PeaceBang

Anointing Ritual

A dearly beloved congregant died this morning, and I am so grateful that I was able to see him and give him this anointing, which I composed on the way to the nursing home. I told a friend about it and she said I should write it down and share it. So here it is, with my blessings on you and your mortal beloveds:

Anointing Ritual
Rev. Victoria Weinstein

N.., I bring you water from the North River, the place of your earthly home, to bless and anoint you as you make the transition from the earthly life to life in the spirit.

(after filling hand with some water, touch the brow)

I anoint you in the spirit of gratitude.
We thank God for all the goodness of your life,
(here you may name some blessings and happy memories)
and your many gifts (you may name some of them).

(with more water, touch brow again)

I anoint you in the spirit of forgiveness.
Whatever burdens of anger or regret you bear,
let them go.
Now is the time to release those cares,
and to receive God’s grace.
Whatever you have left undone,
do not be troubled by it.
Trust that we will attend to those things that concern you,
and be at peace.
Be at peace.

(with the final handful of water, touch the brow a third time)

N., we anoint you in the spirit of blessing.
We pray for your comfort.
You are not alone. God is with you, and we are holding you.
We witness to the beauty of your life,
and we are honored to be with you at its end.

Be at rest. God grant you peace. Amen.

(Here you may take your wet hands and touch the beloved’s hands, then move in a circle around the bed, taking the hands of the witnesses in yours by way of sharing the blessing.)

note: I felt it was important to perform this anointing at the setting of the sun.
____________________________________________________________________

going to cry now.

An Offering For a Growing Congregation

I like to think of the Offering as a great moment for story-telling and sharing of pastoral observations on the spirit of the church. I just don’t like to see it as a “throwaway” moment in the liturgy, where someone says something incredibly brief about giving, using the most euphemistic language possible and then scrambles out of the pulpit like they just committed some kind of unspeakable indiscretion.

I often say that the reason we take up an offering during the church service is because we recognize the spiritual value of generosity and the importance of lifting that up in a worshipful manner.

I wrote this to use in my own church on Sunday and share it as an offering for other pastors in similar situations:

Last week I looked out over the congregation at this time and counted ___ adults after the children and the teachers left for Sunday School. All this bounty, and a good number of our members still have yet to return after summer hiatus!

This is exciting. It means that something within many of you urged you out of the comfort of your Sunday morning routine and into this house of worship, into the great project of seeking after deeper truths, and into the adventure of community with other flawed and faithful human beings.

We who have been at this for some time congratulate and welcome you. We will try to remember that the most important reason people come to church is to become part of a caring community, and we will make an effort to become that to you. We promise to make room for you in our hearts, our programming and in our pews.
We invite you to join us in all aspects of church life, remembering that we need to go slowly and respectfully as we get to know each other.

Church, as we prepare to take up the offering today, I am going to ask that you make a spiritual offering in addition to your financial gift. I ask that each one of us make a commitment to visit with two people we don’t know –or don’t know well—at coffee hour today and for the next few months. We have been blessed by sharing our lives together, and we are being invited to extend that blessing to more souls every week. Let us give generously in all ways to our beloved community. The morning offering is most gratefully received.

You have my permission to use these words. However, please do not publish them without attribution and permission.

A Mystical Place, Indeed

This is a true story.

According to an anonymous source who was there when it happened, this morning at a very affluent UU New England congregation a man got up to share his water for Water Communion.

He told the congregation that got the water from a very mystical place on the Galapagos Islands during a wonderful trip there this summer. As he turned to pour the water into the container, he said that he thought he remembered that the place was called “El Bano” (my computer doesn’t allow symbols, but that n in “bano” should have a Spanish tilde over it).

My friend said that he’s pretty sure he heard him right. Presumably there were either no Spanish speakers in the congregation that morning or those who do speak Spanish suppressed their giggles.

“Woyaya”

Hi PeaceBangers,

My choir director and I would shore like to get our hands on any choral recording of “Woyaya” before next week, and we hoped you might be able to help.

Help?

Help!!

Women Ministers: Issues in Leading Worship

I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the different preaching and presiding styles of the ministers and laypeople I’ve shared worship with these past two summers (during which I’ve averaged 1.5 worship services per Sunday, thankyouverymuch!). I’ve been looking over my notes and conclude that women presiders still have some special issues of vocal and physical inflection that seem not to plague men nearly as often.

