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.

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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?