I have just returned from "The Time is Now" conference sponsored by the UUA in Arlington, Virginia. It was wonderful to be in a room with over a hundred Unitarian Universalists from many places all dreaming of the day when our movement would have demographics resembling those of the lands it inhabits. Of course, we were speaking mostly of our United States congregations, which could be much more diverse, and I'm the one dreaming of the world beyond those national borders. Even the word "welcome" came under scrutiny: if there's a "we" welcoming "you" and "your kind", are you really inside? or just visiting? Are you able to gain citizenship in a UU congregation with your dark skin, Asian features, Hispanic accent? It needs to be the kind of welcome table where when everybody sits down, anyone at the table can spread the welcome for anyone else.
I came home a day early to lead worship at my own church. Afterward, I found myself talking with a couple of parishioners over lunch about matters of welcome. We spoke of the improved process the church is working on for integrating newcomers into the life of the congregation. We've been repelling visitors, as Peter Morales would say, by not following up in a friendly and consistent way to draw them in. That's everybody, not just the kind of special identified groups we talked about at the conference. Yes, there needs to be intentional outreach to all kinds of newcomers, special and not. We need to spread a welcome that draws them into the processes of the church, gets them through the nurture of Adult Enrichment programs and Small Group Ministries and onto the Hospitality Committee, the Worship and Music Committees, the Social Activities Committee, into places where all kinds of newcomers become all kinds of active church participants, citizens of the place who in turn offer welcome to others.
Once all kinds of people sit down together, the table changes. People bring individual gifts, the flavor of their own ways of being in the world, their own ways of expressing faith. Recovering Catholics have added their flavor and their culture of our congregation in recent years. And in appreciating those gifts and that flavor, the culture of the congregation has changed a bit. Who's next? We all reach out to one another, energized by that special something between us that arises because we are congregation together. Getting the "who's next?" started may take a little attention, but I'm confident in the processes of this congregation, confident that there will be no permanent guests, unless the people involved choose that status.
Some things stay the same, for we do have a faith tradition here. But some things change, because the faith tradition has everything to do with people appreciating one another, learning from one another, becoming their own best selves together.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Reverence: Language or Spirit?
The memorial service gathered many stories of the life of my elder friend, and they were told, as is our custom, both in an organized way from the pulpit and in a spontaneous way from the gathered people. It was also a demonstration of the "language of reverence" conversation we Unitarian Universalists are having, and for me, a rather uncomfortable one. Jane was an old-style humanist and social activist, despite being a maker of quilts and a source of wisdom about parenting. Spirituality of the churchy kind was not her own thing, though in her own way, her life was a prayer and a celebration of the gift of spirit. Church was for gathering, sharing, for getting about the business of raising families, making quilts, and seeing to the advancement of justice in the world.
I was struck by the disconnect between her way of church and the tone of the service. I was seated near one of the older women I had known when as a high school student I sang in the choir. When we were invited to join hands at the end, she leaned over to her companion and whispered, "this is why I don't come to church any more." Jane was of the same school. So I felt a little sad with the naming of "God" the saying of "amen", the offering of prayer, the suggestion that she and her husband might be "up there somewhere looking down" and sending us their love. Surely, when we gather a theologically diverse group for a memorial service, we know how to honor those who have different ways. Surely we know how to offer words of that speak of diversity and inclusion, ways that don't simply assume all of it is all right with everyone.
Somehow the reverence didn't extend to offering a service that would have pleased the one it honored. I would have preferred an open acknowledgment that we were remembering one of the ones who didn't do "the language of reverence" as it is practiced in these times, one who, by attending more to her life than to fancy words, became one of the most remarkable people anyone could remember. In my heart, it will be so.
I was struck by the disconnect between her way of church and the tone of the service. I was seated near one of the older women I had known when as a high school student I sang in the choir. When we were invited to join hands at the end, she leaned over to her companion and whispered, "this is why I don't come to church any more." Jane was of the same school. So I felt a little sad with the naming of "God" the saying of "amen", the offering of prayer, the suggestion that she and her husband might be "up there somewhere looking down" and sending us their love. Surely, when we gather a theologically diverse group for a memorial service, we know how to honor those who have different ways. Surely we know how to offer words of that speak of diversity and inclusion, ways that don't simply assume all of it is all right with everyone.
Somehow the reverence didn't extend to offering a service that would have pleased the one it honored. I would have preferred an open acknowledgment that we were remembering one of the ones who didn't do "the language of reverence" as it is practiced in these times, one who, by attending more to her life than to fancy words, became one of the most remarkable people anyone could remember. In my heart, it will be so.
