I've been gone a lot in the last month. And it's been an amazing month, for sure. (Ordination into Unitarian Universalist (UU) ministry, an inspiring conference of UU's during which we spoke about our participation in the growing movement for immigrant/human rights and anti-racism in Arizona, and a family reunion in Denver celebrating my Granddad's 95th and Grandma's 92nd birthdays). And now, I am home. For three weeks. ah... I sigh with relief to be in one place and grow my roots in this town I'll be living in.
I feel/ hope that in my return, a new chapter is beginning. I am making friends in Kalamazoo; having new experiences, like doing yoga in Sam's basement and swimming in her pool afterwards and working on a Community Supported Agriculture farm (Heron Homestead) with a couple awesome young people; cleaning up my house and finally putting away my winter sweaters that I do not need in this 80 plus degree weather!; making lists of things to do that prepare me for the coming year; writing thank you letters to all who gave me good tidings for my ordination...
I just feel so much abundance in my life right now. It is such a wonderful, beautiful feeling. Coming home last night on the airplane from Detroit and watching the fireworks all along the way was just the perfect way to end a chapter and begin another. With blessings from my family and friends for my new life here in Kalamazoo with budding friendships and deepening ministry.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
When Birds Sing
When birds sing,
listen for the return.
One may be joyfully proclaiming,
I'm here!
I'm alive!
Hear my song's sweet sound.
But more often,
there are many songs combining.
I am here!
Are you here?
I AM here!
What tells you so?
You are here, you hear me.
I hear you! You hear me.
My voice sings in your sweet song.
listen for the return.
One may be joyfully proclaiming,
I'm here!
I'm alive!
Hear my song's sweet sound.
But more often,
there are many songs combining.
I am here!
Are you here?
I AM here!
What tells you so?
You are here, you hear me.
I hear you! You hear me.
My voice sings in your sweet song.
Grace
Last week, I went for a walk in the Kleinstuck preserve- a small sanctuary of wild life near my house. Half way around the loop, a side trail leads towards the center of the marsh, with a bench inviting rest.
There I stood, feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders: A solo pastor to a congregation longing to grow. A single life in a soul longing to open. New to town and new to ministry. Things have gone well so far, but when I stumble, who is here to catch me? My friends here are mostly still acquaintances. So much to carry on my own two shoulders, and yet the wisdom of the earth whispers, “lay your burdens down! Rest in this beauty and this grace.”
And then, I heard footsteps behind me. Someone had turned off the main path and was nearing the shore where I stood. I turned around. A young man and his dog.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Is your name Grace?”
“I just found a cell phone on the trail and the owner is grace.”
“No,” I said. “But thanks for asking.”
Grace. Oh, grace! I forgot about you! Without you, the world is so heavy. One plus one equals two and there is no room for mystery, magic, forgiveness and grace. Everything in judgment graves.
The truth is, we reside in grace. We live and give home to grace.
A sweet kiss from God.
A gentle push of the wind.
The release of grief.
An opening of the heart.
A reminder of our deep, deep place in the family of things.
There I stood, feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders: A solo pastor to a congregation longing to grow. A single life in a soul longing to open. New to town and new to ministry. Things have gone well so far, but when I stumble, who is here to catch me? My friends here are mostly still acquaintances. So much to carry on my own two shoulders, and yet the wisdom of the earth whispers, “lay your burdens down! Rest in this beauty and this grace.”
And then, I heard footsteps behind me. Someone had turned off the main path and was nearing the shore where I stood. I turned around. A young man and his dog.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Is your name Grace?”
“I just found a cell phone on the trail and the owner is grace.”
“No,” I said. “But thanks for asking.”
Grace. Oh, grace! I forgot about you! Without you, the world is so heavy. One plus one equals two and there is no room for mystery, magic, forgiveness and grace. Everything in judgment graves.
The truth is, we reside in grace. We live and give home to grace.
A sweet kiss from God.
A gentle push of the wind.
The release of grief.
An opening of the heart.
A reminder of our deep, deep place in the family of things.
Monday, February 21, 2011
In Awe and Anticipation
"Eighty-five million people live in Egypt, and less than 1,000 died in this revolution- and most of them killed by police," said one organizer in Cairo on 2/11/11.
As Roger Cohen writes on 2/14 in a New York Times OP-ED piece that 2/11 may be the most effective antidote to 9/11. Islamic radicalism has thrived not because of lack of U.S. authority and military might. Islamic radicalism has thrived because of lack of diversity (of every kind) and political courage to encourage diversity in the U.S. and abroad. Cohen writes of the unlikely encounters between two Egyptians- a young Westernized woman who returned to Egypt for the protests and a man of Muslim Brotherhood sympathies- on the streets of Cairo. "Right now Egypt has no president, no vice president. no constitution, no parliament and no significant police presence on the streets. But it has the meeting of generations between these two Egyptians; and it has a new sense of nationhood forged through countless other barrier-breaking discoveries of 18 shared revolutionary days."
