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.

Long Time No . . .

Chris Monk gave me a hard time the other night at a Worship Team meeting. Wondered why I had been so silent for so long. I don't think I can answer that right away, but I guess that I have to be honest with myself and say that some events from about a year ago still fill me with anxiety, and especially about where I may say what with what level of safety assured. (I mean, sometimes no matter what I say or don't say, things blow up.)

That being (un)said, I want to take advantage of my own thoughts about what this year might entail at our church in Flint.

I wanted to share with our program people in worship and music, lifespan learning and membership some ideas about how I wanted to shape the "liturgical year." ("Liturgy" is about the work of the "li" people, that is, the laity. So it is important that they have a clue where I think we/they ought to take their/our work. Right?!)

I wanted to follow the patterns of the natural year plus the cultural year. So the fall was the time of ingathering and celebration, and also a time to say that, about last spring and summers conflicts, it was now time to make amends.

September--hospitality theme

October--atonement theme

November--gratitude theme

Winter begins a time of bundling, of gathering around the hearth and drawing close to each other. It becomes a place to share the "deep thoughts" of a community, and, when walking under the clear winter sky when the cloud cover is so dispersed, to look at those stars and to imagine what it means to be "the stuff of stars." We also mark the cultural holidays of the season, and anticipate spring.

December--embodiment theme

January--struggle theme

February--forgiveness theme

March--transformation theme

Finally, we rejoice as nature awakens, as sap runs and flowers emerge, as snow melts away and water rushes to green us. We receive energy and share energy and look at things with anticipation of fruitfulness and favor.

April--regeneration theme

May--engagement theme

June--hope theme

The summer then becomes a time of potpourri, a variety of experiences with people coming and going. I try very intentionally not to draw a distinction between "minister's services" and "lay services" because I think I have vocational and professional responsibility for all of them, and, from my point of view, all services are lay services (again, the work of the laity). But, in truth, I am only present for about half the services in the summer, and it becomes a time of greater variety even as the congregation itself has more variety as people leave on vacations, go to the places "up north," etc.

Projecting forward a year has meant that I am more conscious as I study, week by week, of materials which will be part of the future Sunday story of this congregation. I hope it is making me a better minister. It certainly has been a way for me to raise the bar of expectations for myself. I feel far more powerful.

Good to be writing again. I'll try to keep this up. 

10 Years, and counting

My church marked the 10th Anniversary of my ordination a couple of weeks ago. I was especially pleased that we invited Dean Stevens to come from Boston to present a concert. Dean invited two young musicians, Chloe and Chris, from Milan, Michigan to share in the concert. And then Dean stayed over to perform at our Sunday morning service.

The weekend of his visit was one of the rainiest we've had, and Dean made the choice not to drive to Grand Rapids and Indiana to visit family and friends, but rather to stay at my home, to practice and read and stare out the window.

One great gift Dean gave me was the observation that I live in a beautiful home. He shared that he could see the rooms where work was still being done, the rooms where work hasn't even started, and the mismatched furniture. Still, what a grand yard! What a relaxing library! What joy to have a pretty good piano in the living room! What a place to put your feet up and enjoy a book!

Of course, what he says is true. I don't look at my place and see its charm. Rather I'm weighed down by its expense, I'm sometimes immobilized by the thought of its declining value, and I so wish that the _____ (kitchen, living room, bathroom, you fill in the blank) could be finished. Cheaply. Soon.

I purchased a beautiful glass mezuzah when I was in Fort Lauderdale for UUA General Assembly in June. I finally got it up on the doorpost. I know that I'm appropriating someone else's culture, but I think it is the resident culture of the home I am only beginning to be owned by, and I mean it to honor the Golden family, not to dishonor Judaism. It has two scrolls in it, one traditional Hebrew scroll and another with the UU principles. It pleases me.

