When Universalism was born, the raging debate was who was going to hell, and who was going to heaven. As you may recall, the Universalists thought that everyone had an equal chance at heaven, which lead to a debate a couple generations later about whether everyone went right to heaven when they died, or whether folks who had done really bad things had to spend some time in hell or purgatory to work off their bad karma before being restored to God.
Have you noticed that we only talk about this when we are learning our Universalist history? No UU has yet to ask me whether I thought he or she was going to heaven or hell. So what happened? How did the theological debate that birthed our movement become a historical artifact?
That old debate about whether we all would ultimately be reunited in heaven comes under the rubric of eschatology, which comes from the Greek roots meaning “the study of last things”. Many of our neighbors have an apocalyptic eschatology, believing that a final battle between good and evil is coming. When you hear about the rapture, you are hearing about a particular eschatology. But when we describe contemporary Unitarian Universalist thinking we have to stretch that word a little bit. Because we are not so much interested in talking about the end of the world- in fact Rev. Rebecca Parker says for us Eschatology means “Where we are coming form and where we are going.”
When we describe contemporary UU thinking we get to use the impressive phrase “realized eschatology” which means that the realization, the culmination of everything is in this present time and place. Folks from the Christian tradition who hold this kind of eschatology believe that when Jesus said that "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:14). Jesus was not talking about an apocalyptic scenario, he was saying “the kingdom of God is right here, right now.”
That’s quite a different frame for reality, isn’t it? Think about how you might spend the coming week if you knew that your whole life was leading up to a battle between good and evil at a time of apocalyptic destruction of life as we know it. Now think about how you might spend this coming week if you thought “heaven and hell are both here around me right now, and if I’m ever going to get to heaven, I’m going to have to look for it or create it in this world right here.” If you have a realized eschatology then there are 2 courses of action that seem pretty urgent.
First, we have got to start putting our attention into the here and now. The Buddhist tradition is one that takes seriously this living in the present moment. Even when you are stuck in traffic. Even when you are scrubbing the shower floor. A the Buddha said “
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment”. Buddhists believe that the present moment contains the seeds of all things, including liberation from suffering, and enlightenment. So instead of looking for enlightenment or for glorious reward in some future life, we search in this reality for heaven- cause we know it’s around here someplace. And many have proposed that, it’s hiding in plane site. Matthew Fox, the excommunicated Catholic Priest, says that it is crucial for us all to develop a sense of awe and wonder, to see the divine in the world around us. It’s not too hard to find as spring really gets going and the tiny budding leaves have that special young green color, and the whole diversity of the plant kingdom seems to have come together to create a symphony of color. Those of you who have grandchildren also know right where to look for a glimpse of heaven. It is also an idea that mystics from many generations have written about. Author and mystic Richard Jefferies tell us the same thing:
“It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me, in the sunshine, I am in it as the butterfly is in the light laden air. Nothing has to come, It is now. Now is eternity, Now is the immortal life.”
This ties in with our emerging UU pneumatology- (study of the spirit from the Greek root meaning breath) That the spirit of god resides in the natural world, in all living things. This Pneumatology came into our movement in the transcendentalists in the 1900s who showed us that the world is sacred. But sometimes it leads me to wonder, with the great Peggy Lee:
Is that all there is, is that all there is?
If that's all there is, my friends, then let's keep dancing
Because not everything we see in our daily life looks like heaven on earth. Frankly, some of it looks like hell. Sometimes it’s hard to have any sense of awe and wonder at all after catching a glimpse of the evening news. Isn’t there anything we can do to create the kingdom of God besides “be here now?”
We call ours a “living tradition.” this means that we believe in Continuous Revelation. We don’t generally hold that Moses was the last prophet. We don’t think there will ever be an end to truth that newly emerges into our consciousness. We also believe in Co-creation- which is to say we believe that God is not the only one creating the world- we are all working together day by day, whether we know it or not. We believe in evolution- not only in biology but in all the living growing changing aspects of our world. Things change and grow and live. And we have a role to play in this. Says Mesle, a Process theologian “But we have hands and God does not. Or rather, when hands are needed, God must rely on the hands of creatures to do that work” (Mesle p. 14). So in this eschatology the “end” of the world, that is to say the “purpose or outcome” of the world is right here among us, we have work to do.
And I think the kind of evolution we believe in is changing. As Rebecca Parker so beautifully articulated in here 2002 address to LREDA, our 19th century eschatology took Evolution to mean: “Onward and upward forever” but for generations that lived through world war one and world war 2, they realized that things weren’t necessarily getting better and better. Sometimes things get worse.
People responded in different ways to the tragedies of the 20th century. Some turned to nihilism in the face of those tragedies- that nothing has meaning. But a concurrent theological movement, process theology, was also emerging. This takes what we have observed motion through evolution and other scientific processes, and makes that the center of theology. Process Theologians hold that God is a process not a static unchanging being, God is motion. Some say “God is a Verb” This means that we can tell Peggy Lee “That’s not all there is” Something new is always unfolding, and we have a role to play in that unfolding. Says Processes Theologian Mesle: “For better or worse, each decision of each creature plays some role in the world’s process of becoming” (Mesle p. 62)
Change is linked to the deepest roots in our theology. The Latin phrase “semper reformanda” or “always being reformed” has been used by protestant churches for centuries to remind themselves that they must always be in the process of reformation. A new twist on the phrase: “Reformatus est semper reformandum” means “reformed yet always needing reformation”. Doesn’t that sound like something the UUs would have come up with? But it is an idea we share with many protestant churches. Ours is a living changing tradition in a living evolving world.
Our Unitarian Universalist eschatology has come a long way from our early history. A Revealed Eschatology allows us to focus our attention and our action in the world around us, instead in an apocalypse to come. A revealed eschatology holds in it two courses for being in the world- they give us 2 different senses of where we might direct our attention as we move through our daily life. Do we find the awe and wonder of our present moment, or do we see the flow of change and lend our hands to guide that change in the direction of life and love? In my own life and practice I think that both are crucial, and that there is a time and a place for each. A friend of mine who is Jewish Reconstructionist says this is part of what Sabbath is for her. That on one day a week we set aside the work of co-creating the world, enjoy the created world as it is. On the Sabbath “The world does not need to be changed.” It is ours to appreciate. But whether we are in the still waters of reflection and appreciation, or the rapids of life’s evolutionary flow, it is for us to use the powers of our hands, our hearts, our attention to seek heaven, enlightenment, the realm of God in this very world we now inhabit.
Primary Sources:
Process Theology, C. Robert Mesle, Chalice Press St. Louis, 1993
A Theology of Religious Education, Rebecca Parker, Delivered at LREDA Fall Conference 2002.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
What is Money For (April 26, 2009)
Money is hard thing for people of conscience to talk about. If we value economic diversity in our midst, how can we talk together when money is distributed unequally among people? We are afraid of being judged for being rich, we are afraid of being judged if we are poor. But our church has covenanted to be a place where we provide a forum for liberal religious expression in an atmosphere which encourages spiritual growth and ethical living. And money is a fact of our lives - the tool our culture uses to account for the trade of goods and services. We cannot truly understand ourselves to have examined the ethicality of our lives without thinking and talking about it.
Money is a part of the fabric of our society. In its most basic form, it helps us trade of a dozen eggs for a jar of jam. But it has become something very abstract. I’ve heard a dozen radio interviewers trying to explain how mortgages are bundled and about credit default swaps, and I feel like we have wandered very far away from eggs and jam. Our sense of money has become ungrounded in this culture. So it is up to us as part of our inquiry into living an ethical life that we must each individually figure out what money is for.
Everyone makes choices about how they will spend their money. Some are made at major crossroads- like what rent you will pay for your new apartment, or what your car payment will be, or whether or not to have children. Other choices are made on a daily basis- can I afford the free range eggs? Do I need a new sweater? Any time we take out our wallet or our checkbook, we have to ask ourselves questions about what we value most as we choose how we will spend our money.
There’s a funny thing that happens when we realize that choices are being made, and that we have made different choices than our friends or neighbors. We question our choices. Maybe I am afraid that you are judging me for making the choice I made, since you chose differently. It’s easier not to notice or admit to ourselves that choices are being made: we let them just kind of happen. This is part of what got many Americans into the financial bind we are in now. But as a community of seekers, I hope that together we can think about these things. That we can think about our values, and how we put those values into action in our lives. Because whether we are aware of it or not, our money helps us express our values in the community, and indeed helps shape our community, for good or for ill.
Right now, when so many of our family budgets are changing, and our financial futures are uncertain, is a particularly important time to have this conversation. If our income has changed, it changes how we express our values, it changes the choices we make. And so it has the potential to change our self-understanding. For folks whose sense of self has gotten tangled up with who they are as a consumer, (and that’s most of us here in America) this can be a frightening, confusing time. If we are used to working, and are suddenly out of work, or under employed, or taking a cut in pay, we suddenly realize how much of our sense of our self was tied up with the work we do, and the resources we bring home. Our culture tells is in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that “you are what you buy” and “the value of your work is reflected in how much you make.” The influence of these messages may surface only now as the economy is depressed. So it is up to us as a community of faith to remember that we are not workers, we are not consumers, we are not rich or poor, we are much more than that. We are miracles of evolution and biology, we are living souls, unique and precious.
And if our economic health has been shaken, so much more we must strengthen the other layers of our being. Our relationships with one another, our support for our eco-system, our integrity, our compassion, our agency as change makers in this society, our love of beauty, our creativity. This is a moment when we are all learning how much more there is to our selves than that part of us which is bound up with money. It is also time for us to strengthen our core values, knowing that our values, our ethics, our integrity need not be weakened by this weakened economy.
For example: I had gotten into certain habits in the grocery store. I tried to buy paper products made from recycled paper. I tried to buy free-range chicken, and cage-free eggs. But now that we are trying to make our grocery dollars go farther- I recently stood there in the poultry aisle for 20 minutes weighing the ethics of my impending purchase. I made the hard choice that I was going to buy the conventional chicken for $2.50 a pound instead of the free range chicken for $10 a pound. But I also affirmed that I would support local farmers whenever I can, buying eggs laid in Tompkins county, with preference to those laid in my friends back yard by chickens I have met personally. Was that the only choice I could have made? No. I could have given up my yoga classes and still have purchased the free range chicken. I could give up eating meat. My choices is not perfect- I don’t deceive myself that I made the only possible choice. You might have made a different choice. And that might be part of why we are reticent to talk about these things.
By looking at our financial choices, we learn something about what our values really are. While talking with the young folks in our Coming of Age Program about values few weeks ago, we defined values this way:
Is this something that's important to you?
Do you feel good about this being important to you?
Would you feel good if people you respect knew that this was important to you?
Have you ever done anything that indicates that this is important to you?
Is this something you would stand by even if others made fun of you for it?
Does this fit in with your vision of who you are?
Take a moment right now to list some of your core values. You can do it in your head, or jot it on the back of your order of service.
[pause]
Now here is what money shows us. My story about agonizing in the poultry aisle shows me a few things about myself and my values: Yoga is important to me, Animal rights are important to me, shopping local is important to me and the environment is important to me. Think of your checkbook register or your bank statement. What appears there? How closely does it match that list of values you just made? Are the values that your checkbook illustrates different?
Our work as people of faith is to create as much coherence and integrity as possible between what we value and how we live. Notice how personal a choice that is. I can’t tell you what your values are, or how to do the complicated calculus of weighing those choices in the grocery store. But sometimes by talking together we get the courage to make tough choices, or we receive new information, or a new perspective that helps us choose. For example, a friend pointed me to the Union of Concerned Scientists list of the 10 most important things we can do to save the planet. They put buying organic produce right there at the top. So we are recommitting to our local CSA farm this year. Not all our purchase this year will be socially conscious, but our friend helped us clarify our values and choose something we think is important to focus our resources on.
But social consciousness is not our only value, is it? Sometimes what we see looking at our checkbook is that certain expenses that don’t appear on our list of values appear there with surprising regularity. Columnist Dayana Yochim writes for the “Motley Fool” series “Fiscal fitness 2009” and confesses:
“I spend $1.62 many mornings just to get my fix from the Subway soda fountain. I do so even knowing that I could save $1.37 a day -- $27.40 a month -- by buying a can out of our 25-cent pop machine at work. It may seem like a wasteful expenditure to most, but a fountain soda -- particularly from a machine calibrated to deliver that perfect mix of carbonation and syrup -- is my guilty pleasure. And I'm not going to give it up anytime soon.”
As Yochim was tracking pork in her family budget she just couldn’t bring himself to cut this item, so instead she budgeted for it, and cut out $30 a month of other things that just didn‘t bring her the same joy as that fountain soda. It reminded me that joy, play, fun, taste are values too. This is important because one of the things that goes wrong when people budget, is that they make a budget so ascetic that it sends them screaming into the mall to assuage their feeling of deprivation. A wise friend once said “My parents raised me to believe I could have it all, they just didn’t tell me I couldn’t have it all at once.” Maybe this month I make a special gift to the food bank, and next month I take my Husband out to dinner. I don’t feel guilty at all when I go see a favorite band play. ‘Supporting Local Music” is a proud member of my list of top 10 values, and I’m willing to give up other things to do it.
Of course there are other was to express our values that don‘t require money. If “good food” is a value, we are lucky to be part of a religious community with some awesome cooks! A potluck here is as good as eating at many restaurants. If protecting the environment is a value, one of the best ways you can help is to fly less and drive less- and that doesn’t cost anything. Remember that saving the environment is not at its core about being able to buy the latest eco-chic product. When we “reduce, reuse, recycle” it is good for the planet and for our checkbook.
