PeaceBang

REVIVE at REVIVAL!

I remember the first Revival of the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship in 1999. It was in New Orleans and I worked on the planning committee. We had NO IDEA what we were doing! None!

So I showed up in New Orleans and had a few days of vacation to explore that beautiful, wonderful, tragic city. I met my friend Poppa T Holder at a hotel — he’s gay, don’t get excited — and we had a great time carousing (by the way, Poppa T is profiled in a terrific article in the recent issue of Out magazine). I sang karaoke for the first time and became enamored of hot sauce, a passion that endures to this day.

When I got to the conference, I had never been to a gathering of the UUCF outside of Harvard Divinity School. There were about 90 people there, and we did things like SING GOD AND CHRIST-CENTERED HYMNS. Some people WAVED THEIR HANDS IN THE AIR (Chuck Thomas, where are you, dude? All grown up, married and a daddy now!). I walked around in a kind of bubble of thrill and confusion and anxiety and tremendously fragile hope. We had workshops on PRAYER and we had a HEALING SERVICE that cracked me open like a little egg and I wept and got a runny nose all over the beautiful people who laid hands on me in prayer and love.

I was BAPTIZED! It turned out to be very controversial with some people who thought it was bad ecclesiology. I didn’t think Jesus would have a problem with my being baptized outside of a church community, seeing as he probably just dipped people in the River Jordan, or whatever, without worrying about their community of Christian formation. I wasn’t offended by the critics, just bemused. I think there’s a way to say, “I have to question the way this was done, but congratulations on this important moment and welcome to the faith.” But they were just snotty. Hey, by their fruits ye shall know them.

We all went out to Bourbon Street one night and I wound up barfing into the sink of my dorm room later on. I wasn’t inebriated, I swear. I think I was just really excited and overstimulated and the food was too rich for me.

So all in all, it was totally thrilling and really weird because I had never been a Christian in community before, and I made some wonderful friends and just let myself be filled with joy and commitment.

Someone in a UU setting asked me soon after that why I became a Christian. I said, “Because I’m not mature enough to be a Buddhist.”

Anyway, I’m very much looking forward to joining the UUCF community again for the –what is it, the fourth? — REVIVAL conference in New York City in two weekends. When we started this thing, we just had no idea that they would become a tradition, let alone that they would feature speakers like Gary Dorrien and draw participants from all over the country.

http://www.uuchristian.org/2006/new-york-city-revival-update/#more-58

Hey, original REVIVAL pals, looking forward to seeing you there, and making new friends.

Cancelling Sunday Morning Worship At GA: Not A "Cultural Shift" — A Mistake

Here’s the latest on the shoving of Sunday morning worship to the position of closing ceremony at General Assembly, from the UU World online magazine,

http://tinyurl.com/y8vfpg

This part disturbs me greatly,

“McGregor, of the Planning Committee, posted responses on the blogs and answered questions about the changes on the UUA-GA email list. She said that the changes ‘are part of an ongoing multi-year effort to gently evolve the GA and shift its focus ‘toward ‘a meeting of congregations, where congregational representatives interact and learn, and delegates discuss and act on denominational issues and directions.’
‘We’re in the midst of a subtle but intentional cultural shift, with attendant discomforts,’ she said.
‘It’s an experiment,’ she added. ‘We’re going to try it and see how it works, but we’re excited about the possibilities.’

This isn’t personal, but I find McGregor’s words an incredible insult to my intelligence and to the integrity of our member congregations and delegates.

We’re an association of congregations: a religious organization. Our “business” is to share religious life, and the way we “interact” (could that language be more coldly corporate?) IS to worship. Our work as an association IS a form of worship; it is an incarnational expression of our highest values and our communal vocation as champions of the inherent worth and dignity of all people, among other things dear to us. When we worship together, we make explicit what is implicit in our gathering; that it is not “business” that ultimately brings us together, but reverence and a sense of calling.

To de-emphasize worship in our largest annual gathering isn’t a “cultural shift,” but a blatant attempt by one group to re-direct our priorities. I think that’s dangerous, and I encourage you to watch this development carefully.

As for me, I am not feeling “attendant discomfort” about change. I am feeling deeply suspicious and angry that, just as many in our movement are finally beginning to understand that if we are to be taken seriously as a force for personal and societal transformation in the world– and if we are to be respected and heard at the table of interreligious dialogue– we must not shy from religious language, we must be willing to make professions of faith where we once offered only intellectual arguments against what we do not believe, and we must engage in religious life together not only for the good of our public reputation but for the good of our souls and for the sake of our work.

Again, this isn’t personal. I respect the hard work of the Planning Committee but I think their orientation around this decision is deeply skewed and troubling in ways that they probably didn’t realize when they began the discussions around this change. It’s another case of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

We are not a secular organization. Any business we have that isn’t grounded in spiritual solidarity is no business for us to be about. We do not build spiritual solidarity and cultivate reverence by spending Sunday morning in meetings.

This is not a “cultural shift,” it’s a mistake. A bad one.

Truly, my sympathies are with Ms. McGregor and her team for the conflict they’ve engendered. If they need the support of ministers and lay people in working through this and amending the error, my hand is up to volunteer.

Still Harping on the GA Closing Worship

Another reason not to move the General Assembly big worship service to the hour most people are packing up to leave: the local service project (whihc last year raised over $3,000) which benefits some good cause in our host city, earns the vast majority of its money at the Sunday morning worship service.

NOT cool.
Given the Planning Committee’s decision and its direct economic impact on one of our big service projects, I have to ask: is it more important to discuss how we’d like to be of service, or is it more important to actually BE of service?

More On GA Planning

Rev. Sean over at Ministrare has some thoughtful things to say about the GA Planning Committee’s boneheaded decision* to eliminate our Sunday morning worship service and move it to 4 pm:
http://revsean.com/

Sean’s first post on the matter says, “the last thing I would sacrifice would be Sunday morning worship.” Amen, Sean.
But in his subsequent post, he says, in effect, “but maybe I need to be less resistant to change.”

I’m sorry that Sean back-pedaled here.
I think this is one of those times when wrong is wrong, and it’s not about being resistant to change. A religious body should worship together on a Sunday BEFORE doing their work, not after, as a kind of parting shot before taking off.
The way the committee has planned it, worship seems tacked on, like an afterthought or an irritating obligation to be dispensed with when most people will be on the road home already.

I maintain that it’s a shame and a disgrace.

It’s just another illustration of the way that the GA planners think they’re “moving the Association forward into the future” when actually they’re just overloading us with information and recommendations, “thou-shalts” and calls to arms and other forms of activism that fail to recognize, honor and respect much of what the local congregation exists to do and to be.

* Note that PeaceBang is a little less circumspect than Rev. Sean in this matter