Egypt is proving us wrong. Egypt is proving all of us wrong who believed that Islam was a simple, one-sided faith that was anti-Western and anti-Democracy. Egypt is proving all of us wrong who believed that young people are complacent. Egypt is proving all of us wrong who think grass-roots, non-traditional leadership will bring chaos and thus violence.
What has happened in Egypt will mark, I believe, this entire century. It is an answer to the deep need for peace in the world. If only people will listen. It is an answer to those on the right who try to pose Obama as sympathetic to terrorist groups. Now, with only Obama's firm and gentle words supporting the protesters, Egypt may become a greater force against terrorist groups than our years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Let this be a new day for religious and racial pluralism, and world peace.
As Roger Cohen writes on 2/14 in a New York Times OP-ED piece that 2/11 may be the most effective antidote to 9/11. Islamic radicalism has thrived not because of lack of U.S. authority and military might. Islamic radicalism has thrived because of lack of diversity (of every kind) and political courage to encourage diversity in the U.S. and abroad. Cohen writes of the unlikely encounters between two Egyptians- a young Westernized woman who returned to Egypt for the protests and a man of Muslim Brotherhood sympathies- on the streets of Cairo. "Right now Egypt has no president, no vice president. no constitution, no parliament and no significant police presence on the streets. But it has the meeting of generations between these two Egyptians; and it has a new sense of nationhood forged through countless other barrier-breaking discoveries of 18 shared revolutionary days."
Egypt is proving us wrong. Egypt is proving all of us wrong who believed that Islam was a simple, one-sided faith that was anti-Western and anti-Democracy. Egypt is proving all of us wrong who believed that young people are complacent. Egypt is proving all of us wrong who think grass-roots, non-traditional leadership will bring chaos and thus violence.
What has happened in Egypt will mark, I believe, this entire century. It is an answer to the deep need for peace in the world. If only people will listen. It is an answer to those on the right who try to pose Obama as sympathetic to terrorist groups. Now, with only Obama's firm and gentle words supporting the protesters, Egypt may become a greater force against terrorist groups than our years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Let this be a new day for religious and racial pluralism, and world peace.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Service As Our Prayer
Sermon at UUCC Jan. 9th, 2011
Cassandra Howe
Before Christmas, Joe invited me to the Enduring Spirit art exhibit at WMU. As I walked from piece to piece, I noticed my emotions changing. I was grateful for being “let into the lives” of the people in the portraits. I connected with many parts of people’s stories. But I was also struck with the sobering realization that I have judged these very people every day of my life. I judged even as I offered spare cash, served hot meals, gave articles of clothing.
After spending some time looking at the art, Joe motioned to the notebook and magazine article on the table. Several people had written in the notebook. “I struggle too,” One person wrote. “These stories and pictures help me not to judge, but to listen,” wrote another. “We are more alike than unalike,” left a third, quoting the African American feminist author, Maya Angelou.
From the article, I learned the initial question that inspired this project- who in society doesn’t get to have their portrait taken? Answering the question for himself, Tim, the artist, worked with MwC and the members to set up a way to gift the members with their own portraits.
Perhaps most striking piece of project for me is not the product- but the process. Tim spent thirty minutes with each person photographed. The time was very intentional. For the first ten minutes, Tim asked questions like, “who are you? What do you like? What has life been like for you?” The next ten minutes, he took shots, and finally, he had each person choose their favorite ones for printing.
When I think of the amount of money I pay to sit with my doctor for ten minutes, once a year if I’m lucky, I realize how precious time is. What a gift it is to have ten minutes of another person’s thoughtful attention. Another person’s care. Who gets time like this in society? Who gets to have their story heard?
Another thing I like about the process is that it is ongoing. The art is not finished. Even though it is framed, hanging on the walls, it is not finished. Each one of us is part of the art when we go up and begin to read, peeling away the layers, listen to what the stories and the pictures behind the words are telling us. As Tim writes in the article, we have to earn the pictures. Exhibit not just about sharing pictures and stories. It’s about human relationship. We earn relationship by opening to it. By taking time to listen. To watch. And to learn.
Rachel Naomi Remen writes, “We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected, that which we are willing to touch… we serve life not because it is broken but because it is holy.”
Service, like compassion, not about helping those less fortunate than ourselves, but about realizing our kinship with all beings.
I was recently in Seattle for Christmas. I grew up there, so I was able to visit family and friends from high school and college who either returned or never left the rainy city. One of the people I visited was my godson, Carter. At one and a half years, he is learning and changing every day. one of his recent phases is giving. He likes to give you whatever he has in his hands (or his mouth).
Our impulse to give starts at a very young age. Even before we learn to give, though, we learn to receive. We receive our mothers milk. If we are lucky, we receive warm embraces from friends and family. Smiles. Affirmations. These gifts come from our parent’s desire not for us to get over our infancy, but from their desire to see us grow. They give because they love us- they believe in us, and see our wellbeing as part of their own.
It is important to remember this foundation for giving. As we grow older, giving and helping become more tricky. It is interesting to think of how this works in our language. Whatever is “for you” may be helpful, but also has the potential to be harmful. I think of things that are supposed to be “good for you.”
