Lent 2011

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

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

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

Big Snow

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

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

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

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

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

Coincidence, I'm sure!

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

Day One

I woke early, sleeping throughout the night only, I think, because I took a couple of anti-histamine last night that knocked me out. After weeks of working and worrying and just waiting, I was about to assume my new call as Minister of the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore (Universalist & Unitarian). You can guess that I'm excited.

I rose to take a brief walk in my new neighborhood, Bolton Hill. Just a few blocks from the rowhouse that will be home for the next year or so, Eutaw Place provided a very pleasant garden boulevard in which to walk. The gardens themselves provide little "events" as I walked from block to block, and the variety of shapes of gardens, the mixing of symmetrical and asymmetrical forms, the straight paths ans the "S" curves made it quite delightful.

At the top of the park is the monument to Francis Scott Key, its gilded statue towering above columns and ship and fountain and battle. What a hoot! It is the kind of installation that requires attention, If the waters were not flowing, the perspective just wouldn't work. If the flag-bearer were not so brilliantly shining, the entire piece could easily look abandoned, lost.

Still, cared for and functioning, what a heroic piece it is, the water making it even more pleasant as my walk is beginning to make me rather warm.

Walking toward home, I stop for a moment to see up close the schul which has been a marker for me when I'm trying to figure out where to turn to get home. But it isn't a synagogue any more; it is a Prince Hall Masonic Temple, acquired in the 1960s as Temple Oheb Shalom was moving to their new Walter Gropius designed facilities in Pikesville. It is an impressive Moorish-revival building with a huge dome topped by a star of David. I wonder what the interior looks like today . . .

I stop at the coffee shop a block and a half from home and have a latte while listening to NPR on my iPhone. (Oh dear, who have I become?) There are plenty of young people coming and going, and the "Do Not Park" signs in front of the cafe provide an excellent place for people to park their cars, risking tickets, as they run in to pick up a little joe.

I get home and jump into the shower, giving up on one radio that has many buttons but whose power button seems no longer to work. (I can tune the thing, though, and even set favorite channels. Just can't figure out how to turn 'em on anymore.) The warm water is slow to arrive from the basement, and I so don't want to waste that I start with a good cold shower. Of course, this means that some hot water will be filling the pipes and then cooling down as the day goes by. Ah! hot water on demand!

After some toast (homemade bread by Pat) with cottage cheese and tomato, I finally get out of the house and turn on the timer on the phone to see how long it will take to get to the church. Seventeen and a half minutes later, I arrive a little sweaty, but beaming. At long last, this new place, this new challenge, this new opportunity.

Away from Routine, and Back

I've spent the last two weeks on study leave from my position in Flint. The first week was when I was Minister of the Week at the Lifespan Religious Education Conference on Star Island, and after I completed my opening worship, it was pretty light lifting. I got a chance to read, to plan my final services of worship in Flint, and to hear the Theme Talks presented by Meg Barnhouse with incredible music by her partner Kiya Heartwood. (These will be available as MP3 files on the Star RE Week website, I'm told.) I was happy to help the Senior High Youth prepare a very effective evening worship service, and to provide a "summing up" reflection to a story shared in the closing night Family Worship.

The second week, I was Minister of the Week at Ferry Beach, where two conferences shared the space, the Northeast UU Choral Festival, a week of choral singing and workshops, music sharing and experimentation; and GAYLA XXI, the venerable week of spirituality and fun for gay and bisexual men. I preached each and every morning, led grace before dinner and conducted a Spirit Circle on the Beach after dinner. This is a bit of work! But it is a joy that these conferences leave space for some authentic worship. Each morning there is a 45-minute service, a full sermon, one or more anthems, prepared preludes and postludes, and spirited congregational singing. A "normal" Ferry Beach morning chapel is of the 15-20 minute variety--something that I have been happy to provide; but the fuller worship is so much more satisfying for me, and corresponds, I think, to my gifts.

In each setting, the Minster has a cottage for the minster and their family. At Ferry Beach, it is humble and adequate for a couple in a queen sized bed and two kids in bunkbeds. (Private full bath with hot and cold running water and a shower!) There is a place in which to provide pastoral care, and the only challenge for me was to get the bed I slept in out of the room I was doing pastoral care in.