I’d like to speak to some of them right now in my typically unvarnished way that comes from love and the instinct of a stage mother. I want women ministers to be just as impressive in the pulpit as our male colleagues, but I think we need work in a few main areas.

Vocal Inflections That Undermine Our Message

1. “Babydoll” Voice

When I meet women preachers “off stage,” I am often amazed at how much more grounded, in-charge, warm and confident they sound than they do while presiding. In the pulpit, I am hearing a lot of “baby doll” voices — a strained, nasal tone that comes from tight vocal chords and over-feminization of inflection (lisping is pronounced here, too). The difference is subtle to the ear but the result is infantilizing to both preacher and congregation sharing worship. For women preahcers speaking in Babydoll mode, I get the strong impression that she is presenting as “beloved daughter” rather than leader, and seems unconsciously to be seeking approval for her message.

Women preachers have to be careful because our pitch tends to rise when we get nervous. When we lose our diaphragmatic breathing, we produce a far more nasal sound and can even begin to whine. These are all challenges that can be overcome with vocal coaching.

I should mention here that the preacher who suffers from “babydoll voice” often compounds the problem by the use of physical tics such as flipping hair, flouncing shoulders, relying on the use of an inappropriately flirtatious smile or fluttering eyelashes. I am left with the impression that this is a woman who is not confident of her message and therefore needs to curry favor with the congregation by being adorable.

It might be useful for women clergy with these habits to practice preaching for a coach or friends with total lack of facial expression, using only her voice to communicate the strength and power of her message. Bad habits are hard to break and can require a lot of courage. We need to support each other in this work.

2. “Schoolmarm Voice”

As preachers, we are indeed teachers, but I am concerned that too many women ministers (and religious educators) take that role to heart in the way they present sermons and stories. We must guard against sing-songy cadences that insult the intelligence of our listeners and distract from the impact of our message. The schoolmarm cadence often comes with an attendant straining of the neck, tilting of the head, pursing of the lips and excessive blinking. These are all very ordinary tics and can be avoided by viewing ourselves on video and working to calm the nerves, connect with our congregation, and focus on the MEANING of what we are saying.

In fact, the biggest problem I am seeing with both female and male pastors is a sense of total disconnection between body, voice and message. Words are coming out, but no one’s home! The most emotionally and spiritually powerful worship services I have attended in the past years always happen when the liturgists embody their message from an authentic and present place. This isn’t necessarily a natural skill; some of us really have to work on it, and we should!

Preachers, readers, prayers: slow down! What are you SAYING!!? Do you BELIEVE IT? How is your life being changed by the message you’re sharing? These are NOT JUST WORDS.

When we get into schoolmarm mode, we also have a tendency to over-explain and over-instruct every aspect of the liturgy. Sometimes a hand gesture is worth a thousand confusing words.

3. “I Don’t Deserve To Be Up Here” Voice

This has been more of an issue with lay participants in than with ordained religious leaders in worship services I have attended, but I have seen it far too often in past years. Preachers, please WORK WITH YOUR LAY LITURGISTS and teach them how to project, how to use the microphone effectively, and how to CLAIM the pulpit or podium!!

I can’t count how many times I have been deprived of prayer or the reading of the gospel by lay or ordained readers who are apparently so unconfident, so out-of-breath or so casual as to mumble or murmur their way through their parts. This is a travesty of inclusion: if I have perfectly fine hearing and am still straining to hear, what kind of experience are our elders or hearing-impaired guests having?

For God’s sake… speak up! Pastors, it is commendable to share the pulpit with the laity but it is not commendable to leave them to fend for themselves up there. We all need training and orientation in order to meet the obligations of leading worship. Don’t fail to meet this responsibility due to some misguided sense of the priesthood of all believers. We’re not all natural talents; in fact, very few of us are.

Other Issues

4. Liturgy of the Living Dead

I’ve seen men suffer from this, but more so women. This is the strange and sad phenomenon of the woman preacher who is so unanimated and colorless as to seem vaguely shocked by the fact that she’s in front of a congregation at all. She seems to be sleepwalking through the liturgy completely disconnected from the proceedings. I consider this a subset of the “I Don’t Deserve To Be Up Here” issue.

Not every minister has to be a charismatic extrovert. I am often tremendously relieved when I meet ministers who have a zombie-like presiding style and find that they’re lovely, warm pastors who seem eminently comfortable with themselves and their roles as religious leaders. I think the issue of passive, expressionless and somnabulistic worship style is a matter of training and awareness: somewhere along the line, they never got fair feedback. They should. They very likely have no idea how they are coming across, and complaining behind their back is neither helpful to them or healthy for the Church. Speak up, dearly beloved. Coaching and training can help.

