Day One

I woke early, sleeping throughout the night only, I think, because I took a couple of anti-histamine last night that knocked me out. After weeks of working and worrying and just waiting, I was about to assume my new call as Minister of the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore (Universalist & Unitarian). You can guess that I'm excited.

I rose to take a brief walk in my new neighborhood, Bolton Hill. Just a few blocks from the rowhouse that will be home for the next year or so, Eutaw Place provided a very pleasant garden boulevard in which to walk. The gardens themselves provide little "events" as I walked from block to block, and the variety of shapes of gardens, the mixing of symmetrical and asymmetrical forms, the straight paths ans the "S" curves made it quite delightful.

At the top of the park is the monument to Francis Scott Key, its gilded statue towering above columns and ship and fountain and battle. What a hoot! It is the kind of installation that requires attention, If the waters were not flowing, the perspective just wouldn't work. If the flag-bearer were not so brilliantly shining, the entire piece could easily look abandoned, lost.

Still, cared for and functioning, what a heroic piece it is, the water making it even more pleasant as my walk is beginning to make me rather warm.

Walking toward home, I stop for a moment to see up close the schul which has been a marker for me when I'm trying to figure out where to turn to get home. But it isn't a synagogue any more; it is a Prince Hall Masonic Temple, acquired in the 1960s as Temple Oheb Shalom was moving to their new Walter Gropius designed facilities in Pikesville. It is an impressive Moorish-revival building with a huge dome topped by a star of David. I wonder what the interior looks like today . . .

I stop at the coffee shop a block and a half from home and have a latte while listening to NPR on my iPhone. (Oh dear, who have I become?) There are plenty of young people coming and going, and the "Do Not Park" signs in front of the cafe provide an excellent place for people to park their cars, risking tickets, as they run in to pick up a little joe.

I get home and jump into the shower, giving up on one radio that has many buttons but whose power button seems no longer to work. (I can tune the thing, though, and even set favorite channels. Just can't figure out how to turn 'em on anymore.) The warm water is slow to arrive from the basement, and I so don't want to waste that I start with a good cold shower. Of course, this means that some hot water will be filling the pipes and then cooling down as the day goes by. Ah! hot water on demand!

After some toast (homemade bread by Pat) with cottage cheese and tomato, I finally get out of the house and turn on the timer on the phone to see how long it will take to get to the church. Seventeen and a half minutes later, I arrive a little sweaty, but beaming. At long last, this new place, this new challenge, this new opportunity.

Away from Routine, and Back

I've spent the last two weeks on study leave from my position in Flint. The first week was when I was Minister of the Week at the Lifespan Religious Education Conference on Star Island, and after I completed my opening worship, it was pretty light lifting. I got a chance to read, to plan my final services of worship in Flint, and to hear the Theme Talks presented by Meg Barnhouse with incredible music by her partner Kiya Heartwood. (These will be available as MP3 files on the Star RE Week website, I'm told.) I was happy to help the Senior High Youth prepare a very effective evening worship service, and to provide a "summing up" reflection to a story shared in the closing night Family Worship.

The second week, I was Minister of the Week at Ferry Beach, where two conferences shared the space, the Northeast UU Choral Festival, a week of choral singing and workshops, music sharing and experimentation; and GAYLA XXI, the venerable week of spirituality and fun for gay and bisexual men. I preached each and every morning, led grace before dinner and conducted a Spirit Circle on the Beach after dinner. This is a bit of work! But it is a joy that these conferences leave space for some authentic worship. Each morning there is a 45-minute service, a full sermon, one or more anthems, prepared preludes and postludes, and spirited congregational singing. A "normal" Ferry Beach morning chapel is of the 15-20 minute variety--something that I have been happy to provide; but the fuller worship is so much more satisfying for me, and corresponds, I think, to my gifts.

In each setting, the Minster has a cottage for the minster and their family. At Ferry Beach, it is humble and adequate for a couple in a queen sized bed and two kids in bunkbeds. (Private full bath with hot and cold running water and a shower!) There is a place in which to provide pastoral care, and the only challenge for me was to get the bed I slept in out of the room I was doing pastoral care in.

On Star, the Parsonage is a two-story stone cottage with accommodations for four in two bedrooms upstairs, and two in the first floor bedroom. Having a private bath is great, but there is no running hot water on Star, and all showers are allowed every other day (an improvement from the past!) in the Underworld shower rooms. But the Parsonage has a beautiful wood paneled sitting room with secretary and antiques, artwork on the walls, a small library in a built-in on the staircase, and a (not functioning at this time) fireplace.

