Sitting Out GA 06

Well, not exactly sitting… I accepted a request to officiate at the wedding of one of my son’s high school friends. This comes nine years after they graduated, and most of his friends have moved on as have we. The wedding is in a different area, but many of his friends will be in attendance. Plus the bride’s mother was a friend of mine. So it will be a reunion time of sorts for me. Plus my son will be there, and I see him all too seldom. The place where this couple is getting married is within an hour of my family, so I will also be making a long-overdue visit to my ailing mother.

There was a time when I would attend what I could at GA, then leave at the last possible minute to honor my obligations (even though I moved 1700 miles 2 weeks ago) and then wonder later in the summer why I was so exhausted. I don’t do that any more.

However, I am sorry I’m missing UUGA06. I usually have a love/hate relationship with General Assembly, I don’t like crowds (even Ministry Days seem overcrowded to me – when GA begins, I go into total overwhelm); I feel bad about the money that it’s costing me (usually I’m running out of professional expenses by that time); and for the past few years, I felt like the UUA was running the same agenda and programs over and over. That angered me when I feel that there is so much hunger for the liberal religion that I love so much. I often feel that we as gathered UU community are missing the boat by refusing to really look at who we are and what the world needs from liberal churches.

This year many programs look interesting. I would love to hear Mary Oliver. And Sharon Salzberg during Ministry Days. I would like to hear Gail Geisenhamer preach as well as Judith Meyer. Some people whom I care for will be walking in the Service of the Living Tradition – I’d love to share in their proud moment.

I would be attending the Young Adult worships each day. I truly want to learn about what kind of worship they will be planning – I seem to fill needs of the young adults of the congregations I’ve served, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you what works and what doesn’t. I have a lot to learn about what young adults want and need in church. I would like to hear colleague Rob Hardies give the John Murray Distinguished Lecture on Hospitality and Grace. And the UU Buddhists’ Zen and Unitarian Universalism ( I always attend many of the UU Christian events, because they are always top notch). And since I’m entering an area that is doing intentional regional growth work, I would attend the workshop on growing UUism regionally.

Since I have a strong interest in leadership development and governance, there are several workshops along these lines that don’t sound like the same old tired stuff. There’s a workshop on ‘Growing UU Congregations in a Post-Denominational World’. Wow, I thought. I didn’t think that the reality that we are in a post-denominational world was on the UUA’s radar screen since we are still sprouting ‘The Uncommon Denomination’ bumper stickers. Turns out that James Wind, the President of Alban Institute, is leading it. Of course.

I would want to hear colleague Alma Crawford in Preaching and Public Ministry. And David Korten, someone I read from the alternative press. So there seems to be a lot to like about this GA. I’m sorry I am missing it, but I still would make the same choice – it will be such a delight to officiate at this wedding with people who populated my life a decade or so ago.

OK, one rant: I don’t know how they are publicizing the Seeker Service on Sunday morning where they invite the St. Louis community to learn about us. But in the publicity online, they advertised it thusly:

On Sunday morning, we will be inviting residents of the St. Louis community to join us for worship. The service will convey the Good News of Unitarian Universalism, a faith of open minds, loving hearts and helping hands.

If this is how they are advertising to the wider community, I find this to be a totally inadequate way to publicize our faith. I find ‘open minds, loving hearts and helping hands’ to be insipid. Not to mention that GA gives plenty of opportunities to find that we also have people with closed minds, closed hearts, and closed hands. I’m tired of insipid. I’m tired of the superficial approach that really says ‘maybe we’re a religion but maybe we’re too afraid of what that might really mean’. Where is our fire and our passion? I’ll bet Gail Geisenhamer will give it to those present, but this advertisement is hardly an enticement to come check out what Unitarian Universalism has to offer a hurting world.

End of rant: enjoy GA! I will truly miss you.

Dad and Tiger

I’ve been painfully aware that tomorrow is Father’s Day – my second without my father. It isn’t any easier this year, maybe because my heart is really hurting from the recent death of my former partner.

So this morning my heart tugged even more when I browsed the newspaper and came upon a large picture of Tiger Woods in the sports section – his eyes were downcast, his expression was downcast. There was still evidence of a kid in this picture – a sad kid who was in the painful process of trying to make sense of a seemingly senseless world. He looked so vulnerable! Under the picture was a 2 inch caption that said ‘CUT!’ Evidently, for the first time in a decade, he didn’t make the cut in a major golf tournament.

Now I could care less about golf. I tried to play once in college – I had no skill and even less interest. If I ever began to take up golf, I know several people who would personally take me to a doctor for evaluation. The game makes no sense to me – except for miniature golf. But golf was a passion of my father’s. He took an early retirement and moved my mother to a major golf resort so that he could play every day. He even proudly got a part time job at the major hotel at this resort. And I can’t tell you how many Saturday and Sunday late afternoons were punctuated with TV golf.