5. “Aunt Clara In the Pulpit”

This is the messy, scattershot female minister (I’ve seen guys do it, too) who hasn’t got the liturgical flow down and relies on an endearing, apologetic style to get her through Sunday morning. She skips elements of the liturgy by accident, her ponytail is falling down, and she looks like a nervous wreck during the Offering. She retreats way in the back of the chancel during hymn singing hoping that no one will notice that she hasn’t the vaguest sense of the tunes, and she muffs the benediction and laughs. She’s a sympathetic, real character… but way too real. To this gal we say: Hey lady, this is less cute than you think. Every time you charmingly mess up, you distract the congregation, shifting the focus from God to yourself. There’s no shame in rehearsing the whole thing a few times on Saturday night.

And to all of you: please don’t EVER, EVER apologize for what you do during worship. NEVER apologize for your sermon in advance. NEVER reveal that you feel less than stellar about the way that christening just went. NEVER put yourself down in the pulpit. It is distracting, ego-centric and wildly inappropriate. Don’t apologize: work harder. There is no excuse for us not knowing what we’re doing up there. Our mistakes should be minimal and when they do happen, they should pass by uncommented upon. This is not about us.

6. “Another Sermon About Shoe Shopping”

This is my joke code name for sermons or homilies by female pastors that head right into Oprah territory and never leave. While I am a strong believer in lifting up the sacred nature of woman’s work and women’s lives, I think we have to be careful to include a wider variety of examples and illustrations in our sermons than we are wont to do. I’m sorry, but I have NEVER heard a male pastor preach on dieting, while I’ve heard women do so three times in the past two years. Is this really the deepest we can go? I think we unconsciously reinforce sexism when we preach light-weight homilies that reinscribe traditional gender roles and make it seem as though all of our deepest concerns come connected to our ovaries. Gals, you’ll yell at me for saying it, but I think we really need to work on this.

7. Terminal Niceness: Walking On Eggshells With the Scriptures

It always depresses me when lay or ordained leaders give the Scripture readings with the same intonation they’d use reading a Hallmark card. People, we’re talking about the living God here! The Psalms should not sound like a recipe for brownies! Selections from Jeremiah or Romans should not leave me nodding into my bulletin!! Please — and women, we’re worse offenders than men in this wise — bring some passion and INTENTION to the Bible stories!! Paraphrase if you have to, bring it alive, TELL it! GIVE it! If people are placidly fanning themselves during the telling of the story of the Gerasene demoniac, there’s definitely something wrong. If you’re recounting the story of Job and you don’t see any change of expression out in the congregation, you’ve not doing your job.

I’m not saying to over-do it and ham it up, but monotonal, barely audible, rushed or sing-songy renditions that make it impossible to connect to the story are a serious liturgical failure. If we wonder why people aren’t interested in the Bible anymore, it may be because we’re doing such a crummy job of sharing it in worship.

I attended a church service three summers ago where a lay leader rushed up to the lectern to give the Old Testament reading, chortling and chatting as she set up the light and turned the pages of the Bible. It seems that she had almost forgotten that it was her turn to give the lesson and she had just returned from vacation the night before, and if she hadn’t had a call from Priscilla on the Worship Committee she just didn’t know that she would have even come to church at all…and oh! here’s the reading!

She then sped through some harrowing section from the Book of Daniel in the most off-hand possible tone, tilting her head and barely pausing at the ends of phrases as though she was entirely embarrassed and couldn’t wait to be done with the thing. She then gave a little giggle and shrugged and cringed her way back to her pew.

Someone was responsible for that little performance, and it was you and me, pastors.

Men have their own particular ways of obscuring their messages and messing up liturgy (ridiculously bombastic tones, cutesy twinkly-grandfather routines, distractingly folksy “I shore hope ya’ll like me” cadences, stiff, emotionless delivery, condescending or controlling messages — to name a few), but I’m talking to my reverend gal pals here.

Before you start romping on me in the comments like those gorillas romp on the suitcases in the old Samsonite commercials, just remember that I am speaking from my own personal experience in Christian and Unitarian Universalist congregations in five states and two countries.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about and every woman minister you’ve ever known has had tremendous gravitas and wonderful presence in the pulpit, I’m thrilled to hear it.

