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Several Tibetan Buddhist monks are creating a sand mandala this week at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto (photos here). The mandala is beautiful, and it is also instructive to watch the monks work. A daycare and a school rent our space, and children gather around the monks to watch. When a kid touches the table, the translator patiently tells him or her to stand a couple of feet back (we also have chairs for them to stand on for a better view), but the monks show no anxiety that anyone will brush their arms or bump the table, even though either one would mean recreating many hours’ work. It’s happened, too, the translator told me.
I like to build marble runs, a childhood pleasure I have been reliving since Joy bought me lots of Quadrilla for my birthday a couple of years ago. Munchkin is now old enough to place the blocks carefully, but she still sometimes brushes against it and brings it down by mistake, or semi-mistake. After even ten minutes’ work on a marble run, I find it difficult to stay calm about the prospect of its being knocked down. I mean, what if I can’t remember how I built it? Attachment, anger, yep, the Buddha had my number. I was not clear on how the creation of a mandala was supposed to increase compassion, but I’m starting to get it.
Leadership is a partnership. Just as some of my peak moments occur when I am helping to bring out the best in my congregation, others occur when the people of the congregation are bringing out the best that I have to give. I had one of those moments this past Sunday. I’d changed my topic the moment I heard the news (and oh, how glad I was that I’d turned on the computer. I could have found out about Tucson on Sunday morning on my way in to church . . . ). I didn’t have the kind of time for reflection and writing that I usually do, but that was how it had to be.
Looking down at the mishmash of paragraphs and margin notes and don’t-forget-to-mentions in my hand as I came to the pulpit, I was very tempted to preface the sermon with an apology, which was really an excuse: “Please bear with me if this isn’t as cohesive as I’d like. I was up most of the night, I’m sure you understand . . . ” But that would be a disservice to the listeners.
So I just plunged in. I spoke from the heart, and a bruised and uncertain heart it was, and I could do that because my congregation values it. Sure they want the preacher to make sense, but they care most about passion and are willing to bounce over the rough spots. Because they’ve made that clear, I could let go of my own nerves about wanting to give a more polished presentation than was possible, and give them the passion. They are making me a better preacher all the time. I’m so happy they’re my partners in this ministry.
Like most UUs, I strongly affirm the inherent dignity of each person. But there is the dignity inherent to being a human (I would say a living) being, and then there is dignity that you either don as a mantle by how you act, or cast aside. From time to time, I find myself wishing people would behave with a little more dignity so that we might regard them with the respect their roles deserve.
For example, California has a new Chief Justice of its Supreme Court. The radio piece the day of her swearing-in opened with a little clip of the governor saying, with a dignity befitting the occasion, if an unavoidably comic accent,* “so help you God.” And then we heard a speech from later in the ceremony, spoken by the new Chief Justice herself, who related how when she was a little girl, she used to walk with her family through the capital, past these very buildings, but they didn’t ever think of actually going in. Hm, I thought–so far so good, a humble and down-to-earth anecdote–and then she gushed, “And now we’re sitting in the front row!” I was embarrassed for her, and for the state. Did she really mean to imply that that was the most important aspect of this ceremony? She is the highest judge in our courts, and anyone who enters her courtroom is subject to the strictest protocol of respect. Could she maybe reflect that in the ceremony, and save the giggly “OMG, can you imagine, me a Chief Justice!” stuff for her private family party afterwards?
I have been to a few ordinations that lose their balance this way too. Comments on the personal characteristics of the new minister have their place, but they sometimes dominate to the point that the ceremony feels more like a high school graduation (or even worse, the party afterwards) than a sacred initiation. The “whoo hoo, you did it!” tone (and words) that I’ve heard directed at the ordinand convey to the congregation that this is just a personal achievement of the minister, not about them at all. They also say that the whole ceremony is about itself, about that day, rather than about the ministry to follow, which is like making a wedding all about a wedding instead of about marriage. New colleagues, if that’s not the way you want your ministry to appear, then beg your participants to focus on the meaning of ministry, not on you. If they compliment you, smile with the humility you surely feel as you imagine the enormity of the burden you are accepting. And though you may be thinking “I made it!” yourself–it’s only natural, after the long way you’ve come–then please share it with your friends privately. It really doesn’t belong in the service. This is an hour in which we focus, together, on the holy power and the world’s needs that called you to ministry, and devote ourselves to serving them, with your leadership.
