Promises to Keep

I slept in the day after Easter, rather wiped out, and then rushed around a bit yesterday. So finally I am up and about . . . and thinking about this profession, this full-time, called and settled ministry that sometimes unsettles me.

I have been thinking about the ordination promises I made years ago. Standing before the church that raised me, the Committee on Church and Ministry that held me "in care" during seminary, and with colleagues in the United Church of Christ and other traditions, I was asked these questions, and I gave these responses:

David Carl Olson, before God and this congregation, we ask you:

Are you persuaded that God has called you to be an ordained minister of the church of Jesus Christ, and are you ready with the help of God to enter this ministry and to serve faithfully in it?

(I am.)

Do you, with the church throughout the world, hear the word of God in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and do you accept the word of God as the rule of Christian faith and practice?

(I do.)

Do you promised to be diligent in your private prayers and in reading the scriptures, as well as in the public duties of your office?

(I do, relying on God's grace.)

Will you be zealous in maintaining both truth of the gospel and the peace of the church, speaking the truth in love?

(I will, relying on God's grace.)

Will you be faithful in preaching and teaching the gospel, in administering the sacraments and rites of the church, and in exercising pastoral care and leadership?

(I will, relying on God's grace.)

Will you keep silent all confidences shared with you?

(I will, relying on God's grace.)

Will you regard all people with equal love and concern and undertake to minister impartially to needs of all?

(I will, relying on God's grace.)

Do you accept the faith and order of the United Church of Christ and will you, as an ordained minister in this communion, ecumenically reach out to all who are in Christ and show Christian love to people of other faiths and people of no faith?

(I do and I will, relying on God's grace.)

These promises I call to mind virtually every day. I think that's part of being called to ministry. I may need to interpret them through my own skeptical, liberal, modern lenses, yet still, I hold to them, use them to bind me to a people and to a purpose.

Rev. Alma Faith Crawford preached at my service of ordination, and Rev. Raymond Bradley, Jr. prayed. My Dad presented me with a stole, and my sister Donna a robe that she designed and sewed, and for which the whole family found a variety of buttons. When I robe, when I put on my stole, when I preach, when I pray, all of them are present to me in a vital way; and I think of my promises.

Happy that Easter has come, and that spring will find Flint very soon.

Good afternoon.

Happy New Year

Snow this morning, beautiful and full, waiting to be shoveled from the stairs and sidewalks. (I'll skip the driveway!) But I want to stay in bed a few more minutes . . . hours??

Last night, I bid 2007 good-bye by dropping in at a party at the church and an open house at the home of two members. I went to Club MI for midnight revelries, and sat with fewer than a dozen men--a little sad, it seems--to welcome in the New Year.

I was hoping to go to a party in Detroit last night, but felt I didn't want to risk it, once the snow began. Likewise, I had planned to attend a party this afternoon in the detroit suburbs, but the roads have not been cleared and I'm giving that a second thought.

The last week of 2007 was a relaxing and intimate one with family. I flew to Providence on Christmas Day, missing my plane after my car's battery was dead and I needed jump from a neighbor. Arriving in the evening, I exchanged gifts with family and then went to bed in my mother's bed. (She took the rollaway.) In the next couple of days, I spent time assisting my brothers as they took down a sappy maple; I tried to get ma's computer connected to the internet via cable modem; and I put in a splitter to get cable into my mother's and sister's bedrooms. 

I was happy to go to an Indian restaurant on the East Side with my brother John, in town from his Lubec, Maine home. We then took a long walk around the Brown campus and environs. With nephews Eric and Phillip, John and Paul and I went to see "I am Legend," enjoyable in spite of a rowdy group of teens in the audience. And with Carol and her beau Brian, we went to Town Pizza . . . a real Riverside respite.

I had planned on catching a train to New Haven or Boston to visit New England friends, and finally was simply unable to do so. I was tired, slept in most days, and really enjoyed some "down time" with Ma. A good time to think and feel and re-charge.

I'm listening to a Carolyn McDade CD from a decade or so ago; one that helped me in the first year of recovery from Leonel's death. The CD, "As We So Love," opens with a choral setting of one of Carolyn's solo numbers from the previous decade, "Ancient Love." No matter how many times I hear it, it always makes me cry.  Here it is, for you . . .

"This Ancient Love"

Long before the night was born from darkness,

Long before the dawn rolled unsteady from fire,

Long before She wrapped her silent arm around the hills,

There was a love, an ancient love was born.

Long before the grass spotted green the bare hillside,

Long before a wing unfolded to wind,

Long before She wrapped her long blue arm around the sea,

There was a love, this ancient love was born.

Long before a chain was forged from the hillside,

Long before a voice uttered freedom's cry,

Long before she wrapped her bleeding arms around the child,

There was a love, and ancient love was born.

Long before the name of a god was spoken,

Long before a cross was nailed from a tree,

Long before She waved her arm of colors 'cross the skies,

There was a love, this ancient love was born.

Fateful our night, slumbers our morning,

Stubborn the grass growing green wounded hills,

As we wrap our healing arms to hold what Her arms held,

This ancient love, this aching love, rolls on.

--Carolyn McDade 

In the Lansing Airport, Overnight

I'm on my way to Boston to conduct a Memorial Service for Laura Ross, an old-time radical comrade and long-time friend who supported me in my career as a cultural worker and in my decision to go to seminary and become a minister. The service is sponsored by the Communist Party and the Center for Marxist Education, two institutions which were built and supported by Laura over many years, and will be held at the Community Church of Boston where I was the minister from 1998 to 2005. I am looking forward to being with old political friends even as I am beginning to feel my sadness at Laura's death more acutely.