As far as my own sins and failings as a worship leader, I promise I got plenty of ‘em. I take my own development as a liturgist and preacher seriously, I attend continuing education and listen to myself on podcast, taking critical notes all the while. I groan with horror watching myself on video, and keep working to get better. I rehearse every ritual at which I preside — getting up and walking it through in the church or in my home. I try like the dickens to prepare every speaker and participant in our worship services, trying to strike an acceptable balance between my high expectations and respect for the time and talents of volunteers. I ain’t writing this as an expert (or even as a professor of worship, which I am) — just a woman who loves the Church and believes we would all benefit from deeper awareness of what we are bringing to the worshiping community.

Ministering to Single Folk: Some Questions You Can Ask Yourselves

One thing I have noticed this summer is how drawn I am to churches that don’t emphasize marriage and family life with children as the primary means by which we experience love and relationship.

After all, I don’t have a husband or children. I live alone. I have been single for most of my adult life. My observation is that the Protestant church in America (not to mention the Jewish community!) has a total Noah’s Ark attitude toward life: everyone’s on the ark two by two. Weddings and baptism are central to the life of the church. What other kinds of rituals do we have that allow an adult to feel sacramentally included in the sacred story of God’s love in the world? The Bible lifts up the importance of caring for the widows. What about the elders who have never been married? Do they also deserve our solicitious care, or is it to be assumed that the old broads (and I intend to be one someday) and gents can just take care of themselves since they’ve been doing just that for decades?

How many single churchfolk out there have heard this one? “Well, you don’t have a family, so you have more time for all of this.” I’m a single person with a sister, brother, sister-in-law, mother, stepdad, cousins, aunts, uncles and nephews — many with whom I am extraordinarily close and whose physical distance from me is a source of genuine pain in my life. We must stop thinking of singles as people with no family and start thinking of them as people who have to make a special effort to achieve connection with other humans — even something so simple as sharing a meal with friends takes scheduling effort, planning and driving. Singles are so often the ones who make the effort to reach out. How many people reach out to singles?

Single people don’t get any more hours in their day than do married people with families. Churches must stop discriminating against them and expecting more from them. When I visit churches I see long lists of pastoral outreach that take into account a wonderful variety of human need: meals for the sick and bereaved, meals and visits to new parents. Callers for the elderly and shut-in, support groups for the divorced, addiction recovery ministries. I’d love to see something like Single Support. It would be totally cool if singles could count on their church to be a place where they might find an open invitation to dinner — or Friday night movie night (we’re always happy to cook and contribute since most of us have experienced the feeling that we’re being invited out of pity). I love the “open door” philosophy that some folks have — “just stop by!” I love that. I strive to emulate it. The church Singles Support group could be a place to coordinate rides to and from the airport, to and from the car mechanic (only singles understand what a pain in the butt it is to get your car worked on because you have no spouse to drive you to and from the garage, necessitating doing business with a sub-par operation close-by).

I am lucky enough to have fantastic neighbors who I know are absolutely there for me. They do things like call on a snowy night to say “hey, we’re at the grocery store… do you need anything?” I can’t tell you how much this means to me. Single people often feel that it’s inappropriate to ask for help. We don’t want to be a burden on anyone. We don’t want to be pitied, and we don’t want to be seen as (eek) too needy. The church universal needs to do a better job of affirming the mutual interdependence between all people. The church in America needs to do a better job remembering that our culture is obsessively couples-oriented and to lift up the message that we must reach beyond the comforts our our own families and include others in our intimate circle of concern. Must I remind the Church that Jesus was not a family man?

At one church I attend fairly frequently, the offering is brought up to the altar with great fanfare and the singing of “Amen” by a parade of tiny children and their proud parents. The children bang tambourines and wave ribbon banners. Part of me knows that these cute babies symbolize the future of the church, that they are developing positive associations with church in this moment, and that the children of the church are all our children. Another part of me gets a strong message that stewardship in this congregation is connected with procreativity. I love seeing the little boos, but I also feel that I am most explicitly not included in this moment. If I was a woman who ever had a dream of motherhood, I think it would hurt. Sometimes it hurts anyway. And — and this is small but I’m going to be honest — this hurt affects my giving. When so much about any church broadcasts, “THIS CHURCH IS FOR FAMILIES, AND BY ‘FAMILY’ WE MEAN KINSHIP TIES BETWEEN PEOPLE WHO LIVE TOGETHER IN A HAPPY HOME, PROBABLY ALSO WITH A DOG,” I just don’t feel that my gifts are as welcome or needed as other places. And I give more generously in those other places.