*Before I get deluged by the Austrian Anti-Defamation Committee: I don’t think Austrians are inherently comical. Just the ones whose accented “hasta la vista, baby”s are seared on our brains.
When I was in seminary, most students did their parish-based internships concurrently with two years of school (part-time internship), or else as a year taken between the second and the final year of school (full-time internship). The part-time option requires that you have an internship opportunity near school, which was true for many students, since we were in the Boston area, where congregations and internships abound. But failing that–or if, like me, you didn’t want your internship church to be around Boston (I lived in Vermont)–the beauty of the full-time internship before senior year was that you could go before the Ministerial Fellowship Committee before your senior year, begin looking for a position during your senior year, and potentially have a job waiting for you after graduation.
Also, since you were on leave from a degree program, you were still considered a student during that internship year, so that you didn’t have to repay debt during that period. Since the official guidelines on internship compensation were that it be, I quote, “High enough so that you don’t end up more in debt than when you began the year”–i.e., not by any definition an actual salary–this was important.
Judging from Bay Area students, this is now a rarity. They do their internship the year after they graduate. Since one can’t go to the MFC until after the midpoint of one’s internship, they can’t look for a job that year. So there they are in June, done with school, done with their internships, with their 1 from the MFC (congratulations!), and with over a year to go before they’ll have a position. What an insane system. What do they eat? An M.Div. leaves you with a huge debt and not a lot of qualification to do anything except UU ministry–and of course, it’s very hard to find a job that pays a living wage when potential employers know you’re going to leave in a year.
When I’ve asked individual seminarians about this trend, they’ve looked rather blank, as if they had no idea there was another option. Has something changed? Do seminaries, or churches, or the MFC, press for internship after degree? And if so, how do today’s students pay the rent during that thumb-twiddling year?
Bass Lake, California as photographed by Guy Welch
I’ve just come back from our church’s weekend at Bass Lake, at Skylake Yosemite Camp, which is, as you’d imagine, just outside Yosemite National Park, and is therefore, as you’d also imagine, breathtakingly beautiful. As torn as I was about being away from my family for two days (since Joy had to work, and being the munchkin’s sole parent for that long, in that setting, is not my idea of relaxation, they stayed home together), I was so happy to be there.
It had been too long. Our practice when I started at UUCPA was to alternate years with our Minister of Religious Education (MRE); as much as it would be nice for us both to go, mid-September is a busy time for UU ministers and we thought someone should keep the home fires burning. I went to Bass Lake in 2003 and 2005, but 2007 was our then-MRE’s last year, so she went, then the next year it seemed like such a good idea for our newly-arrived interim MRE to get to know families there that she went, another time the weekend (switched to June) coincided with our big family vacation . . . so, one way and another, I had not been for five years.
I won’t let that much time elapse again. It is a really special way to connect with the congregation members who are there, and both the drive across the state and the campsite connect me again to some of California’s tremendous beauty.
In the days before I left, I was trying to think of an apt worship service for that place and time, since I always lead a short service there. The first thing that came to mind was a hymn I love, “There is a Balm in Gilead”–a simple and profound song, and very apropos for Yom Kippur, too (which Saturday was), in our UU, interfaith way–and as I made myself a sandwich for the drive, I came up with a new verse inspired by Bass Lake. I composed a second on the way. Details are here, under “Sermons etc.”
I know a great arrangement from Ysaye Maria Barnwell’s teaching tapes, Singing in the African American Tradition, so with the help of one of our fine singers, who kindly learned it in a hurry from me the day before, we sang it in two parts. I would like to abolish the rumor that UUs can’t sing. That little group made a spirit-filled sound, all right.
