (and I'm writing that tax check to the city right now, and will call the company in the morning before I leave for UUA General Assembly).  

Much of this has been about the conflict in our church, a conflict which arose out of very bad interactions among several individuals and which is seen by most as a personality conflict. The notion "can't we all just get along" has led more than a few people to blame me for not "handling" the situation, hoping that I'd be the rescuer who would protect innocent victims from an abuser. The problem in the church is that different people feel victimized, and different people have been blamed as the abusers. And my reaction throughout has been to reject the rescuer role, to try to get (adult) people to interact directly with one another and to refer to our covenantal understandings to guide our interactions. This has made the process slow and long . . . but I finally feel that it has been exhausted.

As have I.

But that is a conclusion of sorts. And a combination of letters sent to members, conversations with many people, and a workshop with Rev. Barbara Child has brought us all to a new place.

Much of this has to do with my body. I put on even more weight during the conflict in January,February and March. I have been walking with the Crim Training Program (four miles yesterday) as a way of getting my body moving and getting my weight under control. My plan is to walk the ten-mile Crim in August, and the training program gives me some help along the way, along with another group of non-UU Flint residents with whom to relate. And it is motivating--even if dificult to participate in fully due to my Tuesday evening meetings and frequent time away from Flint in the summer.

Well, it is now clearly time to head off to church to finish up this morning's video display (more on this later). The tomatoes in the back yard are happy--I spoke to them a few minutes ago--and the Renaissance re-enacters on the church back lawn will soon be rising with the sun.

Birds chirping outside. Sky turning to a warmer blue.

Valborgsmässoafton

or Walpurgis Night.

If I were "home" in Rhode Island, I might be attending a Valborg celebration with my family at Little Rhody Vasa Park. (In truth, of course, I bet they'd celebrate not on April 30th but on the closest weekend!) We'd have some Swedish food (with some Italian specialties--I mean, it IS Rhode Island) and a folklorist would share a story and a song. We might build a bonfire (to ward of demonic spirits) and the children might enact running the Winter Witch out of the community. (Lots of layers here.) And there might be a little drinking. Just a little. (Right.)

Wikipedia says that Walpurgisnacht (German) is the time of the "Enclosure of the Fallen." Odin died to retrieve the special knowledge of the runes, and this night of his death is a time when, like on Hallowe'en and All Saints/All Souls, the boundary between the living and the dead is especially slim. It represents a night of chaos when the dead walk among us and might communicate with us. Bonfires contain (enclose?) the dead and protect us from confusion. All creation awaits the return of order with the coming of the sun on May Day, the beginning of summer. (Mid-summer is marked on June 21 with the summer equinox.)

April 30th marks the end of the academic year, and at universities, I'm told, students (and I bet a professor or two) spend the night with peers, singing and drinking and carrying on. Enormous bonfires are built in the weeks leading up to Valborg, perhaps mirrored in the countryside by people having spent weeks pruning trees and then building fires to burn out any mold that has accumulated with the spring's rain. I'm told people expect to sleep away the next morning.

Tonight at our church, we'll have another session in our series of meetings talking about reconciliation in our community. Tonight will be a conversation about shared leadership, shared ministry. I expect that the dozen or so of us who converse will find much agreement, even with differing emphases. I'll hope to post the results of our conversations, even as I try to create a ritual based on our thoughts. 

Reconciliation

Our Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint is a diverse community struggling with some growing pains. We embrace, in our words, a mission that says we are "growing in numbers, diversity and purpose," and at the same time, fear that by growing in numbers we will lose something of our intimate community. Our shared culture contains, like that of many churches, some behavior patterns that are from the small, family-sized church, some of the slightly larger pastoral church we have been for decades, and aspirations to be a larger, program church with an exciting program in lifespan learning, a diverse music ministry a campus ministry, etc.

You can tell that there will be missteps and hurt feeling when the community represents such a clash of cultures. It can't be helped! I know that I disappoint people every day, act (and act out?) in ways that are inconsistent with people's expectations of me. When I can, I say a heartfelt "I'm sorry" and hope that it will be accepted and we can go forward. But other times, it is the inevitable conflict of expectations that exists in a complex system that puts me in a difficult place--and puts our volunteers in difficult places, too. And it feels as if there is no way out.

One "way" ("iter" in Latin, right??) that we are trying is an iterative dialogue that has been held on two occasions, facilitated by Bob Brown, Associate Director of University-Community Partnerships of Michigan State University. Our first conversation of reconciliation looked at what I consider an essential for accomplishing shared ministry, the notion of co-creation. I was pleased that the following words were created by the first group of conversants--although I'm not sure any of the others expected that I might use them in a liturgical setting for our whole church. But I did!

The resulting Sunday service, yesterday, moved many of the participants. It affirmed my thought that, if we are to be about establishing the "new norms" that will let our church grow in numbers to be more effective in Genesee county, more dialogue like this needs to undertaken. More liturgies need to be created. Fuller celebration of the ideas of shared responsibility and opportunity needs to be experienced by our community, starting, I think, with me. (You may say that it needs to start with you!)

