"And Liberty, Justice and Marriage for All"
"And Liberty, Justice and Marriage for All"As a Unitarian Universalist minister, I have spent much of my career in active opposition to government, while at the same time appreciating a government that is founded on one’s right to be opposed to it. That is why I have never been completely comfortable acting as an agent of the state. I do this in one and only one area: when performing a marriage.
I have long thought that it ought to be un-constitutional for the state to decide who can officiate a marriage or get married. I have also thought that this idea, like so many I hold, would never, ever become widely accepted. On this topic, I may be wrong. Recently I have heard several scholars, politicians and advocates across the political spectrum, say it was time for the state to divest of its power over marriage.
The argument goes like this. The state does have a compelling interest in seeing that contracts between people are fulfilled, that children are protected, and so on. However, "marriage" is a religious rite or sacrament. The state should no more decide who can perform or take part in this rite than it decides who can take communion, be bar mitzvah'ed or lead our May Pole Dance.
I suggest rather that two people who wish to enter into a civil union may do so, provided they have the ability to enter into any kind of contract. People, who then wish to participate in the ritual of marriage, may do so, according to their religion or beliefs. I can perform same sex weddings. If some other clergy chooses not to, fine. I suspect many heterosexual couples would choose only the civil union, just as many today have civil marriages at a courthouse.
Could civil unions be expanded to more than two people? I don’t know contract law well enough to comment, but I suspect there would be a way. Why not?
Many say that same sex marriage is now just a matter of time. Yet justice delayed is justice denied. While waiting for the younger generation's values to become dominant, or waiting for my logical and constitutional reform to be enacted, the New Jersey legislation is seemingly close to making same sex marriages legal. As I become aware of ways we can support this legislation, I will share them.
This threatens to become one of those issues where an intransigent few obstruct social just for the many; when the people have moved on while the law lags behind. Anything we can do as a congregation or as individuals to further this cause, we should do.
-June 2009
Change Is HardSomebody once said that Ralph Waldo Emerson was not an iconoclast, despite his many new beliefs, concepts and approaches to spirituality and religion. After, all, "iconoclast" literally means "breaking icons." Emerson did not break icons; he gently removed them from the altar.
This remains a good model for Unitarian Universalism. I have tried, if not always succeeded, not to do violence to the many icons of orthodoxy. Rather I have sought to find wider meaning in them, and, on occasion, to set new icons next to them. In the case of the many and long-suppressed images of female deities, I have tried to aid in the effort to restore them.
There is no idea that has taken on more iconic meaning of late than "change." It is the very nature of change that often separates ideologies. Reduced to the lowest common denominator, it seems to me that conservatives simply think that change is bad, and liberals think it is good. In either case, to use the current commentator's cliche, one thing is for certain: change is hard.
Another important aspect of change is how it is facilitated, especially when change of a very high order is hoped for. The traditional way of bringing on such change is war. The bigger the war, the bigger the change. Various fundamentalists believe that monumental change, and therefore monumental war, loom just over the horizon. One now hears that, according to some ancient calendar or another, the world will come to an end in 2012. While throughout history others have set dates and, obviously, been proven wrong, eventually somebody will get it right, though I personally believe that the human species will have long since evolved into something else before our planet is ready to cash in.
In the meantime, I intend to pursue the idea that profound change requires neither war nor devastating destruction. I continue to believe, with just enough evidence to keep me believing it, that humans will somehow find the common will to enable the planet and all life forms upon it, to live and continue to sustain life.
Passover, Easter, May Day, Opening Day and just plain Spring certainly help me with this belief. So does being part of a community of people who see the possibilities within us, not just the liabilities.
Change we can believe in. If this were only a political slogan to replace one group of politicians with another, it would not be worth repeating five minutes after election day. For me it means continuing to work for social justice, equality and ecological sustainability, knowing that this is not working for three things but for one thing. One very big thing.
--April 2009
Understanding Root ShockSome of us may be familiar with Dr. Mindy Fullilove's book Root Shock. Its subtitle is "How tearing up city neighborhoods hurts America, and what we can do about it." It draws upon examples from around the country, including many from Essex County. As a part of the first class that attended desegregated public schools in Orange, she has experienced the best and worst of the urban experience.
From 7-8:30 PM on the Mondays of April, beginning April 6, I will be leading a book discussion of Root Shock in the Minister's Study. I have also offered this through the University of Orange, so we may also have folks from the larger community.
The book is available at Amazon.com. Please read the first two chapters before the first meeting.
For decades there has been some thought, both within and without our congregation, that staying in Orange has been a foolish, or quixotic thing to do. Yet, a fool persisting in his folly becomes wise. As one of the few, if not the only, Unitarian Universalist congregations in New Jersey within a truly urban environment, we have the opportunity to contribute not only to the revitalization of Orange, but also to helping Unitarian Universalism better understand and respond to its own avowed mission of social justice. Having some of us come together and learn from Mindy's fine work, and talk together about what we can do about it, will be a good step toward a wider and more skilful ministry, both for our congregation and our movement.
--March 2009
Spring TrainingAh, the news that spring training has begun! While we northeasterners shiver, deep within the bowels of winter, we are warmed with the knowledge that our baseball teams have begun to pull themselves together once again. Yes, we are assured, winter does not endure. Persephone will again dance upon the land.
I remember my father and his brothers discussing at this time of year, what seeds would be planted in the fields they cultivated in common, a mutual inheritance. One year, corn; another, soybeans. I always rooted for corn, since its tall stalks made meandering through the fields a far more mysterious adventure than the beans, which never made it above one's knees.
I was taught at an early age it would not be wise to plant corn every year. And so it is with our lives. I never thought of Groundhog Day as a religious holiday until I saw the movie of that name, when I realized that the little animal's shadow was all we had left of the glorious Imbolc pagan holiday, also called St. Brigit's feast day.
