More Than Tradition

I am deeply saddened by the apparent decision of the UUA and General Assembly Planning Committee to ditch the Sunday morning worship in Portland, OR this coming GA, instead holding it in conjunction with the Closing Ceremony from 4 to 6 PM later Sunday afternoon. The Lively Tradition reported on this recently:
http://thelivelytradition.blogspot.com/2006/09/sunday-morning-at-ga.html

Some UUA supporters are copacetic with this decision, but others are not. I guess to some there is nothing sacred about Sunday morning worship – whenever you have it, it’s still worship. Yes, worship is worship. I welcome it any time. But to me Sunday mornings are sacred. I think this decision is wrong-headed. I stand accused of being a hidebound, change-fearing traditionalist.

But I see this as being more than tradition. We live in a culture where Sunday morning is the predominant time to formally observe the spiritual and religious dimension of life. This, of course, is not true for Jews or followers of Islam, or burgeoning US Buddhists, but we as Unitarian Universalists are not any of these. We stand with, as we always have, the Protestant tradition of holding worship on Sunday mornings. Should this not be sacred time for our Association? I can’t imagine attending the scheduled plenary session on Sunday morning. This will certainly send me on my way home from GA early.

We have experimented for a couple of years now holding a seeker-friendly Sunday morning GA worship services that were powerfully felt. I’m not sure how many non-UUs attended these services, but who is counting? If only 5 attended, was this a ‘failure’? I know that one of the congregations I served near the site of one GA had busloads attending that service. They were energized and enlivened by the possibilities of Unitarian Universalism. Would local congregations send busloads on a late Sunday afternoon when it was combined with an insider-focused closing ceremony?

I imagine that one of the reasons for this change is to hopefully keep more people in attendance at the usually less-well-attended closing plenaries and closing ceremonies. My reply is to make the plenaries more interesting and compelling. That’s how you get people to stay. More work needs to be done on that score.

I’m not usually one who likes to hold on to tradition for tradition’s sake (although my aging body has been known to fight change!). I think that the decision to move the Service of the Living Tradition to a different time was a positive decision. I’m always in favor of more worship, not less. The quality and spirit of the Sunday morning GA worship these past couple of years were high and life-giving in a way that was not about us – it was Unitarian Universalism reaching out to the community that is primarily used to attending worship on Sunday morning. Why would we want to change that?

Installed!

Sunday afternoon was the time of the Service of Installation at the First Unitarian Society of Schenectady, NY – I was installed as its first female called minister in its 106 year history. My family was in attendance making the trip from North Carolina and Montreal. My close friend from Delaware also attended. Their attendance made it particularly meaningful.

It was a beautiful service with so many wonderful people participating. The music was spectacular and the participation of the children and youth was heart-warming and challenging.

An older man in attendance said, “I came out of duty. I didn’t expect such a moving service”. Wow. It was really special. I spent the first part of the summer falling in love with this place. And since I began August 1, I have been falling in love with the congregation. What a wonderful way to begin the deep covenant between minister and congregation!

I am indeed blessed.

The Perfect Day

I took a long weekend in Vermont – a place I haven’t visited since I was maybe 12. When I look back at childhood vacations, my 2 to Vermont were the most special. There’s something about it that seems almost magical. I rented a rustic cabin in a rather secluded area and took off with a light agenda. The most perfect day was Friday, the first day of this trip.

I moseyed up the West Coast of Vermont (along the Champlain Canal and then Lake Champlain, which borders NY for the geographically impaired). I took my time savoring the blue skies, the low-seventies temps, and the unmistakable signs of approaching autumn. My mood was light and buoyant – after all, this was basically my summer vacation!

I drove to Shelburne Farms, a magical place that makes an incredibly sharp cheddar cheese and features a most wondrous barn that looks almost Russian in style. They have a circle trail of 4.5 miles that I hiked through meadows, woods, and a stretch along Lake Champlain. The aroma of the sweet grasses and clover and wildflowers was addictive. The Green Mountains framed the eastern sky and the Adirondacks the western sky. A most memorable and pleasant walk.

