Friday Delay

Was up most of the night cleaning my home (!) and then taking the 4:45 a.m. train to the Big Apple. Met my friend Ginga Eichler from Berlin, and we took the Bolt Bus back to Baltimore.

Here's a Facebook posting after Thursday's funeral:

The late Lois Fessenden Honick was a member of First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, married to Al Honick in 1967 by Rev. Irving Murray. She was a great admirer of A. Powell Davies, and in preparation for this morning, I came across this poem (collected into "Great Occasions" by Carl Seaburg) which spoke dearly to me. Accepting that there is a tremendous problem in any poem that sees the world as wild and unpeopled, ready for pilgrim settlers (whether Cana'an, Massachusetts, "The West," Palestine, etc.), I offered it to her husband as he sits shiva this week.

The world we know is passing: all things grow strange;

all but the stout heart's courage;

all but the undiminished lustre of an ancient dream--

which we shall dream again as [others] have dreamed before us,

pilgrims forever in a world forever new.

And what we loved and lost

we lose to find how great a thing is loving,

and the power of it to make a dream come true.

For us, there is no haven of refuge;

for us there is the wilderness, wild and trackless,

where we shall build a road and sing a song.

But after us there is a Promised Land,

strong from our sorrows and shining from our joys,

our gift to those who follow us

along the road we build

singing our song.

Thoughtful Thursday

Not that I've shown thoughtfulness . . . but that I'm full of thoughts this morning.

Last night's Worship Associates meeting was a place for me to listen to how "my people" think about the experience we have together on Sunday, and the experience we hope to lead with one another for our community. I was touched by the reflections of my associates; and I also heard the great variety of perspectives on what touches us, what remains with us, how we order our own lives into the orderliness of our worship. I'm trying to encourage us to build our own interconnections and to model a coherence that our church needs. And I think this group has some of the capacity to accomplish this.

While I've been typing, Ronnie Gilbert and Holly Near have been singing "Too Good Arms" (Charlie King) in the background. Does a minister's "first" church follow him or her all the days of her or his life? This was the anthem of Community Church of Boston, the theme of our ongoing reluctance to trust the state (and all authority, really) and desire to speak our truth about the rotten system that acculturates us. I know that that song forever rings in my heart:

"We will remember this good shoemaker!

We will remember this poor fish peddler!

We will remember all the strong arms and hands

That never once found justice in the hands who rule this land.

And all who knew these two good men

Knew they never had to rob or kill,

Each had lived by his own two hands, and lived well,

And all their lives, they had struggled

To rid the earth of all such crimes.

And all our lives, we must struggle

To rid the earth of all such crimes."

Doesn't get truer than this, for me.

Working Wednesday

Again, a thoughtful sermon to listen to, and then a very very full day. Some trepidation around an upcoming speaker who has been out of touch . . . but the work goes forward.

What listening to others' sermons is doing--beside allowing me to grow in appreciation for a handful of colleagues--is to get me to commit more of my thinking and working time to my own sermonizing. This is good. This is the central obligation, I believe, that I have to the Baltimore church, and the strongest place out of which I may have influence.

Still, this post is a day late. A sign of my over-performing . . .

Tuesday, Bluesday

Okay, okay, not to create a rhymey-timey sequence . . . but Tuesday morning was tough. I listened to a sermon and spent some time thinking, but I had an early morning obligation in addition to trying to get caught up on a few things, and encountered an internet failure at the church that persisted for hours. So the brief blogpost I wanted to make got put off and put off . . . and somehow it is Thursday already. Yikes!

Still, I am getting a lot of things done, and continually choosing things not to do. And, I hope, I'm finding more and more people that I can trust to help.

Monday, Monday

Practice continues. Looking forward to being a little better caught up relationally, and ready to detach from an argument that persists among some leaders. How to be pastoral? How to be present? That's what's in my heart.

First Sunday

Lent is here, and, unfortunately, the first Sunday is also the first day of Daylight Saving Time. Yikes. I always seem to get sick on the Wednesday of the week we change the clocks. Being in Maryland is introducing me to an all new set of spring allergies--and a month earlier than I had them in Flint or in Boston. (Spring allergies didn't appear in me until after college, so I don;t remember particularly problematical sniffling in Rhode Island springtimes.) But I', already sniffling like crazy (started on Friday) and I'm not looking forward to this week!

Still, this morning's quiet time, including listening to a colleague's sermon podcast, has got me thinking about my people, about the kind of leadership from which they might benefit, and how to provide that leadership in my own person and in people I can encourage. So I think the day has started well, and I think a theme is emerging for these forty day. Leadership, and especially leadership that is developed and encouraged from among the people.

Bells ringing outside. Time to get to church! Work to do, and worship to help lead.