Neither our changing economic landscape, nor our changing family budget take away our ability to make a difference in the world: each of us still has gifts to offer. Our story this morning about the magic pomegranate is a beautiful reminder from the Jewish tradition that we each have something special to give, and much as the gifts of all three brothers were needed to save the princess, each of us is called to find and cultivate our gifts. The story reminds us that all of our gifts are needed as we come together to create a community of compassion and integrity.
It calls to mind another story taken from the Christian scriptures:
It begins when Jesus “sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the multitude putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came, and put in two copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury, for they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living.” [Mark 12:41-44]
Whether rich, poor, or somewhere in between, we have the opportunity to contribute the way this widow did, with a felt generosity that will ripple into the way she lives her life. This is why as a community of faith, we are called to see beyond the hard numbers to the heart, the soul of each gift. Said the treasurer of a congregation I worked with years ago: "nobody else knows what goes on in your home and your heart."
The occasion of our stewardship campaign gives us the opportunity to think about money on the level of the soul and heart. This is particularly important in a culture that respects wealth and commerce above all. We must be fundamentally about something different in our sanctuary here. We must value the giver more than the gift. Our principles teach us to honor a diversity of gifts that mirror an economically diverse and inclusive community.
Going back into the story, I like the fact that this translation says the widow gave “her whole living” which invites us to see the wholeness of the gift. It calls to mind the people in this congregation who give hours each week to see our books are balanced. Those who stand by our front door each week making sure all who come to worship are greeted with a friendly smile. I think of the outpouring of generosity for the two families our congregation adopted this winter for the holiday season, and the pies and turkeys we shared over Thanksgiving. I am moved by each volunteer who leads our young children upstairs on a Sunday morning to help them on their own search in this world, and those who drove and cooked and slept on a cement floor so that our teenagers could honor their passing out of childhood in a special way. “Her whole living” reminds me of the people who carry the values of this church out into their jobs, their parenting, their gardening.
No matter how big or small your purse, money is only one of many tools for creating a life of integrity and generosity. But still it is part of the fabric of our society. So let us use it consciously as an expression of our deepest values, let it speak what we intend it to say. Let it speak the wholeness of our living.
Money is a part of the fabric of our society. In its most basic form, it helps us trade of a dozen eggs for a jar of jam. But it has become something very abstract. I’ve heard a dozen radio interviewers trying to explain how mortgages are bundled and about credit default swaps, and I feel like we have wandered very far away from eggs and jam. Our sense of money has become ungrounded in this culture. So it is up to us as part of our inquiry into living an ethical life that we must each individually figure out what money is for.
Everyone makes choices about how they will spend their money. Some are made at major crossroads- like what rent you will pay for your new apartment, or what your car payment will be, or whether or not to have children. Other choices are made on a daily basis- can I afford the free range eggs? Do I need a new sweater? Any time we take out our wallet or our checkbook, we have to ask ourselves questions about what we value most as we choose how we will spend our money.
There’s a funny thing that happens when we realize that choices are being made, and that we have made different choices than our friends or neighbors. We question our choices. Maybe I am afraid that you are judging me for making the choice I made, since you chose differently. It’s easier not to notice or admit to ourselves that choices are being made: we let them just kind of happen. This is part of what got many Americans into the financial bind we are in now. But as a community of seekers, I hope that together we can think about these things. That we can think about our values, and how we put those values into action in our lives. Because whether we are aware of it or not, our money helps us express our values in the community, and indeed helps shape our community, for good or for ill.
Right now, when so many of our family budgets are changing, and our financial futures are uncertain, is a particularly important time to have this conversation. If our income has changed, it changes how we express our values, it changes the choices we make. And so it has the potential to change our self-understanding. For folks whose sense of self has gotten tangled up with who they are as a consumer, (and that’s most of us here in America) this can be a frightening, confusing time. If we are used to working, and are suddenly out of work, or under employed, or taking a cut in pay, we suddenly realize how much of our sense of our self was tied up with the work we do, and the resources we bring home. Our culture tells is in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that “you are what you buy” and “the value of your work is reflected in how much you make.” The influence of these messages may surface only now as the economy is depressed. So it is up to us as a community of faith to remember that we are not workers, we are not consumers, we are not rich or poor, we are much more than that. We are miracles of evolution and biology, we are living souls, unique and precious.
And if our economic health has been shaken, so much more we must strengthen the other layers of our being. Our relationships with one another, our support for our eco-system, our integrity, our compassion, our agency as change makers in this society, our love of beauty, our creativity. This is a moment when we are all learning how much more there is to our selves than that part of us which is bound up with money. It is also time for us to strengthen our core values, knowing that our values, our ethics, our integrity need not be weakened by this weakened economy.
For example: I had gotten into certain habits in the grocery store. I tried to buy paper products made from recycled paper. I tried to buy free-range chicken, and cage-free eggs. But now that we are trying to make our grocery dollars go farther- I recently stood there in the poultry aisle for 20 minutes weighing the ethics of my impending purchase. I made the hard choice that I was going to buy the conventional chicken for $2.50 a pound instead of the free range chicken for $10 a pound. But I also affirmed that I would support local farmers whenever I can, buying eggs laid in Tompkins county, with preference to those laid in my friends back yard by chickens I have met personally. Was that the only choice I could have made? No. I could have given up my yoga classes and still have purchased the free range chicken. I could give up eating meat. My choices is not perfect- I don’t deceive myself that I made the only possible choice. You might have made a different choice. And that might be part of why we are reticent to talk about these things.
By looking at our financial choices, we learn something about what our values really are. While talking with the young folks in our Coming of Age Program about values few weeks ago, we defined values this way:
Is this something that's important to you?
Do you feel good about this being important to you?
Would you feel good if people you respect knew that this was important to you?
Have you ever done anything that indicates that this is important to you?
Is this something you would stand by even if others made fun of you for it?
Does this fit in with your vision of who you are?
Take a moment right now to list some of your core values. You can do it in your head, or jot it on the back of your order of service.
[pause]
Now here is what money shows us. My story about agonizing in the poultry aisle shows me a few things about myself and my values: Yoga is important to me, Animal rights are important to me, shopping local is important to me and the environment is important to me. Think of your checkbook register or your bank statement. What appears there? How closely does it match that list of values you just made? Are the values that your checkbook illustrates different?
Our work as people of faith is to create as much coherence and integrity as possible between what we value and how we live. Notice how personal a choice that is. I can’t tell you what your values are, or how to do the complicated calculus of weighing those choices in the grocery store. But sometimes by talking together we get the courage to make tough choices, or we receive new information, or a new perspective that helps us choose. For example, a friend pointed me to the Union of Concerned Scientists list of the 10 most important things we can do to save the planet. They put buying organic produce right there at the top. So we are recommitting to our local CSA farm this year. Not all our purchase this year will be socially conscious, but our friend helped us clarify our values and choose something we think is important to focus our resources on.
But social consciousness is not our only value, is it? Sometimes what we see looking at our checkbook is that certain expenses that don’t appear on our list of values appear there with surprising regularity. Columnist Dayana Yochim writes for the “Motley Fool” series “Fiscal fitness 2009” and confesses:
“I spend $1.62 many mornings just to get my fix from the Subway soda fountain. I do so even knowing that I could save $1.37 a day -- $27.40 a month -- by buying a can out of our 25-cent pop machine at work. It may seem like a wasteful expenditure to most, but a fountain soda -- particularly from a machine calibrated to deliver that perfect mix of carbonation and syrup -- is my guilty pleasure. And I'm not going to give it up anytime soon.”
As Yochim was tracking pork in her family budget she just couldn’t bring himself to cut this item, so instead she budgeted for it, and cut out $30 a month of other things that just didn‘t bring her the same joy as that fountain soda. It reminded me that joy, play, fun, taste are values too. This is important because one of the things that goes wrong when people budget, is that they make a budget so ascetic that it sends them screaming into the mall to assuage their feeling of deprivation. A wise friend once said “My parents raised me to believe I could have it all, they just didn’t tell me I couldn’t have it all at once.” Maybe this month I make a special gift to the food bank, and next month I take my Husband out to dinner. I don’t feel guilty at all when I go see a favorite band play. ‘Supporting Local Music” is a proud member of my list of top 10 values, and I’m willing to give up other things to do it.
Of course there are other was to express our values that don‘t require money. If “good food” is a value, we are lucky to be part of a religious community with some awesome cooks! A potluck here is as good as eating at many restaurants. If protecting the environment is a value, one of the best ways you can help is to fly less and drive less- and that doesn’t cost anything. Remember that saving the environment is not at its core about being able to buy the latest eco-chic product. When we “reduce, reuse, recycle” it is good for the planet and for our checkbook.
Neither our changing economic landscape, nor our changing family budget take away our ability to make a difference in the world: each of us still has gifts to offer. Our story this morning about the magic pomegranate is a beautiful reminder from the Jewish tradition that we each have something special to give, and much as the gifts of all three brothers were needed to save the princess, each of us is called to find and cultivate our gifts. The story reminds us that all of our gifts are needed as we come together to create a community of compassion and integrity.
It calls to mind another story taken from the Christian scriptures:
It begins when Jesus “sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the multitude putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came, and put in two copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury, for they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living.” [Mark 12:41-44]
Whether rich, poor, or somewhere in between, we have the opportunity to contribute the way this widow did, with a felt generosity that will ripple into the way she lives her life. This is why as a community of faith, we are called to see beyond the hard numbers to the heart, the soul of each gift. Said the treasurer of a congregation I worked with years ago: "nobody else knows what goes on in your home and your heart."
The occasion of our stewardship campaign gives us the opportunity to think about money on the level of the soul and heart. This is particularly important in a culture that respects wealth and commerce above all. We must be fundamentally about something different in our sanctuary here. We must value the giver more than the gift. Our principles teach us to honor a diversity of gifts that mirror an economically diverse and inclusive community.
Going back into the story, I like the fact that this translation says the widow gave “her whole living” which invites us to see the wholeness of the gift. It calls to mind the people in this congregation who give hours each week to see our books are balanced. Those who stand by our front door each week making sure all who come to worship are greeted with a friendly smile. I think of the outpouring of generosity for the two families our congregation adopted this winter for the holiday season, and the pies and turkeys we shared over Thanksgiving. I am moved by each volunteer who leads our young children upstairs on a Sunday morning to help them on their own search in this world, and those who drove and cooked and slept on a cement floor so that our teenagers could honor their passing out of childhood in a special way. “Her whole living” reminds me of the people who carry the values of this church out into their jobs, their parenting, their gardening.
No matter how big or small your purse, money is only one of many tools for creating a life of integrity and generosity. But still it is part of the fabric of our society. So let us use it consciously as an expression of our deepest values, let it speak what we intend it to say. Let it speak the wholeness of our living.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Response to "Watching Over the Love" - Katie Replogle
“Stay at the table”
When Darcey gave her sermon last month about “Watching Over the Love,” I found myself nodding in agreement she spoke about valentine number seven, “Stay at the table.” She was talking about persevering through church conflict.
Church is the last place we want to have to deal with conflict. We have enough stress in our lives outside of church – in our relationships, where we work, in other volunteer organizations. We come here to find love and peace. And we do find a lot of love and peace, but occasionally we also find conflict. Because we expect church to be a haven from the stress of life, conflict in church can be especially disappointing and disillusioning. It’s very tempting to give up and walk out when things get difficult.
During my first five years as a member of UUCAS, we had two significant conflicts. Since childhood I have been afraid of conflict, and the early experiences at UUCAS confirmed my worst fears: that conflict means that relationships will fall apart. Some members – including me - considered leaving the congregation, and several of them actually did leave.
Those painful events preceded my term as president of this congregation. My four years were, thankfully, relatively smooth sailing. But disagreements always arose, and, as president, I had to learn to deal with them. While I’m still not completely comfortable with conflict, I now know that it does not mean that the world is coming to an end. On the contrary, it can lead to learning and growth – if we stay at the table.
I believe that staying at the table is important for three reasons.
First, healthy disagreements help us find better answers. When dissenters leave, we lose important perspectives. I am constantly amazed by the diversity of thought among UUs. I’ve heard issues that I considered “no-brainers” debated hotly at General Assembly and within our own congregation. I would think, “Who wouldn’t agree with this proposal?” – and of course someone always does. And what I thought would be a thirty-minute congregational meeting turns into an hour and a half! But the dissenting opinions always open my eyes to ways of looking at the issue that I had never considered. Because those with opposing views chose to stay at the table, we were able find a better path.
Second, we can be the church we want to be only if the people who see us going off track are willing to push us back on track. Last month we welcomed new members with the following words:
“This congregation charges you to use your fresh and new perspectives to remind us when we seem to be losing our way. Evaluate our words and acts by the words we have just read together. Remind us when we have overlooked them.”
We warn our new members that we don’t always live up to our highest ideals. That shouldn’t be a surprise - we are human, after all. We ask them to stay at the table when we don’t appear to be walking the talk and to help us to put things right.
Finally, staying at the table is important because our world desperately needs people who can resolve conflict peacefully and constructively, and church is an excellent place to develop those skills. I view church as a laboratory. We try to figure out how to create loving community on a small scale, and then we use what we’ve learned to try to transform the rest of the world. If we can’t make it work here, where we share common principles and a covenant to love each other, what hope is there for our world? We need to stay at the table and do the hard work of making peace here, so that we can do it outside.
This congregation is thriving today, 200 years after its founding, because people stayed at the table. In my eleven years, I’ve seen members whose persistent advocacy of a minority viewpoint eventually won over the rest of us and led us to do things of which we were very proud. We have a handicap access ramp, we are a Welcoming Congregation, we have Joys and Concerns in our worship service, we have taken public stands on issues, we have chairs that can be rearranged instead of fixed pews - all because people stayed at the table through the disagreements – and there were disagreements on all of these! - and helped us change and grow.
