Try the Best You Can

 

Much of my time lately has been given over to reading rather than writing. But I did produce a service for my facility folks. It was initially meant to reference May 8th but because of misunderstandings at work among the chaplains, it will actually play this coming Sunday. As a result, I removed most references to the 8th being Mother's Day. That version playing at the facility also is a little different in that I produced essentially a slideshow for during the service that meant I didn't need to appear onscreen. (One of the changes I foresee in sermons is the lessening of the preacher's physical presence and the greater emphasis on his or her voice.) 

Service for May 8

 

Song (“Everybody Hurts”) 

 

Welcome. Welcome to this place where we have nightmares, but we also have dreams. Where we feel confused, but we also understand. Where we are afraid, but we also find courage. You are welcome. Together we make it a holy place.

 

Scripture passage

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. ² He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters, ³ he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. ⁴ Even though I walk through the darkest valley,^[a]  I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. ⁵ You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. ⁶ Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

 

Homily/Meditation

 

          Let’s take that video I showed you by the group REM as a metaphor for what most of us are experiencing. Gridlock. Impasse. Jammed up. For a lot of us, that’s the way life feels often, like just a moment ago we were cruising down the superhighway, windows down, enjoying the swiftly moving air and the excitement that comes with speed. And a moment later, Bam, we’re locked down in traffic. Nowhere we can go. Hundreds of cars in a single boundaried space, like we’re water in a hose and someone has his thumb on the nozzle, just a trickle leaking out so we move forward by inches, a foot an hour.

          The solution for the people in the video is to get out and walk. You see them suddenly, as one, opening their doors and walking together, alone, in pairs, holding hands some of them, in the same direction, like they all know where they’re going. Wouldn’t we give anything to solve our sense of gridlock like that? To just step out of what’s holding us back and walk?

          In reality, of course, even one person getting out of their car and walking away will only make it worse for everyone else. For a solution like this you need everyone deciding beforehand this is how they’ll handle things, and outside a music video there’s not likely to be many people who’ll do that.

          Psalm 23, which I read to you after the video, may be one answer to that. It’s said to be, after The Lord’s Prayer, the most recognized poem in Western literature. Surely its description of comfort resonates with most of us, a sense of bucolic ease and transcendence, imagining us as sheep looked over by a caring shepherd or parent figure, a mother who will refresh and guide us through the harshest, most dangerous terrain, and back into safety and food.

          Pastors often talk about the pastor as the shepherd in this and other psalms. To shepherd also means to guide, and in relation to today, to mother. It’s ironic that the word “shepherd”, has come down to us as a synonym for pastor. Shepherd comes down to us from Old English, as does sheep, two of the few words that have, and a thousand years ago shepherds were buried with wool in their hands to prove their vocation and explain why they hadn’t been to church on Sundays.

          And consider the use that the word sheep has come down to us to mean. Gentle. Oblivious. Obtuse. Stubborn. Most of us experience sheep behind a fence as we zip by on the road. There they are, chewing intently on grass, ignorant as cows. In fact, in the way the portmanteau term “sheeple” has come to us, meaning docile, silly, easily fooled or led, as a derogatory political term for voters on the other side, I don’t think any thinking person would want to have the word sheep associated with them. In a word, sheep are dumb.

          Minnesota sheep farmer Catherine Friend deplores my ignorance. She writes, “Sheep are just steady, reliable, unchanging. Today’s sheep is much like the sheep of 10,000 years ago. They do an excellent job of being exactly what they are…Sheep understand food. They understand danger. They understand caring for their babies…Sheep aren’t born with an understanding of gates or tractors or the knowledge that if they don’t get themselves into the barn right now the farmer will miss the kickoff for the Super Bowl.”

          I want to assert right here that you, by which I mean me too, all of us, can be sheep. Because this is what happens when sheep run into that gridlock I spoke of earlier.

 

Sheep have two flight zones, shaped like cones, that serve as brilliant protection. One cone spreads backward from its head. If you approach a sheep directly from behind or from slightly to the side, you’ll step into this flight zone and the sheep will surge forward…

The sheep has a second flight zone, this cone reaching from its head forward. If you approach a sheep from the front and step inside this zone, will the sheep turn around and run in the opposite direction?

No, she will not…That sheep is going to do the last thing you’d expect. If you step into that forward flight zone, the ewe will shoot straight toward you, a white blurred streak that passes within inches of your useless hands, leaving you standing there, mouth agape. You will both look and feel stupid. You will understand that even though you have more brain cells than a sheep, you have the reaction time of a slug.

         

          We’re all sheep. I don’t mean that as a put down. I’m not talking about sheep as passive but as squirming, lively, noise-making beasts in flight from the problems we’re experiencing, the issues we have, the fears chasing us. There’s no effective shepherd as we’re too fast, too agile, too often do the unexpected thing when we run.

          And boy, do we run. Always running, as babies we hit the ground running, like sheep. And while we may be unable to articulate it, and that’s legitimate because you’ve been running too hard to find words or a definition of what you’re running from or what safety you’re running to.