I slowly made my way to my cabin that was near some small towns in north central Vermont. I settled in and meditated on the deck. I had a light dinner of salad and that great cheddar and at sunset took a walk to the pond that was still and reflective as glass. Crickets chirped and a distant owl hooted. I walked slowly around the pond, the trail taking me into a wooded area. As I emerged from these woods, I found myself at the north end of the pond. Facing south was Mt. Mansfield in the distance and a hazy ¾ moon high above in the navy blue sky. That sight caught my breath. I found a rock to sit upon and ponder the beauty of it all -- the sights, the sounds, that same sweetgrass aroma.

I returned to my small cabin and pulled out a good book. Although the lights weren’t great for reading (all overhead lighting – yuck!), it was great to settle in with no thought of reading email or distracting myself with the innumerable distractions of home and church. It was, indeed, a perfect day that I could not have scripted if I had tried.

More Evidence of Creeping Totalitarianism

This article in today’s New York Times is yet another small piece of the larger picture that is turning this country into something that barely resembles the democracy that we value. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/washington/24evo.html?th&emc=th

It’s about the evident elimination of evolutionary biology as an allowable major for low income students seeking federal grants, such as the SMART program, that gives grants to students wishing to study math and science.

The article quotes a spokesperson from the Department of Education as saying that this was an oversight, but it remains off the list as of last night. I think, at best, this was some kind of trial balloon to see if they can actually get away with this stuff.

The outrage continues.

Andrew Young and Wal-Mart

I had read a while back that Andrew Young, erstwhile civil rights leader, had become a visible supporter of Wal-Mart. When I heard this I felt like I did when one of the Yippies (was it Jerry Rubin?) had become a Wall Street investment banker. Sell-out is the word that comes to mind.

His recent comments that put his Wal-Mart cheerleader job in enough jeopardy to make him resign troubled me – because I remember in my civil rights days fighting the battles of rip-off grocery stores in the ghetto. When you really get down to it, the culprit was more the economic reality of poor neighborhoods than the nationality of the store owners. I knew a family, Jewish, who owned one of these stores. They certainly did not make a great deal of money from their enterprise and had a great rapport with the neighborhood residents. Actually, they lived fairly close to the store – they certainly could not afford the richer suburbs. There were exceptions, and these were the store owners that we fought, but my experience has been that many of the store owners tried to serve well the neighborhood people.

The economics of merchandising poor neighborhoods have been difficult for decades. Chain grocery stores do not do business there unless they get heavy subsidies from the city. I’m not sure why, but it does seem that different ethnic groups gravitate to certain economic niches. Like East Indians and motels before 90% of our motels became chains. In Hawaii, Chinese tended to be bankers as well as restaurant owners. Japanese were the government workers and teachers (this was back in the seventies – much has probably changed). Back in the day, the owners of the ghetto corner stores were largely Jewish at least in the cities I was familiar with on the east coast. When I moved to California, Koreans took on that role in Watts and South Central LA; and I know in Detroit the owners became heavily of Middle East origin.

So on the face of it, Andrew Young spoke some truth. But economics do play in here – without chain grocery stores, without deep pockets stocking the meats and veggies, the tendency would naturally be to try to sell whatever was on hand rather than throwing stuff away that large chains do as a matter of course (I knew a perfectly respectable woman who fed her family perfectly good food from the dumpster behind a Sam’s Club). When the margins are much closer, the tendency is to try to sell what one can. Young blamed Mom and Pop store owners for selling bad meat and produce to poor folks.

I’m not sure that this can still be claimed with today’s food supplies and corner stores, which are more likely to be convenience stores. What sells is the mass-produced crap that has long shelf life: sodas, packaged foods, stuff that’s the scourge of our SAD (standard American diet). Cigarettes are big sellers in these stores – and in many poor neighborhoods, cigarette manufacturers, along with liquor manufacturers, have been the largest billboard advertisers (poor neighborhoods tend to have a lot of billboards). Many stores do have problems stemming losses from shoplifting – it goes with the territory of being in a poor area. Friction does occur over the various ways that store owners deal with this.