In any organization of at least two people, conflict is inevitable. It shows that people care. Sometimes conflicts cannot be resolved and people feel they have to leave the table because the wounds are too deep, the disagreements too fundamental, and the emotional energy required to maintain the relationship too great. But I encourage you to try really hard to stay at the table when things get tough. And encourage those who disagree with you to stay, too. We can be the church we want to be – and the world we want to be - if we stay at the table.
When Darcey gave her sermon last month about “Watching Over the Love,” I found myself nodding in agreement she spoke about valentine number seven, “Stay at the table.” She was talking about persevering through church conflict.
Church is the last place we want to have to deal with conflict. We have enough stress in our lives outside of church – in our relationships, where we work, in other volunteer organizations. We come here to find love and peace. And we do find a lot of love and peace, but occasionally we also find conflict. Because we expect church to be a haven from the stress of life, conflict in church can be especially disappointing and disillusioning. It’s very tempting to give up and walk out when things get difficult.
During my first five years as a member of UUCAS, we had two significant conflicts. Since childhood I have been afraid of conflict, and the early experiences at UUCAS confirmed my worst fears: that conflict means that relationships will fall apart. Some members – including me - considered leaving the congregation, and several of them actually did leave.
Those painful events preceded my term as president of this congregation. My four years were, thankfully, relatively smooth sailing. But disagreements always arose, and, as president, I had to learn to deal with them. While I’m still not completely comfortable with conflict, I now know that it does not mean that the world is coming to an end. On the contrary, it can lead to learning and growth – if we stay at the table.
I believe that staying at the table is important for three reasons.
First, healthy disagreements help us find better answers. When dissenters leave, we lose important perspectives. I am constantly amazed by the diversity of thought among UUs. I’ve heard issues that I considered “no-brainers” debated hotly at General Assembly and within our own congregation. I would think, “Who wouldn’t agree with this proposal?” – and of course someone always does. And what I thought would be a thirty-minute congregational meeting turns into an hour and a half! But the dissenting opinions always open my eyes to ways of looking at the issue that I had never considered. Because those with opposing views chose to stay at the table, we were able find a better path.
Second, we can be the church we want to be only if the people who see us going off track are willing to push us back on track. Last month we welcomed new members with the following words:
“This congregation charges you to use your fresh and new perspectives to remind us when we seem to be losing our way. Evaluate our words and acts by the words we have just read together. Remind us when we have overlooked them.”
We warn our new members that we don’t always live up to our highest ideals. That shouldn’t be a surprise - we are human, after all. We ask them to stay at the table when we don’t appear to be walking the talk and to help us to put things right.
Finally, staying at the table is important because our world desperately needs people who can resolve conflict peacefully and constructively, and church is an excellent place to develop those skills. I view church as a laboratory. We try to figure out how to create loving community on a small scale, and then we use what we’ve learned to try to transform the rest of the world. If we can’t make it work here, where we share common principles and a covenant to love each other, what hope is there for our world? We need to stay at the table and do the hard work of making peace here, so that we can do it outside.
This congregation is thriving today, 200 years after its founding, because people stayed at the table. In my eleven years, I’ve seen members whose persistent advocacy of a minority viewpoint eventually won over the rest of us and led us to do things of which we were very proud. We have a handicap access ramp, we are a Welcoming Congregation, we have Joys and Concerns in our worship service, we have taken public stands on issues, we have chairs that can be rearranged instead of fixed pews - all because people stayed at the table through the disagreements – and there were disagreements on all of these! - and helped us change and grow.
In any organization of at least two people, conflict is inevitable. It shows that people care. Sometimes conflicts cannot be resolved and people feel they have to leave the table because the wounds are too deep, the disagreements too fundamental, and the emotional energy required to maintain the relationship too great. But I encourage you to try really hard to stay at the table when things get tough. And encourage those who disagree with you to stay, too. We can be the church we want to be – and the world we want to be - if we stay at the table.
Response to "Watching Over the Love" - Elaine Lovegreen
Elaine Lovegreen:
I APPRECIATE BEING ASKED BY THE WORSHIP TEAM TO TAKE PART IN THIS SERVICE, AS A RESPONSE TO DARCEY’S VALENTINE’S SERMON, “WATCHING OVER THE LOVE”
AS TIME MOVES FORWARD, IT IS SO EASY TO FORGET A LOT OF THE DETAILS, OR HOW OR WHY THINGS PLAYED OUT THE WAY THEY DID.
IT’S EASY TO RECRIMINATE YOURSELF OR OTHERS AND THINK “I SHOULD HAVE DONE THINGS DIFFERENTLY” OR “IF ONLY WE HADN’T …..”
IT HAS BEEN A GOOD EXERCISE FOR ME TO REVISIT THE ACTUAL RECORDS, AND BE REMINDED OF THE VERY CAREFUL, CONSCIENTIOUS, SENSITIVE AND DEDICATED EFFORTS OF OUR BOARD MEMBERS AND OUR CONGREGATION DURING A TIME OF CRISES.
MY APPROACH TO PLANNING WHAT I’D SAY HAS BEEN METHODICAL AND SYSTEMATIC.
FIRST I RE-READ DARCEY’S SERMON, NOTING THE VALENTINE’S “GIFTS” SHE HIGHLIGHTED.
THEN I READ THE NEWSLETTERS WITH THE PRESIDENT’S COLUMNS I WROTE DURING MY TERM FROM 6/2000 TO 6/03
IT’S BEEN INTERESTING TO REMEMBER THE TONE AND ATMOSPHERE OF UUCAS DURING THAT TIME.
AS I’VE SAID, WE WENT THROUGH SOME DIFFICULT AND TUMULTUOUS TIMES.
LET ME TAKE A FEW MOMENTS HERE TO TAKE YOU DOWN MEMORY LANE, AND REMIND YOU OF WHAT WAS HAPPENING AT THAT TIME:
I HAD BEEN ON THE BOARD AS A TRUSTEE, WITH WILL TRIPOLI AS OUR PRESIDENT IN THE SPRING OF 2000.
WE WERE STILL RECOVERING FROM THE LOSS OF BOB ALLEN, A DYNAMIC AND CHARISMATIC LEADER WHO WAS GREATLY-LOVED.
LEE RICHARDS WAS OUR MINISTER AT THAT TIME
WILL HAD BECOME PRES. AT BOB’S DEATH; THEN WILL MOVED AWAY AND I WAS VOTED PRESIDENT.
I FELT VERY NEW AND UNTRIED; BUT ACCEPTED THE ROLE DUTIFULLY.
WE BEGAN A MEGA-PROCESS OF SELF-EVALUATION, PARTLY DUE TO MY READING OF A BOOK – “BELONGING” BY THE UUA ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A CONGREGATIONAL MEMBER – ABOUT THE BENEFITS, EXPECTATIONS, AND OBLIGATIONS OF MEMBERSHIP
THEN 911 HAPPENED; AND JARRED THE WORLD
IT WAS THEN THAT I BEGAN TO SIGN MY COLUMNS WITH “NAMASTE” – A HINDI SALUTATION THAT LOOSELY MEANS “I SALUTE THE SPIRIT WITHIN YOU, WHICH IS ALSO WITHIN ME” BECAUSE I FELT IT WAS A SACRED AND SOLEMN WAY OF RECOGNIZING THE INHERENT WORTH OF EVERYONE
THE FOLLOWING SPRING LEE RESIGNED SUDDENLY, AS WE WERE NEGOTIATING WITH HIM TO EXTEND HIS CONTRACT WITH US,
SO WE WERE, AGAIN, THROWN FOR A LOOP
WE CALLED ON JPD AND R. SPECK FOR CRISIS INTERVENTION AND HELP PROCESSING WHERE WE WERE AND HOW TO BEGIN HEALING
THEN THE IRAQ WAR BEGAN, AND WE OPENED OUR CHURCH TO THE LARGER COMMUNITY WEEKLY
JACE CAME TO US AS OUR INTERIM MINISTER
THEN WE DID BEGIN A PERIOD OF HEALING AND MOVING FORWARD, WHICH WAS THE THEME I HAD ESTABLISHED FOR THE YEAR 02-03
IT WAS A DIFFICULT TIME.
AND IN READING MY COLUMNS, I TOOK NOTE OF THE HIGHLIGHTS AND THEN STUDIED WHICH OF DARCEY’S MAIN TENETS WERE REFLECTED IN THE ACTIONS AND PROCESSES OF THE BOARD.
AND I SAW MANY, MANY CORRELATIONS BETWEEN WHAT WE WERE DOING ON THE BOARD AND THE EXPRESSIONS OF LOVE DARCEY PUT FORTH.
THE PRINCIPLES DARCEY IDENTIFIED ARE:
1. Make our expectations explicit when starting a new project
2. Listen so that everyone feels heard;
3. Direct communication,
4. Speak the truth with love
5. Good boundaries
6. Share the work
7. Ask for what you want and need
8. Staying at the table
9. Use “I” statements
10. No insulting or name-calling
11. Pay attention to process and to feelings
12. Uphold your agreements
I FOUND MANY, MANY DIRECT CONNECTIONS BETWEEN EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE OBJECTIVES AND THE WORK OF THE BOARD.
# 11 GOT MORE ATTENTION THAN ANY OTHERS – WITH SO MANY INITIATIVES AND CONSCIOUS EFFORTS TO PAY ATTENTION TO PROCESS AND TO FEELINGS;
WE STARTED A LOT OF NEW THINGS – OPENSPEAK AT BoT; “TALK WITH THE BOARD” MONTHLY; REGULARLY ASKING PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANTED, NEEDED AND THOUGHT
MANY EXAMPLES WERE SEEN OF #2 – LISTEN SO EVERYONE FEELS HEARD; AND #8 STAY AT THE TABLE; AND #7 ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT AND NEED, AND #6 SHARE THE WORK, AND #12, UPHOLD YOUR AGREEMENTS
I TRULY SAW EVIDENCE OF EVERY SINGLE POINT - I’M WISHING I HAD A LOT MORE TIME TO TALK ABOUT IT
BUT I’LL END WITH A SUMMARY OF MY RECOLLECTIONS AND HOW THEY’VE MADE CLEARER TO ME WHAT HAD FADED FOR ME PERSONALLY AND PERHAPS FOR ALL OF YOU WHO WERE HERE AT THAT TIME. AND A NEW AWARENESS FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE NEWER.
WE’VE HAD TOUGH AND PAINFUL TIMES;
WE, THE LEADERSHIP, DID OUR BEST TO “WATCH OVER THE LOVE” WITH RESPECT, SENSITIVITY, DEDICATION AND DILIGENT EFFORTS.
ALL THIS HELPED MOVE US TO A STRONGER AND HEALTHIER PLACE
I SEE US NOW CONTINUE TO GROW IN STRENGTH AND VITALITY, WHICH IS WONDERFUL TO SEE AND EXPERIENCE.
I WAS PROUD OF OUR BoT AND THE WHOLE CONGREGATION THEN
AND AM PROUD STILL OF THIS CONGREGATION AND THE PART I HAD IN WATCHING OVER THE LOVE WHEN I WAS GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO “STEER THE SHIP FOR AWHILE.”
NAMASTE
I APPRECIATE BEING ASKED BY THE WORSHIP TEAM TO TAKE PART IN THIS SERVICE, AS A RESPONSE TO DARCEY’S VALENTINE’S SERMON, “WATCHING OVER THE LOVE”
AS TIME MOVES FORWARD, IT IS SO EASY TO FORGET A LOT OF THE DETAILS, OR HOW OR WHY THINGS PLAYED OUT THE WAY THEY DID.
IT’S EASY TO RECRIMINATE YOURSELF OR OTHERS AND THINK “I SHOULD HAVE DONE THINGS DIFFERENTLY” OR “IF ONLY WE HADN’T …..”
IT HAS BEEN A GOOD EXERCISE FOR ME TO REVISIT THE ACTUAL RECORDS, AND BE REMINDED OF THE VERY CAREFUL, CONSCIENTIOUS, SENSITIVE AND DEDICATED EFFORTS OF OUR BOARD MEMBERS AND OUR CONGREGATION DURING A TIME OF CRISES.
MY APPROACH TO PLANNING WHAT I’D SAY HAS BEEN METHODICAL AND SYSTEMATIC.
FIRST I RE-READ DARCEY’S SERMON, NOTING THE VALENTINE’S “GIFTS” SHE HIGHLIGHTED.
THEN I READ THE NEWSLETTERS WITH THE PRESIDENT’S COLUMNS I WROTE DURING MY TERM FROM 6/2000 TO 6/03
IT’S BEEN INTERESTING TO REMEMBER THE TONE AND ATMOSPHERE OF UUCAS DURING THAT TIME.
AS I’VE SAID, WE WENT THROUGH SOME DIFFICULT AND TUMULTUOUS TIMES.
LET ME TAKE A FEW MOMENTS HERE TO TAKE YOU DOWN MEMORY LANE, AND REMIND YOU OF WHAT WAS HAPPENING AT THAT TIME:
I HAD BEEN ON THE BOARD AS A TRUSTEE, WITH WILL TRIPOLI AS OUR PRESIDENT IN THE SPRING OF 2000.
WE WERE STILL RECOVERING FROM THE LOSS OF BOB ALLEN, A DYNAMIC AND CHARISMATIC LEADER WHO WAS GREATLY-LOVED.
LEE RICHARDS WAS OUR MINISTER AT THAT TIME
WILL HAD BECOME PRES. AT BOB’S DEATH; THEN WILL MOVED AWAY AND I WAS VOTED PRESIDENT.
I FELT VERY NEW AND UNTRIED; BUT ACCEPTED THE ROLE DUTIFULLY.