Really Old Kids Get Together
I just came from a memorial service for an old friend of my family's, a Unitarian Universalist service at the congregation where I grew up. The family, the congregation she had been part of from its very beginning, and people from our old neighborhood sat with one another, the art she had made, and the photographic record of the long love she had shared with her beloved husband. We shared stories of the ways we had known her. For me, from the old neighborhood, she was part of the fabric of my early life, so much that while I remember mostly the sparkle of her eyes and the attentiveness of her face, no special stories come to mind. It has been a long time.
I wrote a poem about oak trees when her husband died, and the story of her passing is for me very similar. We grew under oak trees in that old neighborhood, oaks that now fall, one by one, both real oaks and metaphorical ones. As one of them passes, it leaves an opening in the canopy of the forest, a space of light, and the realization that we of the next generation are spreading our branches into being parts of that canopy ourselves. It is an awesome process. And it's worthwhile for us mature ones of the next generation to gather and notice it happening, to honor our being oaks ourselves. We return each time from wherever we have gone. Jane is, I think, the very last one of those old pioneers. I will hear of and return for memorial services for others -- but for me, the generation of parents from the neighborhood has passed.
So at this last service for that generation of parents, a bunch of really old kids gathered. We're in our early sixties now, with graying hair and expanded waistlines, scattered beyond the forested canopy of that old neighborhood, some of us now retired from long-term jobs, and all of us kids again in our gathering to remember our network of parents. Over punch and cookies after the memorial service, I search the faces of people who look vaguely familiar to recognize the children I knew. (Searching this way, I fail to recognize someone I only know as a grownup.)
Stories arise about the way things were in those days when the network of parents called us to supper, offered us games to play and art projects to enjoy, shared grownup wisdom with us as they hung out the laundry. It had taken them some trouble to form themselves into that network. They had been strangers at first. But as they maintained a community association, held monthly covered-dish suppers, organized a community water system, and the rest, they had gotten to know each other and each other's children really well. We kids never found out until much later what a rare thing this was.
Now they are gone, and we really old kids have lived our adult lives mostly in places where that gift of community is not present. We have built or not built networks of parents for our children in other ways. Church is one way to do that. My own mother never approved of church. She said it cut you off from the diversity of beliefs and ways of getting through life that are out there in the world. But for me, stuck out here in the "real" world, church has been a way to do it without giving up the richness of diversity entirely. As good as that old neighborhood was, diversity of class, race, and age were not a strong feature of it then. Still, the children in my church community mostly can't run over to someone's house to play or to visit over a cookie and a glass of milk, something that building community in a neighborhood allows.
The really old kids got together again, and remembered being kids with a network of parents, running freely through the unfenced yards to play wherever and with whomever. Maybe there is some strength for the future in our remembering.
I wrote a poem about oak trees when her husband died, and the story of her passing is for me very similar. We grew under oak trees in that old neighborhood, oaks that now fall, one by one, both real oaks and metaphorical ones. As one of them passes, it leaves an opening in the canopy of the forest, a space of light, and the realization that we of the next generation are spreading our branches into being parts of that canopy ourselves. It is an awesome process. And it's worthwhile for us mature ones of the next generation to gather and notice it happening, to honor our being oaks ourselves. We return each time from wherever we have gone. Jane is, I think, the very last one of those old pioneers. I will hear of and return for memorial services for others -- but for me, the generation of parents from the neighborhood has passed.
So at this last service for that generation of parents, a bunch of really old kids gathered. We're in our early sixties now, with graying hair and expanded waistlines, scattered beyond the forested canopy of that old neighborhood, some of us now retired from long-term jobs, and all of us kids again in our gathering to remember our network of parents. Over punch and cookies after the memorial service, I search the faces of people who look vaguely familiar to recognize the children I knew. (Searching this way, I fail to recognize someone I only know as a grownup.)
Stories arise about the way things were in those days when the network of parents called us to supper, offered us games to play and art projects to enjoy, shared grownup wisdom with us as they hung out the laundry. It had taken them some trouble to form themselves into that network. They had been strangers at first. But as they maintained a community association, held monthly covered-dish suppers, organized a community water system, and the rest, they had gotten to know each other and each other's children really well. We kids never found out until much later what a rare thing this was.
Now they are gone, and we really old kids have lived our adult lives mostly in places where that gift of community is not present. We have built or not built networks of parents for our children in other ways. Church is one way to do that. My own mother never approved of church. She said it cut you off from the diversity of beliefs and ways of getting through life that are out there in the world. But for me, stuck out here in the "real" world, church has been a way to do it without giving up the richness of diversity entirely. As good as that old neighborhood was, diversity of class, race, and age were not a strong feature of it then. Still, the children in my church community mostly can't run over to someone's house to play or to visit over a cookie and a glass of milk, something that building community in a neighborhood allows.
The really old kids got together again, and remembered being kids with a network of parents, running freely through the unfenced yards to play wherever and with whomever. Maybe there is some strength for the future in our remembering.
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