Some really are good- like vitamins. But others- like keeping unhealthy secrets or putting up with abuse- are really more about the other person’s greed than them caring for your wellbeing. I also think of the phrase, “I’ll pray for you.” After deciding to go into Unitarian Universalist ministry, for example, my fundamentalist Christian friends’ comments, “I’ll pray for you,” meant something completely different than the same words offered by a more spiritually sympathetic friend.
Helping you. Pray for you. But we don’t often say, “I serve for you.” We ask, how can I be of service? In service, it’s not just for you, or from me, but we are participating in an act of communion. An act that seeks the well-being of all involved. A recognition that my house is your house, my joy is your joy, my sadness is your sadness, and my life is your life.
Serving others is an extension of a person’s devotion to God, of our ability to live out the fullness of our humanity.
Serving is at the core of our Unitarian Universalist faith. Universalists recognized that salvation is not about the individual. It is about all of humanity. Their belief that Jesus’ death on the cross saved everyone inspired them to seek to uplift all of humanity right here on earth.
Service that is connected with our underlying human connection and our individual birth blessing can be heard in our first and seventh principles- as we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every human being, and the interdependent web of which we are all apart.
Service stemming from our common humanity can also be heard in the very first covenant of a Unitarian church- in Dedham, MA in 1637. a covenant that is spoken in many UU churches to this day:
Love is the doctrine of this church,
The quest of truth is its sacrament,
And service is its prayer.
To dwell together in peace,
To seek knowledge in freedom,
To serve human need,
To the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine -
Thus do we covenant with each other and with God.
Service is our prayer. Prayer, for me, is less about asking or reciting. More about reaching. A longing for union with the oneness that is all of life. in service, as in prayer, I experience a renewing connection with others and with life. I receive as I give, and as I give my full attention to something that is both part of me and beyond me, I learn to deeply listen.
In college I joined a delegation from the UM church of my childhood that was traveling to Guarjila, a small town in El Salvador. We had recently become a member of Sister Parish- a group that pairs together different faith communities across national boundaries. Having heard about mission trips, where the northerners occupy their time building houses or planting trees, I was a little surprised to learn that we were just going to bet here. To hang out, was how one high school companion phrased it.
Once there, I understood that we were there to build relationship. Seeing relationship as foundational to true service, our first several trips to El Salvador were primarily focused on sharing stories, learning history, playing and worshipping together. The organization is not against service projects or fundraising for a specific need in the community- it just recognized that the most effective and transformational service comes out of authentic relationship.
One of the ways that trip impacted me was in my awareness around international trade agreements and US role in the Salvadoran military. I joined others from my church in attending the School of the America’s protests in Georgia in following years, and we joined other organizations in Seattle working to educate around international trade and economic justice.
I smile when I think of how different my experience was from a typical mission trip. Instead of handing out bibles, we learned about Liberation theology from the local residents. Instead of assuming, “we know more than you,” or, “what we have will save you,” we took a deep breath, and listened.
We serve life not because it is broken but because it is holy.
In Judaism, Tzedekah, giving with justice and compassion, comes from the belief that all of creation is a gift and we have a responsibility to return to it a righteous balance. Monetary giving is seen as an extension of justice (Zevit 80). Even with the high esteem placed on giving, it is understood that more than money is needed to restore greater kindness.
The Babylonian Talmud states, “One who gives a coin to a poor person is rewarded with six blessings, but one who encourages that person with words is rewarded with seven.”
To me, the various levels of giving noted in Judaism are less about how much you give, or how much you do, but how much you risk. Often, giving a moment of our time can be more risky, than any product or purchase we might have. Whatever we are able to give, it can be a pathway to the divine. On Mt. Sinai, Moses took off his shoes and found he was standing on holy ground. How can we, in our service, take off our shoes and open ourselves to transformation and change?
Service comes from realizing our kinship with all beings. As we open ourselves to others, we open more fully to ourselves.
The mission of UUCC reflects this understanding of service. The first line states, “our congregation provides a welcoming community that cherishes diverse perspectives.” You go onto commit yourselves through service to make a difference in the world. There is wisdom in your order of words. First, you need community, for in community we build relationship, the foundation for service. We serve when we greet each other Sunday mornings. When we risk telling our stories, the joyful and those full of pain. We serve when we commit to justice-seeking organizations in the community. And when we organize our resources to give in common and with intention, because that is how we find meaning and growth.
Examples of service surround us. Literally, hanging on our walls. We are the first house of worship to host this exhibit. What does it mean to give sanctuary, literally, to this kind of radical relationship? Next week we welcome new members into our congregation. How can we bring more of who we are into this room? How can we offer ourselves more generously to the people we come across, every day of our lives? We will need all of who we are, if we are to make lasting and positive change. May we open ourselves to the challenge of service, calling us to deeper presence, listening, action, and care.
Works Cited:
Zevit, Rabbi Shawn Israel. Offerings of the Heart: Money and Values in Faith
Communities. Virginia: The Alban Institute, 2005.