Reading of Reconciliation
Leaders: To co-create is to be collaborative, to be mutually beneficial to all and our church.
People: It is about the well-being of the whole, about the best interest of our church.
It is about intentionally planning change together, finding common direction.
It is about teamwork, inclusion and respect.
It is about achieving more together than can be achieved alone.

Leaders: To co-create is to seek diversity in voices and ideas.
People: It is about honoring differences in viewpoints and ideas.
It is about finding space for the expression of those differences.
It is about reconnecting with those who feel left out, alienated, overlooked.

Leaders: To co-create is to share power; it is the exercise of shared power.
People: It is about shared leadership, empowering individuals & committees to act.
It is about building our collective capacity to act.
It is about accountability to the whole.
It is about understanding that we as individuals will not always agree with the whole.

Leaders: To co-create is to move from what is, to what can be.
People: It is about being open to change, to new ideas.
It is about unlimited possibilities and realizing potential.
It is about not being restrained by what is.

Leaders: To co-create is to be responsive to each other’s and the church’s needs.
People: It is about all of us being sensitive to one another’s feelings and beliefs.
It is about everyone feeling safe and free to express points of view.

Leaders: To co-create is to check our egos at the door.
People: It is about inter-subjectivity.
It is about “I-Thou” relating, instead of “I-It.”

Leaders: To co-create is to build on all of our strengths.
People: It is about accepting that our entire community is in the process of co-creating.
It is about respect for each other in all interactions.

Leaders: To co-create is to work together in an understood and agreed upon process.
People: It is about deciding collectively how we work together.
It is about the ongoing dissemination of our working-together processes.
It is about evolving our processes together if needed.

Meditation

Words of Encouragement
Leaders: How do we know when we are not co-creating successfully? We are not co-creating:
People: When we are not listening or communicating.
When goals are not mutually agreed upon.
When goals are not being met.
When things go bad.
When nothing new is being made.
When challenges to authority are stifled.

Leaders: How do we know when we are co-creating successfully? We are co-creating:
People: When mutually agreed upon goals are being met and they are good for our church.
When we hear the collective, “Wow!”
When grievances are resolved.
When diversity is apparent.
When it feels that things are going right—we’re “in the flow.”
When we are interconnected and not in silos.
When we honor multiple ways of making meaning.
When we are communicating and connecting in a positive way.
When our traditions and history are being honored.
When we check the relevance of our history and traditions.
When we feel safe to voice any opinion.
When we hear laughter.

Promises to Keep

I slept in the day after Easter, rather wiped out, and then rushed around a bit yesterday. So finally I am up and about . . . and thinking about this profession, this full-time, called and settled ministry that sometimes unsettles me.

I have been thinking about the ordination promises I made years ago. Standing before the church that raised me, the Committee on Church and Ministry that held me "in care" during seminary, and with colleagues in the United Church of Christ and other traditions, I was asked these questions, and I gave these responses:

David Carl Olson, before God and this congregation, we ask you:

Are you persuaded that God has called you to be an ordained minister of the church of Jesus Christ, and are you ready with the help of God to enter this ministry and to serve faithfully in it?

(I am.)

Do you, with the church throughout the world, hear the word of God in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and do you accept the word of God as the rule of Christian faith and practice?

(I do.)

Do you promised to be diligent in your private prayers and in reading the scriptures, as well as in the public duties of your office?

(I do, relying on God's grace.)

Will you be zealous in maintaining both truth of the gospel and the peace of the church, speaking the truth in love?

(I will, relying on God's grace.)

Will you be faithful in preaching and teaching the gospel, in administering the sacraments and rites of the church, and in exercising pastoral care and leadership?

(I will, relying on God's grace.)

Will you keep silent all confidences shared with you?

(I will, relying on God's grace.)

Will you regard all people with equal love and concern and undertake to minister impartially to needs of all?

(I will, relying on God's grace.)

Do you accept the faith and order of the United Church of Christ and will you, as an ordained minister in this communion, ecumenically reach out to all who are in Christ and show Christian love to people of other faiths and people of no faith?

(I do and I will, relying on God's grace.)

These promises I call to mind virtually every day. I think that's part of being called to ministry. I may need to interpret them through my own skeptical, liberal, modern lenses, yet still, I hold to them, use them to bind me to a people and to a purpose.

Rev. Alma Faith Crawford preached at my service of ordination, and Rev. Raymond Bradley, Jr. prayed. My Dad presented me with a stole, and my sister Donna a robe that she designed and sewed, and for which the whole family found a variety of buttons. When I robe, when I put on my stole, when I preach, when I pray, all of them are present to me in a vital way; and I think of my promises.

Happy that Easter has come, and that spring will find Flint very soon.