The accommodations are magnificent. For me, however, they bring up that great problem I face again and again--what to do when, on family time, I'm the only family member. This is feeling like the most heartbreaking facet of my current life--to be without a "significant other (or others)" with whom to share myself. It means that I constantly feel as if I'm facing the world and its challenges "on my own," and, of course, that is so antithetical to my theology, world view, etc. We face the world in communities. But my lived experience--of challenges, yes, but also of joys, of moments of intimacy, of all the times when I'm mad/sad/glad/scared, all of it, it feels as if I am on my own. I buy a big house and wait for someone to move in. I sit in the Minister's Cottage or the Stone Parsonage and wonder where my immediate family is . . . and I am left only to wonder.

I'm back in Flint, now, ready to embrace the routine of the next three weeks of sermon preparation. I also need to be about the work of ending things, turning over tasks and procedures, filing final reports and holding a few hands.

I hope I can find the right people to be holding my hands in the next 35 days. This next step is the right step for me, but I also am also so deeply aware of how much I love my congregation in Flint, and how hard it is feeling to say goodbye. And I want not to tear the fabric of our affection as I move away.

It is quiet here, and I am quiet, too, and ready for the work.

Sunrise

No narrative today. Only impressions of the sunrise on the longest day of the summer.

Cool this morning, and still so wet after days of humidity and rain.

Grass so green, so lush, but such a swamp!

Heavy dew on deck chairs and table, mango uneaten yesterday left out to the elements. Ah breakfast!

Birds waking, calling.

Sun just peeking through unkempt cedar hedge.

Michigan radio inside, some BBC guy chatting. I don't listen.

Cool and substantial tiles in the kitchen, and funny marks in the grout as it sets. Hmm.

Opened can of flat carbonated water. Tasty over ice.

Ice made of water not boiled. Whoops.

Leftovers for breakfast, with memories of Jack and our day together.

Memories of Memorial Day.

Heart swelling.

Sad recollection of Flint. Sweet recollections.

Wonder about Gyllnehem (my house) and its new occupants (oops. soon not my house).

I hope.

Father's Day, and I miss my dad.

Sun is caught in the sycamore. Broad shadows.

Still chill air. Time for a shower.

Good morning.

Ambivalence

It is hard to put into words the internal conflicts I feel these days. I am looking forward to the fall when I will become Minister of First Unitarian Church of Baltimore (Universalist & Unitarian). This is a larger challenge, I think, than any I have faced. But it is a place where excellent professional ministry has been performed for over a decade, and there is a strong sense of what it means that the congregation made a decision, some thirty five years ago, to continue to be a vital presence in downtown Baltimore. This sense of collective vocation, dearly recited to me by dozens of people in the past six months, excites me, as it matches my own sense of vocation to the city with all its challenges. I love being in a place that seeks to build community in ways that transcend class and gender, ethnicity and sexuality, that incorporate faith in the past and hope for the future. I am clearly looking forward to the opportunities and challenges of the Charm City.

But Vehicle City is my home, now, and my vocation as Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint is one that I do not resign easily. Flint is a strong community that has been struggling with its essential identity for over a generation. The birthplace of General Motors, of course it is; but my friend Jack reminds me that it is more fully the birthplace of the American automobile industry. Ford was head of Cadillac before he built his own company, and Chrysler was the head of Buick at the time of the General Motors consolidation. Flint was transformed from being Carriage Town to Vehicle City, and stayed so until the Reagan years.

Now General Motors has nearly abandoned Flint, save all that money left in the coffers of the Mott family foundations. And Flint is seeking its new identity.

My great dream is that Flint will emerge from a culture of dependency (on GM, on the autoworker unions, on the Mott family) and begin to chart its own destiny in ways that are power-distributed and more egalitarian, more grassroots and, frankly, more fun. And I think my Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint is one of the centers that may model a new way of being for a new Flint.

But, alas, I will no longer be at the helm. In the next two and a half months, I need to be as fully present as I can to the congregation, while taking no role in setting a future direction for the church. They get to set the budget that they feel best reflects their capacity and their dreams for the next year. (They did that last week.) They need to decide about professional ministry for the interim year before they call a new settled minister (if they decide they will). And they are working on that. And I am available to assist, to give resource, but not to lead.