Cassandra Howe
Before Christmas, Joe invited me to the Enduring Spirit art exhibit at WMU. As I walked from piece to piece, I noticed my emotions changing. I was grateful for being “let into the lives” of the people in the portraits. I connected with many parts of people’s stories. But I was also struck with the sobering realization that I have judged these very people every day of my life. I judged even as I offered spare cash, served hot meals, gave articles of clothing.
After spending some time looking at the art, Joe motioned to the notebook and magazine article on the table. Several people had written in the notebook. “I struggle too,” One person wrote. “These stories and pictures help me not to judge, but to listen,” wrote another. “We are more alike than unalike,” left a third, quoting the African American feminist author, Maya Angelou.
From the article, I learned the initial question that inspired this project- who in society doesn’t get to have their portrait taken? Answering the question for himself, Tim, the artist, worked with MwC and the members to set up a way to gift the members with their own portraits.
Perhaps most striking piece of project for me is not the product- but the process. Tim spent thirty minutes with each person photographed. The time was very intentional. For the first ten minutes, Tim asked questions like, “who are you? What do you like? What has life been like for you?” The next ten minutes, he took shots, and finally, he had each person choose their favorite ones for printing.
When I think of the amount of money I pay to sit with my doctor for ten minutes, once a year if I’m lucky, I realize how precious time is. What a gift it is to have ten minutes of another person’s thoughtful attention. Another person’s care. Who gets time like this in society? Who gets to have their story heard?
Another thing I like about the process is that it is ongoing. The art is not finished. Even though it is framed, hanging on the walls, it is not finished. Each one of us is part of the art when we go up and begin to read, peeling away the layers, listen to what the stories and the pictures behind the words are telling us. As Tim writes in the article, we have to earn the pictures. Exhibit not just about sharing pictures and stories. It’s about human relationship. We earn relationship by opening to it. By taking time to listen. To watch. And to learn.
Rachel Naomi Remen writes, “We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected, that which we are willing to touch… we serve life not because it is broken but because it is holy.”
Service, like compassion, not about helping those less fortunate than ourselves, but about realizing our kinship with all beings.
I was recently in Seattle for Christmas. I grew up there, so I was able to visit family and friends from high school and college who either returned or never left the rainy city. One of the people I visited was my godson, Carter. At one and a half years, he is learning and changing every day. one of his recent phases is giving. He likes to give you whatever he has in his hands (or his mouth).
Our impulse to give starts at a very young age. Even before we learn to give, though, we learn to receive. We receive our mothers milk. If we are lucky, we receive warm embraces from friends and family. Smiles. Affirmations. These gifts come from our parent’s desire not for us to get over our infancy, but from their desire to see us grow. They give because they love us- they believe in us, and see our wellbeing as part of their own.
It is important to remember this foundation for giving. As we grow older, giving and helping become more tricky. It is interesting to think of how this works in our language. Whatever is “for you” may be helpful, but also has the potential to be harmful. I think of things that are supposed to be “good for you.”
Some really are good- like vitamins. But others- like keeping unhealthy secrets or putting up with abuse- are really more about the other person’s greed than them caring for your wellbeing. I also think of the phrase, “I’ll pray for you.” After deciding to go into Unitarian Universalist ministry, for example, my fundamentalist Christian friends’ comments, “I’ll pray for you,” meant something completely different than the same words offered by a more spiritually sympathetic friend.
Helping you. Pray for you. But we don’t often say, “I serve for you.” We ask, how can I be of service? In service, it’s not just for you, or from me, but we are participating in an act of communion. An act that seeks the well-being of all involved. A recognition that my house is your house, my joy is your joy, my sadness is your sadness, and my life is your life.
Serving others is an extension of a person’s devotion to God, of our ability to live out the fullness of our humanity.
Serving is at the core of our Unitarian Universalist faith. Universalists recognized that salvation is not about the individual. It is about all of humanity. Their belief that Jesus’ death on the cross saved everyone inspired them to seek to uplift all of humanity right here on earth.
Service that is connected with our underlying human connection and our individual birth blessing can be heard in our first and seventh principles- as we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every human being, and the interdependent web of which we are all apart.
Service stemming from our common humanity can also be heard in the very first covenant of a Unitarian church- in Dedham, MA in 1637. a covenant that is spoken in many UU churches to this day:
Love is the doctrine of this church,
The quest of truth is its sacrament,
And service is its prayer.
To dwell together in peace,
To seek knowledge in freedom,
To serve human need,
To the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine -
Thus do we covenant with each other and with God.
Service is our prayer. Prayer, for me, is less about asking or reciting. More about reaching. A longing for union with the oneness that is all of life. in service, as in prayer, I experience a renewing connection with others and with life. I receive as I give, and as I give my full attention to something that is both part of me and beyond me, I learn to deeply listen.
In college I joined a delegation from the UM church of my childhood that was traveling to Guarjila, a small town in El Salvador. We had recently become a member of Sister Parish- a group that pairs together different faith communities across national boundaries. Having heard about mission trips, where the northerners occupy their time building houses or planting trees, I was a little surprised to learn that we were just going to bet here. To hang out, was how one high school companion phrased it.