WE BEGAN A MEGA-PROCESS OF SELF-EVALUATION, PARTLY DUE TO MY READING OF A BOOK – “BELONGING” BY THE UUA ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A CONGREGATIONAL MEMBER – ABOUT THE BENEFITS, EXPECTATIONS, AND OBLIGATIONS OF MEMBERSHIP
THEN 911 HAPPENED; AND JARRED THE WORLD
IT WAS THEN THAT I BEGAN TO SIGN MY COLUMNS WITH “NAMASTE” – A HINDI SALUTATION THAT LOOSELY MEANS “I SALUTE THE SPIRIT WITHIN YOU, WHICH IS ALSO WITHIN ME” BECAUSE I FELT IT WAS A SACRED AND SOLEMN WAY OF RECOGNIZING THE INHERENT WORTH OF EVERYONE
THE FOLLOWING SPRING LEE RESIGNED SUDDENLY, AS WE WERE NEGOTIATING WITH HIM TO EXTEND HIS CONTRACT WITH US,
SO WE WERE, AGAIN, THROWN FOR A LOOP
WE CALLED ON JPD AND R. SPECK FOR CRISIS INTERVENTION AND HELP PROCESSING WHERE WE WERE AND HOW TO BEGIN HEALING
THEN THE IRAQ WAR BEGAN, AND WE OPENED OUR CHURCH TO THE LARGER COMMUNITY WEEKLY
JACE CAME TO US AS OUR INTERIM MINISTER
THEN WE DID BEGIN A PERIOD OF HEALING AND MOVING FORWARD, WHICH WAS THE THEME I HAD ESTABLISHED FOR THE YEAR 02-03
IT WAS A DIFFICULT TIME.
AND IN READING MY COLUMNS, I TOOK NOTE OF THE HIGHLIGHTS AND THEN STUDIED WHICH OF DARCEY’S MAIN TENETS WERE REFLECTED IN THE ACTIONS AND PROCESSES OF THE BOARD.
AND I SAW MANY, MANY CORRELATIONS BETWEEN WHAT WE WERE DOING ON THE BOARD AND THE EXPRESSIONS OF LOVE DARCEY PUT FORTH.
THE PRINCIPLES DARCEY IDENTIFIED ARE:
1. Make our expectations explicit when starting a new project
2. Listen so that everyone feels heard;
3. Direct communication,
4. Speak the truth with love
5. Good boundaries
6. Share the work
7. Ask for what you want and need
8. Staying at the table
9. Use “I” statements
10. No insulting or name-calling
11. Pay attention to process and to feelings
12. Uphold your agreements
I FOUND MANY, MANY DIRECT CONNECTIONS BETWEEN EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE OBJECTIVES AND THE WORK OF THE BOARD.
# 11 GOT MORE ATTENTION THAN ANY OTHERS – WITH SO MANY INITIATIVES AND CONSCIOUS EFFORTS TO PAY ATTENTION TO PROCESS AND TO FEELINGS;
WE STARTED A LOT OF NEW THINGS – OPENSPEAK AT BoT; “TALK WITH THE BOARD” MONTHLY; REGULARLY ASKING PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANTED, NEEDED AND THOUGHT
MANY EXAMPLES WERE SEEN OF #2 – LISTEN SO EVERYONE FEELS HEARD; AND #8 STAY AT THE TABLE; AND #7 ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT AND NEED, AND #6 SHARE THE WORK, AND #12, UPHOLD YOUR AGREEMENTS
I TRULY SAW EVIDENCE OF EVERY SINGLE POINT - I’M WISHING I HAD A LOT MORE TIME TO TALK ABOUT IT
BUT I’LL END WITH A SUMMARY OF MY RECOLLECTIONS AND HOW THEY’VE MADE CLEARER TO ME WHAT HAD FADED FOR ME PERSONALLY AND PERHAPS FOR ALL OF YOU WHO WERE HERE AT THAT TIME. AND A NEW AWARENESS FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE NEWER.
WE’VE HAD TOUGH AND PAINFUL TIMES;
WE, THE LEADERSHIP, DID OUR BEST TO “WATCH OVER THE LOVE” WITH RESPECT, SENSITIVITY, DEDICATION AND DILIGENT EFFORTS.
ALL THIS HELPED MOVE US TO A STRONGER AND HEALTHIER PLACE
I SEE US NOW CONTINUE TO GROW IN STRENGTH AND VITALITY, WHICH IS WONDERFUL TO SEE AND EXPERIENCE.
I WAS PROUD OF OUR BoT AND THE WHOLE CONGREGATION THEN
AND AM PROUD STILL OF THIS CONGREGATION AND THE PART I HAD IN WATCHING OVER THE LOVE WHEN I WAS GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO “STEER THE SHIP FOR AWHILE.”
NAMASTE
Monday, March 16, 2009
Pioneer Churches (March 15, 2009)
History had forgotten the women who struggled to make a home for liberal religion on the American Frontier after the civil war. Until recently their memory had all but disappeared, when a diary turned up hinting at this ministerial sisterhood, and a woman named Cynthia Grant Tucker followed this thread until it lead her to the history she presents in her book Prophetic Sisterhood. In the nineteenth century many Americans were leaving their comfortable homes in cosmopolitan cities like Boston, and moving out west. (This was when Iowa was considered way out west.) While Unitarianism had a very strong presence in New England, and was the religion of the powerful and elite in Boston, the frontier was mostly a conservative area, and the orthodox preachers and congregations had somewhat of a stronghold. One town in Iowa, called Humboldt, was considered a liberal oasis in a cultural desert. The problem was that the main office in Boston was not interested in sending much of their time or resources, and the young men graduating from Harvard didn't want to go where the pay was low and the work was hard, if they could get a prestigious church back east.
Now to contextualize things a bit, 1848 was the year of the now famous Seneca Falls conference, where women who had been speaking up and struggling on behalf of slaves and the cause of their freedom, first met to possibility of fighting for their own freedom. It was in 1866 that Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton joined together to form the American Equal Rights Association to work for women's suffrage, and in 1890 when Wyoming was admitted as a state, it was the first state to permit women to vote. But it was it was not for this generation of women to see the 19th amendment to the U.S. constitution passed, which gave women the right to vote in 1920, after both the civil war and the First World War had been fought. So during the time we are talking of today, beginning in the 1880s, women had begun to look for possibilities beyond their roles as wife and mother, but suffrage was still forty years away, and women were still denied such basic rights as the right of a married woman to own property. While women constituted a majority in most congregations, and did most of the work of the church, most denominations did not allow the ordination of women, and even among liberal denominations such as the Unitarians and the Universalists, there were only a handful of women ministers around the country. In 1870 only five out of 600 liberal clergy in America were women.
Then a woman called Mary Stafford and her friend Eleanor Gordon who began to build a sisterhood that would nurture one other and address the isolation of the frontier churches and build them into thriving and empowered communities. For Mary, who loved to play preacher on the tree stumps on her family farm, it was her father who introduced her to radical ideas like abolition, and Darwinian Theory. Though her mother firmly taught the proper place of a woman, Mary’s father died when she was only 9, and her mother took over managing the farm, providing what must have been a powerful role model for what a woman could do. Eleanor lived on a nearby farm in a religiously diverse family with Baptist parents and Unitarian Uncles, and a home full of religious journals which she read voraciously. Her mother was not well, so running the household fell to Eleanor as the oldest sibling. She gained from her childhood home a sense that through hard work she could accomplish what she set her mind to.
Their childhood friendship grew into their twenties when one summer day sitting in Eleanor’s family orchard they “made a pledge that they would spend their lives together serving the world as a team.” [p. 18]. Mary wanted to become a Unitarian minister, and Eleanor wanted to be a teacher. They determined that marriage was not for them, knowing that marriage in the 1870s limited a woman’s possibilities. The set out to educate themselves, having found significant barriers to a formal college education. The Hawthorne Literary Society started by Mary brought to town a minister who helped them start their first church in Hamilton. Mary and Eleanor grew the Hamilton church to a Sunday attendance of 150, and started a small satellite church in a nearby town.
The Western Secretary for the Unitarians, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, was having great trouble finding male clergy who were willing to settle in these pioneer towns. He was excited to see this sort of initiative, and helped Mary and Eleanor find their way to a new and growing church Humboldt Iowa, which was seeking a parish minister and a Superintendent for their School. Rev. Jones continued to be a support, mentor and participant in this progressive movement of the Western conference, and an invaluable ally to the women who entered the ministry there.
In 1880 the Iowa Unitarian Associate ordained Mary Stafford, despite her lack of higher education saying “The candidate’s proven ability was sufficient ground for credentialing” [p. 24] The ordination overflowed with well-wishers and those wanting to see “the lady preacher.” And so Stafford and Gordon settled in their first parish, Humboldt Iowa. Humboldt really was the frontier- a newly built town where all water and coal had to be carried up a flight of stairs, and ashes and trash carried down. The bitter cold made like harder than Mary and Eleanor had ever known, even growing up as they did on backwoods farms. Yet despite the hardships the parish flourished and grew.
In the five years the women spent in Humboldt they created many innovations. Their emphasis on lay presence in the pulpit, for example, was quite an innovation at the time, but grew out of the necessity that their minister had to share some of her time with even smaller communities without ministers of their own. It created a pulpit apprenticeship that lent self sufficiency to the congregation. Because of their isolation, Stafford also created a group similar to an adult RE program to read and discuss important new ideas, and to bring in speakers to raise the cultural and intellectual awareness of the community. Stafford also was determined to make the church financially self sufficient, and the church was able to build its own building and create financial independence from the AUA in Boston. In her five years with the church they became almost entirely debit free in a community that was anything but affluent. In addition to being a prudent choice this must have created a wonderful sense of empowerment for the community.
At the same time, Stafford and Gordon were mentoring other young women and making connections to the few women already in the pulpits of the mid west. They took in four girls from Illinois: former students of Gordon’s, who served as parish assistants while attending college. Stafford and Gordon passed on this new kind of “women’s work” in the way women had for centuries been trained for more traditional “women’s work” by their mothers and grandmothers. One of these women was Mary Collson who had grown up in the Humboldt parish, and under the mentorship of Stafford and Gordon, became a minister of her own parish, and later served at Hull house, an important institution of social change of the time. The Humboldt parish became somewhat of a magnet to women in ministry. One such woman was Ida Hultin, a lay preacher who had encountered the obstacles of gender and poverty in her attempt to be formally trained for the Unitarian Ministry, and who stepped in to take one of Stafford’s two pastorates when the load had become too burdensome.
Stafford and Hultin worked together in their neighboring parishes and supported each other both emotionally and partially. Ida Hultin herself brought a young woman named Rowena Morse into the ministry who was later called to the first church in Chicago. And in this way the network grew to about twenty women over the same number of years. It’s hub was in Iowa and Humboldt, where Stafford had laid the roots, often was its meeting place. And so when it was time for Mary and Eleanor to move on to a new parish in Sioux City Iowa, where Eleanor was ordained and joined Mary in the pulpit, two of the young women they had mentored stepped in to fill their place in the Humboldt church.
Given their unique circumstances, being both female and isolated from metropolitan society, this cohort of ministers began to create a new model for ministry. Historian Cynthia Grant Tucker described this new model as mothers of their congregations. This new model was perceived as non-threatening by their congregations who were used to men in the pulpit, but it also lead to an important depth in the role of ministry. This did not include the cleaning and cooking of family domesticity, which was largely taken up for these female clergy by parish assistants, but making good homes for their church families with their sympathies, intelligence and business acumen. The maternal role included fighting for financial independence and stability, which was a matriarchal role in both Stafford and Gordon’s families of origin.
These pioneer ministers focused on the institutions of the family itself. They pressed for equality in marriage, even removing the word “obey” from the wedding service. They preached about a “partnership of equals” in which the wife would be fully informed of the family business, a very controversial idea at the time. The ministers modeled devotion to family and kin. They reinvigorated the ritual of child dedication, updated with more liberal language and forms to encourage and honor parental and community devotion. While parish visits were going out of style among male clergy, this group of sisters made these visits regularly, and in response their congregations responded with trust and appreciation.
As many of these women had been teachers before they became ministers, they were not satisfied with leaving teaching for Sunday morning sermons. Many of these ministers also were directly involved in children’s religious education. They transformed the Eastern catechistic question and Answer and memorization, leading instead discussion of myth, legend and scientific method, and world religion. Though this curriculum is very like contemporary UU children’s curricula, it was quite a break with tradition.. In addition, some of the churches opened Pre-school programs during the week to serve both child-care and developmental functions. For some ministers this increased their ability to respond to parents’ needs, and to a mother’s support groups.
They also expanded Adult Religious Education. Being farther from larger Universities and cultural centers than their Eastern counterparts, these congregations found it necessary to take a larger role in the intellectual and cultural lives of the communities. Sunday night forums brought important thinkers from the east, folks like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Adult Study Groups, called “Unity Clubs,” were established in parishes throughout Iowa, and served as adult study groups for a variety of topics, spanning the spiritual, political and scientific, and including modern as well as traditional thought. They made sure these clubs discussed the works of male and female authors, and talked openly presumptions about the roles of women and men in society.
These progressive ministers also changed the nature of the “lady’s groups” questioning the subservient role of women in church who had often been confined to serving and cleaning up church suppers. The Rev. Marie Jenny Howe, said she doubted that “more than one in a hundred women really liked sewing as much as the typical clergyman seemed to think” (p. 95) They pushed their women parishioners to stretch themselves and ask “dangerous questions”. The women began improving their concepts of themselves as individuals, establishing more satisfying relationships with each others, and addressing many of the kinds of issues UU women’s groups in our churches confront today.