I know many single people who won’t step foot in a church because the last time they tried, they were treated as a problem rather than as a beloved guest. Single men venturing into the church are often descended upon by Yente types who assume they want to be set up. Single women can be seen as a threat by married women. Churches are mostly geared to welcome families with children. Do an audit of your own church: when someone walks through the door alone, what are your assumptions? Do you know how often I have been asked if my husband would be joining me? (I like to say, “I certainly hope so, but first I need to meet him.”)
The American Church tends to consider singles ministry as a transitions ministry: we assume that ministries for singles should be about pastoring to them in the aftermath of divorce or in setting them up for dating relationships with each other. I don’t think I have ever seen a singles ministry model that assumed that single folks were neither wounded by divorce nor heading toward the Promised Land of marriage. How about it, pastors? Can we work on this?

How many of Unitarian Universalist congregations start their church service with familes lighting the chalice? Is the “family” in question always a family with two parents (of any gender) and children? In my congregation, we try to present a mix of families, solo folks, and duos or trios of friends or leadership teams.

How many sermons use married and family life as the sole illustrations for relationship issues? How many preachers preach Sunday after Sunday about the challenges of family life, never taking into account the people in the pews who would dearly love the opportunity to have these same challenges? When those little babies come singing down the aisle waving banners every Sunday at the church I just mentioned, has anyone considered the agony it might be causing to women or couples who have been trying to conceive, and failing year after year? Couples whose adoption proceedings have fallen through? Single women and men who dearly want to have children and who are unsuccessfully seeking a partner with whom to share the experience of parenting?
Women who had an abortion this week, or who are considering one? It’s important that the way we lift up God’s blessings of relationship at a particular point in our liturgies (whether it be the chalice lighting or offering or the sermon) not look the same every time we do it.

When your congregation has a fellowship dinner or a Circle Supper, is everyone seated couple by couple in deference to their comfort level, leaving singles to shoehorn themselves in, or is there an effort made to diversify the tables? Has your church ever committed the unpardonable rudeness of seating all the single people at a table by themselves at a social event, as happened to me once at a Pennsylvania congregation where all the singles were women?
“Here– you girls keep each other company.” How unbelievably insensitive!

How about pledging? When we discuss stewardship in our congregations and urge a pledge of, for instance, $1200 or more to meet a goal, are we taking into account the fact that most of the pledges are coming from couples? What are we saying to the singles? “We expect you to contribute twice as much to this congregation as the families (many of whom have children in religious education programs and ostensibly ‘cost’ the church more).” Why not suggest a per person guide to giving, and emphasize the individual spiritual benefits of practicing generosity? To look at it another way — couples aren’t one person; let’s stop treating them like one in this wise.

Those are just some thoughts for now. This issue has been on my mind for some time. There are millions more single adults in America than any other time in history. We are not just leftovers or people living half-lives until that magical moment when we find our special someone and join all you partnered grown-ups in the land of True Adulthood. That’s all a myth; all of it. Loneliness, need and emotional and social isolation are not just the challenges of single folk. They are human predicaments. The only difference is, partnered people mostly have someone at home to accompany them through these painful realities of the human condition. Singles don’t.

Church, remember them.

Prayer Falls Like Rain

I’m such a Jesus freak that I went to church TWICE today: to a United Methodist Church in the morning and to an evening service at a UCC/Disciples of Christ church.

I got to sing “It Is Well With My Soul” and “Blest Be The Tie That Binds” and “In the Garden” and “Just A Closer Walk With Thee” and the usual Halle, Halle and “Thank you Lord” responses. Both of the services use a lot of music and I’m getting inspired with some ideas for my own congregation.

At the morning service I went up to kneel at the altar during the prayer. I haven’t done this yet but I felt drawn to do so today and was glad I did, as Sister Chantal brought down the Holy Spirit in a fierce manner and just about knocked me over. Some people have the words for prayer, and some people have the spirit for prayer, but rarely does someone have both the words and the spirit together in a passionate, authentic, poetic and powerfully invocational way. That’s a gift we rarely get to see in the Unitarian Universalist tradition, where we mostly compose our prayers (if we indeed call them that or give anything like a prayer in our worship services) ver-ry carefully and with much forethought.

