From Another Planet?

I've been holding this post for a long time, a bad thing since it is about interplanetary exploration!

Actually, Rev. Mark is not from another planet, he's from Uganda. I met him at the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists gathering a couple of years ago, and here he was again this summer, attending the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association in Salt Lake City. He has many great connections, but somehow in the course of planning his itinerary, the International Office has routed him through Manchester, New Hampshire, where nothing was happening. I volunteered to help, so I met him at the plane, took him to his hotel, and spent some time sharing sights and food with him. The next day, I took him to South Station in Boston to meet the bus to Cape Cod and his next assignment.

He came to Unitarian Universalism the same way a lot of Americans do, by finding that another church tradition did not work for him. He believed in himself, he said, and in the inner guidance that came to him, rather than in submission to the authority of someone in a higher position in the church. He had found us online, then met us at the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists meeting, which led on to his making this trip to the U.S. to make connections here. Many things he found strange -- he marveled at how heavy so many Americans are, he was uncomfortable in air conditioned buildings -- and it was all very interesting. He liked the highways.

We spent a space of time on the highway from New Hampshire to Boston, and in his company I found myself thinking that if a country were to begin a plan of development right now, they would do well to do it without highways. It is not at all clear how we will transform our highway-based way of life, the one where so many people get up in the morning, get into cars, and drive to work, as the price of fuel rises and its availability shrinks. For how long will this continue to make sense?

I spoke of my feeling that a country could have a nice life without so many of them, without so many cars. Having thought of a country that still had a choice, I began to see my own country in a different way. What will we do with them as we move into the fuel-scarce future? How will we have a nice life without so much driving?

Courage to Love a Troubled Country

I remember the Fourth of July of my childhood, a time when our whole neighborhood packed up their picnics and their softball equipment and headed out to a park by the Potomac River, a place of green grass with a nice grove of trees, where there could be running and playing in the sunshine and sitting later in the shade. I remember there were home-grown fireworks after it finally got dark, but before that, there were ceremonial talk and song and food.

The flag was displayed. One of the men, an actual radio newscaster, would read the Declaration of Independence in a strong, confident voice. The adults would murmur their assent in key places, but I had no idea what was so important about all that. We did sing the Star Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful and My Country 'tis of Thee, and it was from that singing that I came to learn all the verses of all those songs. Then of course there were things to eat, of which I only remember the Flag Cake, something my mother made, a normal rectangular cake frosted with stars and stripes. I got to help with the frosting when I was old enough.

We were patriotic, and determinedly so, for it was the time of McCarthyism, which was testing the strength of our little community. The radio newsman moved away to get out of the political heat of the DC area. One of the fathers of kids I knew went to jail. My own father lost his job. And still we read the Declaration and sang the songs and made the flag cake. But in the end, we were not the same. I certainly was scarred by the experience of those times, and I think others were too.

By working diligently in that small community and in the larger one surrounding us, my parents and their friends were able to build an island of good values in a sea of intolerance and selfishness. That island still exists, lo these many years since they did their work. Leaders of my generation are passing the work along to younger ones.

So it was worthwhile. And this most recent spell of McCarthy-like political climate was mostly not so bad as that one, though it had its moments. I'm hoping that little by little our country becomes civilized. Maybe it's really true that reaching out, having conversations on many levels, sharing words and song and food, maybe that's how the world is really changed. We remember the moments of courage, the moments of challenge, victory and defeat, but in a sense what's really important is the work in between, the daily building of the way of peace and freedom within ourselves and among our neighbors.

I don't have a flag cake to share this year. Maybe next year it would be good to do that. Whether I do or not, I will continue to love my troubled country with all its flaws, love it enough to speak truthfully and work diligently to make it better.

Meeting Thoreau in the 21st Century

After he helped his father build an "arrived" house in town, Henry David Thoreau borrowed some land from his friend Emerson and built that cabin where he lived for two and a half years. There he wrote the only two books he ever completed: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and Walden. He had the privacy there to observe, remember, reflect, and write. He was living at the cabin when he made that protest against the war on Mexico that landed him in jail and became the germ of his lecture and essay on Civil Disobedience. The cabin was a good place for him just then, furnished with just the barest necessities, and not too far from town.

My own new place, in keeping with the exigencies of having accepted part-time work as an interim minister with a wonderful congregation in Belfast, Maine, is reminding me of Thoreau's cabin. It's better: I don't have to build it myself. The rent is right. It has all the necessities. And even I, who pride myself on a fairly simple lifestyle, will have to pack a storage unit full of all the things I won't be taking to my Walden on the shores of Penobscot Bay. There will be enough chairs to entertain a very few people, and the place is but a few steps from the local food coop, where a larger group could sit for hours and talk. And it's very close to church, indeed. There will be privacy in the evenings to play my flute. I will be able to park my car except for trips to the hospital or people's homes or other suchlike excursions.

Will I write? I will surely keep my diaries, which will not have a record of anything like surveying the contours of the bottom of Walden pond, nor curmudgeonly commentary on other people's habits and beliefs. But what will present itself to be written besides that? I'll wait and find out. I do know there will be good spaces of time that can be devoted to the work of writing or to the mindless moodling that is such a necessary part of the creative process. Still, the temptation to look for other paid work is very real... for the right opportunity, I could surrender to the temptation to get paid for something more than the half-time ministry. Will I have the courage to drive life into this corner and experience the very marrow of it? This remains to be seen!