I have a lot of "me" invested in the success of planting Flint Area Congregations Together in the congregation, and believing that there are congregational leaders there who will keep our church in the leadership of FACT, a position we clearly take now. And as I add my own thoughts to the planing of a forum in July with mayoral candidates in Flint, I find that I give my advice and then let go of it. Some one else needs to carry the torch.

I hope I can learn everything I need to learn in these next weeks about ways I can lead without controlling. I think these lessons will be useful in Baltimore (and in so many areas of my life). I want to stay open, let go of that which I cannot control, and take charge of my own work and my own feelings as I take leave of a group of passionate and dear people in this place. And as I look forward to the Charm City, I hope I will continue to hold Vehicle City in my heart.

Good morning.

Proud

Last night, Roman Catholics and Baptists and Episcopalians of the Anglican and African Methodist type saluted our Unitarian Universalist congregation and its leadership in the city of Flint. I don’t know how to share with you the pride I felt when members of FACT congregations began to tell the story of our education initiative and said that it all began with one UU family: Lucy Mercier and Linda Campbell, and their children Robert and Andre. With a simple narrative, they told the story of our unfolding efforts to be in deep conversation throughout the city and county regarding the state of the Flint Community Schools and the profound need for significant change to turn our schools around.

Rayna Bick expertly shared with the 125 people present at Christ the King Parish the scope of our initiative and invited more people to be included in future fact-finding visits to other parts of the country. She shared her passion for our children and their care, and spoke as the mother of children who had received excellent education in the Flint Community Schools of an earlier generation.

Testimonies were given by some of the people who will participate in our first national site visit to California. Sue Kirby began with a passionate presentation about what it means to be a person of power and privilege who has seen her children receive excellent education in spite of the recent patterns of teacher lay-offs and building closures, and asked what it means that not every child in Flint has the power and privilege to choose the exact program they will encounter in Flint. She wondered if we could use our collective power to ensure that every child will have a chance to receive the kind of education that Emma and Sam have.

And Robert Mercier, the youngest person who will travel to California, spoke about his life; the decision of his parents to move from Birch Run to Flint, the good education he received at Doyle-Ryder, the promise of his admission to the International Baccalaureate program housed at Whittier, and the changes wrought as that program was moved to Central High this past year, and which will move again in the fall. Robert symbolized the students we hope to provide a good education to. His testimony brought people to a sense of urgency and promise.

Rev. Ira G. Edwards, Jr., minister of Damascus Holy Life Baptist Church and co-chair of Flint Area Congregations Together, saluted the whole evening in his closing remarks. He noted that FACT is “all mixed up,” Methodists and Unitarians, Baptists and Catholics, Episcopalians and Church of God in Christ, “We’re a kind of Heinz 57,” all the varieties of faith working together.

For my part, I finally felt that the “Together” part of FACT was, indeed, coming together. We are beginning to be recognized as a serious group of people who are trying to create new relationships across the city based in the good will we express for one another. The City Administrator came on the early side, and he called the Acting Mayor, who showed up before we began. One of the mayoral candidates came. The Chamber of Commerce said that they’d be present, and they were. Channel 12 came and did a good story on the 11 o’clock news. Principals and teachers, parents and students were present, as were a few members of the clergy.

A real organization is birthing, with the beginnings of public trust being constructed among us as we risk some things together. There is nothing I could more wish for; and for the work of the whole Local Organizing Ministry team at UU Flint, I will be forever thankful.

Restless Night

I was unable to sleep last night, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. I went to the ACLU of Michigan, Flint branch annual dinner last night, and was entirely captivated.(I'll write about Judge Paul V. Gadola, the "civil libertatrian of the year" award recipient, tomorrow.)

It may be that I had an accident yesterday. While pulling out of my driveway, I believe I struck and killed an opossum. Its body was was there, lying in the road, when I got back a couple of hours later. I don't remember hitting it, but I do remember seeing something, ever so briefly, in the rear view mirror as I turned onto Miller Road.

I called City Hall to figure out what to do, and was helped by June Urdy, who called the person responsible for picking up animal carcasses, usually pets, from the city's roadways. They promised to pick it up within a couple of days if I could move it to the side of the road.

And so it sits in a box at the end of my driveway. And I couldn't stop thinking of it last night (and even now). I'm not particularly upset about wanting to keep the opossums out of my yard, but I certainly don't feel the need to kill them. And especially to do so with my Buick.

I don't remember hitting it. I don't remember being in a particular hurry, or being particularly distracted, But there it was, and it reminded me of something of a shadow in my mind . . .

