PeaceBang

Red Flags and “Like-Minded People”

I just looked up the website for a fairly new UU congregation for which I preached about nine years ago. I wanted to see if they were still “alive,” as it were.

I believe they were planted with help from the Extension Committee and quite frankly, after discussing their idea of church with the founding members, I felt that they had no idea why they were gathering to form a faith community. Their enthusiasm was all based on “offering Unitarian Universalism” to the local community — sort of like bringing a neat new product they thought was cool to the like-minded people who would find their way there to join them. Red flag #1. Who did discernment with this group of founders to determine their readiness, willingness and ability to lead a church start-up? If someone did, did they not notice that these kind people’s understanding of such an endeavor had nothing whatsoever to do with what it means to be a church? I spent all evening and most of a Sunday morning with this small band of folks and never once heard them express interest in anything other than promoting the UU principles in their wider community. Not a bad ideal, but how about the incarnational reality of the day-to-day work of becoming the beloved community, serving the congregation and the community in humility, welcoming the stranger, creating systems and programs that facilitate caring for each other, learning together, growing in faith together, worshiping together, seeking the will of the Holy together? And I mean to do all of this because they are prompted to do so by the Spirit of Love — in fact, called to this work so deeply that they could not avoid doing it if they tried — not doing it just so that they can “get” more members (that utilitarian approach to being welcoming and planning programs that is the death-wind blowing through so many religious communities).

I see that this fellowship currently has no minister (when I met them, they were gung ho on having a full-time minister within a few years), but that they include information on their former ministers (and announce the fact that they have no current clergyperson working with them) on the “Staff” page of the web site. Red flag #2. Ministers are not staff.

This post was prompted by this discussion over at Boy In the Bands. It was also prompted by the fact that I can’t seem to get my paper started for class and needed to clear my head for a bit. Thanks for stopping by. Did you bring me an iced coffee by any chance? Decaf?

P.S. I wouldn’t be sorry if we struck the phrase “like-minded people” from our list of glowingly positive reasons to affiliate with a faith community. Can we start to lovingly challenge that, please? I know it feels really good to find a group of like-minded people and to become spiritual kindred with them, but we too often rest there with nods and pleasant smiles as though this itself is the highest calling of our lives — to find people who share our world view and to hang out with them thinking about the meaning of life for a few decades before we die. My church is, for me, definitely a beloved community of like-minded people. It is also the place that challenges and makes demands on me emotionally and spiritually and practically and that holds my feet to the fire of the highest ideals of our faith tradition. In many moments, I treasure our like-mindedness. But I treasure just as much the work that is required of me and of all of us when we uncover the truth that we are also deeply differently-minded.

“What does the Lord require of thee?
To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.”
This isn’t necessarily best accomplished with a comfortable group of the “like-minded.”

Before Papers, and Before Class

Because it’s good and right for beagles and boys to be on the beach. And because it’s good and right for me to be with them.

Whirlwind

Hola, chickadees!

I am currently on a five-week sabbatical from church and taking an intensive course in the spiritual discipline of discernment. I leave on Sunday for the Festival of Homiletics.

It was SO HARD not to go to church yesterday… but it helped that I’ve had a stomach bug and a bad back for a few days. It took the strength of ten men not to call my DRE and ask, “HOWDITGO?”

This time away from the rhythms of church is interesting. I sometimes can’t figure out what day it is. I read for three to four hours a day, spend hours thinking and figuring things out (how is God really calling me and my congregation to use my sabbatical time next year? What does it mean that my life has changed so radically in the past six months? How does the body respond to letting go of consistently hurtful and even abusive relationships?) and write papers. I am working on a 20-page paper that is due for another class. If it wasn’t for SweetieBang and PuppyBang, I’d probably stay in my pajamas until 2 pm and eat cereal for every meal. Having the guy and the dog here give me different kind of energy and a focus outside of myself, thank Gods. I use laundry and cooking as welcome distractions from brain work (although I don’t hesitate to yap at SweetieBang if I need him to contribute more in that arena).

I await the birth of a healthy, precious Baby Philocrites. I hope to fit in a Washington, DC trip in July for ChaliceChick’s birthday soiree. Life is so sweet, and having things to look forward to make it even sweeter. Some people counsel always to live in the moment but as far as I’m concerned, some moments aren’t worth giving that much attention to. Most moments these days are, and I’m so grateful for that I could toss a bunch of flowers in the sky just for God.