          Be patient with each other. Breathe. Focus. Be with other people as a nursing mother tending to her children. Walk away from the gridlock however you can and toward one another. Do the best things in the worst times. Try the best you can. But be patient. We are sheep and we are running to find where we belong.

 

 

Prayer

We pause in the stillness to rest for a moment, to quiet ourselves so that we can feel what stirs within us. Each breath draws us closer to the pulse of life and with each exhalation we make room for something new. May we find in this gathering the comfort of those who care. May we encounter patience along our growing edges and compassion in our most tender spots. Here may we find the inspiration and encouragement we need to face our challenges and nurture ourselves. And in the presence of suffering across the globe may we redouble our efforts to practice kindness where we are, with the hope that the light of our actions travels like the light of faraway stars. May our gestures of compassion and generosity seed possibility. May we travel humbly with one another, choosing reconciliation over resentment as we try to live right-sized. When life presses in and shifts us off balance, when pain assails us, when frustration mounts, may the rhythm of our breath steady us and bring us back to a place of gratitude.

 

Benediction

Take comfort, friends. The journey is long. The path is often difficult. And the future is uncertain. But take comfort. Deep down there is another truth. You are not alone.

 

Song (“Optimistic”) 

St Francis of Our Streets

I like this essay, although it seems the editor who titled it paid no attention to the writer's opening sentence. Nonetheless, it's a good job of calling out for special appreciation to one of the many people who work in purposeful anonymity to help others. For Father Jordan, and for the others inspired like him, it's not about them it's about "the care of the poor and vulnerable." It should be so for all of us. 

A note, too, on my appreciation for the Franciscans. We have had a St Francis statue in our gardens for years, modeling some of our stewardship on his theology. I've written of how that happens in the past. Interestingly, my father, who I've often said looks like the Dalai Lama, has the middle name Francis. 

I'll survive Trump

I'm concerned that, for most of us, Trump's reworking of what it means to be a citizen who needs help in these United States will be, at worst, a minor bump, while for many, many silenced others it will be a destruction of the little they have. I'm not concerned about myself: I survived Reagan, and Bush's I and II. I'll survive Trump. But I'm not a single paycheck away from poverty, I'm not dependent on EBT or SNAP or Social Security, I don't need to keep myself healthy through Medicare or Medicaid, I don't rely on the social safety net we've spent decades erecting so that as few people fall through it as possible. Yet, that is. But there are many who do have to live with his witless, uninformed, and ever-changeable decisions, and for whom even a single day of uncertainty can mean the loss of food, healthcare, housing, income, employment. Jesus said it best: "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

258 candles-days 157-158

The days when I had many friends who rode this horse are long behind me. But I remain glad of any help in keeping other people like them alive. To argue, as Maine's governor Paul LaPage does, that providing access to Naloxone provides abusers an out that simply leaves them free to shoot up again is not only, like Alexander Walley says, like arguing "that seatbelts encourage riskier driving," but suggests that some lives are more worth saving than others. Arguing that is not a moral choice but a moral failing. After all, no one would say that alcoholics shouldn't have AA available to them because it only gives them the chance to make their next binge sweeter. No one abuses a drug in order to make her life more exciting, only to make it seem that way. The reality is very, very boring. While a lot of people shooting up want to continue, a lot more don't, and they should be given every chance to eventually make that decision. Every chance. As Jesus said, forgiving another type of abuse, "seventy times seven."

would I follow black jesus?

To the extent that, if there is a historical Jesus, he was likelier to look like this than like this; and, as I respect and honor his teachings; and, as I also accept James Cone's theology of a Black God, I already do. But I'm actually talking about a more contemporary black jesus. I'm talking about Aaron McGruder's Black Jesus.

I love The Boondocks, the cartoon series to some extent, but primarily the comic strip, which I first experienced in the later 90s, possibly in one of the paper's out of the hub, possibly in a national magazine, but which I was drawn to like little before. My favorite character is Caesar.I'm sorry McGruder chose to end his strip, prematurely in my opinion, but I can dig it. He was courting controversy, and while I loved him for it, I imagine it's not easy to live that way day to day. In that light, a ten year run is pretty impressive.

MacGruder's new project is Adult Swim's Black Jesus. We don't have cable TV out here, so I try to keep track of it via episodes posted online. The concept, what if Jesus returned as a black man in Compton?, fascinates me (although I think a contemporary Jesus seeking an experience of personhood would live hard and die early as a Chinese single mother). The show tries too hard at times--I can do without the miracles, the robe and crown of thorns, the constant references to his dying for "our" sins (though I agree that, if that's true, we ought to be more grateful)--but I appreciate Black Jesus plays for laughs. It's a satire and sometimes satire has to be played big to be recognized.


I think a perpetually baked, cognac-swilling, "my nigger"-addressing Jesus (though that last makes me cringe every time) is probably accurate to how the historical Jesus would act if he were brought forward to today, and I think the point is that Black Jesus, as he's played by Slink Johnson, ought to be challenging, both to the people in his neighborhood and to us. (And it's also appropriate that the actor playing him is best known previously for his role in a video game.) Jesus' message, in the first century or today, should make it hard for us to live our lives comfortably. When he calls his friends "my nigger," while it makes me cringe, I also recognize the love in the phrase, the acceptance in his "my."