One of the sisterhoods greatest contributions was in housing these communities. Between 1880 and 1913 the western sisterhood put up and paid for over twenty new houses of worship, an impressive record, particularly in light of the financial restrictions of the area. They moved towards a model of church as home, participating in design to ensure a feeling of comfort and attending to details of functionality in all aspects of church life. Almost all of these churches had fireplaces, enhancing the metaphor of the home, “a place that fostered warm feelings of human kinship.” said Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones (p. 102)
They were also aware of the impact of a building’s structure on its community. One woman pointed out that “what a congregation believed and how it behaved were ‘unconsciously molded’ by a sanctuary’s physical properties” (p. 107). Not only could the structure enhance and encourage relationships and community, but that aesthetic beauty fostered inspiration. They also proposed that a less orthodox structure would encourage creativity, that a more traditional structure encouraged complacency (as they felt Eastern churches were victim to)
I imagine the churches where these women served were not too different than our own. Most of them were family size congregations, many of them could not afford full time ministry, and all of them were surrounded by conservative neighbors. I think many of us have had the experience of being the only liberal at school or at work, feeling a sense of loneliness or isolation when our own beliefs were so different from our friends and neighbors. Perhaps we too felt like we were coming home when we found a faith community that welcomed us just as we are, which challenged us with progressive thought. In many ways we are not unlike those early Unitarians in the Western Conference who needed to build an oasis out of their friendships and their community.
Perhaps it can be an inspiration to us that these congregations of the last century turned their situation to their advantage. Their need to reach out spurred a strong and vital network through pulpit exchange, cooperative missionary field work, and through the supportive relationships of the churches and their ministers to their neighbors. They would work together, for example, to bring distant liberals, often abolitionists, into their community to speak and share their ideas. They took as their motto a verse from Isaiah “Enlarge the place of your tent… hold not back, lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes.” [Isaiah 54:2.6] Could we too enlarge the place of our tent? Could we too lengthen our cords of connection to other congregations?”
The isolation of these frontier congregations also created a need for greater unity and commitment within each religious community. Their relationship to the churches and to one another took on greater importance. The church and its volunteers filled a variety of roles in the larger community as its sole liberal organization, and reached out to one another to help meet their own needs and push each other to individual and community growth.
Because these religious communities were geographically far a field from the center of Unitarianism, they began to reinterpret what it meant to be religious liberals without the pull of inertia that was creating complacence in the older more conservative Boston Unitarian churches. Perhaps the lack of seminary training helped these women raised on the frontier speak to ther community in a way those who trained in Boston seminiarys could not. The Souix Falls church, for example, found that the young men fresh from the East Coast seminaries were “too academic and failed to understand that, to build and sustain congregations, a minister had to speak plainly and be concrete” [9. 45]. Said Eliza Tupper Wilkes, who herself became a voice of liberal religion on the western frontier “You cannot plant eastern Unitarian Churches’ in this soil.” For preachers like Stafford and Wilkes, the faith that their parishioners needed was one that was reconcilable with the birth of modern science, and with reason. A faith where the human soul would grow not in isolation, but in community, in an acting out of love. They integrated study of theology with current affairs and community service. This faith based in humanism and ethics, was very different from the Eastern Unitarian faith based in Christ, but this was a faith that served the religious community of the frontier, and the "Come-outers" searching for something more tenable than their orthodox roots.
Sadly, the sisterhood lost much ground after 1910, when more conservative leadership blocked their initiative. Some of the great denominational leaders like Samuel Elliot were unsympathetic to the cause of women, and of the western region. The first Unitarian GA was not held outside of Boston until the 1960s. As for the cause of women, we know that women had to wait another generation until the constitution was changed to allow their vote (1920). It wasn’t until 1962 that the first woman Violet Kochendoerfer graduate from my alma mater, Starr King school for the ministry. It was only in 1990 that the women ministers of the frontier made it into our UU history books, and that we began to honor their contribution to the denomination.
We see from their example that the work of your heart is not always realized in our own life time. Things we take for granted about our church community- that a woman can preach, that women can serve on the board, that science and reason are part of religious thought, that religious education social justice are crucial to our work together, that warm and caring relationships are part of what it means to be a congregation. These ideas which were so radical a century ago are almost taken for granted in our congregations today. These ideas are still radical to many of our neighbors.
We call on the pioneering spirit of our foremothers as we seek to expand the frontier for all those who need our special kind of message, our special kind of community. Let us Enlarge the pace of our tent. Let us not hold back. Let us lengthen our cords and strengthen our stakes. We are still pioneers today as we settle a new frontier for future generations.
Primary Source:
Cynthia Grant Tucker Prophetic Sisterhood: Liberal Women Ministers of the Frontier, 1880-1930 Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Now to contextualize things a bit, 1848 was the year of the now famous Seneca Falls conference, where women who had been speaking up and struggling on behalf of slaves and the cause of their freedom, first met to possibility of fighting for their own freedom. It was in 1866 that Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton joined together to form the American Equal Rights Association to work for women's suffrage, and in 1890 when Wyoming was admitted as a state, it was the first state to permit women to vote. But it was it was not for this generation of women to see the 19th amendment to the U.S. constitution passed, which gave women the right to vote in 1920, after both the civil war and the First World War had been fought. So during the time we are talking of today, beginning in the 1880s, women had begun to look for possibilities beyond their roles as wife and mother, but suffrage was still forty years away, and women were still denied such basic rights as the right of a married woman to own property. While women constituted a majority in most congregations, and did most of the work of the church, most denominations did not allow the ordination of women, and even among liberal denominations such as the Unitarians and the Universalists, there were only a handful of women ministers around the country. In 1870 only five out of 600 liberal clergy in America were women.
Then a woman called Mary Stafford and her friend Eleanor Gordon who began to build a sisterhood that would nurture one other and address the isolation of the frontier churches and build them into thriving and empowered communities. For Mary, who loved to play preacher on the tree stumps on her family farm, it was her father who introduced her to radical ideas like abolition, and Darwinian Theory. Though her mother firmly taught the proper place of a woman, Mary’s father died when she was only 9, and her mother took over managing the farm, providing what must have been a powerful role model for what a woman could do. Eleanor lived on a nearby farm in a religiously diverse family with Baptist parents and Unitarian Uncles, and a home full of religious journals which she read voraciously. Her mother was not well, so running the household fell to Eleanor as the oldest sibling. She gained from her childhood home a sense that through hard work she could accomplish what she set her mind to.
Their childhood friendship grew into their twenties when one summer day sitting in Eleanor’s family orchard they “made a pledge that they would spend their lives together serving the world as a team.” [p. 18]. Mary wanted to become a Unitarian minister, and Eleanor wanted to be a teacher. They determined that marriage was not for them, knowing that marriage in the 1870s limited a woman’s possibilities. The set out to educate themselves, having found significant barriers to a formal college education. The Hawthorne Literary Society started by Mary brought to town a minister who helped them start their first church in Hamilton. Mary and Eleanor grew the Hamilton church to a Sunday attendance of 150, and started a small satellite church in a nearby town.
The Western Secretary for the Unitarians, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, was having great trouble finding male clergy who were willing to settle in these pioneer towns. He was excited to see this sort of initiative, and helped Mary and Eleanor find their way to a new and growing church Humboldt Iowa, which was seeking a parish minister and a Superintendent for their School. Rev. Jones continued to be a support, mentor and participant in this progressive movement of the Western conference, and an invaluable ally to the women who entered the ministry there.
In 1880 the Iowa Unitarian Associate ordained Mary Stafford, despite her lack of higher education saying “The candidate’s proven ability was sufficient ground for credentialing” [p. 24] The ordination overflowed with well-wishers and those wanting to see “the lady preacher.” And so Stafford and Gordon settled in their first parish, Humboldt Iowa. Humboldt really was the frontier- a newly built town where all water and coal had to be carried up a flight of stairs, and ashes and trash carried down. The bitter cold made like harder than Mary and Eleanor had ever known, even growing up as they did on backwoods farms. Yet despite the hardships the parish flourished and grew.
In the five years the women spent in Humboldt they created many innovations. Their emphasis on lay presence in the pulpit, for example, was quite an innovation at the time, but grew out of the necessity that their minister had to share some of her time with even smaller communities without ministers of their own. It created a pulpit apprenticeship that lent self sufficiency to the congregation. Because of their isolation, Stafford also created a group similar to an adult RE program to read and discuss important new ideas, and to bring in speakers to raise the cultural and intellectual awareness of the community. Stafford also was determined to make the church financially self sufficient, and the church was able to build its own building and create financial independence from the AUA in Boston. In her five years with the church they became almost entirely debit free in a community that was anything but affluent. In addition to being a prudent choice this must have created a wonderful sense of empowerment for the community.
At the same time, Stafford and Gordon were mentoring other young women and making connections to the few women already in the pulpits of the mid west. They took in four girls from Illinois: former students of Gordon’s, who served as parish assistants while attending college. Stafford and Gordon passed on this new kind of “women’s work” in the way women had for centuries been trained for more traditional “women’s work” by their mothers and grandmothers. One of these women was Mary Collson who had grown up in the Humboldt parish, and under the mentorship of Stafford and Gordon, became a minister of her own parish, and later served at Hull house, an important institution of social change of the time. The Humboldt parish became somewhat of a magnet to women in ministry. One such woman was Ida Hultin, a lay preacher who had encountered the obstacles of gender and poverty in her attempt to be formally trained for the Unitarian Ministry, and who stepped in to take one of Stafford’s two pastorates when the load had become too burdensome.
Stafford and Hultin worked together in their neighboring parishes and supported each other both emotionally and partially. Ida Hultin herself brought a young woman named Rowena Morse into the ministry who was later called to the first church in Chicago. And in this way the network grew to about twenty women over the same number of years. It’s hub was in Iowa and Humboldt, where Stafford had laid the roots, often was its meeting place. And so when it was time for Mary and Eleanor to move on to a new parish in Sioux City Iowa, where Eleanor was ordained and joined Mary in the pulpit, two of the young women they had mentored stepped in to fill their place in the Humboldt church.
Given their unique circumstances, being both female and isolated from metropolitan society, this cohort of ministers began to create a new model for ministry. Historian Cynthia Grant Tucker described this new model as mothers of their congregations. This new model was perceived as non-threatening by their congregations who were used to men in the pulpit, but it also lead to an important depth in the role of ministry. This did not include the cleaning and cooking of family domesticity, which was largely taken up for these female clergy by parish assistants, but making good homes for their church families with their sympathies, intelligence and business acumen. The maternal role included fighting for financial independence and stability, which was a matriarchal role in both Stafford and Gordon’s families of origin.
These pioneer ministers focused on the institutions of the family itself. They pressed for equality in marriage, even removing the word “obey” from the wedding service. They preached about a “partnership of equals” in which the wife would be fully informed of the family business, a very controversial idea at the time. The ministers modeled devotion to family and kin. They reinvigorated the ritual of child dedication, updated with more liberal language and forms to encourage and honor parental and community devotion. While parish visits were going out of style among male clergy, this group of sisters made these visits regularly, and in response their congregations responded with trust and appreciation.
As many of these women had been teachers before they became ministers, they were not satisfied with leaving teaching for Sunday morning sermons. Many of these ministers also were directly involved in children’s religious education. They transformed the Eastern catechistic question and Answer and memorization, leading instead discussion of myth, legend and scientific method, and world religion. Though this curriculum is very like contemporary UU children’s curricula, it was quite a break with tradition.. In addition, some of the churches opened Pre-school programs during the week to serve both child-care and developmental functions. For some ministers this increased their ability to respond to parents’ needs, and to a mother’s support groups.
They also expanded Adult Religious Education. Being farther from larger Universities and cultural centers than their Eastern counterparts, these congregations found it necessary to take a larger role in the intellectual and cultural lives of the communities. Sunday night forums brought important thinkers from the east, folks like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Adult Study Groups, called “Unity Clubs,” were established in parishes throughout Iowa, and served as adult study groups for a variety of topics, spanning the spiritual, political and scientific, and including modern as well as traditional thought. They made sure these clubs discussed the works of male and female authors, and talked openly presumptions about the roles of women and men in society.
These progressive ministers also changed the nature of the “lady’s groups” questioning the subservient role of women in church who had often been confined to serving and cleaning up church suppers. The Rev. Marie Jenny Howe, said she doubted that “more than one in a hundred women really liked sewing as much as the typical clergyman seemed to think” (p. 95) They pushed their women parishioners to stretch themselves and ask “dangerous questions”. The women began improving their concepts of themselves as individuals, establishing more satisfying relationships with each others, and addressing many of the kinds of issues UU women’s groups in our churches confront today.
One of the sisterhoods greatest contributions was in housing these communities. Between 1880 and 1913 the western sisterhood put up and paid for over twenty new houses of worship, an impressive record, particularly in light of the financial restrictions of the area. They moved towards a model of church as home, participating in design to ensure a feeling of comfort and attending to details of functionality in all aspects of church life. Almost all of these churches had fireplaces, enhancing the metaphor of the home, “a place that fostered warm feelings of human kinship.” said Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones (p. 102)
They were also aware of the impact of a building’s structure on its community. One woman pointed out that “what a congregation believed and how it behaved were ‘unconsciously molded’ by a sanctuary’s physical properties” (p. 107). Not only could the structure enhance and encourage relationships and community, but that aesthetic beauty fostered inspiration. They also proposed that a less orthodox structure would encourage creativity, that a more traditional structure encouraged complacency (as they felt Eastern churches were victim to)
I imagine the churches where these women served were not too different than our own. Most of them were family size congregations, many of them could not afford full time ministry, and all of them were surrounded by conservative neighbors. I think many of us have had the experience of being the only liberal at school or at work, feeling a sense of loneliness or isolation when our own beliefs were so different from our friends and neighbors. Perhaps we too felt like we were coming home when we found a faith community that welcomed us just as we are, which challenged us with progressive thought. In many ways we are not unlike those early Unitarians in the Western Conference who needed to build an oasis out of their friendships and their community.