Once there, I understood that we were there to build relationship. Seeing relationship as foundational to true service, our first several trips to El Salvador were primarily focused on sharing stories, learning history, playing and worshipping together. The organization is not against service projects or fundraising for a specific need in the community- it just recognized that the most effective and transformational service comes out of authentic relationship.
One of the ways that trip impacted me was in my awareness around international trade agreements and US role in the Salvadoran military. I joined others from my church in attending the School of the America’s protests in Georgia in following years, and we joined other organizations in Seattle working to educate around international trade and economic justice.
I smile when I think of how different my experience was from a typical mission trip. Instead of handing out bibles, we learned about Liberation theology from the local residents. Instead of assuming, “we know more than you,” or, “what we have will save you,” we took a deep breath, and listened.
We serve life not because it is broken but because it is holy.
In Judaism, Tzedekah, giving with justice and compassion, comes from the belief that all of creation is a gift and we have a responsibility to return to it a righteous balance. Monetary giving is seen as an extension of justice (Zevit 80). Even with the high esteem placed on giving, it is understood that more than money is needed to restore greater kindness.
The Babylonian Talmud states, “One who gives a coin to a poor person is rewarded with six blessings, but one who encourages that person with words is rewarded with seven.”
To me, the various levels of giving noted in Judaism are less about how much you give, or how much you do, but how much you risk. Often, giving a moment of our time can be more risky, than any product or purchase we might have. Whatever we are able to give, it can be a pathway to the divine. On Mt. Sinai, Moses took off his shoes and found he was standing on holy ground. How can we, in our service, take off our shoes and open ourselves to transformation and change?
Service comes from realizing our kinship with all beings. As we open ourselves to others, we open more fully to ourselves.
The mission of UUCC reflects this understanding of service. The first line states, “our congregation provides a welcoming community that cherishes diverse perspectives.” You go onto commit yourselves through service to make a difference in the world. There is wisdom in your order of words. First, you need community, for in community we build relationship, the foundation for service. We serve when we greet each other Sunday mornings. When we risk telling our stories, the joyful and those full of pain. We serve when we commit to justice-seeking organizations in the community. And when we organize our resources to give in common and with intention, because that is how we find meaning and growth.
Examples of service surround us. Literally, hanging on our walls. We are the first house of worship to host this exhibit. What does it mean to give sanctuary, literally, to this kind of radical relationship? Next week we welcome new members into our congregation. How can we bring more of who we are into this room? How can we offer ourselves more generously to the people we come across, every day of our lives? We will need all of who we are, if we are to make lasting and positive change. May we open ourselves to the challenge of service, calling us to deeper presence, listening, action, and care.
Works Cited:
Zevit, Rabbi Shawn Israel. Offerings of the Heart: Money and Values in Faith
Communities. Virginia: The Alban Institute, 2005.
Would you Harbor Me?
Sermon by Cassandra Howe
Jan. 16th, 2011, UUCC
Last month I drove out to South Haven, and went for a walk on the shore of Lake Michigan. It was a little windy here when I left, and I was amazed at the strength of the wind when I got out of my car. I was also amazed at how quickly I became worn out from the cold wind and rain. What would have normally been an easy walk along the beach, turned into an exhausting, “why am I doing this, again?” pointless excursion.
Life can be like a storm. Just like ships out at sea, we need harbors in which to rest. Nourish ourselves. Gather strength for the journey. Harbors are important for a crew’s journey, and can be life-saving. Often they’ll have light houses shining out for boats lost in bad weather.
Harbors have three essential characteristics:
1. Sturdy walls or land formations that protect the inside from storm and weather. 2. An accessible and open entrance 3. Water deep enough to set an anchor.
I love that both the firm, sturdy walls, and the wide, open entrance are needed for an effective harbor. Both of these help to create an inner environment of calm waters deep enough to lay an anchor. Deep enough to rest and restore.
Religious community is like a harbor. We need firm walls and an open entrance in which to gather, to rest, to learn, and to return, fully engaged, into the world.
As a religious community, we strive to give safe harbor to the many who come our way. What do we offer each other at the water’s edge? How do we encourage one another to grow? To heal? To seek deeper meaning in our daily life?
Today we welcomed six people as members into our community. In an era of rugged individualism, committing to live and grow with others is a radical act. A choice that affirms our interdependence and deep union with all of life.
One of the functions of religious community is to deepen our understanding of hospitality. Together, we expand our concept of neighbor. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, we are told the law states: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.”
Whether or not one believes in God, we can appreciate the importance this reading places on the second part of the sentence: love your neighbor as yourself. It is spoken in the same sentence, the same breath. Loving our neighbor as ourselves was considered as important, and as challenging, as loving God with all your soul.
When I was young, I would help my mother send out newsletters- probably between 100 and 200 newsletters, a few times a year, to people living with AIDS. She was part of a group of people that put on “Strength for the Journey,” an annual retreat for people living with AIDS in the Seattle area. For anyone who has helped with mass mailing, you can relate to the taste of stamps and envelopes that will forever be engrained in my mouth.