If I was a black man in Compton, would I accept and follow this black Jesus? Hell, yes. If I was a white man who heard about this black Jesus, would I cross the country to find and be with him? I sincerely hope so.

johnny thunders died for your sins!

I'll be upfront and say that I'm jealous of this essay from the Orange County Weekly, both in its writing and its subject. I would prefer to be known as the punk pastor.

Having said that, I will admit the writing, by Nate Jackson, is done well. He allows enough of Joe Furey's (great name, that, for a punk) conflicted nature and the conflicts of interest between who he preaches to and the theology he preaches from to speak for itself. Furey is another in that line of preachers who have found a personal savior and want to make others aware that this same salvation can be theirs too. I can't fault anyone for wanting to spread the good news, as it were.

The story I would like to hear, however, is that of his wife, Therese. She has stayed with him nearly full-time from his early days as a catastrophically bad drug runner to his new days in the collar, raising three kids, often without help from him, and losing the eldest, her son, to an overdose. Her trust in life giving her what she needed and her ability to rise each morning is worth listening to and it's unfortunate that this isn't her story.

Which isn't to say Furey's story isn't interesting or worth telling. But it's another in a long spate, reaching back to Augustine, of libertines tamed by the Word and who make their life's work the spreading of that Word to the people they used to be. I can't complain about that, either, in that it's exactly what I want and hope to accomplish. As he comes across in the essay and in the single video I could find, he sounds like an amiable, avuncular, kind presence, and there's a lot to commend about that.

But what I'm uncomfortable with is the theology behind Furey's sermons. It's one that accepts what the Bible says as the end to all things, that there is a good and a bad and that if you would be one of God's People, you must change from one to the other. I don't credit that. It strikes me the Jesus of the Bible didn't seek out the homeless and addicts of his time because he wanted them to change in order to hear his teaching but because they were the ones most willing to hear and credit it. You were encouraged to change--"Go and sin no more"--but actual change didn't come from no longer drinking or hooking. Actual change was harder to accomplish (Matthew 19:22-4). Some people, of course, want to stop drinking or come off the road and they should be encouraged. But others don't. And they shouldn't be discouraged.

If there is a Good News to the messages of Jesus and Buddha and other teachers, it's that people  already have dignity, are of "God's People," through the virtue of being alive. They should be accepted as they are, unconditionally. End of message.

"I know the way out"

I've used this story several times in sermons and essays. It's an amalgam of two stories I really like, the parable of the good Samaritan and this story from The West Wing. It's an accurate reflection of what I see as our responsibility to one another--to be on the lookout for the needs of others--and of my personal responsibility. As I mention in the original sermon this is from, I'm not as good a storyteller as the Luke writer, so I've added detail.

Guy’s walking along the Red Cedar Trail and he’s not looking where he’s going and he falls down along one of those spots where the ground is soft and he slides almost to the river.  He’s pretty banged up, he thinks, maybe a broken arm, maybe his leg is at an angle a healthy leg oughtn’t to be.  He’s laying there a long time.  When he wakes up he notices the slope is almost perfectly sheer and even if he could get up, about halfway up the sand breaks away and he’d be right back down at the river, hurt even worse.

            Dude comes by.  He’s a local teacher.  He’s a good man, responsible, keeps his commitments.  Guy down by the river’s edge, he sees him, waves one pitiable hand at him, shouts, “Hey, brother, can you help me up out of here?”  But the teacher, he’s a jogger and this is his running time.  He’s got his headphones on, doesn’t even hear this guy, he’s not looking down, doesn’t see him waving.  He goes on past.

            Guy’s getting pretty nervous.  It’s going to be dark sooner than later and it’s late in the year.  This could be bad. 

            Another dude goes by, local minister.  He’s a pretty good person, too—everyone in this town is an okay person.  Guy down at the river’s edge waves and says, in a weaker voice, “Hey, pastor, can you help me up out of here?”  But the minister, he’s got tomorrow’s sermon due and he’s taking a walk to clear his head.  His mind’s full of what he’s going to say and how he’s going to say it and he doesn’t hear the guy either.  He just walks on.

            Now the guy’s getting really worried.  It’s about quarter to seven and the cold is already creeping up his spine.  He might live through the night from his wounds, but he’s going to be exposed to hypothermia and if he does have broken limbs he’ll probably go into shock and that can be fatal.  He cries a little.

            One of the local kids comes by.  Guy down at the river recognizes him.  He used to hang out down by the Acoustic where he sold weed to the college kids.  He got picked up by the cops, cleaned out, spent some time in prison, got his act together.  He’s been out a couple months, has a hard time finding a steady job, the story is he’s been turning tricks to live day to day. 

      Guy down by the river practically whispers up, “Help.”

            Kid hears him, looks over the edge down at him, yells, “Can you move?”

            Guy tests himself out.  He can move.  It hurts like hell and he’s going to have some nasty bruises and a scar, but turns out nothing’s broken.  He crawls to his feet and says, “Yeah, I can.”