Perhaps it can be an inspiration to us that these congregations of the last century turned their situation to their advantage. Their need to reach out spurred a strong and vital network through pulpit exchange, cooperative missionary field work, and through the supportive relationships of the churches and their ministers to their neighbors. They would work together, for example, to bring distant liberals, often abolitionists, into their community to speak and share their ideas. They took as their motto a verse from Isaiah “Enlarge the place of your tent… hold not back, lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes.” [Isaiah 54:2.6] Could we too enlarge the place of our tent? Could we too lengthen our cords of connection to other congregations?”
The isolation of these frontier congregations also created a need for greater unity and commitment within each religious community. Their relationship to the churches and to one another took on greater importance. The church and its volunteers filled a variety of roles in the larger community as its sole liberal organization, and reached out to one another to help meet their own needs and push each other to individual and community growth.
Because these religious communities were geographically far a field from the center of Unitarianism, they began to reinterpret what it meant to be religious liberals without the pull of inertia that was creating complacence in the older more conservative Boston Unitarian churches. Perhaps the lack of seminary training helped these women raised on the frontier speak to ther community in a way those who trained in Boston seminiarys could not. The Souix Falls church, for example, found that the young men fresh from the East Coast seminaries were “too academic and failed to understand that, to build and sustain congregations, a minister had to speak plainly and be concrete” [9. 45]. Said Eliza Tupper Wilkes, who herself became a voice of liberal religion on the western frontier “You cannot plant eastern Unitarian Churches’ in this soil.” For preachers like Stafford and Wilkes, the faith that their parishioners needed was one that was reconcilable with the birth of modern science, and with reason. A faith where the human soul would grow not in isolation, but in community, in an acting out of love. They integrated study of theology with current affairs and community service. This faith based in humanism and ethics, was very different from the Eastern Unitarian faith based in Christ, but this was a faith that served the religious community of the frontier, and the "Come-outers" searching for something more tenable than their orthodox roots.
Sadly, the sisterhood lost much ground after 1910, when more conservative leadership blocked their initiative. Some of the great denominational leaders like Samuel Elliot were unsympathetic to the cause of women, and of the western region. The first Unitarian GA was not held outside of Boston until the 1960s. As for the cause of women, we know that women had to wait another generation until the constitution was changed to allow their vote (1920). It wasn’t until 1962 that the first woman Violet Kochendoerfer graduate from my alma mater, Starr King school for the ministry. It was only in 1990 that the women ministers of the frontier made it into our UU history books, and that we began to honor their contribution to the denomination.
We see from their example that the work of your heart is not always realized in our own life time. Things we take for granted about our church community- that a woman can preach, that women can serve on the board, that science and reason are part of religious thought, that religious education social justice are crucial to our work together, that warm and caring relationships are part of what it means to be a congregation. These ideas which were so radical a century ago are almost taken for granted in our congregations today. These ideas are still radical to many of our neighbors.
We call on the pioneering spirit of our foremothers as we seek to expand the frontier for all those who need our special kind of message, our special kind of community. Let us Enlarge the pace of our tent. Let us not hold back. Let us lengthen our cords and strengthen our stakes. We are still pioneers today as we settle a new frontier for future generations.
Primary Source:
Cynthia Grant Tucker Prophetic Sisterhood: Liberal Women Ministers of the Frontier, 1880-1930 Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Sources of Our Knowing (March 1, 2009)
How we understand knowledge, how we define knowledge is changing, and I believe that Unitarian Universalism is on the leading edge of this change.
For the last few hundred years, we have all sort of implicitly followed a “Hierarchy of knowledge.” Think about what knowledge is most trusted in our society -- probably something written in a book, or on the evening news. For many centuries the bible was an authority for knowledge, and for many it still is. Anything written in the bible was God’s immutable truth, unchanging. And the interpretation of that written word was to be done by learned men- men who had been trained in the “right way” to interpret and study the words. I notice that I tend to give a lot of authority to things published in scholarly journals. The more footnotes the better!
But the paradigm seems to be shifting. If we really value the inherent worth and dignity of all people, we start to notice who is left out in a paradigm where “truth” is limited to that which is published by an academic press. Not everyone has access to professional journals. Not everyone has enough education to read those articles. And if you look at the sources of our UU tradition. [If you want to look at those, you can look on the back cover of your order of service] the very first source, at the top of the list, is Direct Experience. Everyone has that. Our tradition had the radical egalitarian idea that each and every one of us gets to draw on our own direct experience of the world as an honorable source of knowledge and wisdom. But I think we have only begun to realized what this means, to realize how radical this idea is.
First, we are realizing that who you are is important to what you know. Remember back in 1990 when congressional hearings found that women and minorities were under-represented in medical research? There was an assumption that whatever was true for male bodies must also be true for female bodies. Women with heart conditions were being mis-diagnosed because the research about heart conditions had been conducted mostly with male subjects. Well, medicine is not the only field where this kind of thinking pervades. Throughout history most of the folks doing the thinking and the writing assumed that their own experience was transferable to all other people. Says Ivone Gebara, an eco-feminist Catholic theologian from Brazil, “they refer to the experience of a part of humanity as though it were the experience of all.” [p. 25] She goes on to say that women and children, Blacks and indigenous groups are commonly perceived as those who know the least “The history of domination has so deeply marked the foundations of our culture that we end up claiming, as if it were our own, the type of knowledge put out by those who hold political and economic power.” [p. 26]
We don’t live in an abstract world, we live in a concrete world in a body different from anyone else’s, in a neighborhood different from all the other neighborhoods. Each of us has different knowing based on our context.
And how we know things is different for each of us as well. Each of us has a physically unique brain, and learn and grow in different communities, different schools, different cultures. Some of you may remember the work developed in 1983 by Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University on multiple intelligences. This brought to us the radical idea that the kind of intelligence tested with pencil and paper was not the only kind of intelligence. He posited that there are different kind of knowledge, and different ways of getting knowledge. Many of us heard this theory and said, wow, I see the truth in that, but still most of us had a residual belief that the linguistic and mathematical intelligences were the important ones, the real ones.
A few years back some Sunday School teachers and I worked very consciously to create a separate Sunday school class for kids who seemed to learn in a very kinesthetic way. They walked to the park every Sunday and then climbed a tree where, worn out from their walk, the teacher presented their lesson. I began to wonder, how could we teach the usual lessons about UU principles and World Religions in a more kinesthetic way? Could we make up a game of tag that taught the inherent worth and dignity of every person? Could we make up a ball game that taught the Buddhist sense of non-attachment? But there was nothing like this in any of the curricula published by the UUA. But this different way of learning was difficult to pursue because it was different than the way we were used to teaching. We realized that most of the folks who taught Sunday School and designed the lessons were folks who had liked Religious Education as children, and had been successful and comfortable with the traditional ways those lessons had been taught.
Gebara speaks about a similar phenomenon in the fiends of “higher” learning: “…when we spoke of scientific knowledge, of philosophical knowledge, of theological knowledge, or even of “true” knowledge, we were always referring to knowing gained and disseminated by men. What was left to women and to the poor was so-called experiential knowledge, knowledge based on everyday experience; but this was not automatically recognized as real knowing.” (p. 25) In the great hierarchy of knowledge, everyday experience has traditionally been at the bottom.
Other non-human beings fell off the bottom of that hierarchy- they were assumed to have no knowledge at all. But remember the words from our children’s story this morning: “Remember animals were here first, so they know better than people how to live. Their wisdom is older. They’re more at ease I a desert place, the Indians say…. Look how Badger burrows into the cool dark earth—while man has to walk in the heat of the sun.” Maybe it’s hard to even imagine a hierarchy of knowledge where animal wisdom is near the top, and where learning from animals is more precious than learning from books or from MSNBC. But if we begin to crack open the structures of how we define knowledge as a culture, many new sources of knowledge, many new ways of learning become open to us.
Keith Basso, an Anthropologist at University of New Mexico, describes another way of knowing and transmitting truth. He has spent most of his career with Apache nations, his most recent work mapping the places named by the Apache people in Arizona. As he and tribal leaders visited many of the places named by the Apache, the elders told the history of each place and how the name evoked that history. Yet, Basso writes:
“One could still maintain that the Western Apaches have yet to produce a tribal historian – but only were one to judge… by Anglo-American standards of what historians are and how they practice their craft. And there, of course, is the rub. For by now it should be clear that Apache standards for interpreting the past are not the same as our own, and that working Apache historians … go about their business with different aims and procedures. It may also have been surmised that few Apache people would wish to change these procedures, much less abandon them.” [p. 30-31]
The Apache people held their history not in books and journal articles, but through an oral tradition, tied closely to the places where they had lived and farmed for generations.
This suggests an even more radical idea- that where you know is important. After our hymnals were printed we add “earth centered spiritualities” to our sources. But what is missing from that list is the earth itself. What we are learning from these earth-centered spiritualities is that there is not just one truth for all times and places. Each place has something special and unique to teach us. If we generalize those teachings we cut off their roots; we lose some of their wisdom when we take them away from the place where they were born and lived.
An analogy from my own traditional rituals and celebrations was the strangeness of IT was celebrating the winter holidays in California, reading stories about the freezing cold and snow of the Christmas season while looking out my window at the green returning to the grass covered hills, and the pouring rain was more common to a California Winter Solstice. Now, returning to a climate with cold snowy winters, the traditions and stories and images that seemed arbitrary in California seem beautiful and are filled with meaning.
Or Think about the Children’s Story this morning [The Desert is Theirs by Byrd Baylor] The lessons of life in the desert are so different than those of life in Ithaca. Baylor writes: “Rain is a blessing counted drop by drop. Each Plant finds its own way to hold that sudden water. They don’t waste it on floppy green leaves. They have thorns and stickers and points instead." If you lived in that dry place where water is sudden and scarce, what would you know in your everyday experience? How different are the lessons I learn every day living in Ithaca where the challenge is to stay dry and warm,
Why does it matter how we know what we know, or where that knowledge comes from? Because day in and day out what you know effects what you do. Says Gebara “Our everyday lives are full of examples of how our knowing has ethical implicates; in other words, of how it affects the quality of our actions…My actions and my relationships with people change depending on my style of knowing. Therefore, the relationship between ethics and epistemology has nothing abstract about it; it is rooted in the concreteness of our lives.” (p. 24)
So if we understand where our knowing comes from, then we have a better chance of understanding why we do the things we do. And when we notice that what we hold to be true is not leading to right action in the world, we can challenge our knowing, investigate where our ideas come from. Gebara is an Ecofeminist, and so she is particularly interested in tracing how ideas came to be that oppress women and other minorities, and the ideas that lead to a degradation of the earth. She is especially interested in tracking the ways that our religions have implicitly legitimated these paths of our society. One of the ways this happens is by the assumption that truth is something that is unchanging, that can be determined by folks in authority for all people in all times.
The hope is that as we become aware, we can interrogate our knowledge, interrogate the sources of what we know. Says Gebara: “The idea is to loosen the soil of our certainties and to ask to what degree these certainties rest on foundations that might be more valid at one time and less so at another” (p. 30) And as we change what we know, and how we come to know it, we do this not to create a new immutable truth, but to bring our context into our way of knowing, and to stay aware of context as we share what we know. This will not only help us be open to truth that falls out side our usual ways of knowing, but will also help us act as ethical agent s in the world, as Gebara says “all we have to do is get to know our own neighborhood better in order to understand how to behave in it.”
As we head out into our neighborhoods this coming week, may it be with eyes open to see beyond the hierarchies of knowing, to the truth our neighbors know in this very time and this very place.
Primary Sources:
Byrd Baylor The Desert is Theirs. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 1975.
Keith H. Basso. Wisdom Sits in Places. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
Ivone Gebara Longing for Running Water. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1999.
For the last few hundred years, we have all sort of implicitly followed a “Hierarchy of knowledge.” Think about what knowledge is most trusted in our society -- probably something written in a book, or on the evening news. For many centuries the bible was an authority for knowledge, and for many it still is. Anything written in the bible was God’s immutable truth, unchanging. And the interpretation of that written word was to be done by learned men- men who had been trained in the “right way” to interpret and study the words. I notice that I tend to give a lot of authority to things published in scholarly journals. The more footnotes the better!
But the paradigm seems to be shifting. If we really value the inherent worth and dignity of all people, we start to notice who is left out in a paradigm where “truth” is limited to that which is published by an academic press. Not everyone has access to professional journals. Not everyone has enough education to read those articles. And if you look at the sources of our UU tradition. [If you want to look at those, you can look on the back cover of your order of service] the very first source, at the top of the list, is Direct Experience. Everyone has that. Our tradition had the radical egalitarian idea that each and every one of us gets to draw on our own direct experience of the world as an honorable source of knowledge and wisdom. But I think we have only begun to realized what this means, to realize how radical this idea is.
First, we are realizing that who you are is important to what you know. Remember back in 1990 when congressional hearings found that women and minorities were under-represented in medical research? There was an assumption that whatever was true for male bodies must also be true for female bodies. Women with heart conditions were being mis-diagnosed because the research about heart conditions had been conducted mostly with male subjects. Well, medicine is not the only field where this kind of thinking pervades. Throughout history most of the folks doing the thinking and the writing assumed that their own experience was transferable to all other people. Says Ivone Gebara, an eco-feminist Catholic theologian from Brazil, “they refer to the experience of a part of humanity as though it were the experience of all.” [p. 25] She goes on to say that women and children, Blacks and indigenous groups are commonly perceived as those who know the least “The history of domination has so deeply marked the foundations of our culture that we end up claiming, as if it were our own, the type of knowledge put out by those who hold political and economic power.” [p. 26]
We don’t live in an abstract world, we live in a concrete world in a body different from anyone else’s, in a neighborhood different from all the other neighborhoods. Each of us has different knowing based on our context.