I need a nap! But not until after the Finance Committee meeting.

Good morning! (and isn't the back yard particularly green after a day and a half of drizzle, overcast skies, and out and out rain? Beautiful!) On to breakfast!

A Very Good Place to Start

Julie Andrews sang "Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. When you read you begin with "A, B, C," when you sing you begin with "do, re, mi." (Such a pretty nun!) When I began this blog, it was a way for me to be reconciled with living in the western end of the Eastern time zone. All my life, I had lived in the eastern end of the Eastern zone, and so all my life my time was shifted just a few minutes so that "true noon" happened a few minutes before noon. In Flint, "true noon" happens a half hour or so after noon on the clock. This meant the "natural" morning happened later on the clock, and while it meant that afternoons and evenings were full of sun, the start of the day has always been quite dark. And so I got up a little early to write and think and pray, and this attempt at bringing some awareness to the struggle to get up on the clock of my old home but with the sun of my new home.

What will the morning be like in Baltimore? I'm bringing that "very beginning" question to this transition.

Let's start with the length of days. On the winter solstice, Flint has 9 hours of light, from 8:02 to 5:02. In Baltimore, the day is a little longer with 9 hours and 24 minutes of light, from 7:22 to 4:38. If "true noon" happens halfway through the day, in Flint it happens at 12:32 p.m.; in Baltimore, it happens very close to noon on the clock, at 12:04 p.m.

A look at summer solstice yields the following: Flint's day is 15 hours and 22 minutes in duration, from 5:54 a.m. to 9:16 p.m. "True noon" is especially shifted due to Daylight Savings so that it occurs at 1:35 p.m. Baltimore's day is 25 minutes shorter at 14 hours and 57 minutes. "True noon" happens at about 1:07, again, largely the result of the Daylight Savings shift.

It will be interesting to see what it is like to have a little more sunlight in the morning, and a little more light in the day during the colder months. Summer will be fun shifting between my weeks in Maine and Rhode Island, and my visits back to Michigan. I'll get the light of my upbringing, and that western "deviant," and then the close-to-natural timing of my new home.

I'm looking forward to the experiment.

Melon today, and strawberries, and a tall cafe au lait.

Good morning!

Heartbreak II

There are a couple of things in my life that I wish were very different. Heartbreak number one is a very tender place for me that I'm not sure I could ever write about in a public way. (Maybe. We'll see.)

But Heartbreak number two is so darn predictable! It is about finding a person here in Flint that I could love. (I know some of you will stop reading here. Why is this guy so stuck on finding someone?)

The men I've been attracted to here in Flint have included a few "types." This first is the heterosexual and married colleague. Oh, there are a couple of these in the Heartland District. I'm able to have a laugh at my own expense about this absurdity, even as I ponder the statistical virtual impossiblility of the very low nmbers of gay men in the UU ministry in this part of the country.

A second type is the man who starts coming to church in hopes of snatching a husband. This has happened a couple of times in
Flint, and I have to say that I'm able to keep my "pastor" hat on pretty tightly, and so I am easily able not to let myself go down a path that will lead to shared disappointment.

And then in the community outside the church, where I might go looking, there is that third group of untouchables, the already taken. A couple of the capital-F-finest men in Flint are already married (in one case I can think of, to each other!) and I can just sigh. Along with everyone else.

I have made a couple of forays into the world of dating, and hope I've learned something about myself. I really adore my friend Jack. He's smart and well read. He's funny and thoughtful. He's a little gossipy--but I guess I fall in there, too. Of course he is older and rounder than any sweetheart I've ever had, but I'm older and rounder, too. But when it comes to relationships, Jack's come to the place where he thinks he's just going to live his life alone. And so he's just not open to having a sweetheart.

I resolved myself to our being friends, and that's working out just fine.

There is another person that I've pursued as a potential mate. It has been quite frustrating. Lots of mixed messages about what I might expect, assurances that I'm really important and then lots of indicators that I'm not. And on Sunday night, as we sat on the back porch (wait a minute, I'm supposed to call it a deck now that I'm all middle class), I realized that I was not in this place for the first time.

Years ago, after the end of the first relationship that otherwise would have been called a marriage (seven years!), I was told by my partner that he thought our life together would have been something else, more "Cole Porter, more elegant parties and witticisms." What? It seemed that we had not been living a gay life together, he had been attempting to live the Idea of a gay life with me. And as he was committed to that Idea, I was persistent with him (and supportive and loyal) in trying to be his partner, in giving him space to grow into himself, in allowing him plenty of space (in which to disappoint me) to grow into affection and warmth and gentle happiness. And I'd listen to him sing (he's a baritone) but we'd seldom make music together.