  

My friend Jack came to visit, and gave me a hand in putting up new curtains in the living room and sun room. They're somewhat sheer linens with a simple silkscreened pattern that is very Scandinavian. I need to get some more attractive rods, and raised them 10 inches or so . . . but they make it feel, more and more, like it is my house.

My dear friend Elissa showed up this weekend and spent a day helping me get my recyclables to the recycling center. We put up another coat of faux Venetian plaster, in a less red color, and I am so pleased. With just a little more of a skim coat, a good dry, cure and burnishing, the kitchen will be ready to be declared "done," at least for my living. (For selling, some day, it will need to be neutered, beiged, toned down!) But I'm close, I'm close.

The furniture has largely been rearranged. I have a new bed (from IKEA) that I enjoy. I need to figure out the dining room. But hey, it is a beautiful house, a great place to relax, a wonderful place to live, a supportive place to be. 

Midsommar

It has been seven and a half weeks since I last blogged, seven and a half weeks of drawing conclusions and hoping for a significant change in my life. I'm happy to say that, in the past ten days, that I feel a new "centeredness," a new energy for my work, and a clearer space for relationships with family, friends, my congregation and its leaders, and my own future.

Some of this has been about money. I have been financially strapped since before moving to Michigan, and month by month have been catching up. Except for the surprising news that my mortgage company did not pay my winter taxes in February (?!?), I have gotten caught up with just about everything (and I'm writing that tax check to the city right now, and will call the company in the morning before I leave for UUA General Assembly).  

Much of this has been about the conflict in our church, a conflict which arose out of very bad interactions among several individuals and which is seen by most as a personality conflict. The notion "can't we all just get along" has led more than a few people to blame me for not "handling" the situation, hoping that I'd be the rescuer who would protect innocent victims from an abuser. The problem in the church is that different people feel victimized, and different people have been blamed as the abusers. And my reaction throughout has been to reject the rescuer role, to try to get (adult) people to interact directly with one another and to refer to our covenantal understandings to guide our interactions. This has made the process slow and long . . . but I finally feel that it has been exhausted.

As have I.

But that is a conclusion of sorts. And a combination of letters sent to members, conversations with many people, and a workshop with Rev. Barbara Child has brought us all to a new place.

Much of this has to do with my body. I put on even more weight during the conflict in January,February and March. I have been walking with the Crim Training Program (four miles yesterday) as a way of getting my body moving and getting my weight under control. My plan is to walk the ten-mile Crim in August, and the training program gives me some help along the way, along with another group of non-UU Flint residents with whom to relate. And it is motivating--even if dificult to participate in fully due to my Tuesday evening meetings and frequent time away from Flint in the summer.

Well, it is now clearly time to head off to church to finish up this morning's video display (more on this later). The tomatoes in the back yard are happy--I spoke to them a few minutes ago--and the Renaissance re-enacters on the church back lawn will soon be rising with the sun.

Birds chirping outside. Sky turning to a warmer blue.

Valborgsmässoafton

or Walpurgis Night.

If I were "home" in Rhode Island, I might be attending a Valborg celebration with my family at Little Rhody Vasa Park. (In truth, of course, I bet they'd celebrate not on April 30th but on the closest weekend!) We'd have some Swedish food (with some Italian specialties--I mean, it IS Rhode Island) and a folklorist would share a story and a song. We might build a bonfire (to ward of demonic spirits) and the children might enact running the Winter Witch out of the community. (Lots of layers here.) And there might be a little drinking. Just a little. (Right.)

Wikipedia says that Walpurgisnacht (German) is the time of the "Enclosure of the Fallen." Odin died to retrieve the special knowledge of the runes, and this night of his death is a time when, like on Hallowe'en and All Saints/All Souls, the boundary between the living and the dead is especially slim. It represents a night of chaos when the dead walk among us and might communicate with us. Bonfires contain (enclose?) the dead and protect us from confusion. All creation awaits the return of order with the coming of the sun on May Day, the beginning of summer. (Mid-summer is marked on June 21 with the summer equinox.)