Why I Publish Sermons On the Internet

This just made my day:

Hi Rev. Weinsten,

My name is [D.W.] and I am emailing you from ____, Idaho. I just wanted to let you know that you were an absolute lifesaver last week at the ______ Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and I’m sure you aren’t even aware of it I serve on the Sunday Services Committee, and we were holding our annual Stewardship Pledge Drive. Our minister, [name here], is currently on Sabbatical, and we had a local speaker scheduled to present on Sunday. Unfortunately, he was forced to leave town late Saturday evening to tend to a family emergency. In a panic, I searched the UU website for a worthwhile sermon that I could read that would speak about our Stewardship theme. That is when I found your wonderful sermon “They Need to Give”!! So, long story short, I read your sermon last Sunday (giving all of the credit to you, of course!) and it was a HUGE hit!! I can’t thank you enough for crafting such a beautiful sermon. Your wonderful message saved the day in [Our City, Idaho] and gave peace to one very stressed out service coordinator who needed to find a sermon at the very, very last minute

Thank you again! You can delight in the knowledge that an entire Fellowship clear across the country heard and loved your beautiful sermon!

- D.W.

I don’t know what UU website this lovely man is referencing [This just in! It turns out that the sermon in question given at the opening worship of a district meeting a few years ago, was a Sermon For the Day at the UUA website! Heck if I knew! - PB] , but I’m glad to have been of help to one of our congregations without having had to lift a finger to do so. For that I thank our church secretary and our webmistress for publishing my sermons so they can be read by anyone who cares to, used (with attribution, of course) by my colleagues who find merit in them, and save the day for a super stressed-out layman in Idaho. COOL! Yay for the internets!

Where’s The Emerson Bio-Pic We’ve Been Waiting For?

Could someone please make it their summer project to write a great screenplay about Mr. Emerson and his buds? We’ve just had this great HBO series on John Adams, so why not Waldo, HUH? Carlos Baker’s book Emerson Among the Eccentrics would give an enterprising writer plenty of good starting material (not that execrable waste of trees by Susan Cheever; who in hell was her fact-checker?) and there are loads of good roles for great actors!

I mean, isn’t it time that we got Sam Waterston on board with this? He’s my choice to play RWE. I’ll let you nominate your own choices for characters like Thoreau, Walt Whitman (cameo), Margaret Fuller, Lydian Emerson, the Peabody sisters, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott, and Horace Mann.

Chris Walton, you’re going to be home a lot this summer with the baby, aren’t you? We can DO this thing!

Singing ‘Bout Jesus in the UU Context

Suzanne wants to resurrect the thread of comments from this old post, and I say why not? I’m working on a paper and will start a ten-day intensive course tomorrow, so original material is unlike to issue forth from my fingertips until much later in May.

She writes,

Peacebang, I’m going to resurrect this thread, because it’s something I grapple with on a daily basis. I am a spiritually open and ritually eclectic person; I’ve ministered musically in Reformed synagogues, Episcopal churches (high and low), American Baptist, and (yes) Wiccan circles and pagan networks. I am now at my first UU position. How to choose hymns and anthems that support the sermon, provide liturgical flow, and have a spiritually meaningful component is shockingly difficult. Many of the best and most suitable music uses the word “God,” and (Oh NO!) often refers to Jesus. The word “God” is tolerated if I don’t overuse it. But if I use the J-word too often, I am severely and immediately criticized. Then if I don’t use the J-word often enough, I hear about that, too. The same group of people who wish for non-theistic language also want more classical or traditional music. WTH? Traditional church music without Jesus mentioned? I guess “Jesu Christe” is ok because if it’s in Latin it doesn’t count??? So I began to change a few words here and there to “UU-ify” the language of our anthems, which actually became ridiculous. (My husband said “why don’t we just say ‘Jello’ whenever the words say ‘Jesus?’ Everybody likes it, and there’s always room for it.”) Finally I had to write a newsletter column in which I told the congregation to trust me: I don’t have a religious agenda, but a spiritual one. I also told them I would trust them as well: I would trust them to use their own brains; I trust that all references to the Divine in the music I choose will be interpreted in any way they wish or need. I don’t care what images they have, or whether they believe in God. But they have chosen to call their institution a “church,” and that implies a spiritual component, which I believe can exist with or without a belief in God. I feel shackled by the bonds of the congregation’s contentiousness.

I marvel at how a denomination that is so proud of its inclusiveness should be so bitter and exclusive to the Christians (or even the theists) in its midst. Yet everybody wants that special Christmas Eve service, and to sing the old carols with the original words. I suppose Jesus, who advocated a radical form of inclusivity based on loving others, is not so radical or his teachings so alarming when he is kept eternally in the manger.

You can’t have it both ways, UUA-ers. You are either inclusive or not.