When I started, didn’t really have a concept for what AIDS was. I just did it because my mom told me to. When I got older, I grew to have more pride in the work my mother did for people living with AIDS. It wasn’t until I was in high school did I learn something that really helped to ground my work for social justice.
A brief introduction to my adolescent revelation is that I was born six weeks premature. Today, it’s not a big deal. In 1981, it was. I was severely anemic and was given two blood transfusions that probably saved my life. What I realized when I was in high school, was that I was born at the cusp of the medical knowledge around AIDS. What I cannot be sure of is if they were screening for AIDS at the time of my birth. I could have been one of the attendees for this conference. Suddenly, these people to whom I was stamping and addressing envelopes were no longer strangers. They were part of my family. People with whom I felt a common destiny.
Dr. King writes, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
The parable of the Good Samaritan is a story of radical hospitality. Left for dead, it was not the beaten man’s family that stopped to mend his wounds and bring him to safety. It was his enemy. A person with whom he knew no commonality. With whom he had a history of hatred and un-ease. The Samaritan did not just lightly help him. He put water and oil on his wounds. He carried him to a safe place and, when he had to go, made sure that the wounded person would be taken care of until he was well enough to care for himself.
The Greek word for hospitality is philo-xenia. Literally love of stranger. This story of hospitality are not just about comforting one of our own. It’s about reaching across boundaries of race, class, politics and religion. In his act of hospitality, the Samaritan was healing not just the individual, but society as well.
Love of stranger. Who are the strangers in our midst?
I would say religious community is a stranger. I speak as someone who grew up in liberal religion, and now serves a religiously liberal institution as a minister.
Liberals have an ambivalent relationship with organized religion, to say the least! Often, people who have worked for change within liberal religious institutions, find that you are free to do anything you feel called to do, as long as you are willing to do it alone.
The well-known architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who was a Unitarian, and who designed many of our churches spoke the mind of many of our members. When asked what he thought of organized religion, he said, “why organize it?”
We are right to feel ambivalent. Religious community has often been more oppressive than liberating. More soul confining than soul uplifting. Consider the sex scandals of Catholic priests, and the painfully slow response for justice by Catholic leaders. Or, the role certain Christian groups like the Family are playing in elevating violence towards gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people around the world. Fundamentalists in every religion are igniting hatred and intolerance. This is heavy. Scary. Real. And makes me want to run the opposite direction from organized religion.
But just because these violent acts are loud does not mean that they get to define what is religious community. Even amidst terrible oppression by religious authorities, people have gathered together to protect their religious convictions. Of love of neighbor. Of freedom. Dignity. Truth.
As Unitarian Universalists, we have a history rich with people acting boldly to create space for religious tolerance and pluralism. People who sought not uniformity, but authenticity.
The history of the flaming chalice, the symbol of our faith, is one such act. In Prague, in the early 1400’s a man names Jan Hus anticipated later reforms of the Church by offering mass not in the traditional Latin, but in the local language, so people could understand. During communion, he gave them not just bread but wine, an element previously reserved for clergy.
These may seem like small acts to us, especially as communion is something many of us don’t feel much connection to. But in his time, these were bold acts, and in 1415 he was condemned for heresy, and burned at the stake. The flame of his death was not forgotten by his followers, who linked it with the chalice of inclusion, as he had offered it to everyone.
Skip a few hundred years to 1939 when the Unitarian Service Committee enlisted a Czech artist named Hans Deutsch, to design a symbol. He chose the flaming chalice. You can find the chalice stamped onto documents from WWII, a formality needed to assist the service committee in rescuing Jews from Nazi persecution.
Just before that time, in 1920, back in Prague, a man named Norbert Capek created the Flower Communion- a simple ritual performed by many UU congregations- including this one- each spring. He created it as a ritual everyone could participate in- whether you were Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, agnostic or atheist. In the ritual, each person brings a flower from their own neighborhood (or grocery store), and adds it to the common bouquet. At the end of the service, everyone then receives one flower, taking home a piece of beauty brought by someone else. Capek publicly opposed the Nazis and thus was killed during the war.
Today, UUs stand with others in the struggle for rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender folks in the US and abroad. Rev. Jill from Peoples and I are working with other clergy and lay leaders to put on Kalamazoo’s first National Prayer Hour on Feb. 1st, to highlight the violence against gays in Uganda. As our country becomes more polarized religiously, I see more of a need for a faith that seeks pluralism instead of homogeneity.
Dr. King writes, “There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted.”
Perhaps part of why we are all here is because we don’t want to be adjusted. We need help from one another to stand true to our higher ideals. In community we learn to love the stranger. Perhaps the strangers in our midst are not distant people who we do not know. But people in our own families. People with whom political and ideological differences have stunted relationship and meaningful conversation. Perhaps the strangers in our midst also read of and feel the hate rising and lament, as we do, the death of communion, the promise of peace, by an increasingly polarized nation.
May we give harbor to the strangers near and far. May we make strong walls that shelter us from the wind, and give us strength for the journey. May we open wide our welcoming doors, inviting the wanderer in from the storm. And may we seek to give one another deep waters from which to rest, to seek, and to grow.