            Kid slides down the cliff to where the guy is.  Guy’s thinking, “Oh man, this kid’s going to rob me!”  He whimpers, “I said get me some help, now we’re both stuck down here.”

            Kid puts his arm around the guy and holds him so the guy can stand and walk.  Gingerly, painfully, but he can walk.  Kid says, “Yeah, but I’ve been down here before and I know the way out.”

maybe it is about the numbers

I completed reading two books of spirituality today: Walking a Literary Labyrinth and Irresistible Revolution. While I really enjoyed Nancy Malone's writing--it often reminded me of the best work of Karen Armstrong or Thomas Merton--between the two the one that's likelier to stick with me longer is the Shane Claiborne book because it irritated me over and over again like an infection. You tend not to remember why you have a scar fondly but you remember it nonetheless.

But what won me over--although to be fair, the fact I kept reading it despite my repeated annoyance with it confirms I was won over long ago--was the following in its final pages:

Certainly, thousands were added to their number in the early church--the poor, outcasts, people fed up with the world. They were the scum of the earth...Our context is quite different. We live among the wealthiest people in the world (top 2 percent), a tough mission field. We are preaching a gospel that declares that it's easier to fit a camel through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom. But look on the bright side. After we preach the crowds down, we will not need such expensive buildings...

And yet whether it's the Prayer of Jabez or the war in Iraq, many Christians seem to be hoping that the kingdom of God will come in triumphal greatness, expanding God's territory and taking over the world with glory and power--shock-and-awing the masses, if you will. But that's the very temptation Jesus faced in the desert, the temptation to do spectacular things like fling himself from the temple or tun stones into bread, to shock the masses with his miracles or awe them with his power. And yet he resists. The church has always faced the same temptation, from the time of Constantine's sword to now. We are tempted to do great things like rappel from the rafters in the newest church gym or throw the best pizza party so that kids might bow before the altar.

But amid all the church-growth tacticians and megachurch models, I want to suggest something a little different: God's kingdom grows smaller and smaller as it takes over the world...

Despite the fact that God's Word insists that "God does not dwell in temples built by hands," we insist that God should...God just digs camping. No wonder when I think of my most powerful encounters with God they seem to involve camping of some kind...That is where I have met God. God still dwells there. No doubt there is power in corporate worship, and there are times when I feel God among the masses (and during Masses), but it has had nothing to do with the color of the carpet or the comfort of the chair...

As we build our buildings, human temples are being destroyed by hunger and homelessness. The early prophets would say that a church that spends millions of dollars on buildings while her children are starving is guilty of murder...The more personal property is retained as private space, the more corporate property becomes a necessity. And the cycle continues, for as we enlarge the territory of corporate property, private property remains comfortably sacred...[We] find ourselves less likely to meet in homes and kitchens and around dinner tables. We end up centralizing worship on corporate space or "on campus." Hospitality becomes less of a necessity and more of an optional matter, a convenient privilege...

One of the underlying assumptions is that money from the offerings or tithe belongs to the church. But the Scriptures consistently teach that the offering is God's instrument of redistribution and that it belongs to the poor. Giving to the poor should not make its way into the budget; it is the budget.

Now, as I've pointed out, there is a disingenuousness to an organization with directors and marketing people like Claiborne's Simple Way calling "85 percent of...church offerings is used internally, primarily for staff and buildings and stuff to meet our own needs...border[ing] on embezzlement." But simply because an organization finds itself unable to meet the ideal doesn't mean the ideal isn't worth trying or is inherently worthless. It just means they haven't figured out how to do it yet.  It may be that in smallness and simplicity such ideals are more likely to be realized.

resistible revolution?

This book has been a challenge to read. Not because I disagree with its theology, although sometimes I do, or because it is written amateurishly, although sometimes it is, or because sometimes I want to hurl it against the wall, although sometimes I would. It's a challenge for all those reasons, plus Shane Claiborne's occasional lapses into the unbelievable--a page after he tells us he was a student at Wheaton while "they still had that pesky no-dancing rule" he describes himself as having "multicolored hair and...ripped jeans and a Rage Against the Machine shirt sporting a black American flag with the words 'Evil Empire'"--after which he manages to pull out something as honest as this:

We hang out with kids and help them with homework in our living room, and jump in open fire hydrants on hot summer days. We share food with folks who need it...Folks drop in all day to say hi, have a safe place to cry, or get some water or a blanket. Sometimes we turn people away, or play Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who answers the door on tired days. We run a community store out of our house. We call it the Gathering, and neighbors can come in and fill a grocery bag with clothes for a dollar or find a couch, a bed, or a refrigerator. Sometimes people donate beautiful things for us to share with our neighbors; other times they donate their used toothbrushes.