Here I was, on Sunday night, sitting with a man that I find generally attractive and with whom I enjoy a movie or a dinner chat, and who I've been happy to hear sing (but with whom I've never . . . made music). And i realized that I was having the Idea of a date, the Idea of a relationship, but not just a fond a friendly relationship with a (real) gay men.

This guy has never responded warmly to my touch. Never happily snuggled on a couch (well, maybe once on a cold night in front of a warm fire--but that didn't lead to anything closer, and maybe it's all in my head anyway). Never gently put his arm around me at a movie, barely allowed out lips to touch when seeing each other in a safe place.

It was easy for me to ask, "What's wrong with him?", but more important to ask, "What's wrong with me?", that I put myself in a position to be so sorely disappointed. Am I just living, once again, in a relationship that has no where to go, and am I expecting that it will sustain me in my life.

I was happy that I got a chance to share some of this heartbreak the other night. He changed the subject when it got too close. I understand that. But I think in facing Heartbreak number two, I need to face more clearly the terrific anxiety I have about being alone and even to examine the spiritual strength that I've exhibited in being painfully alone these past four years. And get real about when the dating is leading nowhere, and more honestly either move on or find satisfaction in being alone (for now).

And be happy to make more friends.

The little rain we got last night leaves the back yard verdant this morning. And I'm awake! I'm awake!

Good morning.

"Up North" for Memorial Day

On my calendar, it still says "Memorial Day at Little Rhode Vasa Park." Each year, members of the RI District of the the Vasa Order of America, a Swedish-American fraternal organization to which my family belongs gather on Memorial Day for a religious service in which we recall the ames of all our members who died in the previous year. It also reminds us of the unnamed many who still reside in our hearts after two or three or three dozen years. It is a simple event, sometimes a little boring, sometimes a little depressing, but real, real.

This year I find myself in a transition--preparing to leave Michigan to become a resident of Maryland at the end of the summer. I needed time this weekend to move furniture to prepare for the arrival of the Morales family in a few weeks. (They will be living in my house, tenants with an option to buy, beginning very soon.)

But my friend Jack stopped by yesterday morning for a cup of coffee while I had breakfast. After a few minutes, he asked if I might want to go with him to a family cabin "Up North."

And so our trek began.

I won't share many of the details. We laughed longer and harder than I have fore the longest time. Somehow, I have developed a reputation as one who delights in killing animals crossing the road. (This comes of an unfortunate incident with a reluctant raccoon who hesitated and zigged and zagged as we drove alone Dixie Highway on the way to Pontiac a few weeks ago. Sadly, I zagged where I should have zigged, with terrible consequences for the raccoon.) Yesterday's total was only one butterdly--and we think that was a case of suicide by windshield.

But we drove through Estey to a little tributary of Wixom Lake where a tiny cabin sadly seeks attention. The stairs down to the river are sturdy, and the dock strong, covered with a composite decking that, I think, will least forever. We say in grimy lawn chairs rescued from the shed's tumble of fishing poles, paddles and a lawn mower.

I noticed in the shed a charcoal grill, and suggested that we grill a few hot dogs. We went to the butcher on Estey Road and got some Koegel's viennas and a couple of freshly handmade brats--regular and jalapeño and cheese--and stated cooking.

Jack started a modest pile of briquets (of the lighter-fluid-free variety) and complained that he needed some help--maybe some paper. Rather than using the old Detroit News in the kitchen, I found the remnant of last year's briquets in the shed, rolled up the bag around the old briquets, and threw that into the attempted fire. When it caught, it smoked and spiuttered, but then gave us enough of a bed to cook a few dozen dogs and brats, and enough smoke for a couple of full racks of ribs.

Still, we shared but four dogs and two brats, and were happy.

Then Jack suggested a trip to another family cabin, a quite nice one on South Dease Lake. So we drove some more (deer beware) and passed through West Branch and Rose City on the way toward Hale. The house there is quite nice, although entirely shuttered, and Jack did not have a key to this place. We sat at the picnic table and saw about the prettiest lakeview I've seen, of a clear and broad lake surrounded by pines, of well-appointed cottages and very little water traffic, a swampy end of the lake out of which came a loon paddling and submerging and a gorgeous blue heron in flight. No "noise pollution" save a kid on a dirtbike out on the road. And serenity as the sun lowered in the sky.