Works Cited:
Barnwell, Ysaye. "Would You Harbor Me?" Musical composition, Safehouse, 1994.
Buehrens, John and Forrest Church. A Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Unitarian
Universalism. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.
Beuhrens, John and Rebecca Parker. A House for Hope: The Promise of Progressive
Religion for the Twenty-first Century. Boston: Beacon Press, 2010.
Jan. 16th, 2011, UUCC
Last month I drove out to South Haven, and went for a walk on the shore of Lake Michigan. It was a little windy here when I left, and I was amazed at the strength of the wind when I got out of my car. I was also amazed at how quickly I became worn out from the cold wind and rain. What would have normally been an easy walk along the beach, turned into an exhausting, “why am I doing this, again?” pointless excursion.
Life can be like a storm. Just like ships out at sea, we need harbors in which to rest. Nourish ourselves. Gather strength for the journey. Harbors are important for a crew’s journey, and can be life-saving. Often they’ll have light houses shining out for boats lost in bad weather.
Harbors have three essential characteristics:
1. Sturdy walls or land formations that protect the inside from storm and weather. 2. An accessible and open entrance 3. Water deep enough to set an anchor.
I love that both the firm, sturdy walls, and the wide, open entrance are needed for an effective harbor. Both of these help to create an inner environment of calm waters deep enough to lay an anchor. Deep enough to rest and restore.
Religious community is like a harbor. We need firm walls and an open entrance in which to gather, to rest, to learn, and to return, fully engaged, into the world.
As a religious community, we strive to give safe harbor to the many who come our way. What do we offer each other at the water’s edge? How do we encourage one another to grow? To heal? To seek deeper meaning in our daily life?
Today we welcomed six people as members into our community. In an era of rugged individualism, committing to live and grow with others is a radical act. A choice that affirms our interdependence and deep union with all of life.
One of the functions of religious community is to deepen our understanding of hospitality. Together, we expand our concept of neighbor. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, we are told the law states: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.”
Whether or not one believes in God, we can appreciate the importance this reading places on the second part of the sentence: love your neighbor as yourself. It is spoken in the same sentence, the same breath. Loving our neighbor as ourselves was considered as important, and as challenging, as loving God with all your soul.
When I was young, I would help my mother send out newsletters- probably between 100 and 200 newsletters, a few times a year, to people living with AIDS. She was part of a group of people that put on “Strength for the Journey,” an annual retreat for people living with AIDS in the Seattle area. For anyone who has helped with mass mailing, you can relate to the taste of stamps and envelopes that will forever be engrained in my mouth.
When I started, didn’t really have a concept for what AIDS was. I just did it because my mom told me to. When I got older, I grew to have more pride in the work my mother did for people living with AIDS. It wasn’t until I was in high school did I learn something that really helped to ground my work for social justice.
A brief introduction to my adolescent revelation is that I was born six weeks premature. Today, it’s not a big deal. In 1981, it was. I was severely anemic and was given two blood transfusions that probably saved my life. What I realized when I was in high school, was that I was born at the cusp of the medical knowledge around AIDS. What I cannot be sure of is if they were screening for AIDS at the time of my birth. I could have been one of the attendees for this conference. Suddenly, these people to whom I was stamping and addressing envelopes were no longer strangers. They were part of my family. People with whom I felt a common destiny.
Dr. King writes, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
The parable of the Good Samaritan is a story of radical hospitality. Left for dead, it was not the beaten man’s family that stopped to mend his wounds and bring him to safety. It was his enemy. A person with whom he knew no commonality. With whom he had a history of hatred and un-ease. The Samaritan did not just lightly help him. He put water and oil on his wounds. He carried him to a safe place and, when he had to go, made sure that the wounded person would be taken care of until he was well enough to care for himself.
The Greek word for hospitality is philo-xenia. Literally love of stranger. This story of hospitality are not just about comforting one of our own. It’s about reaching across boundaries of race, class, politics and religion. In his act of hospitality, the Samaritan was healing not just the individual, but society as well.
Love of stranger. Who are the strangers in our midst?
I would say religious community is a stranger. I speak as someone who grew up in liberal religion, and now serves a religiously liberal institution as a minister.
Liberals have an ambivalent relationship with organized religion, to say the least! Often, people who have worked for change within liberal religious institutions, find that you are free to do anything you feel called to do, as long as you are willing to do it alone.
The well-known architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who was a Unitarian, and who designed many of our churches spoke the mind of many of our members. When asked what he thought of organized religion, he said, “why organize it?”
We are right to feel ambivalent. Religious community has often been more oppressive than liberating. More soul confining than soul uplifting. Consider the sex scandals of Catholic priests, and the painfully slow response for justice by Catholic leaders. Or, the role certain Christian groups like the Family are playing in elevating violence towards gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people around the world. Fundamentalists in every religion are igniting hatred and intolerance. This is heavy. Scary. Real. And makes me want to run the opposite direction from organized religion.
But just because these violent acts are loud does not mean that they get to define what is religious community. Even amidst terrible oppression by religious authorities, people have gathered together to protect their religious convictions. Of love of neighbor. Of freedom. Dignity. Truth.
