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