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.

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.

Qigong and Worry

Sunrise today at 7:22 a.m. Overcast, but a bright, rather than dull, gray. Fresh after a good sleep.

I went to bed last night full of worry. Yesterday my wallet was stolen early in the morning, and I didn't discover it until after church. Last night, as I was calling credit card companies, I learned that gas had been purchased, that a purchase of over $500 was several times denied at Target, that a couple of $100 purchases had been made at Meijer . . . happily I was able to cancel all my cards, although now I need to replace my drivers license, get a new health insurance card, and wait for my new debit card. And get those charges reversed.

And I only had $40 in my wallet.

Rats.

I rose this morning to do twenty minutes of qigong at sunrise, facing east. When I am regular about this practice, which I rarely have been since I moved to Flint, I love the heart balancing poses that conclude the routine. Leaves a smile on my face, and gets me ready to DO things (even the laundry I'm finally going to throw in the washer downstairs).

The past few days have been very productive (that is, energetically focused on producing). Weekends are like that with the public focus on Sunday morning each week, and trainings and actions on Saturdays and Sundays when many people are available for our public work. Add to that a very emotionally draining (and reinvigorating) Memorial Service for Jon Owen last Friday, and an overnight trip to Indianapolis for the Heartland UU District Board of Trustees, I've been very "productive." And pretty satisfied.

The Veterans Day service was quite special. I felt a little more in control of the unity of the service knowing that it would be very diverse due to the number of people speaking. Four veterans spoke during the service, Dr. Van who served in the Army in Korea, Linda Kilbourn who was in the Navy during the Mercury space flights and the early 1960s unrest in the Dominican Republic, Linda Campbell who was in the Navy throughout the 1970s, and Steve Urdy who was an Army paratrooper in Grenada and the first Gulf War.

I had asked that people address why they joined the military, and it was interesting to learn that while one person was fulfilling a family obligation (men in Steve's family had served in the Army since the Spanish-American War), others saw the military as a way out. Linda K got out of Flint and finishing high school; Dr. Van got out of going to jail for drunk driving; Linda C. got out of Oklahoma. All felt that there were positive things they learned in the military, and positive characters that were shaped there, learning leadership and accountability and service. Some said that they had been brainwashed in the process, but never lost their ability to see beyond the rhetoric; and all resisted the conforming culture. "Serving my country" had great meaning, and a copupole of people lamented that today, with the elimination of the draft, we don't make social demands on young people, and we wage war without their being an evident social cost of rationing, for example, or even paying for the wat, which is now entirely being paid for "on credit."

The congregation responded deeply to each testimony and to the service as a whole. In a training on building one to one relationships within our congregation, I asked people to share what was great about the service, and people talked about seeing that issues are not "black and white," that people are multi-dimensional and deeper than we would easily know, and that there is great value in being a community where a diversity of experience is welcome. I was so happy to help us see that our narratives are richer than our issues.

I'm optimistic about the possibilities at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint and the creation of a local organizing ministry for our neighborhood, our people and our city.

Time to pray, to shower and to do some wash. Good morning.

. . . and the "Dayne"

On Tuesday morning, I met Dayne Walling, candidate for Mayor of Flint. The contrast with the previous morning with mayor Don Williamson was like night and day. Which, of couse, is expected.

Incumbents have something on which to run--their records. And so for Mayor Williamson to cite statistics about streets paved and city trucks standardized is normal, expected. Opponents need to craft a visionof change--and Dayne Walling certainly did. He projected an openness to collaboration with people, and expressed a confidence that people can tell what they want and need, and that there need to be more, not fewer, voices incolved in decision making.

I was pleased that when I asked him my question about the schools, he was willing to engage the question with some knowledge of not far distant history. Flint was once a model for community education. School buildings, run by the School Board independent of city government, also functioned as community schools, and were often built with City Parks attached. The C.S. Mott Foundation funded the community schools, education taxes funded the public schools, and the city maintained facilities that enhanced public life. The partnership created a system which was admired and emulated.