I need to get back to Flint to be able to conduct our Sunday service, and the onlyway I can do that (and conduct the Memorial Service) is to fly into Detroit Metro Airport on Saturday night at 11:30, and then drive home. But the only way I can afford the trip without a Saturday night stay over is to fly this crazy route I was able to book: to fly from Lansing to O'Hare and to Providence, and then to fly back from Providence to Washington, DC and then to Detroit Metro. So the trick is to get between Lansing and Detroit . . .

I discovered there is a shuttle between Metro and East Lansing, and so I drove to Detroit and caught the shuttle. I was pleased to park on the "Blue Ramp" which is connected to the Smith Terminal by a crossover bridge. But the work in the Blue Ramp is not quite finished, and there are no directions for getting to the Terminal, so I found myself on the telephone with the Michigan Flyer people trying to get help finding the shuttle bus. The walk from where I parked to the terminal was far longer than I ever imagined, and even when I saw the bus from the crossover bridge, I had a hard time figuring out how to get downstairs to the street.

Thankfully, the driver called me to walk me through those last few minutes, and the bus ride was very pleasant. As there were only four of us on the bus, and as we were all going to East Lansing, we didn't stop in Jackson or Ann Arbor and arrived early.

In East Lansing, I took a minute to get dinner (at Big Ten Burrito) and then took a cab to the airport. The cab driver was a young Cuban man named Pedro, and we had a fun time talking about Cuba and the punitive travel restrictions on Cuban families. He also shared some thoughts about his church, and tithing, and his desire to prosper in this country. It was a pleasant ride that I thoroughly enjoyed.

At the airport, I found a corner in which to sit, and slouch, and eventually fall asleep for a few hours. I was the first person in line at 5:00 a.m. when the ticket window opened, and had a quick bite to eat when the little cafe upstairs opened a few minutes after 5. Boarded the short trip to Chicago at 5:40, and caught naps throughout the rest of the morning.

My mom picked me up in at the Providence Airport (in Warwick) and took me home to Riverside. Now I'm going to catch a nap.

About the sunrise . . . I flew out of Lansing in the dark, and then saw the sun rise in Chicago at about 6:40 a.m., a time that would be "normal" in my East Coast experience. (Sunrise in Flint was at 7:20-something.) It felt great! Except that I was so shot from sleeping in the airport.

Great day.

Year Three, Day One

The Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint called me to become their minister beginning August 16, 2005. As I begin this third year in the Midwest, I'm relieved to be on vacation (!), I'm behind (of course) in getting the yardwork done that I had planned, and haven't quite finished painting the kitchen. (So what else is new?) But I'm happy. As I sit and think about the reasons I came to Flint and what still pertains in that decision and my life, I am happy.

I had been happy in Boston, Massachusetts, too. I served the Community Church of Boston as their Leader/Minister for seven years. The work was rewarding and I was especially pleased about my public ministry through the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, GBIO. Still, I had always planned on moving away from New England to see how our liberal religion was practiced in other parts of the country, and I wanted to grow as a "parson" and as a person.

Flint is and has been a tremendous challenge for me. First, it is a much smaller city than I had imagined--smaller than Providence, smaller than Worcester where I had done my clinical pastoral educaiton, and, of course, much smaller than metropolitan Boston. I have long known that I'm a city guy; being in such a small city has been a learning experience.

Second, the culture in Flint assumes a standard family arrangement that I don't have. Rather than ask what I do for work or where I went to school, questions that seemed pretty standard openers in New England, virtually every first question I got when I moved here was, "Who is your wife, and how many children do you have?" WOW! How much do people ant me to reveal? To say simply, "I'm not married," is such a diminution of the rich relational life that I aspire to. To say, "I'm gay," is to reinforce a notion that gay guys don;t have partners and children, which is not my experience, as well as to be too candid with strangers. To say, "My husband (!) died ten years ago of AIDS," sets off a whole pile of emotions that aren't the best conversation (or relationship) starters. So I just tolerate the question and say that I live alone. And watch a sadness grow in the eyes of the inquirer.

Finally, the gay culture in Flint feels hard to build relationships within. Being the minister of the UU church means that I develop public relationships with all sorts of LGBT people, and quickly; but it also means that I can only be the part of myself which aligns with my ministerial identity. (This, of course, is NOT unique to Flint!) I've been pleased to speak to the LBGT Center at University of Michigan at Flint; happy to think with Genesee County PFLAG leaders; excited to attend Triangle Foundation events and host an appearance by a gay speaker on a national book tour. But these are not dating opportunities. I haven't discovered the places that gay men go for Salsa dancing and speaking Spanish; or the gay-friendly gym with folk that enjoy camp humor; or the circle of gay Democrats (or Greens or Libertarians or Socialists, etc.) who want to critique culture and politics in a deep way and from a point of view that celebrates our marginality and its perspective (as well as holding healthy suspicion about the role of maleness or whiteness in my own development). Gay culture seems wed to bars and private parties, and I haven't found my way in.

I don't have reference points here that shape my sense of myself the way Narragansett Bay and the Lucy Parsons Bookstore and any number of political theaters and galleries do when I am "home" in New England. I know that such reference points for me can (and will) be found. But in these first two years, I have been working--and working hard--to be present fully to Flint and to my congregation. And it has been exhausting work, this worthwhile work that I have chosen. Exhausting.

I look forward to being able to be here more simply; to begin feeling at home in this home; to be able to relax among friends; especially to be able to talk politics and culture and spirituality and camp and sexuality and desire, and, and, and . . . and not feel like a stranger in a strange land.

So I rise and watch the sun . . . and breathe.

Good morning.