Good afternoon.

Close to Home, Close to Tears

I performed a Memorial Service last night in Byron, Michigan followed by a reception at the Eagles Aerie in Durand. On the drive home to Flint, I burst into tears and realized that I have been living into what I asked for when I moved to Flint. It feels so hard.

Unitarian Universalism, in my experience, is clearly localized in upper middle class and suburban culture. We joke sometime about an "M.A." as the price of admission to membership in our churches. We say we expect a learned ministry (although we really don't have much of one, anymore, but rather a professionally prepared clergy), and yet are satisfied that our members are often smarter than our ministers.

When it was clear to me that it was time for me to leave Community Church of Boston, I met with a leading colleague in Boston who looked with me at the list of congregations that were in search. He read a list of eight wealthy suburban congregations in eastern Massachusetts, and said he thought I could use my public position as President of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization and frequent supportive spokesperson of the janitors union in their struggles as a way to become minister of one of these powerful pulpits. I rejected that notion outright. Not that I don't want to have a meaningful ministry among people with resources; but there are plenty of well-prepared ministers who can serve in those locations.

I come from a working-class family, my Dad a maintenance man in a vinyl factory and later a sheet-metal rolling mill, my mom working in the home until all the kids were in school, and then working restaurant and clerical jobs often on a part-time basis. I was the first person in my family among all my cousins to go to college, and even now I am in a minority among my cousins.

Still, this upper middle class liberal religion has been lifesaving for me. In Unitarian Universalism I have found a place to be the free-thinker that I am; to live openly my homosexuality and radical politics; to find friends who care deeply for the earth and for the people who live closest to the earth, those who, because of their economic resources, have fewer options than the wealthy to move to other places, to avoid the poisoning of the earth and the commodification of our food and our lives.

I came to Flint to pursue a multi-class and multi-cultural Unitarian Universalism. I came to be in a place where there might be the possibility of leading a racially-diverse community. I came here to be able to sit with working-class families in their joy and grief, to accompany them in their experience of injustice, to offer them a broad and liberal way out of circumstances and thinking that might have been straitened by the relentless attacks of our economic system on working people, families and communities.

Here I was, after sitting in the simple home of a grieving man who had lost his partner of 25 years and who wanted, in his grief, not to be bombarded with anti-gay messages; here I was with his sister who had watched her brother struggle for many years and finally to die only weeks after his 50th birthday; here I was trying to speak a truth about the tremendous value of worthy lives that might be considered less significant than those lives of the wealthy, educated, powerful.

I asked for this ministry, and here it is. And yet the truth that I don't experience in my everyday life is that a working class life is a familied life, a communal life; to find myself without a family here, without much of a community beyond my employment here, is difficult, lonely.

And so a drive last night with many tears.

The morning is bright, snow is steady and beautiful, just at freezing and pretty "even." I'm leaving later this morning to see the first showing of "Semi Pro" in Flint at noon. Looking forward to THAT! (And yet, I'll be doing this alone. Hmm.)

Good morning.

Black History, Children's Books

Last night, Prof. Rose Casement, a member of our congregation, gave a passionate presentation on her brilliant, inspirational and comprehensive book, Black History in the Pages of Children's Literature (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008). I spent much of the presentation in tears.

This is not a book review. The book is described by its publisher thusly:

"In spite of the month of February being designated as Black History Month, few students, regardless of race, leave school with an understanding of the depth and breadth of Black experience in America. Black History in the Pages of Children's Literature presents Black history contextualized in chapters that provide both an introduction to historical periods and an annotated bibliography of outstanding children's literature that can be used to introduce and teach the history of each period. These children's books provide stories and information that can help students develop deeper understandings of the distinct history of African Americans within the encompassing history of America.

"Author Rose Casement provides a complete historical timeframe from pre-colonization to the present, with chapters specifically covering the colonization of North America, the years of slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the role African Americans played in westward expansion, the Jim Crow years, and contemporary stories that depict the present. Accompanying each chapter's bibliography are notations as to the recommended grade levels for the books presented. A glossary of terms and an index are also provided for clarification and easy access to specific areas of study. Teachers, parents, librarians, and administrators who want to gain a greater understanding of Black history will find this book to be a good resource."

In her presentation, in which she cited about twenty books which she had at hand, Prof. Casement asked us to be attentive to providing some guidance to our children as they read this literature. "Is it historically true?" is only one of the questions we must consider. "Does it tell the story in a way that children can understand?" is a great consideration. Kids know about whether things are fair, they can understand when events are right and wrong. Children can write their own experiences and feelings into the narrative of other people's lives.

"Does it romanticize history?" is a great question, one which asks us to confront the reduction of certain Black leaders from the truth of their brilliance and courage. Last night Prof. Casement read a quotation from a Lewis and Clark picture book a page where York, the enslaved companion of Clark, looks into the northern lights and, just for a moment, forgets that he has been enslaved. Such romanticism needs to be undone, talked through with children, given a context that they can understand.