So what impact has Wal-Mart had on poor neighborhoods? I’m not really sure. Certainly Wal-Mart doesn’t hang out their shingle in these neighborhoods. So my guess is that there would still be a niche still for the Mom and Pop store. Although I have a strong distaste for Wal-Mart for many reasons, I can see why it would be an attractive place for poor people to shop. Moreso if public transportation goes from these neighborhoods to Wal-Mart. But how much can you carry on the bus? How much profit does Wal-Mart make off of poor people, and how much does it give back to local poor neighborhoods?

I would think that many small businesses in the ghettoes/barrios of our cities do give something back to these neighborhoods. Certainly there are always those who would foster adversarial relationships. But are they in the majority? Sadly, I don’t know, because I have not entered a poor neighborhood for many years. We are much more isolated from these areas than when I grew up in the sixties – at least the major arterials still ran through the poorer areas. Now freeways totally skirt most neighborhoods.

It does feel like Andrew Young has sold out – and is perpetuating stereotypes that 1) probably no longer exist in the way that he implied, and 2) are probably the exception rather than the rule. But maybe I’m wrong.

Due to our collective lack of interest in poor folks and how they live, this issue most likely will not get the fuller airing that it deserves.

Musings on Iraq

The ongoing trauma in Iraq has been relegated to back pages or footnotes since the war erupted between Hezbollah and Israel, with two exceptions: the generals referring to the ‘civil war’ in Iraq when they appeared before Congress a couple of weeks ago and the Connecticut Democratic primary last week between Joe Lieberman and the winner, Ned Lamont. With regard to that primary, much analysis has been written – Lieberman was defeated by ‘disgruntled moderates’ who are fed up with the war. Or by boomer folks who are somehow finally rediscovering their coming-of-age leftist roots that brought the Viet Nam antiwar movement to be a driving force.

But the focus of all this is on election analysis, not Iraq. This is driving me crazy, because no one seems to be advancing anything constructive beyond analysis. Reflecting back on the months leading up to March, 2003 when we invaded Iraq, there was plenty of sentiment that we should not ‘go there’. But our collective fear and trauma from 9/11 silenced all but a few. We didn’t really listen to all of those nations who refused to be part of a coalition to invade that country. We listened to our fear, part of which was that to not invade Iraq would just give ‘the terrorists’ more leeway. So a vast majority of Congress voted to invade. And the Democratic Party rolled over.

As we know, Iraq has been one huge mistake after another. We did not go in there to restore electricity, to boost their economy that was in shambles after a decade of economic sanctions, we did not provide basic human care to the people of Iraq. We strutted around Baghdad and environs while Saddam’s storehouses were looted by the rival factions that we ignored. We were the arrogant Americans who totally blew any opportunity to lift up the Iraqi people (back in the sixties, we were called ‘Ugly Americans’).

So by now things have spun so much out of control that most Iraqis are afraid for their very lives, live under siege, and still don’t have their basic human needs met. And we wonder why we seem to not be ‘winning’ this so-called war on terror? Hello???? Oh, yes, we did give them the gift of democracy. No one seems to be dealing with the outrageous fallacy of Iraqi democracy following our invasion. No one is talking about what to do next except ‘should we stay or should we go’. Both options are lacking from a humanitarian perspective.

As a nation, our nation, what about the concept of atonement? We have essentially raped a country in a misguided effort. We bear witness every day to the fruits (or spoils?) of that rape. And no one is taking the leadership to 1) apologize or 2) make any kind of amends. We cannot go back to March 18, 2003. And we cannot leave a country that is self-destructing in our wake.

I want to hear someone in the leadership of this country come up with a plan to give humanitarian aid to Iraq – we are, after all, spending $1.5 billion a week (heard on NPR this morning via a general whose name I didn’t get, who is now retired but served in Iraq). With that kind of money, we could do a lot, it would seem, towards restoration work that might begin to 1) attend to basic living needs and then perhaps 2) heal the soul of the people whose lives have been totally disrupted. At this point the US cannot be the healers, but we can begin to provide the elements that might help people to begin to heal.

So how do we citizens begin the call for a moral leadership in this war? Not partisan bickering, not pulling out the 9/11 fear card which is at an even higher level this week, not further ‘analysis’, but a strong call for moral leadership to do the right thing?

