Yesterday, a colleague invited a question on the UU Evangelists Lab Facebook page, asking the group to share about our particular cultural context and how it shapes our core theological message. Today, I have been preparing for a session with our youth group tomorrow morning, where we will be telling the story of David and Goliath (based on 1 Samuel 17), particularly emphasizing the 5 smooth stones that David carries with him, and which give him the confidence that he can defeat the fabled warrior (and that Unitarian theologian and ethicist James Luther Adams used as a central image in his essay, "Guiding Principles for a Free Faith"). This story and session will set up the next few months of conversations around our Unitarian Universalist smooth stones and what we in the Mountain Desert District call our Jagged Rocks - that is, what we believe are our saving tools and messages. While David brought with him smooth stones, we have evolved this idea to recognize a faith that is dangerous and not always smooth-going - and to lift up how our tools must always be contextual and particular, even while they are rooted in our tradition. In order to fully engage the question posed on the Evangelists Lab, or the questions with the youth tomorrow, we have to start by thinking about the particular struggles and challenges our community faces - those things which threaten abundant life in our particular time and place. Who or what are our Goliaths today? And then we can think about what tools give us the assurance that we will not be defeated....What are our jagged rocks or smooth stones? These are the questions I will invite the youth tomorrow to answer - and then we'll turn to consider what saving messages their faith community has offered them that could adequately address these threats. What would your answers be? Who or what are our Goliaths today? And how would you describe the saving tools, values or messages that assure you of their defeat? I'll share my own answers as well as some of what the youth came up with in future blog posts. | 5 Smooth Stones (James Luther Adams)
5 Jagged Rocks (Originated w/Rev. Nancy Bowen; evolving through collegial conversation in the MDD)
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Intercom Article, December 2013
In one way or another, all the holidays of December invite us to honor the persistence of light in the midst of dark times. But what is that source of light for us? What will shine on even in our most difficult days? What can we count on, ultimately? Last month, I invited us to consider these and other related questions, particularly in response to the major upheaval going on in our national political scene. I could have just as readily invoked the changes we anticipate in the next few years within our congregation. And, just as easily, I could've drawn on the stories I hear from many of you about changes you are experiencing within your own families and your lives. We do not live in simple times. Many of you know that I recently returned from a 5 day intensive learning experience with the Rev. Justin Schroeder, the Senior Minister at First Universalist in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a church with just over 1,000 members, with an average Sunday attendance of about 800. Justin grew up at Foothills and worked as our youth and young adult coordinator for a number of years. And so he has more than a friendly, collegial interest in our congregation; rather, he easily conveys his willing commitment to our health and vitality, especially as we navigate the next few years. The experience in Minneapolis was incredible, a huge opportunity for deep learning and reflection. Of all the many things I learned, my most important take-away was their answers to this question: Over the past 15 years, as you've moved through multiple ministerial transitions, and as you've seen the church change and grow in pretty dramatic ways, what would you say is the thing that hasn't changed? Amazingly, every single one of the lay leaders were able to answer this question, and even more amazingly, they answered it with pretty much the same response. In one way or another, they all said that what they found to be ultimately reliable in their religious community, was their message of the Universalist spirit of love and hope, embodied through a shared vulnerability and authenticity. This is their source of light. Every church, regardless of its success, has its struggles and questions. If it doesn't, it probably isn't pushing itself to grow and become all it could be. Even in the midst of its inevitable challenges and struggles, First Universalist knows why it is there and what it could count on. They could trust that they were all working on a bigger picture, something that mattered. For our own community, we might imagine ourselves at the beginning of answering these questions. At these early stages, answering at a communal level can be daunting. To begin, it's helpful to start with your personal answers. I promised last month I'd share some of my responses to get the conversation started. (I also said I'd share about how I came to these answers - that'll have to be next month!) So - what is ultimately reliable - what grounds me? A great and mysterious connecting spirit of love, with which I attempt to partner and further. What grounds me? A deep trust in the ways this spirit is manifest in this community, in all of you. What brings me comfort? That I don't have to do any of this life alone. That we're all in this together Intercom Article - November 2013