I'll leave reading the book to you (and I hope you will). But I will share that Casement brings a sense of the resourcefulness of teachers, parents, librarians and others who help form our children. Her presentation showed her trust that we want to do the right thing for our kids--Black kids and white kids and all kids--but that we, like they, need better tools to do the right thing. And she tries to provide these tools. She quotes from each of the books she would have us read, and trusts that her quotations will make us want to read the books cited. She groups the books by historical topic, and then gives us indications of age appropriateness. She gives us a glossary.

I was struck by her appeal for literacy reparations. It is a passionate, political and very Unitarian Universalist appeal. She looks at a historical truth--that illiteracy was one of the legal shackles imposed on the Africans and African Americans held in slavery and that those who talk Black folk to read and write could be severely punished--and its lack of remedy--the interruption/abandonment of Reconstruction and the restoration of economic slavery--and then the current state we find--low literacy rates, insufficient libraries and failing schools in urban centers like Flint--and asks that we find ways to do literacy reparation on a massive scale in our inner city schools and communities, providing the best books, the best teachers, the most modern equipment, the most complete hi-tech capacities, etc. The kids still need meaningful employment on the far side of education, of course, and they need hope; but they need tools and teachers, and Casement's book hopes to be one in the service of the other.

Conflict and the Too-Busy Life

Life has been too-full of late, including a weekend in Des Moines, Iowa filling the pulpit of a colleague on sabbatical, and a weekend in Cincinnati for the Heartland UU District Board of Trustees, on which I am a Member At-Large.

This doesn't mean I haven't been writing, but it does mean that until my laptop got fixed (It is now, hurrah!), I haven't had the capacity easily to post. I'll post a few thoughts in the next couple of days, but for now I want to share my latest newsletter column from The Flint Unitarian Universalist.

=====

Dear congregation, our members and friends,

You may know that I have a somewhat split personality when it comes to matters of faith. I’ve told you that my working faith understanding is one of humanism, an understanding that the natural world contains all that is, and that we don’t need the supernatural to reliably live with one another—and the earth—morally and ethically, joyously and aesthetically. Still, the religion of my upbringing ties me to the stories of Jesus, teacher, brother and friend, organizer and rabblerouser, and—mystically, impossibly—the savior and redeemer of all that is.

The task of resolving the conflicts among these understandings is mine. That’s what I believe, and that’s what our liberal religion promotes. Each of us uses this religious community to help us on our spiritual growth, letting us create provisional answers for life’s large questions. We seek universal answers even as we expect that we must remain wide open to the unexpected, to the challenging, to the diverse.

We say we want to behave with one another in ways that allow for a multiplicity of provisional answers to our many questions. We say that we want to welcome the stranger, to encourage each other, to allow for difference. Still, we get into trouble with each other because—well, because we are human. Our human differences, the differences of our experiences, the differences of our self-assessments and our assessments of other people’s capacity (or incapacity!), our brokenness and alienation often leave us in bad behavior and conflict.

Conflict is not a bad thing. Understood and addressed, it can be a motor for improvement, evolution. When those of us who are in conflict bring, face-to-face, our differences; when we listen as well as speak; when our interaction causes us to better refine our own positions, we may learn better who we, ourselves, are and what the specific contribution is that we might make to our common life.

Conflict that is avoided can cause us to look at the world around us not as it really is. Conflict that is avoided can send up that marvelous river “Denial,” and leave us adrift. Conflict avoided can harm us.

By the same token, conflict that escalates—and conflict can escalate quickly!—can be very harmful and hurtful. Conflict escalates when, rather than bringing a question or problem to the person who can help resolve the question, it is spread around through rumor and gossiping and further avoiding the real problems and personalities.

Speed Leas of the Alban Institute identifies five levels of conflict in congregations:
I is “A Problem to Solve”;
II is “A Disagreement”;
III is “A Contest among Parties”;
IV is “Fight or Flight”; and
V is “Intractable Conflict.”

When we have confusion or disagreement about something, we can resolve it in the first two conflict levels and decide how to act together. (Sometimes we vote. Sometimes we figure out who is supposed to be responsible.)

When we get into that difficult place where the conflict is not about the “issues” but about the people or personalities with whom we disagree, or when we begin to threaten to leave, or when we know that the only way out is the annihilation of the opposing party, then we are stuck in a place that requires some outside help to work things through and find a resolution—one where, usually, not all parties will be happy!

Our interactions with one another reveal plenty of places where we there is lack of clarity about process, and some confusion about responsibility for programs and decisions. Some places we find that we don’t all agree with the decisions we’ve made with one another. This is normal. We keep talking, trying to listen more completely and speak more precisely. Sometimes we learn just to be quiet and listen to the sound of our own hearts.