We couldn't stay. We needed to get back to the Estey cabin to bury the fire and put away the grill. We needed to get home for me to look after moving tasks. But the day was full of silliness and accident, misdirection and frivolity, much freedom. We talked about boys (!), or, even better, about the ways we are attached to one another; the good attachments that bring us to our better selves, and the troublesome attachments where we wonder, ":why do I put up with this? why don't I respect myself more?" My first Memorial Day "Up North" was a journey to me and us, to memory and hope.

A Prayer for Interfaith Action

I was pleased to be asked to give the Invocation at the Flint Area Congregations Together public meeting with Fr. John Baumann, SJm founder of the PICO National Network who visited Flint to share with us our vision for our future.

I asked those assembled at St. John Vianney Parish to assume the posture of prayer that was the one that spoke most personally to each of us. We're different, and some of us kneel, some sit, some stand. At the same time, because "we're all in this together," I asked that each person find someone's hand to hold. And then I prayed this 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 Thyself

in the Mystery of life and the Wonder of creation,

in the Faith kept by generations for their own kith and kin,

in the Love of parents for their children,

in the Hope evidenced by communities of people coming together as we do
to mark a sacred moment,
to experience a transcendent power,
to be a holy people,

be with us, O Divine presence, today, in all your power.

Speak to us as you have in all the prophetic witnesses,
the women and men of the ages
who have looked at the world as it is,
and imagined a world that might be,

Speak to us as have all our teachers,
our Moses, our Socrates,
our Jesus, our Mohammed,

Speak to us as did our brother Mohandas, our sister Dorothy,
our leaders Cesar and Sojourner and Harriet,
our martyrs Harvey and Oscar and Martin,

Enter our hearts, Spirit of Life and Truth,
as you have in all the ages and all the places
so that we may breathe into this place,
our beloved city Flint,
and into this time, this very moment,
a word of promise and hope,

that we may see the powerful community we are,
and know the powerful transformative work we are called to do.

For the sake of our children and our children’s children,
and in the name of all that is holy we pray,

Blessed be. Amen.

Complicated Love

I have long wondered how Unitarian Universalists minister to "my people." Now "my people" is a complicated subset of humanity. Some most readily identify the "my people" among us as middle-aged gay men (yep, I'm one of those!), and gay men have long had a pretty public place among UUs. Especially since the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s, many gay men (and those of us who lived through the challenging first decades of AIDS are pretty middle aged now!) have found a place at UU churches where they have been fully integrated.
If "my people" are men, well, of course, men have been running this movement since its inception. Men have also relied heavily on women's participation to raise money for our projects, write our Sunday school curriculums, build all our institutional forms,etc.; but men (as "my people") have been ever present.
But it is working people who have been rather marginalized in our movement. Interestingly, we have long been aware of the challenge of integrating working people into a religious tradition that has long ben part of the ruling class of this country. Friend Street Chapel (1827) was founded in Boston specifically to reach out to the poor and working people who were coming newly into Boston. Similar working-class chapels were established in many cities with large "establishment" churches.
Still, since the suburbanization of our country following World War II, the power of many UU institutions has moved out of the central city (so that the Cleveland OH church is in Shaker Heights, the Lynn MA church is in Swampscott, the Bridgeport CT church is in Fairfield, etc.). I want to find a way to do ministry that was intentionally directed toward serving working class people. In Flint, I have found that some of my most painful and rewarding work has been tending to the grieving of working class families after the loss of mother, father, lover, friend.
Last weekend included two rites of passage for two families. On Saturday afternoon (with a rehearsal on Friday afternoon), I was privileged to officiate at a wedding that was overflowing with joy (and relief!) that this couple had found each other and were ready to go forward in trust and mutual dependence. It was a celebratory afternoon with a delightful evening reception at the Sloan Museum.

On Friday evening, friends of Freda Counelis remembered a mother who recently died in her late 50s. Sitting in Freda's home on Civic Park, looking at piles of photographs and seeing the presence of children's toys and proud clutter, I felt so very much at home. This was as close as I've found in my professional life to the home of my upbringing. And to share with a daughter her feelings for her mom--celebrating the best that her mom was, and her deepest conviction that her mom loved her, loved her, as well as her sense of disappointment at times her mom let her down, and she let her mom down--this was the stuff of a class conscious ministry I to which I aspire.