Saturday, a little sad

The Maryland House of Delegates yesterday decided to move the Marriage Equality bill back to the House Judiciary Committee. This will allow us to avoid a possible defeat, and to keep the bill alive for next year's session. Not the outcome we desired, but probably a better outcome than a losing vote--and we just didn't have assurance that we would win.

So I'm a little sad.

Last night, church had a delightful and "easy" dinner to kick off our Commitment Campaign . . . and then I went to a house concert with my favorite live performer, Dean Stevens. Dean's music always moves me to tears, especially the moment in "Wood and Strings" where he sings

Thank you, George Lowden

Thank you, Jean Larrivée,

Gordy Bischoff, C. F. Martin,

I am thanking you every day.

Thank you, rosewood, thank you, cedar,

Mahogany, ebony, bronze and steel,

Thank you wood, oh thank you metal,

Thank you hands that make it real.

This ebullient moment of gratitude makes me cry.

Likewise, from "Old Man in his Garden,"

I'll be thinkin' rain, I'll be hopin' sun,

I'll be dreamin' greener gardens. Is this my last one?

You can see me growin' slower,

But, ah! the grace of the garden grower.

And when we sing, simply, "Cuida el agua, cuida el agua, cuida el agua, cuida la."

Bring me to overwhelming joy.

I listened to a colleague's sermon this morning and was moved in my heart. How can I myself become a minister whose podcasts others listen to, find helpful, welcome in moments when they need to be more centered.

Well. prayers said for my people; intention expressed and optimism asserted. Much of what this morning thing means to me.

Off to a baby naming, child dedication and baptism. My work! Blessed be.

Catching Up

Not a big post! But an affirmation that I took time this morning to listen to a colleague's sermon and to reflect on my own gifts. I also spent some time in prayer for members of my congregation. Made a choice not to hire some help (today, anyway) to re-arrange the apartment. And now I'm waiting a little to make a call to Berlin to check in with my friend Ginga, who is coming to visit the US and Canada for the next few weeks.

Dinner at church tonight. I expect it to be fun!

Now to Gerald and the gym.

Lent 2011

No looking back . . . but the past year has been a tough one in many ways. I realize that some of the "un-centered-ness" that I've felt has to do with my living situation, which has been complex--paying for a house in Michigan (without the help expected by people sharing the house--for whatever reason!) and discovering that my housing arrangements in Maryland needed to be "tweaked" to be more equitable to my gracious landlady. It has meant that I've lived without a study at home, and that my morning centering time has been later in the day than I'd like. So now, for Lent, I'm going to "take back" the morning for these forty days.

I've been listening to podcasts of colleagues' sermons lately, and will do so intentionally each morning through May Day. I have a collection to which I've subscribed and which I get automatically, but I've also looked around to see what is on other churches' websites. I don;t think this will be a place to comment on someone else's sermon, but I will check in to help find the centeredness I need as I imagine what my next living situation will be.

That's all for today! First Thursday in Lent . . .

Big Snow

Visitors from Boston (says the Baltimore Sun) finding a snowy white welcome in Baltimore (say I).

I have a little bit of a snow history. Thirty-two years ago, there were back-to-back snowstorms in New England that we call "The Blizzard of '78," a snow emergency unlike any seen in a lifetime wherein hundreds of cars were stranded on highways, thousands of homes lost electricity, and the City of Boston came to a standstill for about a week. I was living in an efficiency apartment on St. Botolph Street and working as a waiter at the 57 Restaurant, and when I awoke with no power, I hadn't heard the radio news (and I didn't have a TV then) and didn't know that a state of emergency had been declared. So I walked to work (as I always did) leaving quite a bit of time to get through the drifting. When I arrived, my supervisor asked, "Why the hell are you here?" And then realized that having an additional worker on-hand would be helpful, and told me that I'd need to stay for the lunch shift.

Of course, there were only a few diners. The hotel on the opposite side of the 57 Complex (a Howard Johnson's) was less than full, but there were business people there who would not be going to work, so they came to us for extended lunches. But there was a more important task for some of us: working in the kitchen.

The families that owned the 57 (the Philopoulos and Dadasis families) were politically connected, and "the old man" worked his connections at every turn. When the state of emergency was declared, the owners instructed the executive chef to roast enough beef to make hundreds of roast beef sandwiches. Which a group of us then made, and delivered 500 sandwiched to the State Police and 500 sandwiches to the Boston Police. The police were thankful, of course. They were hard working public servants, after all, and our expression of support for them was an indication of our appreciation of all they did.

Still, it was interesting that, in the days of the state of emergency when little traffic was allowed in the city of Boston, food trucks would be escorted by the police to the loading docks of the 57, and when other restaurants in Back Bay and the Theater District were closed, we had fresh supplies each and every day.

Coincidence, I'm sure!

Stay tuned for more tales of the Blizzard of '78.

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.