And how we know things is different for each of us as well. Each of us has a physically unique brain, and learn and grow in different communities, different schools, different cultures. Some of you may remember the work developed in 1983 by Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University on multiple intelligences. This brought to us the radical idea that the kind of intelligence tested with pencil and paper was not the only kind of intelligence. He posited that there are different kind of knowledge, and different ways of getting knowledge. Many of us heard this theory and said, wow, I see the truth in that, but still most of us had a residual belief that the linguistic and mathematical intelligences were the important ones, the real ones.
A few years back some Sunday School teachers and I worked very consciously to create a separate Sunday school class for kids who seemed to learn in a very kinesthetic way. They walked to the park every Sunday and then climbed a tree where, worn out from their walk, the teacher presented their lesson. I began to wonder, how could we teach the usual lessons about UU principles and World Religions in a more kinesthetic way? Could we make up a game of tag that taught the inherent worth and dignity of every person? Could we make up a ball game that taught the Buddhist sense of non-attachment? But there was nothing like this in any of the curricula published by the UUA. But this different way of learning was difficult to pursue because it was different than the way we were used to teaching. We realized that most of the folks who taught Sunday School and designed the lessons were folks who had liked Religious Education as children, and had been successful and comfortable with the traditional ways those lessons had been taught.
Gebara speaks about a similar phenomenon in the fiends of “higher” learning: “…when we spoke of scientific knowledge, of philosophical knowledge, of theological knowledge, or even of “true” knowledge, we were always referring to knowing gained and disseminated by men. What was left to women and to the poor was so-called experiential knowledge, knowledge based on everyday experience; but this was not automatically recognized as real knowing.” (p. 25) In the great hierarchy of knowledge, everyday experience has traditionally been at the bottom.
Other non-human beings fell off the bottom of that hierarchy- they were assumed to have no knowledge at all. But remember the words from our children’s story this morning: “Remember animals were here first, so they know better than people how to live. Their wisdom is older. They’re more at ease I a desert place, the Indians say…. Look how Badger burrows into the cool dark earth—while man has to walk in the heat of the sun.” Maybe it’s hard to even imagine a hierarchy of knowledge where animal wisdom is near the top, and where learning from animals is more precious than learning from books or from MSNBC. But if we begin to crack open the structures of how we define knowledge as a culture, many new sources of knowledge, many new ways of learning become open to us.
Keith Basso, an Anthropologist at University of New Mexico, describes another way of knowing and transmitting truth. He has spent most of his career with Apache nations, his most recent work mapping the places named by the Apache people in Arizona. As he and tribal leaders visited many of the places named by the Apache, the elders told the history of each place and how the name evoked that history. Yet, Basso writes:
“One could still maintain that the Western Apaches have yet to produce a tribal historian – but only were one to judge… by Anglo-American standards of what historians are and how they practice their craft. And there, of course, is the rub. For by now it should be clear that Apache standards for interpreting the past are not the same as our own, and that working Apache historians … go about their business with different aims and procedures. It may also have been surmised that few Apache people would wish to change these procedures, much less abandon them.” [p. 30-31]
The Apache people held their history not in books and journal articles, but through an oral tradition, tied closely to the places where they had lived and farmed for generations.
This suggests an even more radical idea- that where you know is important. After our hymnals were printed we add “earth centered spiritualities” to our sources. But what is missing from that list is the earth itself. What we are learning from these earth-centered spiritualities is that there is not just one truth for all times and places. Each place has something special and unique to teach us. If we generalize those teachings we cut off their roots; we lose some of their wisdom when we take them away from the place where they were born and lived.
An analogy from my own traditional rituals and celebrations was the strangeness of IT was celebrating the winter holidays in California, reading stories about the freezing cold and snow of the Christmas season while looking out my window at the green returning to the grass covered hills, and the pouring rain was more common to a California Winter Solstice. Now, returning to a climate with cold snowy winters, the traditions and stories and images that seemed arbitrary in California seem beautiful and are filled with meaning.
Or Think about the Children’s Story this morning [The Desert is Theirs by Byrd Baylor] The lessons of life in the desert are so different than those of life in Ithaca. Baylor writes: “Rain is a blessing counted drop by drop. Each Plant finds its own way to hold that sudden water. They don’t waste it on floppy green leaves. They have thorns and stickers and points instead." If you lived in that dry place where water is sudden and scarce, what would you know in your everyday experience? How different are the lessons I learn every day living in Ithaca where the challenge is to stay dry and warm,
Why does it matter how we know what we know, or where that knowledge comes from? Because day in and day out what you know effects what you do. Says Gebara “Our everyday lives are full of examples of how our knowing has ethical implicates; in other words, of how it affects the quality of our actions…My actions and my relationships with people change depending on my style of knowing. Therefore, the relationship between ethics and epistemology has nothing abstract about it; it is rooted in the concreteness of our lives.” (p. 24)
So if we understand where our knowing comes from, then we have a better chance of understanding why we do the things we do. And when we notice that what we hold to be true is not leading to right action in the world, we can challenge our knowing, investigate where our ideas come from. Gebara is an Ecofeminist, and so she is particularly interested in tracing how ideas came to be that oppress women and other minorities, and the ideas that lead to a degradation of the earth. She is especially interested in tracking the ways that our religions have implicitly legitimated these paths of our society. One of the ways this happens is by the assumption that truth is something that is unchanging, that can be determined by folks in authority for all people in all times.
The hope is that as we become aware, we can interrogate our knowledge, interrogate the sources of what we know. Says Gebara: “The idea is to loosen the soil of our certainties and to ask to what degree these certainties rest on foundations that might be more valid at one time and less so at another” (p. 30) And as we change what we know, and how we come to know it, we do this not to create a new immutable truth, but to bring our context into our way of knowing, and to stay aware of context as we share what we know. This will not only help us be open to truth that falls out side our usual ways of knowing, but will also help us act as ethical agent s in the world, as Gebara says “all we have to do is get to know our own neighborhood better in order to understand how to behave in it.”
As we head out into our neighborhoods this coming week, may it be with eyes open to see beyond the hierarchies of knowing, to the truth our neighbors know in this very time and this very place.
Primary Sources:
Byrd Baylor The Desert is Theirs. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 1975.
Keith H. Basso. Wisdom Sits in Places. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
Ivone Gebara Longing for Running Water. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1999.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
A Valentine for UUCAS: Watching Over the Love (February 15, 2009)
One year when I was in Seminary at Starr King School for the Ministry, we were all mysteriously enrolled in a class called “Watching over the love.” This was very unusual because there were no required classes at SKSM. When the entire student body came together for the first class in the one room big enough to hold all 70 of us, a colleague of mine asked “Is this class required?” Our president and professor Dr. Rebecca Parker responded “no, but it is not optional either.” I thought it was a pretty interesting idea; while you can’t require anyone to take care of something like love, each person in a community impacts the quality of relationships that we all feel when we gather. Love is the business of a church, deep real complex human love.
So how do we show our love for our congregation? I want to talk about this in very practical concrete terms: a dozen basic agreements for congregational relationships. Any time you practice these it is like a box of chocolates or bouquet of flowers for your beloved community.
Our First Valentines gift is to make our expectations explicit when adding new people to a group, or starting a new project, or whenever things seem unclear or confused. What a blessing it is to a newcomer to hear things like “Don’t worry about dressing up for church, we are very casual” or “We all pitch in to wash cups at coffee hour.” Many conflicts begin because of conflicting expectations. Maybe Michael is not being rude and thoughtless, maybe he just as different expectations about what being a church member means. Every new group you meet will have different expectations, so it’s worth making explicit even seemingly obvious things. Some congregations go as far as creating a “Covenant of Right Relations” for their community. This is like getting out your snow shovel and ice melt before the first big storm. It’s hard to create agreements about “how we will work together” while the winds are howling.
The 2nd gift, and possibly the most important is… listen. Listen so that everyone feels heard. It is amazing how frustrated and angry we can get when we don’t feel heard, and how much healing and connection grows when someone really listens.
The Third Valentine, one that is a growing edge for most of us, is direct communication, so I’d like to spend some time with this one. Some of the most painful conflicts in congregations happen when a member has a concern and talks about it with everyone except the person it concerns. A concern between 2 people suddenly involves 30 people, many of whom are now anxious or angry and can’t really do anything to help. This is called triangulation. Imagine if Michael complained to you when Rosie put that worm in his sandwich. Now you are thinking “Geeze that Rosie really is a lout” Michael goes home and makes up with Rosie or gets on with life, but you are left thinking about that lout Rosie. The next time you are at coffee hour together, you are thinking “I don’t even want to talk to Rosie after what she did” even though Michael has lightened his load and moved on.
So as an act of love for our congregations, we speak directly. That means when Michael takes me aside in coffee hour to tell me about Rosie, I try to remember to say “When you talk to Rosie you should mention that.” Or if Michael says at a committee meeting, “Rosie should not be allowed to host coffee hour; who knows what she might put in the sandwiches” I hope I will have the courage to say “Rosie is not here with us today, if we have concerns to bring to her, let’s invite her to our next meeting so we can talk about it together.
Now this can be scary- the thought of speaking directly with someone about a conflict or concern. So if Michael says “no I couldn’t do that” I say “would you like me to come with you when you speak to her?” and if that still doesn’t work I can say “Would you like me to talk to her and tell her your concern?” In such a case we always use names. Let us try never to give anonymous feedback- because “I hear you’ve been putting gross things in people’s sandwiches” does not really help with healing and reconciliation.
Most likely you all have talked about direct communication here over these 200 years together, but it’s easy for the culture to shift; when one person falls off the wagon, most of the rest of us will fall off as well. At the same time it only takes one or two people to start de-triangulating to help everyone climb back on.
Because sometimes we do need to get advice from a friend, or get help troubleshooting a difficult relationship, but when we are acting out of our best self, we return as quickly as possible to direct communication so that our friend doesn’t get triangulated. It’s like the evil magic done by the white witch in Narnia; no one can save the animals she has turned to stone until she is gone. No one can de-triangulate all the people I bring into my concerns about church life except me. So for example if I say to the Committee on Ministry “Gee, I just don’t know how to solve a problem with Rosie, and I’m frustrated. Can you give me some advice?” I will be sure to go back to them later and say “I talked to Rosie this week and I think we are back on track”
The 4th valentine’s gift is “speak the truth with love.” We need to be able to tell one another the truth: In the words of this morning’s story: “Rosie is my friend. When she honest and truly wanted to know if she walked like a kangaroo, I honestly told her.” But the truth is powerful- we need to share it with love. A terse or fiery e-mail dashed off at 2 in the morning can do a lot of harm to feelings and morale, even if the facts in the e-mail are all true. How we say something can have a ripple effect that impacts the whole church system. In church life “how” we say the truth is as important as “what” we say.
The 5th valentine present is good boundaries. Being loving doesn’t mean you can’t have boundaries, only that we express them in a compassionate way. It is important that we have the courage to say “When you made that joke I felt hurt” This is CRUCIAL! If someone is being hurtful or violating boundaries, or not keep their commitments, we as church leaders must speak up. Consider, for example, the clergy sexual abuse that we have heard about on the news. We ask now in retrospect: “Why didn’t anyone say anything? Why didn’t anyone stand up to the abuser?”
These boundaries are important on more subtle levels as well. If Michael sprays cool whip in your sneakers, or doesn’t do the action items he agreed to at the last committee meeting, it’s important to say something in a loving way.
Now of course there are plenty of small transgressions that we can just let go of- no one is perfect. If Michael made punctuation errors in this week’s order of service, it’s probably fine to let that go- they are on their way to the recycling bin anyway. But if I decide let it go, I have to really be able to LET IT GO. When I feel like I must talk to Alvin Alpert about the worm Rosie put in my sandwich, I know I have not really let it go. It’s time to talk to Rosie.
Small congregations are really good at giving the 6th valentine – we all share the work. When you know everyone by name, it’s easier to see plainly that if you don’t wash your coffee cup then Michel will have to. Not everyone can or should serve on the Board or teach Sunday school, but each of us can find a way to help build our community. This also means no one needs to burn themselves out. Burned out volunteers don’t make for a healthy happy community. We have to trust one another that if it’s really important and I just can’t do it, someone will emerge.
Being explicit about what we can and cannot do helps. If you say you can take on a project, and life happens, let folks know so they can respond. Tell your teammates: “we’re under-staffed at work and I need another week to type up those minutes” or “I can’t make that mural about the web of life now that my arthritis has flared up.” Sometimes the occasional e-mail saying “no progress yet on the mural, but it’s on my radar and I’m scheduling it for spring break” can be a relief to our team mates. That also gives them a chance to say “but spring break the UUA is coming to take photos of our new mural for the World magazine, can I give you a hand to get it done before then?”
Valentine #7 is: ask for what you want and need. Be as clear and specific as you can be. “Some of us want more spiritual sermons” is hard to respond to. “I notice you haven’t mentioned any Buddhist or Hindu teachings in the last 2 months, and I miss that” is very concrete. And, if the worship team knows who it is they are making changes for, they can check back in: “I thought of you when I tied my sermon into a passage from the Bhagavad Gita last week, did that help?”
When we are concrete and specific “No one cares about me” becomes “I felt lonely when I was in the hospital and no one from the congregation called or visited.” Now your community has a sense of where they came up short and what they can do to reconnect. The same is true for positive things as well. YOU know Michael makes the most amazing scones for coffee hour, but I bet Michael would like to hear it. It probably would lead to more delicious scones in the long term as well.
Valentine #8 is a hard one. It is: staying at the table. I know that sometimes congregations have tough conflicts, and it can be uncomfortable to come to church during such a conflict. Says Rev. Steve Bierly “Show others in the small church that ‘We’re in this thing together and I’ll stick it out as long as you all will’ and in this way conflict actually helps draw congregations closer together. [Bierly p. 56] Often we walk away from things that are hard. If coffee is bad at the coffee shop, I can just find another coffee shop. But I believe that church should be different. I believe in second chances for our beloved community, and third chances.
