In the drizzle, inspiration

What burns in this chalice, this sacred bowl, this cup o'erflowing with welcome and promise? What means this religion of ours, this attempt of humans, temporal and finite, to express the eternal and infinite? How do we discover the larger truths out of our smaller selves? How shape we symbols which inspire?

I stood, last night, in drizzle-rain, stood near UAW Region 1-C. We were leaving the hall, friends of a fallen comrade, leaving a time when we sought to be together to comfort brother and son after death of sister and mother. We had had a moment together to celebrate one of our own, and to accept the challenges of keepin' on without her in our midst.

I stood in the drizzle-rain and walked on the slick bricks around the Sitdowners Memorial. I saw there all those who struggled for human progress in all the ways we have and do. My dad was present in my ruminations, telling me and my brothers that we weren't welcome around the shop when he was on strike. "We get rough sometimes," he said, and he didn't want to scare us if the men on the picket line felt they needed to jostle (or overturn?) a car.

I felt the presence of Mother Jones, too Mother whose grave I discovered on the ride from Flint to St. Louis a few years ago. Imagined the friends from 'round the world whose names I had seen on the visitor register that day--people I hadn't spoken to in years, but whose visit to that memorial was held closely in the little daily register barely kept safe from the elements.

I stood a few years ago before the Rosa Luxemburg-Karl Liebknecht  memorial in Berlin. A flame burns there, too, and the stones bear a motto: "The Dead Remind Us." That flame reminds me of all those who have struggled that I might enjoy the prosperity and freedom that I so take for granted.

"If I stood out in the rain-night, my only light a candle, a million miles away, would you lay down your fire as I lift mine? Will you not kill again?" Cindy Kallet sees in tiny fires of all our candlelit vigils the possibility of the end of all the fires of war.

And I see, now, in the Sitdowners' Flame something of the possibility, for all of us, of a day when we all might know work that bears dignity, leisure that restores, community that heals and builds, creativity that liberates imagination unto the infinite.

I stood in the drizzle-rain, and was blessed.

Long Time No . . .

Chris Monk gave me a hard time the other night at a Worship Team meeting. Wondered why I had been so silent for so long. I don't think I can answer that right away, but I guess that I have to be honest with myself and say that some events from about a year ago still fill me with anxiety, and especially about where I may say what with what level of safety assured. (I mean, sometimes no matter what I say or don't say, things blow up.)

That being (un)said, I want to take advantage of my own thoughts about what this year might entail at our church in Flint.

I wanted to share with our program people in worship and music, lifespan learning and membership some ideas about how I wanted to shape the "liturgical year." ("Liturgy" is about the work of the "li" people, that is, the laity. So it is important that they have a clue where I think we/they ought to take their/our work. Right?!)

I wanted to follow the patterns of the natural year plus the cultural year. So the fall was the time of ingathering and celebration, and also a time to say that, about last spring and summers conflicts, it was now time to make amends.

September--hospitality theme

October--atonement theme

November--gratitude theme

Winter begins a time of bundling, of gathering around the hearth and drawing close to each other. It becomes a place to share the "deep thoughts" of a community, and, when walking under the clear winter sky when the cloud cover is so dispersed, to look at those stars and to imagine what it means to be "the stuff of stars." We also mark the cultural holidays of the season, and anticipate spring.

December--embodiment theme

January--struggle theme

February--forgiveness theme

March--transformation theme

Finally, we rejoice as nature awakens, as sap runs and flowers emerge, as snow melts away and water rushes to green us. We receive energy and share energy and look at things with anticipation of fruitfulness and favor.

April--regeneration theme

May--engagement theme

June--hope theme

The summer then becomes a time of potpourri, a variety of experiences with people coming and going. I try very intentionally not to draw a distinction between "minister's services" and "lay services" because I think I have vocational and professional responsibility for all of them, and, from my point of view, all services are lay services (again, the work of the laity). But, in truth, I am only present for about half the services in the summer, and it becomes a time of greater variety even as the congregation itself has more variety as people leave on vacations, go to the places "up north," etc.

Projecting forward a year has meant that I am more conscious as I study, week by week, of materials which will be part of the future Sunday story of this congregation. I hope it is making me a better minister. It certainly has been a way for me to raise the bar of expectations for myself. I feel far more powerful.

Good to be writing again. I'll try to keep this up.