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Our district has been grappling with a painful situation: the firing of our District Executive, Cilla Raughley. Many (all too many) Unitarian Universalists of the Pacific Central District, including the congregation I serve (the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, a.k.a. UUCPA), don’t even know that we’re part of a district, nor have any idea what services to expect from–or responsibilities to assume towards–the district. However, some of our members are paying attention, especially since Cilla was a member of UUCPA until she became DE. (A District Executive may certainly belong to a congregation, but some decide that it is best not to belong to any one district church, preferring an option such as membership in the Church of the Larger Fellowship.)
If you’ve ever been in an organization whose leadership went through a crisis, you’ll know it raises pastoral issues and issues of communication. One of the skills of community-making is knowing how to act when we have incomplete or conflicting information about matters of concern to the community. So I used my most recent newsletter column to share what I’ve learned from hard experience.
UUCPA is in a tender position because so many of us know and love Cilla. She and her husband Andrew have played important roles in our congregation, chief among them friend to many of us. Unitarian Universalism was not only Cilla’s employer, but her community, and she and Andrew must be feeling very alienated from their community. I hope you will extend them all the comforts of friendship. We need not know what happened, or what position we take, in order to express our support and affection.
Since employment decisions (with all their necessary secrecy) create strong feelings, conflict, and confusion, I want to urge us all to be mindful of what words and actions help build community in such a time. I have seen the damage done in these situations when we fill the gaps in our knowledge with gossip and speculation. We do it because we want to know what really happened; we have our theories and loyalties; we try to stitch a coherent story out of many and conflicting versions; but in rushing to replace our uncertainty with firm statements for which we have no real support, we do harm to real people. It is best if we:
* assume good intentions of everyone involved;
* remember that behind abstractions such as “the District Executive,” “the UUMA chapter,” “the PCD Board” and “the UUA” are ordinary people who, like us, love our tradition and are doing their best to make the decisions that will benefit it;
* ask ourselves, before we speak, whether what what we are about to say is true; if it is necessary; and if it is kind;
* remember that we are all Unitarian Universalists seeking to build a community together based on the principles we share.
Tonight and tomorrow our congregation’s choir (and various other musicians, most of whom are congregation members and staff) is putting on a concert, A Nation of Immigrants. The centerpiece is a mass by our music director, Henry Mollicone, a noted composer who is also, this year, a composer-in-residence here at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto. Ever since Henry became our music director, he has forged a connection between social justice and music. This piece, Misa de los Inmigrantes, alternates the elements of the Latin mass (here sung in Spanish) with narration, in English, telling the true story of a recent immigrant from Mexico. Another concert a few years ago featured his Beatitudes Mass, which also integrated interviews with real people, in this case homeless people; Henry stipulates that all proceeds from performances of this piece benefit the homeless. Tonight’s concert splits the proceeds between the Day Worker Center of Mountain View and UUCPA.
Music and justice are a natural fit for our congregation, and Henry has helped put them together in other ways, for example enthusiastically generating a list of pieces for a Coming Out Day service in which I requested that all of the music be by LGBT composers and librettists. I’ve been thinking about other ways to use our love of music, and the power music has to change hearts, to take it out beyond our worship services. How about a congregation-based Threshold Choir? Sending small groups to sing or play at hospitals, assisted-living facilities, shelters, or hospices? (As a teenager, I was very moved by caroling with my mom and a few other members of the New Haven Chorale at Yale-New Haven Hospital on Christmas Day.) Creating a group that sings songs of work, struggle, and peace? Creating musical groups whose membership intentionally combines members of the congregation and other groups such as recent immigrants (our area has a zillion), veterans (ditto), or people without homes (ditto)?
photo by Gary Vanderlinden
While the monks of Drepung Loseling Phukhang Monastery were at our church this week, they had for sale malas (beads used for counting mantras or prostrations), flags reading Om Mani Padme Hum, wall hangings with various writings of the 14th Dalai Lama, and so on. This quote caught my attention, especially the part I’ve emphasized.
Let me explain what we mean by compassion. Usually, our concept of compassion or love refers to the feeling of closeness we have with our friends and loved ones. Sometimes compassion also carries a sense of pity. This is wrong–any love or compassion which entails looking down on the other is not genuine compassion. To be genuine, compassion must be based on respect for the other, and on the realization that others have the right to be happy and overcome suffering just as much as you. On this basis, since you can see that others are suffering, you develop a genuine sense of concern for them.
As for the closeness we feel toward our friends, this is usually more like attachment than compassion. Genuine compassion should be unbiased. If we only feel close to our friends, and not to our enemies, or to the countless people who are unknown to us personally and toward whom we are indifferent, then our compassion is only partial or biased.
Genuine compassion is based on the recognition that others have the right to happiness just like yourself, and therefore even your enemy is a human being with the same wish for happiness as you, and the same right to happiness as you. A sense of concern developed on this basis is what we call compassion; it extends to everyone, irrespective of whether the person’s attitude toward you is hostile or friendly.
I have wanted a proper mala (all 108 beads) for some time, but as with all such purchases, have felt the tension between the wish to have one and the desire not to be acquisitive, especially about spiritual things. This week, offered the excuse that I was helping the monks build more dormitories for their monastery, I bought one from them. I will not be using it to count prostrations, the way the Tibetan Buddhists do, thank you very much, but on my walks I’ve been using it to meditate as I go, and trying to work up some respect, and thus genuine compassion, for people I tend to pity or dislike.
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.
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.
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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