The weekend begins on Thursday afternoon, but I got there on Friday just before dinner. Here are some of the things I did in my less-than-48-hours:
- looked through a telescope at an incredible view of Jupiter, one astronomers wait several years for: the shadow of its largest moon, Ganymede, on the planet’s surface. I wanted to stay up to see the Great Red spot come around again, but was too tired. That happens every three days, so I’ll get another shot
- saw the Milky Way. For that, you don’t need a telescope, just your own eyes–but you also need a dark sky that isn’t available here in my urban area
- kayaked
- laid on the dock listening to the lap of the water and the sounds of other people playing
- drew, on my own and with others who wanted to do “nature drawing without fear”
- toasted marshmallows and ate more s’mores than I intended
- learned how to do paper embossing and stencilling and made some pretty cards for Christmastime
- went out looking for scorpions with an ultraviolet light–in that light, plain black scorpions are a fluorescent green. I had no idea. I also had no idea that there were scorpions in the area, but I was relieved to see that even at night, their active time, they prefer to curl up under pine needles. (The man who led the scorpion walk said he looked all around and under his cabin and couldn’t find a one.)
- stopped dead in wonder at the shape of the manzanita outside my cabin
- read on a sunny deck, the lake in the distance, Ponderosa pines overhead
- had a visit from a tiny lizard who froze on my cabin doorstep as I came outside
- laughed until I cried at some of the talent show skits
- found an oak leaf that bore the marks of an insect that had eaten its meandering way all across its landscape
- got to know people from my congregation with whom I’d never had a conversation beyond a few minutes at coffee hour
- heard a story read aloud to us by a wonderful reader (talent show again)
- learned the Spanish ABC song from the mom of a child who goes to a Spanish- immersion school
- talked, crafted with, carried children from the congregation (and their friends not from the congregation)
- sang ridiculous camp songs
- put together jigsaw puzzles
- woke up in the woods.
Here are things I didn’t do that others enjoyed:
- yoga
- motorboating
- tubing/waterskiing behind the boat
- canoeing
- swimming
- horseback riding
- tie-dyeing
- playing cards
- tetherball
- ping-pong
- seeing deer
- hiking at Angel Falls.
Incredibly, the weekend almost didn’t come off for lack of sign-ups, but our feisty registrar persevered and made it happen. My question is, why isn’t this fabulous trip oversubscribed every year? It can’t be because of the scorpions, because only a few people knew about them until I spilled the beans just now. (I swear, they are very shy! You will never see one unless you go peering into piles of pine needles at night with an UV flashlight!) At $200/person for three nights, meals and an astounding array of available (optional) activities, it’s not an expensive three-day weekend trip. The food is good and the staff are friendly, fun, and unobtrusive, stepping in when wanted and leaving us to enjoy the camp’s resources as we like. It’s one of the best intergenerational activities of our church’s year, which is why I recommended to our interim that she be there instead of at church on that weekend of her first September with us. It suits introverts and extroverts alike, and you can spend your time in rigorous outdoors activities like hiking and riding, or just sit on the deck knitting for three days.
We advertise it to the several dozen churches in the district, and it’s open to non-UUs as well. I hope by the time the next Bass Lake weekend rolls around (maybe next September, or maybe next June), demand will be so high that the registrar’s job will be a breeze.
My Palo Alto colleague Dan Harper posted a teaser at his blog, Yet Another Unitarian Universalist, about “possibly the most famous Universalist that ever lived” who, like several other of our forebears, celebrates a 200th birthday this year. I confirmed my guess at Wikipedia, then ran a search to see if the biography actually identified the person as a Universalist. Nope. (There is another article, called “List of Unitarians, Universalists, and Unitarian Universalists,” where the person does appear.)
On a slow day or ten, I may go through each Wikipedia biography of a U, U, or UU, and add one line identifying their religion. If you get the time before I do, go for it. The references have already been provided by the editors of the “List” article. It’s very nice of us to be so reluctant to push our religion down anyone’s throat, but ridiculous to conceal our existence under a bushel basket.
Being an environmentalist and a parent of a young child, in my stroll around the ‘net I naturally stopped to read a blog entry called “Six Ways to Raise Eco-Conscious Toddlers.” The most important thing I do to try to teach my daughter environmental responsibility wasn’t on the list, so midway through commenting I realized I needed to write about it myself.
It isn’t explicitly about ecology at all. It crops up, not when we’re brushing teeth and I turn the water off, or when she’s learning that buses are a fun way to travel. It’s an opportunity that occurs many times every day, and if you spend any time with children, it does for you too:
Teach them to clean up after themselves.