We know, however, that sometimes reconciliation is not possible, but still we can take care of how we leave and how we let others go. Says another church expert Arthur Boers: “Sometimes believers have to say: “I disagree with you sharply... But for the … well-being of the church, why do you not go your way and I go mine and …. perhaps someday we can reconnect in a healthier way.” [Boers, p. 90] If someone in our congregation resigns, we make sure someone in leadership reaches out and says goodbye, and asks about their experience so that they feel heard and so that we can grow in wisdom about our community.
The 9th valentine is simple but important. Use I statements. How different does it sound to hear “You are a jerk” than to hear “I am really angry.” When I say “I,” I get to say my truth, and I don’t have to worry about hurting someone else. Also, when people know you are not attacking or blaming them, they are more likely to keep listening. Now you have to be careful with this “I am really angry that you are being a jerk” doesn’t count. The usual formulation is “when you didn’t send out the minutes I felt frustrated.” or “ I really needed those minutes to prepare for tonight’s meeting, and when I didn’t get them I felt frustrated.” How do you know if you formulated it correctly? If you feel centered in yourself afterward you got it right.
This goes with the 10th; no insulting or name-calling. This is a very clear guideline. There is no case where a person can cross this line and still be in right relationship. Here is where Judith Viorst and I part ways. If I call Michael a Banana Head in the heat of an argument, I owe Michael an apology. And hopefully Michael can say back, “I forgive you, and I’m sorry I called you a monkey face.”
The 11th Valentine gift is to pay attention to process and to feelings. One committee I served on adopted an informal process monitor to notice and speak up when the tone was getting adversarial, when folks seemed discouraged, or when someone had violated one of our agreements about how we would treat one another. Almost as soon as she took on this role, other committee members would say “here’s something for the energy monitor” because everyone was becoming conscious of how we were with each other, watching over the love. Any member should be able to stop a class, a board meeting or congregational meeting and ask “where is the love right now?” and if the answer is not clear, then that is arguably the most important work that group can do together.
According to Peter Steinke, who is a consultant on church health for the Alban Institute “Mood, tone, spirit of church is very important.” As the hymn says “Love is the spirit of this church.” This is something you can feel if it’s present, and its absence can be felt as well. This is why we need to celebrate and laugh together. Says Steinke: “humor and church growth are directly related”. He encourages us to feed each other, to nourish each other. This church is very good about feeding one another, not only with food but in other ways as well. This is what makes community worthwhile, and what gets you through the hard times.
The last Valentine gift is to uphold your agreements ESPECIALLY when you least feel like it. It’s easy to speak the truth with love when all is peaceful and well. It is much harder when your supposed friend has put a worm in your sandwich. But this is when it really counts. If you act with love and compassion, and follow the agreements your community has laid out together during the rough times, the challenges we face together hold the possibility of bringing us closer together and strengthening our community.
If our goal is building and sustaining the beloved community here at UUCAS, each of us is responsible for watching over the love, each of us plays a role in the quality of relationship that binds us together. What better occasion than Valentine’s day to give this gift to one another.
Sources:
Judith Biorst “Rosie and Michael” (New York:Atheneum, 1983).
Steve R. Bierly “Help for the Small-Chrurch Pastor” (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995).
Peter L. Steinke “Healthy Congregations: A Systems Approach” (New York: Alban Institute, 1996).
David Augsburger “Never Call them Jerks” (New York: Alban Institute, 1999).
So how do we show our love for our congregation? I want to talk about this in very practical concrete terms: a dozen basic agreements for congregational relationships. Any time you practice these it is like a box of chocolates or bouquet of flowers for your beloved community.
Our First Valentines gift is to make our expectations explicit when adding new people to a group, or starting a new project, or whenever things seem unclear or confused. What a blessing it is to a newcomer to hear things like “Don’t worry about dressing up for church, we are very casual” or “We all pitch in to wash cups at coffee hour.” Many conflicts begin because of conflicting expectations. Maybe Michael is not being rude and thoughtless, maybe he just as different expectations about what being a church member means. Every new group you meet will have different expectations, so it’s worth making explicit even seemingly obvious things. Some congregations go as far as creating a “Covenant of Right Relations” for their community. This is like getting out your snow shovel and ice melt before the first big storm. It’s hard to create agreements about “how we will work together” while the winds are howling.
The 2nd gift, and possibly the most important is… listen. Listen so that everyone feels heard. It is amazing how frustrated and angry we can get when we don’t feel heard, and how much healing and connection grows when someone really listens.
The Third Valentine, one that is a growing edge for most of us, is direct communication, so I’d like to spend some time with this one. Some of the most painful conflicts in congregations happen when a member has a concern and talks about it with everyone except the person it concerns. A concern between 2 people suddenly involves 30 people, many of whom are now anxious or angry and can’t really do anything to help. This is called triangulation. Imagine if Michael complained to you when Rosie put that worm in his sandwich. Now you are thinking “Geeze that Rosie really is a lout” Michael goes home and makes up with Rosie or gets on with life, but you are left thinking about that lout Rosie. The next time you are at coffee hour together, you are thinking “I don’t even want to talk to Rosie after what she did” even though Michael has lightened his load and moved on.
So as an act of love for our congregations, we speak directly. That means when Michael takes me aside in coffee hour to tell me about Rosie, I try to remember to say “When you talk to Rosie you should mention that.” Or if Michael says at a committee meeting, “Rosie should not be allowed to host coffee hour; who knows what she might put in the sandwiches” I hope I will have the courage to say “Rosie is not here with us today, if we have concerns to bring to her, let’s invite her to our next meeting so we can talk about it together.
Now this can be scary- the thought of speaking directly with someone about a conflict or concern. So if Michael says “no I couldn’t do that” I say “would you like me to come with you when you speak to her?” and if that still doesn’t work I can say “Would you like me to talk to her and tell her your concern?” In such a case we always use names. Let us try never to give anonymous feedback- because “I hear you’ve been putting gross things in people’s sandwiches” does not really help with healing and reconciliation.
Most likely you all have talked about direct communication here over these 200 years together, but it’s easy for the culture to shift; when one person falls off the wagon, most of the rest of us will fall off as well. At the same time it only takes one or two people to start de-triangulating to help everyone climb back on.
Because sometimes we do need to get advice from a friend, or get help troubleshooting a difficult relationship, but when we are acting out of our best self, we return as quickly as possible to direct communication so that our friend doesn’t get triangulated. It’s like the evil magic done by the white witch in Narnia; no one can save the animals she has turned to stone until she is gone. No one can de-triangulate all the people I bring into my concerns about church life except me. So for example if I say to the Committee on Ministry “Gee, I just don’t know how to solve a problem with Rosie, and I’m frustrated. Can you give me some advice?” I will be sure to go back to them later and say “I talked to Rosie this week and I think we are back on track”
The 4th valentine’s gift is “speak the truth with love.” We need to be able to tell one another the truth: In the words of this morning’s story: “Rosie is my friend. When she honest and truly wanted to know if she walked like a kangaroo, I honestly told her.” But the truth is powerful- we need to share it with love. A terse or fiery e-mail dashed off at 2 in the morning can do a lot of harm to feelings and morale, even if the facts in the e-mail are all true. How we say something can have a ripple effect that impacts the whole church system. In church life “how” we say the truth is as important as “what” we say.
The 5th valentine present is good boundaries. Being loving doesn’t mean you can’t have boundaries, only that we express them in a compassionate way. It is important that we have the courage to say “When you made that joke I felt hurt” This is CRUCIAL! If someone is being hurtful or violating boundaries, or not keep their commitments, we as church leaders must speak up. Consider, for example, the clergy sexual abuse that we have heard about on the news. We ask now in retrospect: “Why didn’t anyone say anything? Why didn’t anyone stand up to the abuser?”
These boundaries are important on more subtle levels as well. If Michael sprays cool whip in your sneakers, or doesn’t do the action items he agreed to at the last committee meeting, it’s important to say something in a loving way.
Now of course there are plenty of small transgressions that we can just let go of- no one is perfect. If Michael made punctuation errors in this week’s order of service, it’s probably fine to let that go- they are on their way to the recycling bin anyway. But if I decide let it go, I have to really be able to LET IT GO. When I feel like I must talk to Alvin Alpert about the worm Rosie put in my sandwich, I know I have not really let it go. It’s time to talk to Rosie.
Small congregations are really good at giving the 6th valentine – we all share the work. When you know everyone by name, it’s easier to see plainly that if you don’t wash your coffee cup then Michel will have to. Not everyone can or should serve on the Board or teach Sunday school, but each of us can find a way to help build our community. This also means no one needs to burn themselves out. Burned out volunteers don’t make for a healthy happy community. We have to trust one another that if it’s really important and I just can’t do it, someone will emerge.
Being explicit about what we can and cannot do helps. If you say you can take on a project, and life happens, let folks know so they can respond. Tell your teammates: “we’re under-staffed at work and I need another week to type up those minutes” or “I can’t make that mural about the web of life now that my arthritis has flared up.” Sometimes the occasional e-mail saying “no progress yet on the mural, but it’s on my radar and I’m scheduling it for spring break” can be a relief to our team mates. That also gives them a chance to say “but spring break the UUA is coming to take photos of our new mural for the World magazine, can I give you a hand to get it done before then?”
Valentine #7 is: ask for what you want and need. Be as clear and specific as you can be. “Some of us want more spiritual sermons” is hard to respond to. “I notice you haven’t mentioned any Buddhist or Hindu teachings in the last 2 months, and I miss that” is very concrete. And, if the worship team knows who it is they are making changes for, they can check back in: “I thought of you when I tied my sermon into a passage from the Bhagavad Gita last week, did that help?”
When we are concrete and specific “No one cares about me” becomes “I felt lonely when I was in the hospital and no one from the congregation called or visited.” Now your community has a sense of where they came up short and what they can do to reconnect. The same is true for positive things as well. YOU know Michael makes the most amazing scones for coffee hour, but I bet Michael would like to hear it. It probably would lead to more delicious scones in the long term as well.
Valentine #8 is a hard one. It is: staying at the table. I know that sometimes congregations have tough conflicts, and it can be uncomfortable to come to church during such a conflict. Says Rev. Steve Bierly “Show others in the small church that ‘We’re in this thing together and I’ll stick it out as long as you all will’ and in this way conflict actually helps draw congregations closer together. [Bierly p. 56] Often we walk away from things that are hard. If coffee is bad at the coffee shop, I can just find another coffee shop. But I believe that church should be different. I believe in second chances for our beloved community, and third chances.
We know, however, that sometimes reconciliation is not possible, but still we can take care of how we leave and how we let others go. Says another church expert Arthur Boers: “Sometimes believers have to say: “I disagree with you sharply... But for the … well-being of the church, why do you not go your way and I go mine and …. perhaps someday we can reconnect in a healthier way.” [Boers, p. 90] If someone in our congregation resigns, we make sure someone in leadership reaches out and says goodbye, and asks about their experience so that they feel heard and so that we can grow in wisdom about our community.
The 9th valentine is simple but important. Use I statements. How different does it sound to hear “You are a jerk” than to hear “I am really angry.” When I say “I,” I get to say my truth, and I don’t have to worry about hurting someone else. Also, when people know you are not attacking or blaming them, they are more likely to keep listening. Now you have to be careful with this “I am really angry that you are being a jerk” doesn’t count. The usual formulation is “when you didn’t send out the minutes I felt frustrated.” or “ I really needed those minutes to prepare for tonight’s meeting, and when I didn’t get them I felt frustrated.” How do you know if you formulated it correctly? If you feel centered in yourself afterward you got it right.
This goes with the 10th; no insulting or name-calling. This is a very clear guideline. There is no case where a person can cross this line and still be in right relationship. Here is where Judith Viorst and I part ways. If I call Michael a Banana Head in the heat of an argument, I owe Michael an apology. And hopefully Michael can say back, “I forgive you, and I’m sorry I called you a monkey face.”
The 11th Valentine gift is to pay attention to process and to feelings. One committee I served on adopted an informal process monitor to notice and speak up when the tone was getting adversarial, when folks seemed discouraged, or when someone had violated one of our agreements about how we would treat one another. Almost as soon as she took on this role, other committee members would say “here’s something for the energy monitor” because everyone was becoming conscious of how we were with each other, watching over the love. Any member should be able to stop a class, a board meeting or congregational meeting and ask “where is the love right now?” and if the answer is not clear, then that is arguably the most important work that group can do together.
According to Peter Steinke, who is a consultant on church health for the Alban Institute “Mood, tone, spirit of church is very important.” As the hymn says “Love is the spirit of this church.” This is something you can feel if it’s present, and its absence can be felt as well. This is why we need to celebrate and laugh together. Says Steinke: “humor and church growth are directly related”. He encourages us to feed each other, to nourish each other. This church is very good about feeding one another, not only with food but in other ways as well. This is what makes community worthwhile, and what gets you through the hard times.
The last Valentine gift is to uphold your agreements ESPECIALLY when you least feel like it. It’s easy to speak the truth with love when all is peaceful and well. It is much harder when your supposed friend has put a worm in your sandwich. But this is when it really counts. If you act with love and compassion, and follow the agreements your community has laid out together during the rough times, the challenges we face together hold the possibility of bringing us closer together and strengthening our community.
If our goal is building and sustaining the beloved community here at UUCAS, each of us is responsible for watching over the love, each of us plays a role in the quality of relationship that binds us together. What better occasion than Valentine’s day to give this gift to one another.
Sources:
Judith Biorst “Rosie and Michael” (New York:Atheneum, 1983).
Steve R. Bierly “Help for the Small-Chrurch Pastor” (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995).
Peter L. Steinke “Healthy Congregations: A Systems Approach” (New York: Alban Institute, 1996).
David Augsburger “Never Call them Jerks” (New York: Alban Institute, 1999).
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