On Star, the Parsonage is a two-story stone cottage with accommodations for four in two bedrooms upstairs, and two in the first floor bedroom. Having a private bath is great, but there is no running hot water on Star, and all showers are allowed every other day (an improvement from the past!) in the Underworld shower rooms. But the Parsonage has a beautiful wood paneled sitting room with secretary and antiques, artwork on the walls, a small library in a built-in on the staircase, and a (not functioning at this time) fireplace.

The accommodations are magnificent. For me, however, they bring up that great problem I face again and again--what to do when, on family time, I'm the only family member. This is feeling like the most heartbreaking facet of my current life--to be without a "significant other (or others)" with whom to share myself. It means that I constantly feel as if I'm facing the world and its challenges "on my own," and, of course, that is so antithetical to my theology, world view, etc. We face the world in communities. But my lived experience--of challenges, yes, but also of joys, of moments of intimacy, of all the times when I'm mad/sad/glad/scared, all of it, it feels as if I am on my own. I buy a big house and wait for someone to move in. I sit in the Minister's Cottage or the Stone Parsonage and wonder where my immediate family is . . . and I am left only to wonder.

I'm back in Flint, now, ready to embrace the routine of the next three weeks of sermon preparation. I also need to be about the work of ending things, turning over tasks and procedures, filing final reports and holding a few hands.

I hope I can find the right people to be holding my hands in the next 35 days. This next step is the right step for me, but I also am also so deeply aware of how much I love my congregation in Flint, and how hard it is feeling to say goodbye. And I want not to tear the fabric of our affection as I move away.

It is quiet here, and I am quiet, too, and ready for the work.

Sunrise

No narrative today. Only impressions of the sunrise on the longest day of the summer.

Cool this morning, and still so wet after days of humidity and rain.

Grass so green, so lush, but such a swamp!

Heavy dew on deck chairs and table, mango uneaten yesterday left out to the elements. Ah breakfast!

Birds waking, calling.

Sun just peeking through unkempt cedar hedge.

Michigan radio inside, some BBC guy chatting. I don't listen.

Cool and substantial tiles in the kitchen, and funny marks in the grout as it sets. Hmm.

Opened can of flat carbonated water. Tasty over ice.

Ice made of water not boiled. Whoops.

Leftovers for breakfast, with memories of Jack and our day together.

Memories of Memorial Day.

Heart swelling.

Sad recollection of Flint. Sweet recollections.

Wonder about Gyllnehem (my house) and its new occupants (oops. soon not my house).

I hope.

Father's Day, and I miss my dad.

Sun is caught in the sycamore. Broad shadows.

Still chill air. Time for a shower.

Good morning.

Ambivalence

It is hard to put into words the internal conflicts I feel these days. I am looking forward to the fall when I will become Minister of First Unitarian Church of Baltimore (Universalist & Unitarian). This is a larger challenge, I think, than any I have faced. But it is a place where excellent professional ministry has been performed for over a decade, and there is a strong sense of what it means that the congregation made a decision, some thirty five years ago, to continue to be a vital presence in downtown Baltimore. This sense of collective vocation, dearly recited to me by dozens of people in the past six months, excites me, as it matches my own sense of vocation to the city with all its challenges. I love being in a place that seeks to build community in ways that transcend class and gender, ethnicity and sexuality, that incorporate faith in the past and hope for the future. I am clearly looking forward to the opportunities and challenges of the Charm City.

But Vehicle City is my home, now, and my vocation as Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint is one that I do not resign easily. Flint is a strong community that has been struggling with its essential identity for over a generation. The birthplace of General Motors, of course it is; but my friend Jack reminds me that it is more fully the birthplace of the American automobile industry. Ford was head of Cadillac before he built his own company, and Chrysler was the head of Buick at the time of the General Motors consolidation. Flint was transformed from being Carriage Town to Vehicle City, and stayed so until the Reagan years.

Now General Motors has nearly abandoned Flint, save all that money left in the coffers of the Mott family foundations. And Flint is seeking its new identity.