I write this post nearly two weeks into the federal government shutdown, and once again on the brink of national (which would likely mean global) financial disaster. Though there is talk of a deal in the works, the process leading here has only further degraded any small shreds of confidence that we held in our leaders and the process before this latest round - and now...it's hard not to give up on politics entirely, isn't it? Unlike other national political crises, however, the impact of the shutdown has not remained theoretical or far-away. With friends, neighbors, maybe even ourselves, suddenly off from work without a clear path forward - this crisis has arrived in our own communities, in our homes, in our everyday realities. The garage is cleaner, and the lawn winterized, but the heart - and the checkbook - wearier, more fragile, tired. Over these past few weeks, I have talked to more than a few of you who have admitted feeling testier, more ill at ease, less trusting of the world and the people of the world. I feel it too, in my own life. What was already a complex life is made just that much more complicated and confusing against the backdrop of such a national crisis. This is what it means when we say we are individuals who are a part of a larger interconnected web of existence. What happens in the wider web impacts us, whether we realize it explicitly or not. The struggles of our country ripple out until they become our individual struggles; the questions facing our community impact the questions we face in our every day lives - and vice versa. Everything matters, and our destiny is inextricably interconnected. Affirming this, we seem to be faced with two options: giving up, and giving in to despair and cynicism; or being the change we wish to see in the world. I admit, sometimes the former tempts me, and makes its case quite persuasively. And yet, I know in my heart I am bound by the commitments of my Unitarian Universalist faith that call me into partnership with the forces of love and justice in the world. And these forces compel me to choose the latter. To do what I can, for the time I have, to keep alive the story of hope (to paraphrase Victoria Safford). But how? How do we keep steady in our commitment to goodness even as the world around us seems to invite the opposite? What can offer us comfort, grounding, purpose, during times of great change and complexity? What can we count on to hold us steady through the storm? Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams says it this way: "Whether people call themselves theists or atheists, the issue comes down to this: What is ultimately reliable?" Over the next few months, I will be exploring this question in depth and from various angles. For this month, I invite you to consider: what do you turn to as "ultimately reliable" through times of change? What grounds you, orients you, calls you back to yourself and allows you to act in the ways you wish the whole world would act? How do you name this reality, this ground of your being? Next month, I will share some of my answers to these questions, as well as a little of my process in coming up with them. I encourage you to share your answers with your friends, family, with one another in your small groups and/or with me. Discovering our answers together we can help each other remember these most core truths, even as the world around us may change. We hold each other steady, no matter what may come. Intercom Article, July 2013
We each have a blessing to bring to this world. We spend our lives discovering and then offering this blessing. And yet along the way, we run into obstacles, things that prevent us from being our fullest, best selves. This is the work of the church - to help us see and overcome these obstacles, and then support us in blessing the world. These obstacles are often quite tangible: an illness, an injury, a lost job, a lost relationship, overwhelming grief. Or as our friends in the Springs know all too well right now: a wildfire threatens you and your home. What is our role - as a religious community - when our members find themselves facing these kinds of difficult times? We are not social workers. We are not medical professionals. We are not family. We are not even simply friends - for often we are called to care for someone whose name we do not even know, or who we are not sure we have actually ever met. When life puts obstacles in our paths, as a religious community we are called to witness to & embody the love that holds all of us and will not let any of us go. We are called to be the Beloved Community. We do this by reaching out and saying: “We see you.We love you. We are holding you in our thoughts and prayers.” We write and send Caring Cards. We visit members who are in the hospital or unable to leave their home. We provide emergency shelter when members have been evacuated. We give financially to support in economic strain. We coordinate and provide meals and rides. We listen to one another, without agenda. When life happens - we