April 30th marks the end of the academic year, and at universities, I'm told, students (and I bet a professor or two) spend the night with peers, singing and drinking and carrying on. Enormous bonfires are built in the weeks leading up to Valborg, perhaps mirrored in the countryside by people having spent weeks pruning trees and then building fires to burn out any mold that has accumulated with the spring's rain. I'm told people expect to sleep away the next morning.

Tonight at our church, we'll have another session in our series of meetings talking about reconciliation in our community. Tonight will be a conversation about shared leadership, shared ministry. I expect that the dozen or so of us who converse will find much agreement, even with differing emphases. I'll hope to post the results of our conversations, even as I try to create a ritual based on our thoughts. 

Reconciliation

Our Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint is a diverse community struggling with some growing pains. We embrace, in our words, a mission that says we are "growing in numbers, diversity and purpose," and at the same time, fear that by growing in numbers we will lose something of our intimate community. Our shared culture contains, like that of many churches, some behavior patterns that are from the small, family-sized church, some of the slightly larger pastoral church we have been for decades, and aspirations to be a larger, program church with an exciting program in lifespan learning, a diverse music ministry a campus ministry, etc.

You can tell that there will be missteps and hurt feeling when the community represents such a clash of cultures. It can't be helped! I know that I disappoint people every day, act (and act out?) in ways that are inconsistent with people's expectations of me. When I can, I say a heartfelt "I'm sorry" and hope that it will be accepted and we can go forward. But other times, it is the inevitable conflict of expectations that exists in a complex system that puts me in a difficult place--and puts our volunteers in difficult places, too. And it feels as if there is no way out.

One "way" ("iter" in Latin, right??) that we are trying is an iterative dialogue that has been held on two occasions, facilitated by Bob Brown, Associate Director of University-Community Partnerships of Michigan State University. Our first conversation of reconciliation looked at what I consider an essential for accomplishing shared ministry, the notion of co-creation. I was pleased that the following words were created by the first group of conversants--although I'm not sure any of the others expected that I might use them in a liturgical setting for our whole church. But I did!

The resulting Sunday service, yesterday, moved many of the participants. It affirmed my thought that, if we are to be about establishing the "new norms" that will let our church grow in numbers to be more effective in Genesee county, more dialogue like this needs to undertaken. More liturgies need to be created. Fuller celebration of the ideas of shared responsibility and opportunity needs to be experienced by our community, starting, I think, with me. (You may say that it needs to start with you!)

Reading of Reconciliation
Leaders: To co-create is to be collaborative, to be mutually beneficial to all and our church.
People: It is about the well-being of the whole, about the best interest of our church.
It is about intentionally planning change together, finding common direction.
It is about teamwork, inclusion and respect.
It is about achieving more together than can be achieved alone.

Leaders: To co-create is to seek diversity in voices and ideas.
People: It is about honoring differences in viewpoints and ideas.
It is about finding space for the expression of those differences.
It is about reconnecting with those who feel left out, alienated, overlooked.

Leaders: To co-create is to share power; it is the exercise of shared power.
People: It is about shared leadership, empowering individuals & committees to act.
It is about building our collective capacity to act.
It is about accountability to the whole.
It is about understanding that we as individuals will not always agree with the whole.

Leaders: To co-create is to move from what is, to what can be.
People: It is about being open to change, to new ideas.
It is about unlimited possibilities and realizing potential.
It is about not being restrained by what is.

Leaders: To co-create is to be responsive to each other’s and the church’s needs.
People: It is about all of us being sensitive to one another’s feelings and beliefs.
It is about everyone feeling safe and free to express points of view.

Leaders: To co-create is to check our egos at the door.
People: It is about inter-subjectivity.
It is about “I-Thou” relating, instead of “I-It.”

Leaders: To co-create is to build on all of our strengths.
People: It is about accepting that our entire community is in the process of co-creating.
It is about respect for each other in all interactions.