Suzanne, thanks for your testimonial on Unitarian Universalist Christophobia, which is still alive and well among us, even though from my own perspective we’ve come a long way in the past ten years. At least more UUs know that both Unitarianism and Universalism have exclusively Christian historical roots, and I experience much less Christian-bashing and ignorant comments than I used to. But that may be because people more know who I am; I’m not sure.

These days when people ask me “How can you be a UU a be a Christian?” I sense that they mean it with more openness and less hostile challenge than when the question came to me formerly. I receive anywhere from 20-50 e-mail inquiries and letters per year asking me how to be UU and Christian (or to remain Christian and join with the UUs), and I haven’t been angrily asked to leave Unitarian Universalism for at least a year (now that’s progress!).

In this blog and everywhere I go, I have been exhorting Unitarian Universalists to understand that “Christianity” is not a monolith, that we are too often willfully ignoring evidence of a huge liberal Christian world out there in favor of perpetuating myths of Unitarian Universalist uniqueness, and that this has got to stop if we want to live into our own claims of being accepting and intelligent people. I have been actively participating in ecumenical Christian life for many years and answering dozens of questions per year about why I am there (as in, “Why are you here, heathen?”). It gets tiring, this role of defending myself to hostile Christians who have been insulted for too long by Unitarian Universalists (or are just plain prejudiced), and defending my life in Christ to wounded or just plain hostile UUs who claim to be intellectuals but who know precious little of Christianity beyond what offended their spirits in 8th grade (the age they decided religion was all nonsense, and particularly the religion of Christianity).

To speak more directly to your point of being a UU Music Director, I do think it fair for the congregation to request minimal Jesus references if they’re not a Christian congregation. While I have every sympathy for your struggle, and while I cheer your ability to name hypocrisy when you see it, and while I totally dig your analysis that the baby Jesu in the manger is not nearly as threatening as the living Jesus who passionately challenges our spiritual inertia and social sins, I still think it makes some sense to ask, “If we’re not officially Christian, and if Christian Scripture isn’t part of the larger liturgy, why would we import Jesus only for the musical segments of the service?” That, for me, is about liturgical integrity as much as it is about theological distaste or mistrust.

All that said, I think your ministry with the congregation sounds like an excellent one, and that your newsletter column was a brave and wise invitation to individual discernment and more conversation among you. If anything, the congregation needs to know that there’s not a huge repertoire of purely secular (ie, “God-free”) music arranged for choral performance that would work well for Sunday morning worship. Your respectful invitation that they stop censoring you (your phrase, “I feel shackled by the bonds of the congregation’s contentiousness” pierces me to the heart) and your logical conclusion that “church” implies spirituality and yes, God-language, feels RIGHT ON to me. Hang in there, Music-Maker. Chances are you are doing much good in fighting for the right to include sacred music in this congregation. I don’t doubt that there are many in the pews who appreciate your struggle without even knowing that it is going on, and that you will do much good to the God/Christ-phobic by inviting them to move beyond fear and hostility into a place of comfort and more integrity around our much-vaunted commitment to inclusivity.

Blessings on your ministry, and on your congregation.

Syllabus Shock

Holy Doctor of Ministry, Batman!

I just got a gander of my May intensive course on congregational discernment (”Grounded in God”) and broke out in a cold sweat at the number of books and papers assigned, including one due THIS WEDNESDAY AT NOON. And here I was thinking I had all the time in the world to ease into class and to write the 20-page paper I have due for the class that is just finishing up tomorrow!!

Good thing we’re all stocked up in the pantry and I’m catching up on laundry and I hope I’ve prepared SweetieBang for ten days of me with my face stuck in a book or at the computer every waking hour, commencing May 7th. Holy cannoli. Wish me luck, everyone.

See you at the Festival of Homiletics, if not here beforehand.

Kiss of peace, PB

Three Month Check-In

As my regular readers know, I met SweetieBang while vacationing in Florida at the end of January. We spent four days together which were not the torrid days you might imagine, considering what happened next — which is that he drove up the entire East Coast a week later and moved in with me. Those days were filled with laughter and yes, romance, but mostly with comfort. With a sense of kinship. With a feeling of having come home in some ineffable way.

We are not an obvious couple. We are, in fact, total opposites in many significant ways. He is Buddhist in his ways of thinking and processing information, while I am thoroughly imbued by Christian practice. I am an academic. He is intellectual but definitely not academic. I am ambitious. He simply wants to do a good day’s work and earn an honest paycheck. I am mercurial, extroverted and dramatic. He is almost consistently positive and definitely introverted, more animated around me in the privacy of our home than anywhere else. I am a leader. I set a course and want to bring others along. He is an true individualist; not leading and not following but finding his own path and ambling along it.