As Unitarian Universalists, we have a history rich with people acting boldly to create space for religious tolerance and pluralism. People who sought not uniformity, but authenticity.
The history of the flaming chalice, the symbol of our faith, is one such act. In Prague, in the early 1400’s a man names Jan Hus anticipated later reforms of the Church by offering mass not in the traditional Latin, but in the local language, so people could understand. During communion, he gave them not just bread but wine, an element previously reserved for clergy.
These may seem like small acts to us, especially as communion is something many of us don’t feel much connection to. But in his time, these were bold acts, and in 1415 he was condemned for heresy, and burned at the stake. The flame of his death was not forgotten by his followers, who linked it with the chalice of inclusion, as he had offered it to everyone.
Skip a few hundred years to 1939 when the Unitarian Service Committee enlisted a Czech artist named Hans Deutsch, to design a symbol. He chose the flaming chalice. You can find the chalice stamped onto documents from WWII, a formality needed to assist the service committee in rescuing Jews from Nazi persecution.
Just before that time, in 1920, back in Prague, a man named Norbert Capek created the Flower Communion- a simple ritual performed by many UU congregations- including this one- each spring. He created it as a ritual everyone could participate in- whether you were Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, agnostic or atheist. In the ritual, each person brings a flower from their own neighborhood (or grocery store), and adds it to the common bouquet. At the end of the service, everyone then receives one flower, taking home a piece of beauty brought by someone else. Capek publicly opposed the Nazis and thus was killed during the war.
Today, UUs stand with others in the struggle for rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender folks in the US and abroad. Rev. Jill from Peoples and I are working with other clergy and lay leaders to put on Kalamazoo’s first National Prayer Hour on Feb. 1st, to highlight the violence against gays in Uganda. As our country becomes more polarized religiously, I see more of a need for a faith that seeks pluralism instead of homogeneity.
Dr. King writes, “There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted.”
Perhaps part of why we are all here is because we don’t want to be adjusted. We need help from one another to stand true to our higher ideals. In community we learn to love the stranger. Perhaps the strangers in our midst are not distant people who we do not know. But people in our own families. People with whom political and ideological differences have stunted relationship and meaningful conversation. Perhaps the strangers in our midst also read of and feel the hate rising and lament, as we do, the death of communion, the promise of peace, by an increasingly polarized nation.
May we give harbor to the strangers near and far. May we make strong walls that shelter us from the wind, and give us strength for the journey. May we open wide our welcoming doors, inviting the wanderer in from the storm. And may we seek to give one another deep waters from which to rest, to seek, and to grow.
Works Cited:
Barnwell, Ysaye. "Would You Harbor Me?" Musical composition, Safehouse, 1994.
Buehrens, John and Forrest Church. A Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Unitarian
Universalism. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.
Beuhrens, John and Rebecca Parker. A House for Hope: The Promise of Progressive
Religion for the Twenty-first Century. Boston: Beacon Press, 2010.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Miracles
What makes a miracle? Is it an impossible event- something that goes against common understanding? Or, can a miracle be claimed by gratitude- like the reappearance of a lost child, or the gift of beauty to a forlorn soul?
December is a month of miracles. Stories of miracles reside in the tale of Christmas, the birth of the Christ Child, and Hanukah, the eight-day flame that existed from only one day’s worth of oil. In both these stories, the miracle is not in grand fanfare and impressive stunts. It is in the hard labor of Mary giving birth to a child, found in a manger. It is in the meaning of one lone flame, surviving from oil, the blood of the earth. Instead of stretching to find miracles “out there,” these stories remind us that what is truly important, indeed miraculous, is what we have right here.
I appreciate that this month-of-miracles rests immediately before the New Year, and my new year’s resolutions. Instead of setting goals that serve to satisfy my expectations, my resolution is to be open to surprise. To the way life defies my expectations, and that from the ordinary unfolds the extraordinary.
The Sufi poet and mystic Rumi writes “Giving thanks for abundance is sweeter than the abundance itself.” How can we be the makers of miracles by our manner of receiving life? By living with a heart full of wonder and awe for this world in which we live?
December is a month of miracles. Stories of miracles reside in the tale of Christmas, the birth of the Christ Child, and Hanukah, the eight-day flame that existed from only one day’s worth of oil. In both these stories, the miracle is not in grand fanfare and impressive stunts. It is in the hard labor of Mary giving birth to a child, found in a manger. It is in the meaning of one lone flame, surviving from oil, the blood of the earth. Instead of stretching to find miracles “out there,” these stories remind us that what is truly important, indeed miraculous, is what we have right here.
I appreciate that this month-of-miracles rests immediately before the New Year, and my new year’s resolutions. Instead of setting goals that serve to satisfy my expectations, my resolution is to be open to surprise. To the way life defies my expectations, and that from the ordinary unfolds the extraordinary.
The Sufi poet and mystic Rumi writes “Giving thanks for abundance is sweeter than the abundance itself.” How can we be the makers of miracles by our manner of receiving life? By living with a heart full of wonder and awe for this world in which we live?
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