Leaders: To co-create is to work together in an understood and agreed upon process.
People: It is about deciding collectively how we work together.
It is about the ongoing dissemination of our working-together processes.
It is about evolving our processes together if needed.

Meditation

Words of Encouragement
Leaders: How do we know when we are not co-creating successfully? We are not co-creating:
People: When we are not listening or communicating.
When goals are not mutually agreed upon.
When goals are not being met.
When things go bad.
When nothing new is being made.
When challenges to authority are stifled.

Leaders: How do we know when we are co-creating successfully? We are co-creating:
People: When mutually agreed upon goals are being met and they are good for our church.
When we hear the collective, “Wow!”
When grievances are resolved.
When diversity is apparent.
When it feels that things are going right—we’re “in the flow.”
When we are interconnected and not in silos.
When we honor multiple ways of making meaning.
When we are communicating and connecting in a positive way.
When our traditions and history are being honored.
When we check the relevance of our history and traditions.
When we feel safe to voice any opinion.
When we hear laughter.

Black History, Children's Books

Last night, Prof. Rose Casement, a member of our congregation, gave a passionate presentation on her brilliant, inspirational and comprehensive book, Black History in the Pages of Children's Literature (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008). I spent much of the presentation in tears.

This is not a book review. The book is described by its publisher thusly:

"In spite of the month of February being designated as Black History Month, few students, regardless of race, leave school with an understanding of the depth and breadth of Black experience in America. Black History in the Pages of Children's Literature presents Black history contextualized in chapters that provide both an introduction to historical periods and an annotated bibliography of outstanding children's literature that can be used to introduce and teach the history of each period. These children's books provide stories and information that can help students develop deeper understandings of the distinct history of African Americans within the encompassing history of America.

"Author Rose Casement provides a complete historical timeframe from pre-colonization to the present, with chapters specifically covering the colonization of North America, the years of slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the role African Americans played in westward expansion, the Jim Crow years, and contemporary stories that depict the present. Accompanying each chapter's bibliography are notations as to the recommended grade levels for the books presented. A glossary of terms and an index are also provided for clarification and easy access to specific areas of study. Teachers, parents, librarians, and administrators who want to gain a greater understanding of Black history will find this book to be a good resource."

In her presentation, in which she cited about twenty books which she had at hand, Prof. Casement asked us to be attentive to providing some guidance to our children as they read this literature. "Is it historically true?" is only one of the questions we must consider. "Does it tell the story in a way that children can understand?" is a great consideration. Kids know about whether things are fair, they can understand when events are right and wrong. Children can write their own experiences and feelings into the narrative of other people's lives.

"Does it romanticize history?" is a great question, one which asks us to confront the reduction of certain Black leaders from the truth of their brilliance and courage. Last night Prof. Casement read a quotation from a Lewis and Clark picture book a page where York, the enslaved companion of Clark, looks into the northern lights and, just for a moment, forgets that he has been enslaved. Such romanticism needs to be undone, talked through with children, given a context that they can understand.

I'll leave reading the book to you (and I hope you will). But I will share that Casement brings a sense of the resourcefulness of teachers, parents, librarians and others who help form our children. Her presentation showed her trust that we want to do the right thing for our kids--Black kids and white kids and all kids--but that we, like they, need better tools to do the right thing. And she tries to provide these tools. She quotes from each of the books she would have us read, and trusts that her quotations will make us want to read the books cited. She groups the books by historical topic, and then gives us indications of age appropriateness. She gives us a glossary.

I was struck by her appeal for literacy reparations. It is a passionate, political and very Unitarian Universalist appeal. She looks at a historical truth--that illiteracy was one of the legal shackles imposed on the Africans and African Americans held in slavery and that those who talk Black folk to read and write could be severely punished--and its lack of remedy--the interruption/abandonment of Reconstruction and the restoration of economic slavery--and then the current state we find--low literacy rates, insufficient libraries and failing schools in urban centers like Flint--and asks that we find ways to do literacy reparation on a massive scale in our inner city schools and communities, providing the best books, the best teachers, the most modern equipment, the most complete hi-tech capacities, etc. The kids still need meaningful employment on the far side of education, of course, and they need hope; but they need tools and teachers, and Casement's book hopes to be one in the service of the other.