as your spiritual community want to know. We want to be with you, and we want to help you know there is a circle of care around you beyond your own choosing, more than a collection of individuals. And so we ask you to let us know. In turn, our promise is to respond, and to embody that greater love. We promise to find those Caring Cards in the social hour, and sign even those whose names we do not recognize. We promise to listen deeply in the Joys and Concerns, and hold each story in our hearts. As we are able, we promise to join the Parish Visitor program or the Emergency Response Team. We promise to provide meals or rides to each other as we can. And most of all, we promise to reach out to one another in social hour, in small groups, in choir, in committee meetings - remembering to ask, to see, to hold each other - strengthened by a love that will not let any of us go. Intercom Article, December 2012
In our recent Path to Membership class, a few participants shared stories of previous attempts in Unitarian Universalism. They said, they’d tried really hard to make a connection in those other churches, but it never really worked for them. “I’d show up on a Sunday morning, and I felt like I was at a political rally. It just wasn’t what I was looking for.” I was sad to hear their stories, their longing for religious community, and the ways we as Unitarian Universalists had failed to offer them a space for holding and even healing the brokenness of their lives, failed to lift up a message grounded in the spirit. I was sad. But I wasn’t surprised. We have at various points in our history, but perhaps most especially since the consolidation of 1961 and the intensified question of “who are we” -gotten mixed up in our yearning for justice, and confused our spiritual path with a political one. Even now, we wrestle with these issues. We know we have a calling to bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., who was referencing Unitarian minister Theodore Parker. And yet, what does it mean to engage issues of justice as a community of faith? What does it mean to talk about service and social change as a spiritual practice? One of my favorite stories from the Jewish tradition offers one perspective. It’s a story of a man who loves to read the Sunday newspaper. Cover-to-cover, slowly, methodically. There is just one problem.This man has a five-year-old daughter who, for as much as her dad loves to read the paper, loves to interrupt him while he tries to do so.Every Sunday, the man tries everything to keep her occupied, but to no avail. Finally, one Sunday, he has an idea. There, across the whole front page of the Travel Section, there’s a map of the world.He rips the page off, and tears it into little pieces.He shows his daughter all the little pieces and says,“Honey, here’s a game for you.It’s a puzzle.Go grab some tape, and then see what you can do to put these pieces back together the way they are supposed to go.” With that, his daughter cheerfully agreed, and ran off. Five minutes later, however, his daughter came back, with the page all taped together.The man shook his head, amazed.Though he wondered if she had just put the pieces back haphazardly, a careful inspection revealed the map was perfectly reconstructed. He looked at his daughter in disbelief.“How did you figure it out so quickly?!” She shrugged, and said,“It was easy Daddy. On the other side of the paper, there was a picture of a person.I know what a person looks like.I just put the person together, and the whole world fell into place.” In our religious communities, we are called to tend to the brokenness of the world, and the brokenness of our own hearts -as these are two sides of the same page. Our justice work must be grounded in our personal stories, in the healing we yearn for in our own lives, and must ask us to grow, change, and deepen our own sense of interconnectedness with the whole world. And just as much, in our individual acts of kindness and compassion, we might recognize that we are doing the work of changing and healing the world, just as much as when we march, or organize, or petition, or witness. Engaging social justice from this perspective underscores how one ministry in the church flows easily to any other. What we might lift up as justice ministry could just as easily be considered inter-generational ministry. What we might call small group ministry can equally be called the work of justice. And all of these find overlap and deeper meaning in the connections we build with other Unitarian Universalist congregations, our partners in this larger project. All of these are pieces of building the Beloved Community. Put the person together, the whole world falls into place. We risk sharing our stories; we listen deeply and with an open heart; we meet brokenness with tenderness and joy with gratitude. And slowly, step-by-step, breath-by-breath, we create the world we dream about. Poet Adrienne Rich says it this way: “Putting together, inch by inch, the starry worlds. From all the lost collections.” Intercom Article, April 2013
