Tale of Two Seders

Our UU Congregation has its own version of a Passover seder most years, and this year it fell on the first day of "real" Passover. We gathered, families bringing young children, families bringing elderly parents, adults with Judaism in their past, adults with no clue about what Passover might be, for an ordered celebration, a dinner with traditional foods, and our own approximation of a Haggaddah. Everything was in English, the songs were mostly selected from songs of freedom we know from other contexts ("Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land. Tell old Pharoah, let my people go!") And some things were about Unitarian Universalists, those who have tried to help when people -- especially Jewish people -- were being killed, and those who stood by. We allied ourselves in spirit with the people who were slaves in Egypt. They had been in "a narrow place", the English translation of the Hebrew word for "Egypt", and somewhere in our histories as families, as individuals, as cultural groups, we have all been there. In our usual style, it was informal, with readings shared all around, requiring minimal leadership. And in our usual style, the food was copious and excellent. Our cooks followed Jewish recipes and used no leavening anywhere. Someone had found some bottles of nice dry kosher wine, and of course, there was grape juice. A good time was had by all.

I had the pleasure of attending the seder at the home of the Conservative rabbi and his wife the following night. It was a wonderful, convivial gathering of a dozen people, including some teenagers, but otherwise all older adults. The table was decorated to illustrate the ten plagues that Moses allowed God to send to the Egyptians. Little plastic frogs were everywhere (we need these for the little kids at the UU Seder next year!). And finger puppets, one for each plague. And Elijah's cup was joined by Miriam's well in a place of honor. There was a song about Miriam and the women dancing on the shores of the Red Sea after the people had crossed over. Of course the fine china and crystal and silver and linen marked this as a very different kind of occasion than the one in our church basement, but I know of seders in synagogue basements, too. In contrast with our group of mostly newbies, with a few execptions, everyone there had been doing multiple seders all their lives as part of the rhythm of the Jewish liturgical calendar. There was rich chanting in Hebrew, and of course songs that everyone else knew in Hebrew. Still, the main story was told in English, shared around the table the same way we had done ours the night before. If you wanted, you could read your part of the story in Hebrew, but the requirement was to include the English as well. As in our UU seder, things got informal and even a little silly at times, as people enjoyed each other's company.

I came away feeling all right about the way our congregation does Passover. It's a UU Passover, of course, but it's true enough, to my ear, eye, and tongue, to the "real thing". It's a combination of serious purpose and informal tone, reaching out in gratitude to the Holy, promising to remember, feeling our unity around the table. Children and their parents leave with many things to talk over. Another time, though, I'm going to try to get my congregation together with a group from a Jewish congregation for seder, to bring a live experience of interfaith celebration into what for us borders of make-believe.

A Great Celebration

I was among the 250 or so happy Unitarian Universalists who got to celebrate the joining of the New Hampshire/ Vermont District of the Unitarian Universalist Association with the Northeast District (Maine) on April 11 and 12. What a party! There were a banner parade, choral singing with percussion, and a rapid-fire “testimony” time on Friday night that got us all thinking about what a lot of Good News there is to share about our congregations in these three states. And a well-run meeting in which delegates from the two districts met simultaneously for their last separate annual meetings, culminating in a vote to merge, consolidate, or whatever it was we called it. Then our surprise keynote speaker, Ginny Courter, UUA Moderator proceeded to knock our socks off with an alternately hilarious and touching presentation encouraging us to go ahead and let people know about our faith. I missed the grand ceremonial worship service because I had long ago agreed to do a wedding that afternoon for a couple near and dear to the congregation’s hearts, but all reports were that it was energetic and inspiring. Members of the congregation who attended came back energized, though tired.

So now two are one, with a bigger voice and fewer votes in the UUA, though our fewer votes will emerge as the longer-serving of our Trustees reaches the end of his tenure next year. And we’re too big for any of the congregations to be able to house our annual meetings and conferences. I trust we will make up for all that by having a critical mass that will bring new energy to our associations here in northern New England. It will certainly be easier to staff one District instead of two, and to staff it well instead of sketchily. I’m excited about the presence of a small church specialist among us, since this is a part of the world with many little congregations tucked away here and there, bringing civilization to the boonies.

May Northern New England speak and sing with a new voice that energizes the whole region with the good news of Unitarian Universalism, the faith we make for ourselves in conversation with one another.

Service and Peace

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.

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.

Spiritual Knee

I love to ski. It's one of the ways I connect with the highest truth and the deepest love -- I feel the oneness of everything when I'm floating downhill with those long flat things stuck to my feet. Songs of the universe pass through my head and the sky opens up to let the energies of the heavens connect with those of the earth. In the days when I had a partner who shared skiing with me, a day on the slopes generally served as the best appetizer for an evening of high-powered love. Both the skiing and the lovemaking are/were spiritual practices for me.