My great dream is that Flint will emerge from a culture of dependency (on GM, on the autoworker unions, on the Mott family) and begin to chart its own destiny in ways that are power-distributed and more egalitarian, more grassroots and, frankly, more fun. And I think my Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint is one of the centers that may model a new way of being for a new Flint.

But, alas, I will no longer be at the helm. In the next two and a half months, I need to be as fully present as I can to the congregation, while taking no role in setting a future direction for the church. They get to set the budget that they feel best reflects their capacity and their dreams for the next year. (They did that last week.) They need to decide about professional ministry for the interim year before they call a new settled minister (if they decide they will). And they are working on that. And I am available to assist, to give resource, but not to lead.

I have a lot of "me" invested in the success of planting Flint Area Congregations Together in the congregation, and believing that there are congregational leaders there who will keep our church in the leadership of FACT, a position we clearly take now. And as I add my own thoughts to the planing of a forum in July with mayoral candidates in Flint, I find that I give my advice and then let go of it. Some one else needs to carry the torch.

I hope I can learn everything I need to learn in these next weeks about ways I can lead without controlling. I think these lessons will be useful in Baltimore (and in so many areas of my life). I want to stay open, let go of that which I cannot control, and take charge of my own work and my own feelings as I take leave of a group of passionate and dear people in this place. And as I look forward to the Charm City, I hope I will continue to hold Vehicle City in my heart.

Good morning.

Proud

Last night, Roman Catholics and Baptists and Episcopalians of the Anglican and African Methodist type saluted our Unitarian Universalist congregation and its leadership in the city of Flint. I don’t know how to share with you the pride I felt when members of FACT congregations began to tell the story of our education initiative and said that it all began with one UU family: Lucy Mercier and Linda Campbell, and their children Robert and Andre. With a simple narrative, they told the story of our unfolding efforts to be in deep conversation throughout the city and county regarding the state of the Flint Community Schools and the profound need for significant change to turn our schools around.

Rayna Bick expertly shared with the 125 people present at Christ the King Parish the scope of our initiative and invited more people to be included in future fact-finding visits to other parts of the country. She shared her passion for our children and their care, and spoke as the mother of children who had received excellent education in the Flint Community Schools of an earlier generation.

Testimonies were given by some of the people who will participate in our first national site visit to California. Sue Kirby began with a passionate presentation about what it means to be a person of power and privilege who has seen her children receive excellent education in spite of the recent patterns of teacher lay-offs and building closures, and asked what it means that not every child in Flint has the power and privilege to choose the exact program they will encounter in Flint. She wondered if we could use our collective power to ensure that every child will have a chance to receive the kind of education that Emma and Sam have.

And Robert Mercier, the youngest person who will travel to California, spoke about his life; the decision of his parents to move from Birch Run to Flint, the good education he received at Doyle-Ryder, the promise of his admission to the International Baccalaureate program housed at Whittier, and the changes wrought as that program was moved to Central High this past year, and which will move again in the fall. Robert symbolized the students we hope to provide a good education to. His testimony brought people to a sense of urgency and promise.

Rev. Ira G. Edwards, Jr., minister of Damascus Holy Life Baptist Church and co-chair of Flint Area Congregations Together, saluted the whole evening in his closing remarks. He noted that FACT is “all mixed up,” Methodists and Unitarians, Baptists and Catholics, Episcopalians and Church of God in Christ, “We’re a kind of Heinz 57,” all the varieties of faith working together.

For my part, I finally felt that the “Together” part of FACT was, indeed, coming together. We are beginning to be recognized as a serious group of people who are trying to create new relationships across the city based in the good will we express for one another. The City Administrator came on the early side, and he called the Acting Mayor, who showed up before we began. One of the mayoral candidates came. The Chamber of Commerce said that they’d be present, and they were. Channel 12 came and did a good story on the 11 o’clock news. Principals and teachers, parents and students were present, as were a few members of the clergy.

A real organization is birthing, with the beginnings of public trust being constructed among us as we risk some things together. There is nothing I could more wish for; and for the work of the whole Local Organizing Ministry team at UU Flint, I will be forever thankful.