Part of the sadness of this picture on the day before Father’s Day for me was the fact that my father couldn’t stand Tiger Woods. He found every opportunity to put him down. Why? No reason other than Mr. Woods is African American. My father grew up in a very racist home in a pretty racist city and never opened his heart to the slow and tortuous journey of acceptance that many in this nation have inched towards. OK, maybe overall people have moved maybe an inch and half since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. opened us to the sin of racism and oppression. But my father didn’t really move even that inch and a half.

What tore my heart out at this picture in the paper today was the fact that Tiger Woods exemplifies so many traits that my father would have admired in a white guy. He was close to his father and wasn’t afraid to show it. He isn’t a flaming grandstander. He is clean-cut and respectful of others. He probably doesn’t have even one tattoo – this would have been high on my Dad’s list of great traits. Sometimes I have wondered if Tiger is too good to be true, but this is the type of hero that my father always held up.

The sin of racism – so senseless, so tragic, and always very much a part of us. We are all part of a culture that accommodates racism -- to wit, Darfur, other horrors going on in Africa, the wall going up along our border and the hate being spewed against ‘illegal immigrants’. Not to mention the invisibility of the poor among us, who are largely African American and Hispanic.

My heart breaks open because I am part of this culture and part of this racist tide. I am a person of privilege who often places my own comfort and security ahead of doing what I can to staunch the tide.

I pray that I accept my father’s limitations and shortcomings while empowered through the everlasting and unconditional love of God to spread that love to all the corners I can reach.

Goodbye to a Dear Friend

My former partner died this week. It was a May-December relationship – he was a widower many years older. He was charming, funny, a great old-fashioned liberal (he took pride in one of his childhood memories – his mother, a Russian immigrant who, with his father, became American citizens – left her deathbed to vote for Eugene Debs). He was also very controlling, as I found out after I left active ministry a few years ago to be with him.

His family was, shall we say, opposed to our relationship. He was wealthy, they were greedy. We did a pre-nup which was pretty much engineered by one son – not a pretty story – but it didn’t matter. The family was not only hostile to me but also shunned him. That was the real sin, and it tore both of our hearts out.

Who knows if we could have worked out the generational issues and expectations if we had family support? Maybe not even support, even indifference would have helped. But there was too much to deal with in this relationship, and his failing health also got in the way. He simply did not have the energy to put into relationship, and his generational understanding of how relationships worked (the guy commanded, the woman obeyed) was not something that I could deal with.

So in addition to his family failing him, we also failed each other. That is a grief that I will always carry with me. As a minister, I see every day how people fail one another – it’s interwoven into the tapestry of human relationships. It took me a long time as a social worker and then as a minister to realize that I cannot fix this in people. I do not have the power to stop people from hurting and/or failing one another. And my blind spots and ego often prevent me from seeing where I fail others. When I do see it, it hurts deeply. Sometimes I have the power to change it and other times I don’t. Sometimes it depends on the willingness of the other person(s). But at other times, I simply do not have the willingness to change. I didn’t in this case.

So I carry this grief, and I carry it alone – out of respect for his family, I will not attend his service. I will find my own ritual way to say goodbye. It may not come tomorrow, but it will come. And I will carry the grief for a long, long time. He was such a special person.

Waiting to Exhale

I've moved. My furniture has arrived, minus my vacuum cleaner and a broken knob on my washing machine. But I am far from settled in. My kitchen is about half complete, and the rest is probably less than half unpacked.

I'm tired. No, I'm exhausted. I drove over 1700 miles over 50 hours after the packing and leaving from the 100 degree heat of the southwest. So I arrived in pouring rain and chilly temperatures. My blood needs to thicken up! But today was a beautiful June day and I'm glad that I'm in a cooler climate.

I'm having to do far more cleaning as I unpack than I would like. I don't understand landlords who rant and rave about tenants not being spotless when they do not hire cleaners to ready an apartment for them if they do not wish to clean it themselves. Also, this is an older building with electrical outlets that are not, shall we say, up to the computer age. And don't even talk to me about phone jacks. Actually, I am having to use dial up temporarily until I get the DSL thing straightened out. A major crimp in my usual operations.

But my apartment is bright and sunny (when the sun is out!!) and I think I will like it until I am able/ready to buy my own place.

I'm still feeling like I'm in that curious limbo state as I transition into this new community. I've found the grocery stores (but no Whole Foods!! I'm in withdrawal!!), the big box stores like Target and Lowe's, and a Barnes and Noble -- there's a smallish independent bookstore that looks interesting, but it wasn't open on Sunday or on whatever morning it was that I walked by it.

Hopefully I will soon be able to think of interesting things once again. My brain cells are still not functioning well together. So let's pray for synergy...