We have times set aside this month. An “after church conversation” on Mar. 2. The “Open” service on Mar. 30. Additional times which will be set for small group interaction in a more relaxed setting.

When the conflict we face is larger, (Level IV? Level V!) we may need to ask someone outside to help us talk through our differences. We may need to look at other congregational “right relations” policies to address challenges that we have. We might need to ask a consultant to help us express a radical honesty about our differences. We might have to unearth our fears about the church, its direction and future.

Maybe it is here that I’m happiest that I have this “Jesus loving” side. On the Christian side of my split personality, I know that there is a God—and it is not I!—and that there is a resurrection hope beyond the pain of change and conflict. I know that there is, somehow, a way that everything can be saved, redeemed.

My practice each spring in the weeks leading to Easter is to set aside time daily to be quiet, to study and meditate, even to pray. I’ve been blessed to do this, since Paczki Day (thanks for the Polish pastries!), in ways that make sense to my spiritual quest: watching a video class on great ideas in philosophy, reading the biblical prophets, listening to devotional music, leading interfaith chanting among colleagues . . . and keeping you in my heart.

“Morning by morning new mercies I see,” says the old evangelical hymn, and my quest for mercy has you at its center. I long for ways for us to more fully embody our liberal religion with each other, to be the community of right relations which honors our faith. To embrace conflict well. To change. To grow.

Happy (Humanistic) Easter, one and all.

Love, just love,

(Rev.) David Carl Olson
minister

P.S. Please join members of the Greater Flint Interfaith Community on Tuesday, March 18 at the Life Enrichment Center for a Peace Service on the evening before the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. This non-partisan service is an expression of our deep desire to end not only this war but all war, and asks us to call on our spiritual resources to imagine ways out of this war and all war. The Peace Prayer Service is sponsored by the Genesee County Committee for Community Peace, and members of the Life Enrichment Center will lead the service itself. Leaders of the congregations of Temple Beth El, Woodside Church, Lou’Helen Baha’i Center and the Al-Saddiq Institute & Mosque have indicated interest in attending. I hope you can be there, too, at the corner of Lennon and Dye.

Des Moines, Iowa

I arrived last night in Des Moines, and was so pleased to see my friend Joan and her daughter Renee at the foot of the escalator. I ran up and hugged a couple of New Englanders, got into their car with its New England Patriots decals, and enjoyed familiar accents--made me feel like "home."

Joan has been the Director of Lifespan Faith Development at First Unitarian Church in Des Moines for three and a half years now. In her first year, during my last months as a minister in Boston, I visited Joan for a weekend during which I attended a conference on progressive religion in Des Moines, and got a chance to see the church and a little of the city. The church was on the verge of a capital campaign to do some building improvements and an addition, and Joan was preparing to find another apartment in Des Moines. (I think I've helped her move either two or three times, now!) At that time her daughter Renee was living in Florida (I think), and was preparing to join Joan in Iowa.

I'm going to be preaching at First Unitarian on Sunday, and am looking forward to it greatly. Rev. Mark Stringer, the senior minister, is on sabbatical, and a year ago I agreed to come for the weekend to fill the pulpit he normally occupies. I was pleased, then, to learn that the church was experimenting with a third worship service on Saturday evening, and was looking forward to seeing what that looked and felt like. I learned a few weeks ago that the Saturday evening services have been suspended during the sabbatical, so I'll only be preaching twice--which is, in and of itself, something unfamiliar to me, and I am looking forward to it.

I'm staying at Joan's house, which will be a joy. Joan and I became close at Andover Newton Theological School in the 1990s; I was completing an M.Div. and she was completing more credits than she needed for an M.Div. but never quite got around to completing Clinical Pastoral Education or finding a substitute for that important course. She also was working both as a religious educator and as the assistant to two professors at Harvard Business School--whew!

When I became Minister at Community Church of Boston, Joan became religiouos educator there--an overqualified person who was distinctly under-employed at CCB. I was pleased to have her around for a coule of years before she moved on to a more substantial church position. And then I was pleased to hear of her "fishing" expedition to find full-time emplyment as a Director of Religious Educaiton. Which she found in Des Moines . . .

Joan and I also have been roommates at General Assembly (a couple of years ago in Fort Worth, TX), a splendid time for me. We got to take a night off for dinner at a great Texas steak house, and also went to the National Cowgirl Museum and the Fort Worth Modern Art Museum. Great memories.

Joan is packing to move, next week, to Cape Cod. She will be "going home" to care for her parents--her mom, a fabric artist with a national reputation--will be having surgery in March, and Joan will be moving in to her house to aid her and her dad. I think she had every intention of staying in Des Moines longer, but the change in her family situation required an early and mid-year exit. I suspect the church will miss her.

But for now I will enjoy a couple of days among friends--and then preach in one of the great Humanist pulpits of our Unitarian Universalist Association. I'm optimistic.

Sunny outside, and since I'm in Central time, the sun seems to have arisen at a normal time. Who'd-a thunk it?