We reclaim abandoned lots and make gardens amid the concrete wreckage around us. We plant flowers inside old TV screens and computer monitors on our roof. We see our friends waste away from drug addiction, and on a good day, someone is set free. We see police scare people, and on a good day, we find an officer who will play wiffleball with his billy club...[We] mourn the two people who died in this property...We try to make ugly things beautiful and to make murals. Instead of violence, we learn imagination and sharing. We share life with our neighbors and try to take care of each other. We hang out in the streets. We get fined for distributing food. We go to jail for sleeping under the stars. [My emphases]

This is part of Claiborne's recitation of "an average day" at Simple Way, the community house he's a part of in Philadelphia. The book is full of passages like this. He describes miracles to which he's been witness and then he recounts spending the summer in Calcutta working in Khalighat. He recounts one night when he and some friends sent a demon in the form of a little old grandmotherly type skittering from them in shrieking horror by humming "an old worship tune." Then he describes the patient, gentle, "careful" way he dresses a leper's wounds in Khalighat, and is rewarded with  "Namaste." Of course he has to add that he whispers back, "Jesus."

Perhaps you see why this book troubles me. It's the mix of the true--the tired days when they turn people away, the friends dying, the used toothbrushes--with the stuff in there because the book is published by Zondervan--the miracles, the shrieking demons, whispering Jesus' name. I am having a great deal of difficulty from page to page determining whether to toss the book far away from me or to keep reading.

What is probably most troubling to me is that I suspect this is Claiborne being true to himself, this mix of the worst stereotypes and heartfelt experience. It is a self-image mirrored by both the photos inside the back covers where he is presented as a willowy, do-ragged, barefoot, geeky white boy and on the Simple Way's website where the simple community is composed of Boards of Directors and Chairs and Controllers and Claiborne even has an assistant. It leads me to uncharitably point out that Jesus didn't have an Executive Director. But to be fair Jesus wasn't operating a 501(c)3 either.

the pastor of porn

I rarely talk on this site about personal things going on in my life, primarily because I don't think that's the business of or of interest to most readers.  Having said that, it has been a hard two years since my last full time employment, and this past week I've stepped up my applications to places that aren't in my fields.

One of these has been a place closer in on the hub, in the river town Hudson, and around the corner from one of my favorite libraries.  It's called Left of Center, and it's one of those remnants of the looser 70s and early 90s, a store that specializes in sex toys, printed and video porn, pipes and other smoking accessories, lighters, gambling equipment, and lingerie.  I'm secretly hoping, although the guy I spoke with told me they aren't hiring currently, that I'll get a call from them.  This is the sort of place I'm comfortable in and with whose people, secretive and anonymous as they often are, I'm comfortable. 

My role as a minister, albeit part time, is featured prominently on my resume, and in my imagination it's this that would encourage the owner to hire me.  What better argument at contentious zoning and ordinance meetings than that the store is so safe it has a minister working at it?  I've even played around with titles I might use in relation to there:  "Pastor of Porn;" "Preacher of Paraphernalia;" "Hierophant of Hemp;" "Lay Clergy."  (As an interesting aside, I've typed "pastor of porn" into Google Images and much of its returns (NSFW) are mugshots of preachers arrested for child pornography and publicity shots of Ron Jeremy, who famously traveled the country debating Ron Gross of Fireproof Ministries, as well as the usual crotch shots. And yes, I'm aware the image I use uptop is from XXXchurch.com, whose message is diametrically opposed to my own, but the image is too good, and too right, not to use.)

So I recognize, and wouldn't be opposed to, my being used in that way.  But it's also a valuable way to be with the people I see as my primary congregation, the people who aren't covered by most preachers:  lowlifes, addicts, the lonely, the desperate, the fearful.  My wife pointed out to me that by working outside my teaching or ministerial roles I could be ministering to people without their even knowing it, and that's exactly where I hope my road takes me.  So if you're of a mind to, pray or think good thoughts for me to find full time employment at the porn shop.

what might save u(u)s

 “What Might Save Us”

            A moment first about my background which has a lot to do with the direction my suggestions would take our movement.  I spent the last years of the 1980s homeless, partly by choice—I could have returned to my parents’ home at any time, and sometimes did when things were really tough, but preferred to live on the road and for a short while on the streets—and during that period I noticed two important things concerning religion.

            The first was that the people who were kindest and most willing to be with me, besides other homeless people, were adherents of fringe religions.  Christian fundamentalists, Hare Krishna members, Santerians, followers of Sri Chinmoy and G.I. Gurdjieff, Buddhists, and people who never told me what their religion was beyond helping other people, often fed and clothed and housed me, rarely asking for anything more than my attention in return.  They lived their spirituality as a daily practice and when they worshipped they made a joyful noise and moved a lot and then had a huge meal afterward.  They rarely missed the opportunity to eattogether.  I never asked but each one probably would have described him or herself as a minister or priest in the faith, living it out by action rather than by sermonizing.

            Secondly, nearly all of them were working poor.  Most of them rented apartments or trailers or property, and the few who did own their own home tended to farm (as nearly all the Santerians did) or owned it in common (as the Hare Krishnas and Gurdjieffians did).  The individuals with the least to spare often shared food and clothes and sometimes money with me.  I am aware that as a white man I am presumed less dangerous than others, but I am also an able-bodied white man in good condition, and while some people asked for work in return for what they gave me—a quid pro quo I offered—most simply helped me out with no thought of recompense, and if I mentioned it would say, “Help the next person you see.”