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.

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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.

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.

Further Shock

I was sitting in Palm Beach International airport on Tuesday when I received the call from Scott Stensaas, member of UU Flint and former congregational Moderator. Auldin Nelson, long term member and leader and the architect of our 1961 classroom building and 1986 Sanctuary and Bell Tower, had been discovered dead that morning by his sister, who worried that he hadn't called her as he did each morning. Auldin had died of a heart attack the night before. What a shock.

Auldin had not been feeling well for a few days. He felt he had a virus and ought to take it easy, but his sister noticed that he was using his walker to get around Ikea on Saturday--something quite unusual. He didn't go to church on Sunday, wanting to rest up. And on Monday, he said that he was feeling under the weather but was not ready to see a doctor.

In talking with Auldin's wife Jean on Wednesday, I learned that their son is traveling in China with a production that he would have a hard time walking away from. So the family has decided to postpone a Memorial Service until the spring when everyone can be in Flint. In the meanwhile, there will be no viewing on the body or funeral service; friends are asked to make contributions to the Memorial Garden Fund at the church, a project conceived and designed by Auldin, and one very dear to his heart.

I'm thankful that we concluded our church's 75th anniversary year by paying tribute to Auldin on the 45th and 20th anniversaries of the construction of our buildings. In the spring of 2006, we thanked Auldin with a banquet with tributes. I was pleased then to speak with former ministers of UU Flint, to hear their accolades and to deliver them to the body gathered.

Last year, Auldin "retired" as the "supervisor of aesthetics" of our buildings and grounds. He shared with me his thoughts about our narthex; he showed drawings for a new wheechair accessible unisex and family bathroom; he encouraged me to think about how useful a pavilion could be for outdoor activities. He was clearly turning things over, even as he wanted to be kept "in a consultiung role."

Auldin's appearances at our candlestand to share "joys and concerns" was always amusing, always thought provoking, and usually surprising. I loved just stepping back and letting his bright wit speak. The way he spoke illuminated a dozeb other conversations with congregation members.

It is silly to say that I will miss him; it would be foolish not to think that the worlds of the UU church and Flint are changed and that the future includes a great unknown. What a presence! What a loss! What a shock!

With the end of Daylight Saving Time, the sun today will shine 4 hours and 43 minutes before noon, and 5 hours and 19 minutes after. That puts "high noon" at 12:18 or so--almost natural! The sky is gray, the morning chilly. I'm going to do some Qigong before showering . . .

Good morning.

Words for Jon

We set the clocks back this morning, and I was pleased to rise early and take a walk around the Indiantown development where I am staying with Ferry Beacher Ann Nozawa. Walking the circumferential road around the development, listening to neighbors discuss how cold it had become last night (57 degrees Fahrenheit!), feeling the warm sun on my face and enjoying the leisurely pace of bicycles and golf carts, I felt a few words organize themselves in my heart which I typed up to send to June Urdy at UU Church of Flint, who will be serving as Worship Associate this morning while I am away in Florida.

Words for Pastoral Prayer:

Oh Thou, Whom no person at any time hath seen,
And yet Who, through all the ages and places of the human story hath revealed Yourself
in the love of each mother for her babies,
in the growing creativity of each child,
in the communities of affection that be build to accept, nurture and inspire our children;
Be with us now as we share with each other the grief
of the shocking death of Jon Owen,
a member of our church, a leader of our young adults,
a worship leader of our celebrations and our sorrows,
a brother of us all in the human family.
Make us now a community of solace, each for the other,
and all of us for Susan, his mother, and for his grandmother.
Be present to us in our shock and in our grieving,
in our happy remembering, in our recovery,
in our creation of caring community among and within.