I went to a peace march and rally in Concord on Saturday, along with six or seven others from our congregation. Two of our delegation participated in the reading of names, the nearly 4,000 U.S. service people who have died in the war, plus many more civilians, both U.S. and Iraqi. They read in shifts for 13 hours to say the names. And those names are just the beginning. The group Code Pink had collected shoes and lined them up along the sidewalks of the square in front of the State House -- combat boots, yes, and flip-flops, high heels, little sneakers, and other kinds of civilian shoes, to remind us not only of the soldiers, but of the everyday people whose lives have been taken by this war. As we walked to the State House from the other side of the river, passing cars honked and gave us the peace sign (one or two offered the "other" salute). We even walked with a police escort along the street for a couple of blocks, heady stuff! A very funky marching band accompanied our parade. We chanted, "What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!"
For me, there was a certain bitter nostalgia. I was glad to see that many of those marching were too young to remember those other marches. Not even born in Vietnam times. Some who would not remember the first Iraq incursion. There was music -- their kind of music, and mine, too, for the day.
There were speeches. Nabil Migalli, head of the New Hampshire Arab American league, spoke passionately about the false pretenses under which the war was started and the tremendous damage it has done to our national security and our stature in world opinion. He reminded us that terrible things are being done in our names for no good reason. Then a young veteran took the stage, Will Hopkins, to speak of his experience in this war, and of the price paid by so many returning veterans in the form of dreadful injuries, and in the form of hidden injuries of the spirit -- the flashbacks, the fear that doesn't stop, the reluctance to seek treatment. We will be paying for this war in the very fabric of our own culture for a long, long time.
It's a cultural question-- we value military service to our country to defend the peace we have within our borders. And then we squander the lives of those loyal Americans who enlist for this valuable service as if they were so many electronically generated images on a computer screen. We need to reincarnate our thinking about this service so as to respect it more. Real people with real families, real hopes and dreams of life within the borders the service supposedly defends, real blood, real muscles, real arms and legs and heads.
If our faith, Unitarian Universalism, is about God, then it must be about God incarnated in everyone, the spirit of life that animates us all, the precious and sacred made flesh . The flesh too sacred to be thrown so lightly into harm's way. And from the response to the march from the passersby, I'm thinking there are a lot of Americans who share this faith without actually saying that's what it is. Wholly human -- holy human. Something divine within us all, too precious to be thrown away.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Different Uses for a Church
It was Sunday, and on a Sunday our church is full of life. Meditation starts at 8:00, then the Our Whole Lives class at 9:00, warming up the place for the main events, Adult Worship and Children's Church, at 10:00. This particular day, there were both a class for potential new members and a Religious Education Committee meeting right after social hour. It's not always totally busy for me, but this week, it was.
I sat with the Religious Education folks, then went over to the Newcomers class, where I was scheduled for a cameo appearance. I had work to do coming out of the RE Committee meeting, so I sat down to do it after the class was done (3 new people "signed the book" to become members!). The Finance Committee had asked for a detailed justification of the budget for our prospective new Director of Religious Education. I created it and shipped it off to the other concerned parties for comment. Then I prepared my evening discussion class, "Co-creating the Church We Want" and went home to get a bite to eat.
Sunday evening is full: The youth group meets, the Social Responsibility Committee meets, there's and AA meeting, and the discussion I was leading happened to be meeting. I locked my purse in my office and headed off to the other side of the building to meet my fellow co-creators. The conversation was rich -- we actually opened up some things that seriously need wider discussion and resolution -- and I was feeling pretty wired by the time I got back to the office. A good kind of wired, the way I feel when a lot has happened and I need to process. There was some more stuff to do at the computer, wired or not, and it was about an hour before I was ready to go home.
But as I looked around, it became clear that my purse was missing. Money, ID, cards, keys, missing. I called the police. I called my landlady to let me in. Then I went home and called all the credit card offices. Someone had apparently already used one of my cards at several stores. Then the next day, it became clear that someone had broken into the other office and into the closet where we keep the safe, and maybe they had used keys they found to open the safe. But the money had left the building before they got there. I lay awake most of the night, trying to process, but mostly just freaking out.
I thought that yes, a church has many functions. We provide a place of calm and quiet for meditation, age-appropriate worship for young people and adults, instruction in dealing with life's persistent questions, conversation about how to be our own best selves both individually and collectively, opportunities for healing, and now, apparently, someone was thinking we were a sort of informal ATM.
Of course. A church collects money on a Sunday, so Sunday evening must be the right time to redistribute it to someone who needs it. I don't accept this idea. Especially when the person doesn't even have an account with us! Building security. Not my favorite concern. But there we have it -- if we don't want to be an ATM, we'll have to tighten things up. I like it that church is many different things to different people on Sunday and throughout the week. But there are limits.
I sat with the Religious Education folks, then went over to the Newcomers class, where I was scheduled for a cameo appearance. I had work to do coming out of the RE Committee meeting, so I sat down to do it after the class was done (3 new people "signed the book" to become members!). The Finance Committee had asked for a detailed justification of the budget for our prospective new Director of Religious Education. I created it and shipped it off to the other concerned parties for comment. Then I prepared my evening discussion class, "Co-creating the Church We Want" and went home to get a bite to eat.
Sunday evening is full: The youth group meets, the Social Responsibility Committee meets, there's and AA meeting, and the discussion I was leading happened to be meeting. I locked my purse in my office and headed off to the other side of the building to meet my fellow co-creators. The conversation was rich -- we actually opened up some things that seriously need wider discussion and resolution -- and I was feeling pretty wired by the time I got back to the office. A good kind of wired, the way I feel when a lot has happened and I need to process. There was some more stuff to do at the computer, wired or not, and it was about an hour before I was ready to go home.
But as I looked around, it became clear that my purse was missing. Money, ID, cards, keys, missing. I called the police. I called my landlady to let me in. Then I went home and called all the credit card offices. Someone had apparently already used one of my cards at several stores. Then the next day, it became clear that someone had broken into the other office and into the closet where we keep the safe, and maybe they had used keys they found to open the safe. But the money had left the building before they got there. I lay awake most of the night, trying to process, but mostly just freaking out.
I thought that yes, a church has many functions. We provide a place of calm and quiet for meditation, age-appropriate worship for young people and adults, instruction in dealing with life's persistent questions, conversation about how to be our own best selves both individually and collectively, opportunities for healing, and now, apparently, someone was thinking we were a sort of informal ATM.
Of course. A church collects money on a Sunday, so Sunday evening must be the right time to redistribute it to someone who needs it. I don't accept this idea. Especially when the person doesn't even have an account with us! Building security. Not my favorite concern. But there we have it -- if we don't want to be an ATM, we'll have to tighten things up. I like it that church is many different things to different people on Sunday and throughout the week. But there are limits.
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