This partnership is long since ended, but the fact that the city expects to be investing resources in specific communities, as it is able, is impetus to see that the city and the schools are on the same page. Because the capacity of schools far exceeds enrollment, and because of the deterioration of many public facilities, some schools probably need to be closed; but it would be disastrous to have a community targetted for development by the city lose its school. It was refreshing to listen to someone spin a vision of cooperation.

I also was struck with Mr. Walling's confidence that not everything in Flint's governmental history is bad. Where the Mayor tended to express that everyone who comes to City Hall with an idea is looking for a handout at the expense of the taxpayers, and especially the police union, Walling shared a confidence of prior cooperative efforts, such as community policing. He eschewed a "one size fits all" approach and, in the area of policing, called for a mixture of car patrols, bike patrols and walked "beats."

Clearly he is a candidate, and clearly he needs to paint the "big picture" of what might be possible under his leadership. I relate to this, because I'm a "big picture" kind of guy. I also shoot myself in the foot if I don't have the right people around me to make sure the details get managed, bacause when I try to manage details, I sometimes get alternatively distracted and bored or side-tracked and overwhelmed. It will be intersting to see what kind of team he assembles, should Dayne Walling win.

I also have to say that I was annoyed that he was late for our meeting. We were only a half dozen pastors and a couple of staffmembers, but we were kept waiting first as he arrived late and then as he sat in his car and finished some telephione business. My acute annoyance is probably related to my own sense of guilt when I schedule 75 minutes of activity in every hour , , , can I grow in empathy? Even as I express a little annoyance?

I made a decision that as a public figure whose church includes both supporters of the Mayor and those who are working for Walling (and more than a few who are just disgusted that both candidates are White men!), I won't publicly endorse a candidate. Still, I have my opinions which I will share with individuals, and I certainly expect to vote, and will work for change in Flint, either under the present administration or with someone new.

Gray and rainy, and I still have to get a tree into the ground.

My back is very much better, thank you.

Good morning.

Meeting "The Don"

After a very long Sunday (morning service, pot luck luncheon, check in with the leaders of our campus ministry, PFLAG forum, campus ministry forum--WHEW!), you may imagine that I might be looking forward to my Monday morning "sleep in" until 9 a.m. or so. But opportunity knocked in another direction, and I rose early to take part in a conversation between the steering committee of Flint Area Congregations Together (FACT) and Flint Mayor Don Williamson.

I was happy to walk through the door to the Mayor's Office and see June Urdy's smiling face. June is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint, a leader of our Worship Committee and a Board member. June and her husband Steven live downtown in the Cul-de-Sac neighborhood just west of the Cultural Center. June has been working in the Mayor's Office in an appointed position for as long as I can remember, and it was June who asked Patsy Lou Williamson to lend my parents a car for a week when they came to Flint to witness my Installation as Minister of the Flint UU congregation. (My parents and aunts Peachy and Betty loved the SUV.)

The meeting itself was relatively low-key. We wanted to introduce our fledgling organization to the Mayor) and tomorrow to his opponent in the upcoming election) and ask him where he felt he was leading the city. (A speculative question was "What would you like your legacy to be?" but I'm not sure that we asked the question that clearly.)

It was interesting to listen to this man. He wanted to make a connection with us, I think, as he began his remarks by talking about himself as a person who grew up in the church. He didn't describe his faith, but his experience and formation. I liked that. It was clear in his presentation that he knows "how to go to church." Indeed, just about every Sunday he goes to church, and often not his own congregation but one of the larger Black churches in the city. He arrives a half hour early, he told us, and he stays through the whole service. This was one of the few instances I remember in our meeting where he seemed to be a "politician."