Weekend Blessings

This morning was a glorious Sunday morning with the sun beaming down on my front porch. What a difference a couple of days can make – it was blessedly cool (I even donned a long sleeve shirt), so I drank my quotidian pot of green tea hot (I’ve been letting it cool significantly in past weeks – and green tea is steeped much cooler than other teas anyway). The bird song was pure liquid harmony and the sun was strong. I didn’t engage in my usual machinations of moving my chair from one side of the porch to the other to evade its direct rays as it climbs in the sky (well, it doesn’t climb, how archaic our language is!!). The strong rays today felt good, so I got a good dose of vitamin D along with my polyphenols, catechin and theanine. All of this before breakfast!

Yesterday was a great day as well. A dear couple from the church invited me to the rehearsal of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which holds court in a nearby town during the month of August. So I went to the glorious farmers market in that town, stuffed my goodies in my cooler, and headed off for the rehearsal. I love symphonic music and miss regular doses of it (my former partner who recently died was a professional musician, so we attended many symphony and chamber music performances in our time together). They began with their contemporary piece – Phoenix by contemporary composer Bright Sheng (who was there to oversee their rehearsal!). Like many classical music lovers, I find some 20th century compositions to be way too atonal for my tastes, but I think I could like this piece. The story behind its composition was fascinating. They stopped often while rehearsing to master the technicalities of certain sections, so I was not able to track how it all fit together. There were many church members in attendance at this rehearsal, but none liked that particular composition.

The highlight of the rehearsal was the Rachmaninoff concerto featuring Andre Watts. I had never seen him in person, and he was amazing. He rarely looked at the piano – he was looking at the orchestra the whole time, and the music that came out of that piano seemed like an extension of his essence. Hard to explain -- you had to be there. Playing Rachmaninoff seemingly effortlessly is genius at work. At any rate, it was such an incredible treat!

This is my next-to-last Sunday before I begin preaching again. I am going to worship by being in nature on this beautiful day. I’ll weigh in on ‘why I don’t go to church’ on many of my Sundays off in another post.

The First Days of a New Ministry

This is an intricate time, beginning a new ministry. It is a time when a powerful focus is needed – on people, systems, structure, customs, habits. It is a time to watch where I’m placing my feet (metaphorically) – while I’m also watching my back. It’s a time to bite my tongue and listen carefully before I do hold forth on my thoughts.

My primary focus is getting to know the people of this church – the first thing I learn is their names (hopefully); then what positions they hold or not, who their family members are (if they have family connections), a bit about their history in the church if I’m lucky – plus all the etceteras. But most importantly I try to focus on what are their hopes, dreams, challenges, hungers, needs, and opinions. It will be a while before this kaleidoscope comes into focus and the beautiful patterns emerge.

The challenge of trying to fit my books and office files and ‘stuff’ into a new configuration is always interesting. The process of settling into the Minister’s Study (with its own bathroom and shower, woo hoo!!!) has been slowed by a lack of Pendaflex ‘bones’ for the file cabinet drawers. The procurement of office supplies seems to proceed at a glacial pace. Plus storage spaces are filled with stuff left by previous ministers. Much of this is in the way of items from the Partner Church in Transylvania – it makes sense that the ample storage in ‘my’ study would be the repository for this. But there’s so much of it!! There are lots and lots of historical files too, and they will be fun to go through. But with the steady stream of members and staff that come through, this will probably go slowly.

Another thing that has slowed me down this week has been the heat wave, of course. The church offices are air conditioned, but not my upstairs apartment. My whole body slowed down considerably this week, but the excitement and drama of beginning this ministry, a ministry I’ve dreamed of for a long time, has kept me upbeat and engaged with life in such a wonderful way.

When I get a few months down the line from this settling in/newbie process, I always look back totally amazed and relieved that I actually got through these months, coupled with a feeling that I really wouldn’t want to repeat that time either.

Such is the blessing and drawback of new ministry. It is beautiful in its unfolding, it is heady, it is exciting. It is also full of surprises (which I’ve never been a particular fan of) and ‘dangers, toils and snares’. Yes! That’s it – this is a time of Amazing Grace.

May those of you experiencing such new beginnings find this to be that time of Amazing Grace too.