As I said, I’m the parent of a three-year-old, so I know it’s easier to clean up yourself than to get kids to do it. But children who find, “if I let it fall, it’s magically picked up and put away” grow into adults who think, “whatever mess I make isn’t my problem.” And that’s why they choose to believe that “The oceans / the air / the landfills have plenty of room” for whatever they throw “away.” They come to believe that there is such a thing as “away.” As grownups they assert, against the evidence, that “The earth can take care of itself” no matter what we do to it.
So when we say to our kids, “We need to put away the Legos before we get out the fingerpaints–here, I’ll help you,” we are teaching them sustainability and giving them a life skill that may keep our planet fit for human habitation. If it isn’t too late by the time they are our age . . .
I think about this as a religious educator (and yes, parish ministers are religious educators, which is why I belong to LREDA*) and I strongly believe that in our religious education (RE) programs, cleaning up should be part of the hour, unless we want to teach children that messes magically clean up themselves–or are someone else’s problem.
We Unitarian Universalists (UUs) frequently do include environmental education in RE, where it absolutely belongs, a lively part of a basic moral education whose principles include: don’t take more than your share; think ahead; think of others’ needs as well as your own; know the difference between needs and desires; take responsibility for the consequences of your actions. To give examples just from the congregation I serve, the kids have made recycled paper, cooked lunch in solar ovens, written letters to paper companies, and played with models demonstrating what happens to a town built on permafrost when the Earth warms up. They vote each year on where their collection money goes, and have voted many times to give it to rainforest protection.
That’s all good stuff. But even when the topic is “holidays and holy days,” “our religious heritage,” or “wisdom from the world’s religions,” an environmental lesson can be a part of every Sunday. The kids get that lesson when the teacher says, “Ten minutes left. Time to clean up, everyone,” and makes sure that everyone participates.
As with my three-year-old, who is much more motivated to throw her Legos in the box if I’m sitting beside her throwing too, we don’t have to make them do it all themselves. The teachers can help. The littlest kids don’t have to put things on high shelves. And we can explain that the kids’ parents pool their funds to pay our custodian to mop the floors and change the lights so that the kids have more time to learn (though I think a rotation of cleanup among all church members, children and adults alike, would be a good supplement to a paid custodian in any congregation). The important point is that they realize that the person who made the mess is ultimately responsible for getting things back to their original state. (Maybe I’m an environmentalist today because Montessori education, with its “everyone cleans up” philosophy, got its hooks into me when I was only 3. My preschool bears no responsibility for the cluttered state of my office, however. Hey, at least I live with the mess instead of expecting someone else to clean it up.)
As my UU colleague, Robert Fulghum, wrote in “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” the key lessons are there: “Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours.” The folks running BP, and the folks in Washington who let oil companies write environmental laws, and the folks all over the US who voted for them, and the folks all over the US who wrung their hands and stuck a “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Gore” sticker on their cars instead of taking action (I confess that I appear in that list), apparently didn’t fully absorb those lessons in kindergarten, but it’s not too late for today’s 5-year-olds. So, UU churches: who cleans up in your classrooms?
*Liberal Religious Educators’ Association
But first: Why should we do anything about SB 1070?
Something missing from quite a lot of the UU conversation on the topic, as we rush to sort out our urgent move-General-Assembly-or-not question, is what exactly is wrong with this law. We shouldn’t take it for granted that UUs are unanimous, or anything close to it, in their opposition to SB 1070; we have to make the argument. There are actual Republican UUs, beleaguered minority though they are, bless their persevering souls, and I’m willing to bet that a lot of UUs who are liberal on most matters are conservative on immigration. I also don’t think the man we overheard after a sympathetic-to-illegal-immigrants service at the San Miguel UU fellowship was all that unusual. “These people don’t pay taxes,” he grumbled. (Sure they don’t. When they go to Costco, the checkout worker squints at them, says “You look Latino,” and rings up their items without sales tax.)