I thought, man, if I’m having a bad week in the faith department, it sure does help to know that someone like Chantal is out there believing hard enough for both of us.

And I realized that her faith was an act of love. I had never thought of it like that before. It had never occurred to me that when you or I show up to church feeling like “meh, I’m just not feeling anything particularly god-like in the universe lately,” someone like Chantal might also show up and not just suggest, but TELL you that God is a Father who loves and cares for you, will never forsake you, who has made us promises about justice and mercy that He will never break, and that we are yes we ARE living in a creation that God hath made and has pronounced GOOD.

The little hamster wheels in your head finally stop turning for one blessed Sabbath moment as she claims that yes God leads you paths of righteousness and anoints your head with oil and that you WILL dwell in the house of the Lord forever, amen, and amen. Something in your remembers this. Something about this sounds eminently logical, in fact.

There is such love in naming reality in this way for a community of people who come seeking spiritual bread for the journey. What generosity, I have to think, in pouring forth the convictions of one’s own heart with such fervent inclusion; i.e., “I know I am living in the embrace of the Holy and I know that you are, too. I know that God is blessing all of us today.”

There was a time I would have listened to that prayer with critical ear, wondering “how much of this do I believe?” But I have changed. Now I simply bow my head and let the words fall like rain on my parched head that is so often bone-dry from all the thinking, thinking, thinking.

Sweating It Out On Sunday Morning

Berry’s Mom has written a fantastic, detailed account of the typical Sunday morning for most ministers. For everyone who thought that clergy just showed up on Sunday mornings and breezed into the pulpit, here’s a behind-the-scenes correction to that perception.

Now you know why we need a nap on Sunday afternoons.

PeaceBang, Unplugged!!

Friends, I share with you my first sermon done completely without notes. All I took down the stairs with me was my ordination program so that I could read the ordination vows.

A few observations:

1. Wow, what a motormouth! Without the discipline of the ms in front of me, I am breathless, tending to start the next phrase before one is even out of my mouth.

2. Near the end of the service, my volume and articulation drop a bit. You have to listen closely.

3. The sound quality is lesser than usual since we had to put our digital recorder on the piano. I was walking around a lot, so I’m glad the recorder did as well as it did.

4. The sermon ended where you hear it end — with the words Yossi said to me at the Chabad House that night. What happened next, after about 15 seconds of silence, was that our Student Minister gave this prayer immediately before he and I distributed the flowers for our Flower Communion.

I wrote the prayer, and here it is:

God, Holy One beyond naming,
who calls us all into the rich tapestry of life lived in caring community,
Here we are. Send us.
Send us into our days with open hearts and good graces,
make of us emissaries of peace and affection,
each of us as lovely and unique a gift as these flowers which we now distribute,
representing all the ways we bestow our presence upon each other,
all the ways we simply show up in love.
As we pass the flowers, take one that is different than the one you brought.
Receive it as a gift, as we sing together our closing hymn, #298, “Wake Now, My Senses.”

**Thanks and kisses and hugs to Scott Wells for making it possible for me to link the sermon.

The Annual Prayer of Kvetching

There is always that worship service at Ministry Days at GA that contains a prayer that goes something like this,

Holy One,
we come together at the end of a long, difficult year.

And etc.
You get the idea.

I’m exaggerating, of course, but not that much. And while this prayer is going on, I’m sneaking looks around at the several hundred clergy people there and thinking, “CRIPES, is ministry as bad as all that? Is it disloyal to say that not all of us come wounded and disappointed to this gathering? Would I get dragged out into the parking lot and kicked in the teeth if I led a prayer and said, ‘Dear God, my job is awesome and I have a really delightful and inspiring congregation and my staff is 100% fantastic and we had another good year with just the usual number of terribly sad or difficult things, and thanks?’”

As I’m thinking this, I imagine the lay people over at UU University having their own worship service and having a prayer that kvetches about their disappointments and contains veiled references to the way we fail to respect and support them .

Of course I remember years when I came hurting and thoroughly burned out to Ministry Days, and those prayers reflected my current reality. I understand the pastoral need to name how difficult and painful ministry can be. I just think that our collegial gatherings tend to emphasize the negative far too much, and also focus far too much on the grand chasm that some of us seem to think lies between the ordained clergy and the laity. It was so refreshing to hear none of this at the Festival of Homiletics. I mean NONE. Not in casual conversations, not in formal presentations.

What’s that about?