The rest of his self-presentation was as a manager. He can tell you how many miles of streets have been paved, and how long our sidewalks are, He could talk in general but specific terms about the deficit he inherited and the balanced budget we now have. He could spew out the numbers of contracts he cancelled to be able to give more work to city agencies and city workers. And he talked about the higher morale among city employees,

He was quickly brought outside his comfort zone when we asked about a couple of issues. Rev. Sims of Quinn Capel AME asked a question about health care, the Mayor paused for a moment and then seaid that he had something to unveil, very soon, but that he hoped we would understand that he wanted to reveal his plan in his own time. A little mysterious, I guess. but not outside my exoerience with other mayors.

I aksed hime to speak about the Flint Public Schools, and it was here that it felt to me that "the manager" was most activatyed. While I know from colleagues that the Mayor is very frustrated by the state of the schools, because we have an independently elected School Board wiht its own funding, the Mayor has no formal role, even as the state of the schools is a crucial element in the revitalization of our city. But the Mayor, as manager, was able to set the questions aside because it isn't in a "department" that is under his supervision.

That was telling to me. It is not that the Mayor has no vision for the city; rather, I think, his area of strength is to manage problems, maybe even to micro-manage problems, and to come up with practical solutions that get the streets paved, limit the number of garages needed to maintain a fleet of city cars and trucks, standardize some procedures so that there is greater efficiency, etc. And he can complain that there simply isn't the revenue through taxation to get all the work done that needs to be accomplished.

It was a great change for me not to have a Mayor breaking out into a tirade at me (loke the Mayor of Boston used to do during the Janitors strike in 2005). The grandfatherly figure trying to do his best . . . left me feeling "warm and fuzzy."

My hope, of course, is that this experience of being in the public with one another will allow FACT as an organization to mature in our relationships and to focus in our work together. Mayors come and go, but the organization we hope to build ought to remain.

Cool this morning, and grey. My back is killing me, but I am awake!

Good morning,

Unitarian Universalism

Today I will host the monthly meeting of the Steering Committee/Sponsoring Committee of Flint Area Congregations Together, the congregation-based community organization we are creating in Genesee County among a couple of dozen congregations. The organization is overwhelmingly Christian, as one would expect, and in my faith reflection today I want to think about our work tohether from the UU perspective of my people.

Largely, then, I need to reflect our pluralism. But I think that that needs to be done less by listing a number of hyphenated UU identities. I'm thinking, rather, of a brilliant presentation (lengthy, quite academic, surely Orthodox) by Archbishop Demetrios, where he made reference to Christian thought from the first, third, eighth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries (of the Common Era). This broad approach to what it means to be "the Church" was pluralistic, charitable, breathtaking.

What I can say in four or five minutes will contain nothing of Demetrios's impact. But it is his intention that I look toward, and I too hope to display charity, pluralism and a little movement of the soul.

My "impromptu" speech about Unitarian Universalism (not my twenty-five second elevator speech, but my "a couple of sentences" remarks) usually says something like this:

Our Unitarian ancestors may have been obsessed with the question of Unity. The unity of God has been a very important question for our Unitarian Christian forbears; but the unity of the human family, the unity of the one planet we inhabit, the unity of experience in the one cycle of life we are called to share; these perhaps are the Unity that now animates our unitarianism.

Our Universalist ancestors gave us a faith that says that God is Love, and their Christian faith knew a Love so powerful that all will be reconciled: in history, that all souls will be saved, yes; but in our work with one another, that each soul is precious, that each person is inherently worthy, each has inherent dignity; and that the living into Love that we are graced to exhibit happens as each of us responds to "the Love that will not let us go, that will not let us down, that will not let us off" (R. Hardies).

Unitarian Universalism calls us, in society, to make real the ethic of the interconnectedness of all existence, knowing that all we do has effects in the real world, and the inherent worth and dignity of each person, including ourselves, our families, our neighborhoods. Thus we act in the world to raise up all of us, and to build together a more blessed and beloved community.

The morning, after an evening of loud and bright thunderstorms, is clear, crisp. Humidity remains, and clouds overhead. But how green the grass! How red the tomatoes!

Good morning.