At Pokagon with Colleagues

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I'm enjoying a little time with colleagues in the next couple of days. The Heartland Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association chapter is in its Winter Conference at the Potowatomi Inn at Pokagon State Park in Angola, Indiana, and last night we "checked in" with each other and had a first worship time. There are more people participating than we've had before (in my experience), including a number of the "Big Boys" from our larger congregations. I'm looking forward to learning from their wisdom and experience.

I am looking forward to today's program with Rev. Stefan Jonasson who is the Large Church consultant from our national headquarters in Boston and who also is the pastor to a number of small churches in western Canada. He is an entertaining folklorist with an extensive business background (in Human Resources/Personnel), and is continuing a presentation he began last year on staff supervision.

Our staff at the UU Church of Flint is small. I supervise a half time Director of Lifespan Learning, Amy Derrick, who in turn supervises volunteer teachers and paid child care workers; a half-time Office Assistant, Cheryl Craig, hired last August, who is a joy to work with and who spends a lot of time with key congregational volunteers; a one day a week Music Director, Pia Broden-Williams, who is a graduate student at Michigan State and a tremendously accomplished singer, and who makes me cry when she shares her gift on Sundays. I will be supervising a Superintendent/Building Manager when he (it looks like) is soon hired, pending reference check and other HR issues, and that person will work with volunteer custodians and other key volunteers.

The task of these next few days is to think about how supervision happens in different size churches. Patterns are set in small, family-sized churches where the members are the staff and where lines of authority are unclear; and the patterns persist even as the congregation grows to having hired professionals. My task, just now, feels like I need to set clearer expectations with the people that I supervise and with the Board members who would like to get in the middle of the supervisory relationships to direct the work of the staff. My encouragement to my Board has been to assert that the strongest possible action by Board members will be to strengthen the Supervisor-Supervisee relationship; when staff members have quesitons about priorities and evaluaiton of their work, that Board members will encourage the staff to speak to their supervisors . . . Well, that's how I hope it will work.

I'm pleased, too, in this setting to be able to "let my hair down" with colleagues, to strengthen our collegiality and, frankly, my affection for them. There are a couple of colleagues with whom I am developing much closer relationships, and I hope that these couple of days (and especially at night over a glass of wine!) will afford some time for frank consideration of how we are doing as religious liberals in this economically depressed part of our country.

It is pretty cold out; but the hotel is warm as are the hearts.

Good morning.

Rethinking the Color Line (I)

It is clearly premature to post on this topic. It is the title of a sermon I'm preparing for a weekend in February in Des Moines at First Unitarian Universalist Church. I originally planned on being their guest on or about Dr. Du Bois's birthday (February 23rd), but they were gracious to let me change my weekends when I was elected to the Heartland UU District Board of Trustees, which is meeting on that weekend. But I digress.

I know I'll post on this more fully again as the sermon gains more shape. But I will say that it has been a joy reading "the Old Man" this past week. "The Role of Africa" is more sociological/historical study, "The Autobiography" is a breezy and optimistic retelling of his life in his ninth decade (!), and, of course, "The Souls of Black Folk" sets out an essential perspective on the intelligence, culture, dignity of people of color.

What strikes me in a new way this time around is that the "color line" language is not only about the challenges of racism in this country, but a call for self-determination of all people of color in the world; an appeal for colonialism to be ended, but also for a unity among peoples of color so that the ways of enslavement and colonialization not be re-installed by people of color in systems of oppression that they impose.

My sermon is going to think some about how UUs are doing, a decade into our commitment to create an anti-racist, anti-oppressive, multicultural association. I'll sketch out some of my thoughts about how congregations might reflect the growing multiculturalism of our country. I think this is important.

But more importantly, I think, will be questions about our social values, and what we not only think but act around the southern Sudan/Darfur crisis, the Kenya humanitarian crisis, etc. What are the soul-moving economic and political responses we need to enact, and what is the humanist perspective and attitude that we need to bring to building appropriate relationships with other nations.

And, of course, in Flint, I need to ask the question of what it means that the (White) power structure and many Black communities are isolated from one another; that the lives of young people are considered problems to be solved rather than members of a multicultural tribe to be included, engaged, mentored, etc. etc.

Well, that's in the sermon (or will be, soon), and I'll let you know. For now, I am enjoying reading the Old Man.

Glad to be back in the Midwest, at home, in spite of this perpetually delayed sunrise!

Too cold! But crisp and clear. With a full day ahead and a pulpit exchange in the morning (Jackson, MI, congregation in E. Liberty).

Ah, Epiphany

I made it through another Christmas season, it seems, by having a very successful Epiphany party last night. The whole neighborhood showed up, and a few other friends, the candles only burned one child (yikes!) and the left overs look manageable (sort of). And there is always a little Akvavit to keep me humming.