So now this year, I come to a time when my right knee has enough arthritis in it to provoke a flareup. At first, I didn't know what it was. I spent weeks contemplating life with a sore knee. I limped up and down stairs. I couldn't do yoga. I couldn't take long walks. I couldn't ski. It was awful. "So this is how it feels to be in your 80's," I thought. I was so unhappy. I'm quite a few years away from being in my 80's, not at all ready to go there. Though many people my age have real physical limitations. I thought of them and felt grateful. Acceptance, I thought. That's the spiritual practice for this knee. And it was.

But non-acceptance was also a worthwhile practice. I went to the doctor and accepted a shot of cortisone and a prescription for anti-inflammatory pills. I took my friends' advice and started taking glocosamine. Finally, after weeks and weeks of one thing and another, I can dance and I can ski.

First, it was dancing. I go contradancing, which although it is quite energetic, is always done in places where you can stop and go home with very little trouble. Somebody told me to get new shoes with less resistance to turning. I did, and it was great! Then, I went for an afternoon to a smoothly groomed, pretty boring ski place. I got cold from not exercising enough while heading down hill, but my knee came through beautifully.

I paid attention to my knee. I let it tell me what to do. And it did. One step after another became clear as I paid attention to what it said.

So my spiritual practice of accepting the truth and paying attention to my knee has led me from despair to readjustment. Maybe I'll never ski aggressively again, or maybe I will. I'll pay attention and not just make up some story about what's going to happen. I will be guided in the way that works. After all, It's my spiritual knee that will take me to where I need to go.

Experimenting with Worship Time

We're experimenting with worship time. Some members and friends of the congregation work nights or Sunday mornings and find it really difficult to get to church on Sunday at 10:00 AM the only time church "happens" for us. One mother confessed that she has a tight turnaround with taking her son to a sports practice and almost never makes it to church -- plus, she really, really isn't a morning person! To those of us who have been Unitarian Universalist forever, it seems very unnatural to think of church happening at a different time. I still wish they wouldn't have youth sports practice on Sunday mornings, because we still really can't have Sunday School any other time. But with our experiment, now Mom can come, but only once a month, at 5:00 PM on the second Saturday of the month, January 12, this month. (check our website for other months: www.uumanchester.org)

I can tell you it's very sweet. There's something about the silence outside in the evening -- no doubt this will change when spring comes, but for now, silence -- and the smaller congregation makes it more intimate. We sing together, keep silence together, take our time in sharing joys and concerns, and reflect together on the theme of the week. Sometimes the sermon is cut short to allow for discussion, so it's less formal. The light is different, the stained glass windows look different, and there's just something about the calm energy of that time of day that makes everything flow together nicely. Then, sometimes, we go somewhere to get a bite to eat and socialize afterward.

I'm hoping many more people discover this experiment with worship time. Maybe you if you're nearby? We'd love to have you!

Burning our Regrets, Safeguarding our Intentions

I have always liked the ceremony of the turning of the year, the one where you reflect on the year just completed, release your regrets, and welcome fresh intentions for the year to come. I often don't get to lead the service just after Christmas, and blessedly so, but this year, I found myself scheduled for December 30. Knowing I would be pretty tired after the extra services at Solstice and Christmas Eve (little suspecting at planning time that Solstice would be snowed out), I planned to take the time that Sunday morning for ceremony, not sermonizing.

It was good. We spent time in silent reflection about the year just past, then in spoken sharing about particularly important life events that people were willing to make public. Then everybody took little slips of paper and wrote, after a further silent reflection, the things they wanted to release to the universe, regrets, missteps, habits, they hoped would be taken from them somehow. I invited them to crumple up the little papers and drop them into a big bowl. As my helper passed the bowl through the congregation, it turned out that the big metal salad bowl from the church kitchen made a wonderful sound as it was struck by the crumpled papers. People threw them in with gusto -- bong!-- even launched them from a distance. They crumpled them tightly for maximum effect. What a great sound to signal release!

We gathered into silence again, accompanied by the strains of "Auld Lang Syne" played on Celtic harp. And as the silence deepened, we reflected on what we wished to invite into our lives, now that whatever that other stuff was had left. There was time to write or draw reminders of those intentions, and then an invitation to safeguard them, put them someplace where they would be seen from time to time, even tape them to the mirror so they would be seen every day. That felt good too.

We sang again, and closed our ceremony. Then some of us went outside to burn those little crumpled papers from the salad bowl. We went downstairs and reported that the "bad stuff" had been released to the universe, news received to general rejoicing.

I'm thinking that simple ceremonies have a place in our church calendar, ceremonies that invite inner work rather than sermons that stimulate thinking and reflection. Not every week, but from time to time.