We UUs have our share of Libertarians too, and I’ve already heard from a few self-described Libertarians (some UU, some not) who don’t see any problem with SB 1070. The fact that someone can call themselves Libertarian, and yet approve of something so close to pass laws, speaks to the intellectual bankruptcy of the libertarian movement, whose concern for freedom seems to have dwindled to an obsession with “property rights” and minimal taxation–but I’m impressed to see that at least the Executive Director of the Libertarian Party has written a blog entry opposing it.
So what is wrong with a law that is, after all, essentially saying “We don’t think the federal government is doing enough to enforce its laws, and we’re going to do more to enforce them”? For starters, three things. Read the rest of this entry »
Ten years ago today, on a perfect Vermont spring afternoon, with the blessings of two beloved congregations and family, mentors, and friends, I was ordained a minister. A spiritual practice of the past few weeks has been to reflect on what called me, what the past ten years have meant, what changes I’d make today in those vows. In the hectic weeks before we left for Mexico, I couldn’t find a copy of my ordination order of service, containing the vows themselves; Sean, who’s serving UUCPA in my place this spring, tried valiantly to find it in my office files but it must be in my home files. It doesn’t matter. I remember the gist, and as I remember them, they were as much vows for life in general as for the Unitarian Universalist ministry. We don’t take vows upon becoming human, but the kind of things I committed to do were the things I want to do with my whole life, not just in my service to our congregations or organizations: Cultivate love and wisdom in myself. Speak truth to power. Remember the holiness of every being and every moment. Pursue justice. Celebrate beauty. Help heal the world’s broken places. Act with kindness and patience. Tend my spirit.
The joint choirs of the Champlain Valley UU Society and the UU Church of Rutland sang “Blessed,” by Lui Collins. I knew then, and I know it even more now, how blessed I was to have found a vocation in which the job description lined up so neatly with “live well.” The tarnish of church politics, my own insecurity, overwork, confused priorities, daily routine, trees too crowded to allow much of a view of the forest–it all builds up, but life in church also provides countless polishing moments to clear it away. The next ten years will no doubt bring many changes, but fundamentally I’m still answering the same call. Unitarian Universalism, the three congregations I’ve served, and especially the hundreds of people who’ve touched my life through this work have my deep thanks.
Practically-pure bliss.
There are a few things I do miss. I miss the cats—I swear I almost signed up with a one-on-one Spanish tutor, even though it’s a very expensive way to learn and I would do just as well or better with a class of other students at this point, so that I’d be able to pet his cat who looks just like my sweet, snuggly Luna. I pale a little when I consider that it will be another 5 months before I get any dim sum. (We had dim sum about five times in our last couple of weeks in California, trying to store it up, but that doesn’t really work.) I miss our house when I think about it, but it will wait for us, unchanging, and I find it comforting that a lovely family is living there and loving it. I do wish I could talk to faraway friends more, but the internet is sure a help there, and a couple of them are planning to visit.
I don’t miss work. Not in the slightest. This was not a foregone conclusion; I love my job, and last fall’s were my happiest months of work in a long time, full of particularly interesting challenges and promising more. And I’m not someone for whom retirement is the point of life. I would go mad with nothing to do but lie on a beach and read. Work, the doing of something that stretches my abilities and is useful to other people, is one of my chief sources of happiness; I ought to speak a language where “work” and “play” are the same word, if there even is one besides Pravic. However, the beauty of sabbatical affords most of the blessings of work without most of the downsides. I’m learning a lot and pushing myself to do difficult and rewarding things, while—these are the tough parts in regular worktime—getting enough sleep, having enough time with my wife and daughter, not fretting about stray critical comments or church politics, not feeling like I have more to do in a week than can possibly fit, putting first things first. All of those things will be hard to maintain once I’m back in the intensity of daily ministry. In particular, I am not good at letting go of the concerns of work to make heart-space for the other parts of my life, though I’m hoping I learn something during this time that will make it easier. It is so, so good to be in a different mode.
What I do miss about church, though, is the people. I love my congregation so much. They are a very smart, funny, devoted group of people, fun to be with, who challenge me (mostly in constructive ways *grin*) to be a better person as well as a better minister. It’s hard to be separated from their lives for this long, knowing that they are going about their daily worries and joys and that I can’t share them. However hard it might be to re-enter the pressure chamber of sermons, meetings, etc. come August, being with them again will be the reward.
Sermons in Stones 
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