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 . . .

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. 

Conflict and the Too-Busy Life

Life has been too-full of late, including a weekend in Des Moines, Iowa filling the pulpit of a colleague on sabbatical, and a weekend in Cincinnati for the Heartland UU District Board of Trustees, on which I am a Member At-Large.

This doesn't mean I haven't been writing, but it does mean that until my laptop got fixed (It is now, hurrah!), I haven't had the capacity easily to post. I'll post a few thoughts in the next couple of days, but for now I want to share my latest newsletter column from The Flint Unitarian Universalist.

=====

Dear congregation, our members and friends,

You may know that I have a somewhat split personality when it comes to matters of faith. I’ve told you that my working faith understanding is one of humanism, an understanding that the natural world contains all that is, and that we don’t need the supernatural to reliably live with one another—and the earth—morally and ethically, joyously and aesthetically. Still, the religion of my upbringing ties me to the stories of Jesus, teacher, brother and friend, organizer and rabblerouser, and—mystically, impossibly—the savior and redeemer of all that is.

The task of resolving the conflicts among these understandings is mine. That’s what I believe, and that’s what our liberal religion promotes. Each of us uses this religious community to help us on our spiritual growth, letting us create provisional answers for life’s large questions. We seek universal answers even as we expect that we must remain wide open to the unexpected, to the challenging, to the diverse.

We say we want to behave with one another in ways that allow for a multiplicity of provisional answers to our many questions. We say that we want to welcome the stranger, to encourage each other, to allow for difference. Still, we get into trouble with each other because—well, because we are human. Our human differences, the differences of our experiences, the differences of our self-assessments and our assessments of other people’s capacity (or incapacity!), our brokenness and alienation often leave us in bad behavior and conflict.

Conflict is not a bad thing. Understood and addressed, it can be a motor for improvement, evolution. When those of us who are in conflict bring, face-to-face, our differences; when we listen as well as speak; when our interaction causes us to better refine our own positions, we may learn better who we, ourselves, are and what the specific contribution is that we might make to our common life.

Conflict that is avoided can cause us to look at the world around us not as it really is. Conflict that is avoided can send up that marvelous river “Denial,” and leave us adrift. Conflict avoided can harm us.

By the same token, conflict that escalates—and conflict can escalate quickly!—can be very harmful and hurtful. Conflict escalates when, rather than bringing a question or problem to the person who can help resolve the question, it is spread around through rumor and gossiping and further avoiding the real problems and personalities.

Speed Leas of the Alban Institute identifies five levels of conflict in congregations:
I is “A Problem to Solve”;
II is “A Disagreement”;
III is “A Contest among Parties”;
IV is “Fight or Flight”; and
V is “Intractable Conflict.”

When we have confusion or disagreement about something, we can resolve it in the first two conflict levels and decide how to act together. (Sometimes we vote. Sometimes we figure out who is supposed to be responsible.)

When we get into that difficult place where the conflict is not about the “issues” but about the people or personalities with whom we disagree, or when we begin to threaten to leave, or when we know that the only way out is the annihilation of the opposing party, then we are stuck in a place that requires some outside help to work things through and find a resolution—one where, usually, not all parties will be happy!

Our interactions with one another reveal plenty of places where we there is lack of clarity about process, and some confusion about responsibility for programs and decisions. Some places we find that we don’t all agree with the decisions we’ve made with one another. This is normal. We keep talking, trying to listen more completely and speak more precisely. Sometimes we learn just to be quiet and listen to the sound of our own hearts.

We have times set aside this month. An “after church conversation” on Mar. 2. The “Open” service on Mar. 30. Additional times which will be set for small group interaction in a more relaxed setting.

When the conflict we face is larger, (Level IV? Level V!) we may need to ask someone outside to help us talk through our differences. We may need to look at other congregational “right relations” policies to address challenges that we have. We might need to ask a consultant to help us express a radical honesty about our differences. We might have to unearth our fears about the church, its direction and future.

Maybe it is here that I’m happiest that I have this “Jesus loving” side. On the Christian side of my split personality, I know that there is a God—and it is not I!—and that there is a resurrection hope beyond the pain of change and conflict. I know that there is, somehow, a way that everything can be saved, redeemed.

My practice each spring in the weeks leading to Easter is to set aside time daily to be quiet, to study and meditate, even to pray. I’ve been blessed to do this, since Paczki Day (thanks for the Polish pastries!), in ways that make sense to my spiritual quest: watching a video class on great ideas in philosophy, reading the biblical prophets, listening to devotional music, leading interfaith chanting among colleagues . . . and keeping you in my heart.

“Morning by morning new mercies I see,” says the old evangelical hymn, and my quest for mercy has you at its center. I long for ways for us to more fully embody our liberal religion with each other, to be the community of right relations which honors our faith. To embrace conflict well. To change. To grow.

Happy (Humanistic) Easter, one and all.

Love, just love,

(Rev.) David Carl Olson
minister

P.S. Please join members of the Greater Flint Interfaith Community on Tuesday, March 18 at the Life Enrichment Center for a Peace Service on the evening before the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. This non-partisan service is an expression of our deep desire to end not only this war but all war, and asks us to call on our spiritual resources to imagine ways out of this war and all war. The Peace Prayer Service is sponsored by the Genesee County Committee for Community Peace, and members of the Life Enrichment Center will lead the service itself. Leaders of the congregations of Temple Beth El, Woodside Church, Lou’Helen Baha’i Center and the Al-Saddiq Institute & Mosque have indicated interest in attending. I hope you can be there, too, at the corner of Lennon and Dye.