We are also alike in some important ways. We are both inescapably Jewish in temperament and humor. We are generational peers, but I am four years older. We are both musical. We share a love of food and have large appetites. We love animals and neither of us has ever wanted to parent a child. We both have an edge, but mine is far sharper and honed by years of feminist rage. His is keen, sharpened by years of silent and solitary observation of inane human behavior. We tend to have the same visceral admiration or dislike for the same people and things.

“It’s the people that you hate together
Bait together
Date together,
That make marriage a joy.”
- from “It’s The Little Things You Do Together” from Company
Lyrics, Stephen Sondheim

We have no idea what insanity led us to agree to share our lives after knowing each other only four days. Had a friend of mine done this, I would be shaking my head and predicting disaster. But my friends and congregants, thank God, have been wonderful, respecting an innate wisdom that I myself doubted and welcoming Greg with open arms. He has a good natural knack for being the Minister’s Guy. His sophisticated technique in establishing the appropriate persona is to be himself and not worry about anything, which I think is a good one. He likes church. He goes sometimes and not others. He genuinely likes and cares about people and is comfortable at coffee hour. He admires the church’s commitments and hopes that his work schedule will allow him to be involved in our environmentalist work in some meaningful way. He does not own a tie but says that he wants to buy a summer-weight blazer so he can “doodly do” around with me to formal events. For a guy who lived on a tropical island in swim trunks and flip-flops for years before I met him, I think this shows fairly astonishing flexibility.

It has been incredibly stressful at times. We have fought. But we fight pretty constructively, and we have quickly learned how to make up and move on. He has a talent for defusing terrible situations that I greatly admire. We brought a dog into our little family almost right away, contributing another set of stressers to our new relationship. Our beagle baby is expensive, he requires constant care and discipline, and Greg and I don’t always agree on how to achieve those things. For all his Zen equanimity in most other matters, I find that he is an over-protective, worried Jewish papa when it comes to Max. This makes me laugh. I love having found the chinks in Greg’s peaceable warrior armor.

He is Togetherness Man, I am Give-Me-Some-Space Girl. We are learning to cross borders into each other’s territory, to grant space or companionship as acts of love, respect and compromise. This makes me want to spend more time with him and I think it makes him much more comfortable with my desire for privacy and time alone or with others. He goes off to work and says, “I won’t see you for another seven hours.” I say “ONLY SEVEN?” We laugh a lot. He makes me laugh every day. He does not take me too seriously, which helps me to not take myself so seriously. This is a wonderful development, even though it makes me peevish at times.

He never used a personal computer before he met me, doesn’t have an e-mail account, and doesn’t mind that I write about him, as long as its in the interest of sharing wisdom about relationships in general and not just to dish. My interpretation, not his words.

What happened here? What is this story about, so far? I think it is about timing and luck and I think it is about commitment. I have been attracted to plenty of men I’ve met on vacations. I’ve been smitten in St. Louis and intrigued in New York City and gone ga-ga in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. I’ve been addled in Philadelphia and pined in Columbia, Maryland and almost married in Minnesota. The big difference here is that this time, the object of my initially very-casual-interest turned out to be a true mensch who was ready to commit himself to someone, who recognized in me that someone, and did not hesitate to take his heart out of his body, slap it on the table in front of me, and say, “Take this. I want you have it.” It was a good heart. I could see that immediately. As for my own, it was split in two: I had a Minister’s heart that was joyful, open and pulsing with life. My women’s heart was cold, shriveled and tucked away under layers of anger, resentment, hurt and disappointment. I took it out, showed it to him, said, “It’s not in very good shape but it’s what I’ve got.” He said, “Looks good to me, we’ll have it all fixed up in no time.”

This was a non-verbal transaction. For a woman who is used to analyzing everything within an inch of its life, that is profoundly refreshing. We don’t talk endlessly about “our relationship,” we just have it. A friend said to me that the first three months would be a nightmare, and then we would know whether or not we had something real. My friend guessed that we would. He just felt it.

And we do. So I want to say happy spring to my Pan, my ocean blue-eyed boy, my Troll Mate, my sweetheart. Congratulations, kid. We made it through the first three months and for all our struggles, they’ve been revelatory, and you are the best insane decision I’ve ever made.

There’s Something About Mary

Oh dear, darling UU minister colleagues and lay people,

I’m working on a paper on why Unitarian Universalists love the poetry of Mary Oliver so much that she’s become “sacred scripture” to many of us (certainly her poetry is used liturgically on a frequent basis in our congregations).

I’d love to hear from you.
1. Do you love Mary Oliver’s poetry? Why?
2. Do you use it in worship? Approximately how often and in what place in the service?

Thank you!! Gracias! Merci! Tack!