            One large reason for the dramatic drop in Universalism’s numbers, and in the numbers of Unitarian Universalistsin the recent past, has to do with greater acceptance by other, more mainstreamdenominations of the bulwark we built our movement around.  While it isn’t a platform of most denominations, ask anyone attending any mainstream (and many evangelical) church services if the people they know or children in other parts of the world or victims of terrorism or famine or natural disasters will be saved and the answer, especially as the question becomes more specific, will be “yes.”  This has been called the reason for the failure of Universalism but it may in fact be its greatest success. 

That isn’t to suggest we need to simplify our message or terminology.  I am an elitist of the first order from way back.  At my first UU service at Mahtomedi many years ago, I heard the words “eschatological” and “Jungian” spoken by then-minister Krista Wolf and said to myself, “I’m home!”  But in his book Letting Go, Roy Phillips writes about the divide between religion and religious education as uneasiness, as lacking a center.  It “hurts religion to associate with the kind of education that functions primarily as a way of adding to a person’s accumulating stock of information and concepts.  Religion gets to be a matter of ideas about religion rather than the living of religion.”[1]  This is probably where Unitarian Universalists sin greatest and most often, and probably the aspect we are least willing to change.  We tend to be lifelong learners and often mistake worship for an opportunity to learn something new rather than to celebrate something, even if it’s our own community.  Even I’m put off by the number of services I’ve attended (and that I’ve written) that are better described as public lectures than as sermons.  Many ministers, myself included, pad our sermons with minutia.  At least a part of this is the imposed need, following our Puritan past and our more recent attempts at being a G.I. Bill spirituality, for twenty minute sermons that seek to integrate “the humanities and religion with pragmatic debates about politics, social issues, and psychology…Unitarian [Universalism] offer[s] the opportunity to join a high-achievement, thinking elite.”[2]

Much of this is a response to the general settling over the fifty years since merger.  Given the decline in Universalism prior to the merger, the lesson we learned was that the focus ought to be more on the mind than on the heart.  The Unitarians definitely won the day in terms of their primarily intellectual view both of liberal religion and of worship.  And while “Religion for Smart People” is an accurate description of Unitarian Universalism, that slogan wouldn’t gain many adherents.  Again, that’s not to say our faith can’t be smart or that we can’t talk smartly about it.  But maybe we’re going about the conversation wrong.

A related issue probably responsible for our damnation by other denominations as a perpetually suburban congregation is our discomfort talking about money.  It is a very middle class attitude, this idea that everyone is giving his fair share and so to ask for more is to overtax her.  This is reflected in our centralization of governance, both local and national—some might argue it’s a repudiation of our polity history—for which a portion of a congregation’s tithes should go to pay for national and regional resources.  This is not a bad thing.  Too many small congregations find it too easy to see themselves as alone in a vast sea of hostility.  But a result of centralization is that we require many steps for ordination, including the results of tests of emotional fitness which come at considerable cost, culminating in two very expensive trips to either one end or the other of the continent for interviews that could, in this digital age, be as easily done by Skype.  There is a need for gatekeepers—in a movement about which others say derisively that it’ll accept anyone, it’s necessary that its representatives present consistent competence—but the costs for gatekeeping are passed onto the potential minister.  Add to this that many congregations who are willing to sponsor a potential minister during the required one year parish residency pay no or minimal compensation.  True, there is financial help for students in the form of grants and loans, but even after successful completion of the hoops a would-be UU minister must pass through there is no guarantee of full-time oreven part-time employment.  In fact, with the closing down of many congregations and the reversion of others to being lay-led because of finances, there is no guarantee of employment at all.  Can we seriously wonder at the scarcity of working class clergy in Unitarian Universalism?

What would I suggest in its place?  If I were devising a new movement intended to appeal to as many people as possible there are important aspects of Unitarian Universalism I would be sure to keep.  We pride ourselves on being an inclusive rather than an exclusive faith.  Particularly today, when many seekers look outside the traditionalspiritualities their parents brought them up on (or didn’t), a religion can be more often than not a place to land and settle for a few seasons than for life.  It’s been said that working people today are likely to have three or four careers over their lives rather than the single one their parents had.  There is no reason not to move across denominations, spiritualities, and practices so a seeker can find what she seeks.  We see it as a failure when people leave our congregations but that may be the new epitome of success.

            I would keep trained clergy and I would continue to train them in social justice issues in addition to (and maybe with greater emphasis on) theology.  As the large number of our clergy involved in the successful Minnesota same-sexmarriage legislation and nationwide ecological and immigration issues suggests, we are making tremendous strides in spreading our message.  We are a felt presence at rallies and protests and public celebrations and mourning.  In 2005 I attended Camp Wellstone in Madison, WI, and I remember the lesson brought to us by a Lutheran minister at one workshop:  Bring clergy with you and make sure they’re seen.  It’s a major reason I decided to become ordained.  Our visibility shouldn’t change. 