When I mover to Boston in September 1977, I celebrated Christmas at home with my family in Rhode Island. That was fine, But by December 1978, I felt I needed my own Christmas "do," and so I held a mid-week party (was it on a Wednesday? a Thursday??) where friends stopped by after work.

In those days, most of my friends were waiters and waitresses at the 57 Restaurant ("best beef in Boston" according to the truck drivers of the New York Times). Everyone loved to party and I'd jam thirty people at a time into my one-room studio (and overflow into the hallway and stairwell). My neighbors would join in, and amid much conviviality we'd get sloppy and smoochy and very touchy (unlike today!). I'd keep food and drink cold on the fire escape, a friend would play my piano and we'd sing . . . a pattern established for the future.

After a couple of tries at an early Christmas, it became clear to me that I needed another way, and so I think it was at Christmas 1979 that I decided to shift the party to after Christmas so that I could really give it some attention (and still get all my church- and music-related Christmas responsibilities addressed). So I initiated the Epiphany Party for which I am yet remembered. My family would show up from Rhode Island, friends would drop in and out, the food and drink would be largely Swedish, and the stories far too obscure and long. We'd sing Christmas carols one last time, a few friends would show off their singing, and many toasts would be offered.

Now I get misty. Last night as I sat with a next-to-the-last guest waiting for his (last guest) ride, I thought of three special people. Leonel, of course. We met at Carlos Latoni's "Tres Reyes" party (Puerto Rican food and ultra-swishy host!) on a Friday night, and I gave him a ride home to Roslindale. He showed up at my house for most of the day on Saturday to help me cook and clean, and then I brought hi home again. And on Sunday evening, he showed up to help, dressed handsomely, respectfully; he interacted with friends and enjoyed himself and at the end of the night, even as I was trying to get the last few guests to leave, he put his arms around me and told me that he loved my family and friends and lifestyle . . . and he spent the night!

Two other souls were present in my mind. My dad and Priscilla Grey used to spend hours in the kitchen together in my Boylston Street apartment overlooking Copley Square. They'd wash and dry dishes (I never used paper plates or plastic utensils in those days!) and share some close times. Priscilla loved to listen and Dad loved to talk. Priscilla just appreciated people, and Dad appreciated being busy. They died about a month apart two summers ago, Priscilla discovering that here chest cold was not a cold at all but a web of metastasized cancer throughout her torso; Dad having overcome his renal cell cancer, but his body just being exhausted. Dad a week short of his 75th birthday, Priscilla shy of her 60th.

Epiphany becomes a touchstone for me, a memory and loss place, certainly, but a hope-center, too. I treasure an evening with friends, I hope there'll be someone special to share the days with, I look forward to the new year and the possibilities that await.

But this morning, I'm going back to take a little nap! Ah, Mondays!

Good morning.

Sweeney Todd

Snow again this morning. I was pleased to have done the walks yesterday, in only half an hour or so, and afraid I'd need to get to them again. They are barely dusted, it seems, with anything new.

Went to the movies last night during the snowstorm. Drove on the highways to Grand Blanc to catch "Sweeney Todd" at the Trillium. I was anxious to see what Tim Burton's vision would reveal, and nervous, frankly, that it would be too gory for me to take well.

The opening credits oozed with blood, but it was surreal, too red, too viscous, drops too perfectly formed and too shiny. This was a relief as it indicated that the throat slittings, too, might be too perfect, to controlled, and thus, for me, bearable.

The darkness of everything was wonderful. The singing better than I imagined. The cuts, removing the "presentational" theatricality and replacing it with a more lyrical narrative, and richer personal relationships, worked very well. It was tighter, less comical, more gruesome, scarier.

I love Johnny Depp (did I actually need to say that?), and I think he was about as perfect as one could get for this film. A couple of singing quirks annoyed me, but that is par for the course. But he looked a mixture of intentionality mixed with genuine surprise as events transpired.

Helena Bonham Carter was spectacular, and I had had a hard time imagining her as Mrs. Lovett. Younger than I'd imagined, but then again, people then didn't live as long as we do. Watching her deal with insects and rodents on her pastry table was distasteful, upsetting and funny.

The lovers were as lovers are, the villains villainous. The story is repugnant, of course, but this one was told well. And yes, I did have trouble sleeping last night.

I'm reading the final chapters of a novel I love, Halldór Laxness's Independent People. (I'm told a better translation of "independent" is "free-standing" or "lone-standing.") Here is a quotation about morning--an early summer morning, true, when the sun rises at 3--that is rather pivotal:

"The sun was shining, the shadows cast by the croft long as those of some mighty palace. No part of night or day wears such a beauty as the time f the sun's rising, for then there is quiet, loveliness, and splendor over everything. And now over everything there was quiet, loveliness and splendor.