As the memorial service proceeded, with mom's favorite music, including the karaoke which helped to tie her to a community and to her own son, I was overwhelmed with a notion: that the universalism I preach is about a complicated Love. This complicated Love is, as I might say, eternal and all-conquering; a Love which calls us all into reconciliation and harmony. But it is also a Love which recognizes the aspirations evident in our love. I, personally, always loved my Dad, always wanted to love my Dad, even when the haze of his alcoholism made it hard for him to see me, or for me to see him truly. So often my vision was skewed by my inadequate lenses of resentment, and even my earnest desire to save him, to redeem our relationship, to reform him so that I might be formed as a good son with a good father.

It was a complicated relationship, as our relationships are complicated, and the Love discovered in our lives is a complicated Love. But the universal Love, the eternal and all-conquering Love of our faith, is Love that tolerates the complexity of complicated Love, and gives us a means by which t make things less complicated. In faith, I understand that my Dad is, after death and now in Love's presence, able to live his best Love; and I, too, am able to remember him at his best, to Love him with my best. Eternal and All-Conquering Love leads me to experience a complicated Love not as inferior but as a part of the greater Love.

Likewise, complicated Love lets me see working class people not as inferior (nor superior!) to the middle-class folk who so populate my ministry and around whom so much of Unitarian Universalism is organized. A complicated Love lets me embrace where I am and fully to enter the possibility about which I dream--a multi-class Unitarian Universalism which expresses more completely the fullness of human living and being.

Mornings are dark, again, after the sunrise time was "sprung ahead." Yet here I sit, overwhelmed by this calling, held by a complicated Love which brings me to Flint and sustains me day by day.

Good morning, friends!

Millard Fillmore and Sissy Lifelines

I couldn't believe the side comment made during the trivia game played at church on Sunday night. The host mocked us by complaining that the game was taking far too long because people were relying on "those sissy lifelines." Sissy? Sissy?!? I couldn't believe my ears!

Some of us wear the term "sissy" as a badge of honor. Personally I can choose "sissy" for myself to undo the years of bully-terror as a child when such name calling was accompanied by the threat of physical harm. I don't remember being physically beaten as a child--the authentic fag-bashing would come much later--but I do remember one day after school being in tears at threats by a neighbor and ending in my mother's closet crying my heart out. Now THAT'S a sissy boy!

I was astonished to hear the term used, and I expect the host will never live it down. (Her partner sat at the "experts" table with her mouth agape. "Gender bashing! Gender bashing!" some of the lesbians cried out.)

But of the content of the game itself, I was amused at some of the answers (can't figure how the establishment of the American Unitarian Association, which happened in 1825, was cited as beginning in the 1740s) and became quiet and thoughtful about others. In particular, the game needed to cite the Unitarian Presidents of the United States, and I wrestle with that badge of honor.

John Adams, of course, had modernist ideas about religion. So did Thomas Jefferson. Neither was a member of a Unitarian church because there weren't any, although the arguments between orthodox and liberal ministers in Massachusetts were leading toward the formal adoption of unitarian theology in the next generation. In John Quincy Adams's day, the parish to which his family belonged did, indeed, become a Unitarian congregation. Millard Fillmore was a charter member of the Unitarian Church in Buffalo, and William Howard Taft was a member of the First Unitarian Church in Cincinnati.

I remember hope being expressed at an anti-oppression workshop once, "If only we can grow to the place where we have a Unitarian Universalist President of the country, we'll finally be able to end oppression." Huh? We've already had a few chances at that, and what did we get? The man who signed the Fugitive Slave Law into effect.

I'm no Millard Fillmore expert, but I understand that he understood he was to serve as president for the entire nation. He was against the extension of slavery as our country grew, but felt that refusing to enforce the laws of our constituent states would lead to division. To reject the Fugitive Slave Act--passed by Congress--would be an abrogation of his essential role as President of all the states. For Fillmore, signing a law he did not agree with was an act of political compromise. (For more information on Millard Fillmore go to the Famous UUs pages.)

As Barack Obama seeks to lead us, now, I wonder what he will need to do as an act of compromise which will disturb some of us who know ourselves as liberals and progressives. The venom out there, calling every act of "common weal" a step toward socialism, is quite deadly. The legislation making its way through Congress is replete with compromise, and none of us is certain that the expensive investments that are being made will do the trick at averting economic catastrophe. Still, I can imagine "perfect" legislation that will never be passed competing with the "good" that is possible.