What is our message?  Do we have core beliefs that can be summed up in as lovely and compact a manner as the lawyer responding to Jesus’ question in Luke 10:27?  I think we do.  It can be summed up as “Love all life as if it were your own.”  This reflects many of the pre-merger beliefs that leaned heavily on Christian interpretation—some would argue persuasively it predates interpretation and goes straight to the heart of Christian religious sentiment itself. But can that be separated from any other liberal religious faith?  Can it be used to differentiate UUs from progressive Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Ba’hais, Secular Humanists, or anyone else?  Perhaps not.  But that may not be a problem.

            To be sure, there are problems.  To echo Reverend Egbert Brown, “I [am] surprised, disappointed, disillusioned as I [face]…that the failure or success of a religious venture [is] based on the number of members enrolled and the amount of dollars collected.”[3]  Congregations live anddie by whether they can collect enough to put on programs and hire a minister or, if unable to do so, to hire enough speakers to attract people to visit, then remain, then contribute in order to upgrade the process.  This isn’t just in our movement, of course; all faiths are experiencing this to some extent.  But in our case one rationale is that we suffer worse partly because of our smaller footprint and partly because, except for congregations in New England, we rarely benefitted from the past social expectation that members of a community would attend and contribute to a church.  It’s true we aren’t flush at the national level either, and not at many congregations, even among the larger ones.  But as Brown also argued, what is needed is “a religion of the present and the practical profoundly concerned with this world.”[4]  In seeking this we need to decide where to focus our efforts, whether it’s more important to have many small lay-led congregations or a few large, minister-led congregations.  We can have both but eventually one will drown while the other will barely keep its head above water (reinforcing the complaint against us, that we’re an elitist faith attractive to only a few metropolitans). 

            We are also too beholden to our Christian roots in our method of worship.  We meet on Sunday mornings, a time that is convenient for an increasingly diminishing population, and focus our service on the homily or sermon, putting its message at the center.  I love writing and delivering sermons and I think I do a good job of it, but fewer and fewer people are eager to sit for a twenty minute lecture even if followed by an opportunity to respond.  They can read and comment online.  Perhaps services should have an adjunct in which visitors can listen to a recorded weekly message while our actual time together in body is taken up with singing, dancing, conversing, arguing (we love arguing; we will never lose our fondness for arguing), and eating.  Such services don’t rely on a consistent day or place to meet. 

            Perhaps the time for Unitarian Universalism is past, not as an idea or a way of thinking, but for our existence as a separate movement.  Perhaps what we ought not to do is continue as an independent faith just like all the other faiths that, with one or two, admittedly, sometimes major differences, believe much the same thing we do.  Perhaps what we ought to do is join with like-minded progressive religions into one large, multi-churched, multi-service faith whose pastors are flexible enough to minister to multiple spiritual needs.  Such a denomination would look like nothing we have seen before.  But such a denomination could answer needs we have never had before. 

---

[1] Phillips, Roy.  Letting Go:  Transforming Congregations for Ministry.  Alban Institute.  1999:  80.

[2] Buehrens, John.  Universalists and Unitarians in America:  A People’s History.  Kindle ebook. 2011:  Loc 2368.

[3] Morrison-Reed, Mark.  Black Pioneers in a White Denomination.  Skinner House Books.  1994:  51.

[4] Morrison-Reed, Mark.  Black Pioneers in a White Denomination.  Skinner House Books.  1994:  84.

a congregation of one

"Every man will have a creed of his own," wrote [Needham, Massachusetts] pastor Stephen Palmer..."I have mine, but have no right to impose it upon others, nor have others any right to impose theirs upon me...He who thinks he has no more light to receive, has seen but little; and he who is not open to conviction is in bondage to himself."

--from Universalists and Unitarians in America:  A People's History by John Buehrens

This idea, if not this quote, opened up an intense discussion in a small group forum during our UU polity class last week.  We had assembled to discuss whether our principles and purposes are a contemporary help or a hindrance.  Early on the question "why don't we have a creed?" came up and from there the better question, "are we afraid of a creed?", was spoken.

The answer to the first question is suggested in Palmer's quote:  Unitarian Universalists as a group don't have a creed because we aren't free to impose our own convictions on others and they aren't free to impose theirs on us.  The distinction between agreeing with a conviction and insisting on it being the way people ought to behave is a fine one that seems lost on so many who would insist on the US being a Christian nation.  I agree with a number of Christian convictions--treating others as we'd like to be treated and obeying god (as I conceive god to be) are only two examples--but I don't identify as a Christian because I don't accept a supernatural force outside existence.  (Besides which, there is the issue of "which" Christianity some people are arguing for.  In terms of sheer numbers, Protestants are the predominant Christians.  But "Protestants" are a huge umbrella term, incorporating everyone from the Latter Day Saints to the United Church of Christ.  If we are talking just a single denomination, the US is far and away a Roman Catholic nation.)