As I write this, the UUA has just announced its intent to sell our historic headquarters at 25 Beacon St in Boston, a location we’ve held since 1927. You can hear the whole story of this big decision here. I was just visiting “25,” as it is affectionately known, a few weeks ago, and the mixed feelings about the impending move were tangible. Our history is literally in the walls, and our traditions are embedded in the architecture. And yet, as the staff says: it sure would be nice to have modern conveniences like, say, reliable heating. Perhaps not unintentionally, the UUA Headquarters will be moving from this traditional building to a neighborhood known as the Innovation District. This is especially fun given that our 16th century religious forebear, Francis David, was tried and convicted for the religious heresy termed “Innovation.” As I reflected in our March 10th worship service, that we do not consider ourselves a “tradition-bound” faith does not shield us from experiencing an emotional reaction to such big changes in long-held practices and ways of being. And yet, how we react to these changes varies widely. For every person who grieves the loss of our historic location and wonders if this will be yet another move away from our historic roots, there is another who decries our idolizing of the past and our wasteful attachment to an old and expensive building. In our March 10th worship service, we explored our relationship to tradition, and I asked: What is one of our traditions that matters to you?And how does that tradition make you feel?The congregation wrote their responses, and then next to their answer, they wrote a happy face or a sad face, or a neutral face - to indicate how the tradition makes them feel. Just as with the move from 25 Beacon, our reactions to these traditions vary widely, with the same tradition yielding sad faces from some and happy faces from others. We are a faith tradition that affirms many different beliefs and spiritual paths,and so this will perhaps always be the case, even more so than in other denominations. As a Unitarian Universalist minister, I am often asked how I can hold all these differences: How can you choose what to put in an order of services?! And often after that question, comes a more pressing one: how is it that we, as members of a Unitarian Universalist congregation, can hold these differences? What should we do about the fact that the same thing that brings my neighbor deep satisfaction, makes me want to crawl out of my skin? I have two responses. First, as I reflected in the worship service, we hold these differences by receiving our tradition as a gift, such that it can become a source for dynamic and creative interchange with our present realities. Through this interchange, we construct our living faith for the future. Living in this dynamic dialogue between past and present, with humble openness to wherever truth may lie, allows us to experience these tensions and contrasting experiences not as a problem, but as a wonderful representation of truth: Human beings are not simple. Our reactions to things are not simple. There is no single right answer. Truth is ever-unfolding, and revelation isnot sealed. Second, and just as importantly, is to receive these contrasting experiences as an opportunity to practice hospitality. That is, to realize the deepsatisfaction possible when we see our neighbor rejoicing, feeling at home, feeling like they belong. To reach a level of spiritual maturity where I am authentically grateful that our practice includes atradition that offers you comfort, and to stay open to that feeling of joy you are experiencing, even if it isn’t a practice that naturally brings me joy. Hospitality is a core value in our covenantal faith, and our contrasting experiences allow us to put this value into practice. Claiming our past as a gift in intentional relationship with our present, and practicing hospitality as we encounter differences allow us toengage our diversity of experiences not with anxiety, but with compassion and mutual respect. And, as our covenant suggests, allows us to seek the truth, in love.
A while back, I was a part of a Unitarian Universalist Worship Committee where we spent a lot of time arguing about whether or not what we did on a Sunday morning was worship.
Worship implies a deity, one of our committee members insisted, worship means one above all, and I don’t believe in any of that anymore. And though I knew what he meant, I thought to myself, How many miracles have you witnessed today? Too many to count. How many places where there may have been nothing, is there something, and is that something beautiful, joyous, beyond measure? How much is worthy of praise, and whatever could we do to earn such a possibility as this one life, and how many shouts of joy and thanks could we offer and still not express sufficient gratitude? I thought, we should worship more, not less. Glory be: Friendships renewed! Praise be: Bodies renewed; Sing out for: New Homes and remodeling plans; Let us give thanks for: Wedding proposals and positive pregnancy tests; Let us worship: Growing life inside us all, good news of life’s re-creation, this new day… Worship. Praise, give thanks. On Sunday morning, on every morning (if we’re lucky and willing). Praise beauty as it flourishes. There are other words Unitarian Universalists use to describe what we’re up to on a Sunday morning – we say: services, meetings, gatherings – these words are all good. But there’s something about the word – Worship – that gets to more what I hope we’re up to, what I hope we are experiencing when we meet and gather together. Worship – it’s not a time just for our brains (though bring those too) – that’s what “meeting” says to me, brain time. And it’s not a time that’s for work exactly – that’s what “service” says to me (though you should expect some heavy lifting). Worship is a bigger word with bigger implications. It says, not only does this time matter, but matters in the biggest way. It’s not just a gathering about anything, about whatever curious thing we’ve decided to talk about on any given day. It’s what we care most about. What we want our lives most to be about. Worship says, there’ll be singing, and there’ll be silence, there’ll be candles and there’ll be prayers. And, worship says there’ll be preaching – not lectures or talks or even reflections – these are all words we use sometimes - but what I hope you expect when you come to Worship on Sundays, is preaching – preaching - rooted in a specific religious tradition, boldly proclaiming a particular religious vision. Preaching that seeks to comfort, and seeks to challenge, to let loose and to form. Preaching that holds out before the gathered people, not just who we are now, but who we are called to become, both as individuals and as a religious community. Preaching is vigorous, and often passionate, and it has everything to do with what matters Ultimately. Which means that when the preaching is flowing – it’s coming from my deepest sense of self – and from someplace that has absolutely nothing to do with me. And so, in our worship time, especially in the preaching time, I show up, all the way, with my whole heart, and also, I get out of the way, and welcome, Spirit. Worship invites us all to show up that way - with our whole, most authentic selves, and invite in something beyond ourselves, bravely seeking wholeness in a too-often broken world. Worship says you’ll find here real people carrying their biggest dreams and biggest fears, their tears and their laughter, their darkest secrets and their deepest yearnings. Worship says – we might dance, we might sway our arms in the air, we might call out...We might do whatever we need to do to name and praise the surprising work of love in this world, the bright glory of life that just keeps on coming, lift our heads and our hearts and let them open to All this Beauty, offering itself to us as possibility, again, again, again. My theology is covenantal. Primarily, this means that I make meaning in the ultimate sense by way of relationship - relationship across time, across space, relationship between and among all life, and the greater thing which we might imagine as the sum of all of these parts. I understand all life as beautifully and inescapably interconnected. Second, a covenantal theology attends to the reality that inherent to life is our capacity to break these relationships, and our need and yearning to try again in mending and making them anew. Third, it means that my theology is constructive - that is, it is always seeking to make new meaning, to construct useful metaphors for the way life is unfolding before us, and to be open to how we can partner with truth and creation as it is always being revealed. And finally, it means that I am aware of life as both a blessing and a responsibility - that just as we receive we are called to give, just as we experience goodness, so must we share it, called in our great blessing to build the Beloved Community. My ministry draws regularly from our Unitarian and Universalist historical traditions, which often locates me in what many consider a Christian vocabulary, although I am comfortable with religious language of all kinds. I am capable of ministry, dialogue and relationship with a wide variety of theological positions - I currently work with strong atheist humanists as well as theist Christians, and everything in between. Across these differences, I invite us to meet each other first in our hearts, and then later, with our heads. Rather than theology first being a matter of analytical debate, I invite us to consider it a place of feeling, a place where we can offer each other and the world our whole hearts. There is always a time and place for analysis and debate, but often if we can start with our hearts, these debates can be community-building rather than relationship-breaking. As we encounter these differences, I invite us to practice hospitality - in our worship settings, in our religious education classes, in our social settings. To me, this means remembering that even if something is not for you, our shared value of hospitality allows us to delight in its capacity to serve your neighbor. Still, these practices are works-in-progress in us all, and I include myself in that. Our covenant asks of us something even more basic: that we just keep showing up, keep trying to love each other, love ourselves, love the world. So as we encounter differences in our congregations, this is my most basic response - I ask that we all keep showing up, keep trying to love in these ways, and know that each day is a new opportunity to begin again. Preaching stirs up a holy story, in the preacher, and in the congregation: a story already written, a story alive and unfolding, a story not yet imagined.