Well! Time to get to the treadmill of the gym before the delightful treadmill of my work and my vocation.  Good morning!

Still March . . .

As I watched the sun rise this morning (at 7:07, according to the almanac), I has the sense that we're coming around to "normal" daylight again. When the alarm goes off at 6:45, I have a sense that I am at the break of dawn, even though it is a little skewed by the good choice I made last summer to move into the big bedroom on the west side of the house. So as I sit at the computer in the east-facing "boys' room," (I'll tell you later. Remind me.), the colors of the sky are changing more completely than they are in the view from my bed. Finally, not to be bumping around in the dark!

But then I look at my planner, and see that Sunday will be the first day of Eastern Daylight Time this year. March 8th? I mean, come on! March 8? Sunrise goes back to being at 8 o'clock? Help!

Okay, okay, I know I'll get over it. But what a drag! It will mean a little more light at the end of the day, but we haven't even hit the equinox yet, and we'll be trading some afternoon light for a morning that is too too dark.

That's what I think.

March is a time for some traditions for me, including the month when I repot my house plants. I think I'm going to get a couple larger copper pots to the plants in the sun room (which grew into larger pots last year very quickly. I think the room can handle them, and they can use a little room. (Maybe I'll even post their pictures on the first day of sprig! Note to self . . .)

I am wandering in the yard each day talking to the plants and encouraging them to wake up. (The neighbors already know I'm crazy, and are just happy that there is one less vacant house in the neighborhood.) The tufts of thyme that I planned on making a little border between the lingon and dill and the lawn look like they are ready to grow into the role I chose for them--thank you, thyme!

Which brings me to the Pete Seeger song that inhabits my heart lately (don't know why).

     Old devil time, I'm gonna fool you now,

     Old devil time, you'd like to bring me down,

     But when I'm feeling low, my lovers gather 'round

     And help me rise to fight you one more time.

     Old devil fear, you with your icy hand, 

     Old devil fear, you'd like to freeze me cold 

     But when I'm sore afraid, my lovers gather 'round

     And help me rise to fight you one more time.

     Old devil hate, I knew you long ago

     Before I learned the poison in your breath

     Now when I hear your lies, my lovers gather 'round

     And help me rise to fight you one more time.

     No storm or fire can ever beat us down,

     No wind that blows but carries us further on.

     And you who fear, oh lovers, gather 'round

     And we can rise to sing it one more time.

Good morning!

March already? It can't be!

I have been getting up a little early this week to put some attention to my days. I'm not sure exactly what that's about, except to say that the discipline of keeping Lent has been a part of my life-pattern of the past decade. 

I realized after I left seminary and began serving a humanist congregation that I needed to be intentional about my own spiritual practice (duh!). The pattern that I had developed over time was largely seasonal--a week at Ferry Beach in the summer, a week in Montreal in the winter (visiting cultural institutions, having time on  my own, and a lot  of sitting in big fancy churches where I was invisible), some time in retreat with the Cowley boys, or with UUMA collegaues, or the UCC pastor's study retreat in Springfield, or even the Advent study with Bishop Stendahl. I didn't have a pattern of devotion in my church, and needed to create one for myself.

My therapist Dr. O'Donnell had encouraged a Lenten practice to get me out of winter hibernation (that sounds like a redundancy), and so I began a pattern of study and prayer, including a little more morning time. (That's even the reason I started this blog a couple of years ago--more intentional morning time to "tame" my monkey-mind.)

But this Lenten practice is not about taming anything, rather, I hope to establish a "pattern" of my own in a life that so often is caught in other people's lives' patterns. And then there is this blog, a pattern of patter(?).

My sister Carol encouraged me to spend the time to write. And so I have . . . although it seems it is about "nothing." 

And yet, as I sit here, O know where my mind is going: to a Sunday service in a few hours, where Melanie Morrison will preach, and where I will be moved; to a relationship building campaign training that I hope will be productive and reflective; to the Hellobores which are in the back yard and which I hope will produce this spring their first flowers since transplantation; and to my aching back which so wants me to take the morning off and go to the gym.

Which I can't, which I won't. But still, paying just a little attention to how I'm doing in my body gets me at least a little in touch with the world. And so I'll do a little stretching before hitting the showers . . .

The sun is a few minutes away, the air quite clear, the temperature a tiny bit brisk, and I'm thinking of family and friends and, of course, my congregation and my call.

Good morning. 

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.