The answer to the second question, according to many UUs, is "no."  But I think it's "yes," although maybe "afraid" isn't quite the right word.  We have these terrifically anodyne Principles which are and read like they are written by committee and fulfill a lot of functions.  They give us something to point to when asked "what do you believe" and something to rally around when we sense our rights as citizens of faith are threatened.  But to paraphrase Walter Royal Jones' famous question, No one asks to have the Purposes and Principles read to him on his deathbed.  They're a package of words most of us can agree to, but a Mission Statement will itself never be included as a prophetic source.

He "who is not open to conviction is in bondage to himself," Palmer writes, and insofar as his earlier point, that individuals need a personal creed, he is right.  The problem lies in that my personal creed may countermand yours and neither one of us really wants that.  None of us would, or should, want to belong to a congregation consisting of one--one person, one thought, one mission--and despite claims that are made in its favor, and the beauty sometimes of its language, that is precisely what a creed does:  Reduce a congregation to one.  Yes, we are "afraid" of a creed--if by fear we mean a wariness brought on by history and experience--but it may be good to be so afraid.

God isn't only the rose and not the thorn

I may read too many political and news blogs.  The past 30 hours have been a blur to me of information, speculation, frustration, anger and righteousness.  There is an appalling amount of what we don't know about the killing of children and adults in Newtown, CT.

Here is what little we do know:  Around 9:30 a.m. Friday morning, a young man eventually identified as Adam Lanza of Newtown and "forced his way"--as yet police haven't explained what that means--into the elementary school.  Apparently, he began immediately shooting indiscriminately with a high-powered rifle.  According to the BBC, the shooting only took a few minutes and then stopped abruptly.  Adam Lanza apparently took his own life after killing 27 people, more than 2/3 of them children, most of them girls, between the ages of 6 and 7.  All the adults killed were women.

The most frustrating word in the above is "apparently," but it's a very apt word because we don't really know, in this age of 24/7, microdetailed news, exactly what has happened.  We are more certain about what we don't know.  Why did Adam Lanza carry his older brother's identification card, which is why he was originally misidentified?  Why did he kill his mother, who may or may not have been a substitute teacher at the school, at their home before going to the school, which act, maddeningly, we are assuming?  Why did he target the local elementary school and, once there, target small children?  Why was he armed with both the rifle and 2 handguns, which he did not fire?

This is a particularly disturbing fact:  Dr. Wayne Carver, the medical examiner who reported his findings to news organizations and who did autopsies on several of the children, said that at least 2 of them were shot at close range, and that many of them had been hit between 3 and 11 times.

At least among my Facebook friends, the primary emotion, after shock, has been despair.  Why has something like this happened, they ask, and why is someone so obviously unhinged been allowed to have access to such murderous weapons?  We also don't know the answers to either of these questions, although it's very possible, in relation to the second question, that Lanza may have never shown any sign of being mentally ill.  The guns were his mother's.

Many of my friends are also insisting that this is the time to enact major gun control legislation, a perspective with which I'm in sympathy, but another friend who's a gunowner's rights advocate has pointed out that, short of making any gun purchase illegal, no control would have had an impact on this incident.  So far as we know, Lanza's mother bought the weapons legally and may have had them locked away safely.  I think he's right about that, too.  We don't know how Lanza got access to them.

However, I am convinced now is the time to have the argument, fierce and angry and costly as it will be, we keep putting off about gun control.  As someone else has pointed out, the perfect time for this conversation was before this incident happened; now is the second most perfect time.  But we also need to have a theological conversation.

Many of my Facebook friends are seminarians and rabbis and ministers and chaplains.  We link one another to articles and advice lists about how to talk about this with children and with each other.  The despair we feel is a consequence of a very real sense we have that god is somehow absent from the events, although how that can be, while god is also somehow involved in all situations, fucks with our heads.  Ecological theologian Sallie McFague has argued that religion has two primary criteria:  "It has to make sense and it has to make a difference."  It also has to take into account the painful, unnecessary deaths of children.  This isn't that religion.  

Theodicy has a long, storied history among monotheisms.  But it isn't only Christians and Jews and Muslims who are asking "Where was God?" in Newtown.  For an agnostic Unitarian like myself who sees everything related, there is no comfort to be had in the recognition that, whatever god is, god was there and involved.   In my cosmology, god is the teachers who shielded their students with their bodies, and god is the children whose bodies were defiled.  God is the school that Lanza forced himself into and god is the person who made the 911 call and the police and EMTs who responded to it.  God is Dr. Wayne Carver and other M.E.s who have to examine the broken bodies of children.

But god is also the bullets that flew, 6 per second, from that powerful rifle.  God is also the .223 Bushmaster assault weapon, a gun developed specifically for combat and has no other use, that Lanza used.  God is also Adam Lanza.

This isn't very comforting, I'll admit.  It's not a theology that says, "It's all for the best, they're with Jesus now," or "If only we'd done something different it would have never happened," both of which are a false comfort at best.  But I don't think god is about comfort, at least not for most people.  God is about living and dying, sometimes painfully.  God is about reality and the real experiences people have which can involve having a gun pointed at them and being the one pointing the gun. If we accept that god is real in the world then we have to accept that god is everything real in the world.  God isn't only the rose and not the thorn.