"The song of the birds was sweet and happy. The mirror-like lake and the smoothly flowing river gleaned and sparkled with a silvery, entrancing radiance. The Blue Fells lay gazing in rapture up at their heaven, as if they had nothing in common with this world. They had nothing in common with this world. And in the unsubstantiality of its serene beauty and its peaceful dignity the valley, too, seemed to have nothing in common with this world. There are times when the world seems to have nothing in common with the world, times when one can no more understand oneself than if one have been immortal.

"No one was awake, or anything like awake, on the croft, and yet the lad had never known such a day. He sat down in the grass, with his back to the garden wall, and began thinking. He began thinking of America, the glorious land across the ocean, the America in which he could have been anything he chose. Had he lost it for good and all, then? Oh well, it mattered little. Love is better; love is more glorious than America. Love is the one true America. 

"Could it be that she loved him? Yes, there was nothing half so true. There is nothing half so unlike itself as the world, the world is incredible. True, she had ridden away and left him, but she had been out on one of the famous Rauthsmyri thoroughbreds, and possibly it had wanted to get home. She had never looked around, never slackened her sped. but in spite of this seeming indifference, he was convinced, on this incomparable morning, that at some future date, say, when he had become the freeholder of Summerhouses, he would bring her back home as his wife. Since it had begun in such a fashion, how could it end otherwise? 

"What he had found was happiness, though she had ridden away and left him behind--and again and again he excused her on the ground that she had not been able to manage her horse. He was determined to spend his American money on a good horse, a first-class thoroughbred, so that in future he would be able to side side by side with his sweetheart. 

"Thus he lay stretched out in the grass of his native croft, looking up into the sky, into the blue, comparing he love he had won with the America he had lost. Leifur the Lucky had also lost America, Yes, love was better--and thus over and over again. He saw her still in his mind's eye as she swept over the undulating heath, flitting thought the lucid night like an airy vision, her golden locks streaming in the wind, her coat flapping against the horse's rump. And he saw himself following her still, from crest to crest--till she was lost in the blue. And he himself was lost in the blue.

"He slept."

Not an early morning, today, nor a warm one. Snow abounds, and my own sleepiness.

Nevertheless . . . good morning!

Happy New Year

Snow this morning, beautiful and full, waiting to be shoveled from the stairs and sidewalks. (I'll skip the driveway!) But I want to stay in bed a few more minutes . . . hours??

Last night, I bid 2007 good-bye by dropping in at a party at the church and an open house at the home of two members. I went to Club MI for midnight revelries, and sat with fewer than a dozen men--a little sad, it seems--to welcome in the New Year.

I was hoping to go to a party in Detroit last night, but felt I didn't want to risk it, once the snow began. Likewise, I had planned to attend a party this afternoon in the detroit suburbs, but the roads have not been cleared and I'm giving that a second thought.

The last week of 2007 was a relaxing and intimate one with family. I flew to Providence on Christmas Day, missing my plane after my car's battery was dead and I needed jump from a neighbor. Arriving in the evening, I exchanged gifts with family and then went to bed in my mother's bed. (She took the rollaway.) In the next couple of days, I spent time assisting my brothers as they took down a sappy maple; I tried to get ma's computer connected to the internet via cable modem; and I put in a splitter to get cable into my mother's and sister's bedrooms. 

I was happy to go to an Indian restaurant on the East Side with my brother John, in town from his Lubec, Maine home. We then took a long walk around the Brown campus and environs. With nephews Eric and Phillip, John and Paul and I went to see "I am Legend," enjoyable in spite of a rowdy group of teens in the audience. And with Carol and her beau Brian, we went to Town Pizza . . . a real Riverside respite.

I had planned on catching a train to New Haven or Boston to visit New England friends, and finally was simply unable to do so. I was tired, slept in most days, and really enjoyed some "down time" with Ma. A good time to think and feel and re-charge.

I'm listening to a Carolyn McDade CD from a decade or so ago; one that helped me in the first year of recovery from Leonel's death. The CD, "As We So Love," opens with a choral setting of one of Carolyn's solo numbers from the previous decade, "Ancient Love." No matter how many times I hear it, it always makes me cry.  Here it is, for you . . .

"This Ancient Love"

Long before the night was born from darkness,

Long before the dawn rolled unsteady from fire,

Long before She wrapped her silent arm around the hills,

There was a love, an ancient love was born.

Long before the grass spotted green the bare hillside,

Long before a wing unfolded to wind,

Long before She wrapped her long blue arm around the sea,

There was a love, this ancient love was born.

Long before a chain was forged from the hillside,

Long before a voice uttered freedom's cry,

Long before she wrapped her bleeding arms around the child,

There was a love, and ancient love was born.

Long before the name of a god was spoken,

Long before a cross was nailed from a tree,

Long before She waved her arm of colors 'cross the skies,

There was a love, this ancient love was born.

Fateful our night, slumbers our morning,

Stubborn the grass growing green wounded hills,

As we wrap our healing arms to hold what Her arms held,

This ancient love, this aching love, rolls on.

--Carolyn McDade