That is to say, it is rooted in tradition. There can be no preaching without inheritance. In this way, preaching forms us in our faith, and can offer continual opportunity for ongoing conversion. In proclamation and praise, it offers the good news, those critical words of assurance in a difficult world. And in lament, it acknowledges the weight of long-held burdens and seemingly inescapable brokenness. We learn of our saints and our stories; we learn of the dreams left yet unrealized that we must pick up and carry forward. We learn how we came to be - as a faith, as a congregation. We learn of the covenants we inherit, the story we have stepped into. And from all of these, we come to know ourselves as a people. Yet, preaching remains urgent and immediate. It speaks to the real life of the real days of the gathered community. It is here where I find Kay Northcutt helpful, with her notion of preaching as spiritual direction. By offering up concrete language and imagery, preaching orients our daily lives towards that which is of worth, towards the holy and the sacred, towards Ultimacy. It addresses the realities we face as we awake each day, and calls our attention to God’s presence. Perhaps even more, it calls our attention to our own presence, to the possibility of wholeness, and integration, of living full and awake, in our real lives. With a posture of prayer, preaching enlivens our spirits, and teases out our hidden longings, offering an invitation to live each day, as a people redeemed. Yet this is not an act of the imagination, but rather relentlessly connected to the reality of life as it is - with alarm clocks and grocery store runs, strip malls and ski passes, the tedium of congregational administration and the poison of politics, the ongoing presence of illness and the shadow of violence, ongoing acts of grief and repair. It is here, among us here, that preaching calls us to know ourselves as already healed, already full of grace. Still, preaching is not only an act of the past, and of the present, but must always be connected to the call of our future. It dares to invite transformation - the transformation of persons, the transformation of communities, the transformation of the world. It calls us to change, to grow, to leap into the unknown abyss. Preaching engages the true danger of dialogue, in that it risks the possibility of change through open, ongoing relationship. It is an ongoing conversation between preacher and congregation, congregation and the larger community, the community and the wider world. And all of these might be changed, are changing, by way of offering themselves to one another in honest dialogue, as reflected in the preached event. So that, by the time the preacher arrives at the charge, the call to action, it is not a surprise to anyone, but rather a most obvious conclusion - since each layer of the community has walked the path with the preacher. To say it another way, the transformation made possible from preaching comes about like a change in the weather, like the dawning of a new day, like the setting down of one book and the picking up of another. Which is not to say there is not pain, or struggle. No truly dissolving/creative act can occur in ease. And letting go of who we are and calling ourselves to a new world, we can only expect resistance. But perhaps paradoxically, preaching engages this resistance by helping us to see our change as a return, our total transformation as the path of solace. And as it is an act that makes no sense without community, preaching fundamentally reminds us that our journey is shared, and we are held in lovingkindness by the Spirit of Life, by one another - past, present, future. Based on my understanding of preaching, I envision the preacher in four primary ways. First, I understand the preacher as storyteller. The preacher holds and offers the stories of the community, stories of faith formation and religious tradition, stories of wisdom and of prophecy. Of course the preacher must not only offer the stories, but also a hint of ways to interpret and apply these stories to our lives - especially as connected to the traditions and good news of the faith. The preacher sees connections across time, and space, and finds words to illumine these connections in the midst of the gathered community. Second, I imagine the preacher as spiritual director. Which means, I value highly the spiritual life of the preacher, the spiritual practices of the preacher, and the ways the preacher maintains a relationship with Spirit. The preacher remains humble, and receptive, to the mystery, and then calls the congregation to this receptivity. Though the act of preaching might appear the opposite, much of the preparation for preaching must make room for silence. Even in the midst of this humility, however, the preacher is not shy in offering guidance, or in encouraging the community in its relationship with God. Third, I imagine the preacher as pastoral caregiver. The preacher must carry forward the real concerns and the celebrations of the human persons into every part of preaching - the preparation, the construction, the performance. This means two things: first, having their own real life; and second, being a part of the congregation’s lives. As to the former, preaching about life and its struggles and joys is simply impossible if you have not had a life yourself. And the latter, though it may work at a certain level to carry with us the theoretical struggles of the community, it seems to me that deep connections are possible only when we address the people as they actually show up in this particular time, this particular space. Finally, I imagine the preacher as prophet, calling individuals and the community towards radical repair. This requires courageous love, offering wise council and gracious vision. This too requires humility, and a willingness to start with self-reflection and confession. At the same time, we must be careful not to paralyze ourselves in our self-indictment. Preaching does not require perfection, but only a willingness to engage in the struggle, to risk something of ourselves, and our privilege, to take action, to acknowledge all that remains unfulfilled and unfinished, and with this humility and courage, to act with our community in doing all that we can. |
"None of us alone can save the world, but together, that is another possibility, waiting." Author
Rev. Gretchen Haley is a Unitarian Universalist minister, mom, partner and friend, trying her best to love this beautiful, broken world. Archives
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