As the movie showed so well, if you want to get different results: do things differently! You want something more nourishing to your soil this year than corn, then you must not plant corn! So obvious, yet so hard to apply in our own lives, and in the lives of our organizations, political, social, or, of course, religious.
We are just beginning a process of looking at membership issues in our congregation: how we can better serve our members and reach out to others. Unlike Bill Murray's character in the movie, we are not afforded endless opportunities. Rather like our baseball teams, this is an excellent season to plan, inventory our resources, and encourage each other. Come the fall, again like the teams and my family's fields, we will see how wise the planting, how faithful the cultivation, how bountiful the harvest.
--February 2009
Was a Unitarian Universalist Elected President?Last year I wrote "Could a Unitarian Universalist be Elected President?" I concluded in the negative, as I assumed the electorate would insist on an orthodox believer, if not a fundamentalist. As Mark Twain said more or less: "It's not what you don’t know; it's what you know for certain that turns out to be mistaken."
If Unitarian Universalists are going to claim Thomas Jefferson, Ted Sorenson and Kurt Vonnegut, they might as well claim Barack Obama. In the first chapter of Dreams from My Father he writes about his grandfather in 1960:
In the back of his mind he had come to consider himself as something of a freethinker – bohemian, even. He wrote poetry on occasion, listened to jazz, counted a number of Jews he'd met in the furniture business as his closest friends. In his only skirmish into organized religion, he would enroll the family in the local Unitarian Universalist congregation; he liked the idea that Unitarians drew on the scriptures of all the great religions.
He goes on to say that his grandmother, who died the day before the election, was more skeptical and stubbornly independent, insisting on thinking everything through for herself. She sounds like she would have been more at home as a Universalist!
In any case, his grandparents were among the very few who would have accepted, even in Hawaii, their daughter dating, and having a son with, a very Black African man. In years to come they were on several occasions Obama's primary care givers. One can safely surmise that the local congregation was one of the few supportive institutions for them, even if they never became more than marginal members.
By the longstanding rules of the South, one drop of blood makes you Black. Then by the same rule I claim Barack Obama as a Unitarian Universalist! That he later chose membership in a liberal Christian church with a strong social justice ministry is exactly what we encourage our children to do: develop their own minds and spirits, and channel them into institutions that make a difference.
That's what Unitarian Universalist churches do: support people like Obama’s grandparents: people who seek to be progressive, lead lives and raise children with expansive spirits and compassion minds. And that’s why it is so important for every UU church to be welcoming and let their local community know where they are and what they stand for. You never know when some freethinking bohemian poet might need our help raising a grandchild!
--January 2009
Hope and the HolidayI've been giving Christmas sermons and writing holiday newsletters for over thirty years. Of course, "hope" has often been the theme. For those among us who relate well to our Judeo-Christian traditions, clearly hope is a primary part of the holiday. For those given to more secular expressions, the coming of the light is a great metaphor of the longing for justice and equality. The pagans have a big party and invite everyone!
Never in my life have I seen this season so linked with real peoples' real day-to-day hopes for their own future. This presidential election has released years, generations, of hope from across all lines of difference. This is all the more reason that those of us given to reflection and examination keep looking deeply at what is happening and what lies ahead.
The hope I have held for the world during my life heretofore has arisen from the ashes of disappointment and loss. I have hoped as an element of my personal belief, not from any expectation I have for the world. Hope was abstract, distant, an intellectualized concept to be contemplated, or a fragile emotion to be nurtured, not a reality to be experienced.
Now everything has changed. Or has it? What has changed is the opportunities that appear before us. What has not changed is how we need to respond to events. We ought to face our future using a blend of reason and revelation, just as those first Unitarian heretics did in New England during the early years of our nation.
Reason will help us direct our energies in useful ways. Revelation will keep the fires of those energies burning. Our approach to religion not only gives us the means, but in fact requires of us, to be at the same time both faithful and thoughtful. This year brings a different approach to the holidays. The rituals will be the same, the decorations just as shiny, but the hope is a lot more down to earth.
--December 2008
Worship AssociatesFollowing worship on Sunday, November 9, I will lead a meeting for those interested in becoming Worship Associates. This is a fairly new concept within Unitarian Universalism, and, as with many such concepts, we are free to adapt whatever process fits our congregation.
A Worship Associate is a member who is well-versed in creating and conducting worship, from setting up altars and chalices, developing orders of worship, finding readings and music, to creating and delivering sermons.
Many of our members have experience in these areas, but there has been no systematic way that we can invite people to acquire them, nor support and guide their efforts. Worship Associates attempts to change this: creating a safe place to learn worship arts.
This is a natural component of shared ministry. Worship is still the center of the UU experience, so a congregation cannot truly share ministry if they do not share worship, including the pulpit.
At this first meeting we will outline the basic elements of worship, and how they are put together in a cohesive whole to best serve our worship needs. Though there are as many ways to create worship as there are preachers, I will share some of what has proven useful to me. I will also be available to coach anyone who wishes to develop these skills.
Unitarian Universalist congregations contain so many interesting stories, experiences and points of view. Worship Associates attempts to bring this richness to worship in new and exciting ways.
--November 2008
How Amazing shall be Our Grace?In my last sermon, I spoke briefly about John Newton, who wrote 'Amazing Grace.' He was a slave trader. I have heard it said that he had a vision, and then turned his ship around and quit trading slaves. He did not. He did survive a terrible storm at sea, and, determining that he was saved only by the grace of God, thereafter decided to treat his slaves much more kindly. But he continued in the trade while advocating better treatment for slaves. He and others like him, though to us it seems they moved with glacial slowness, did enable the next generation to take further steps, leading to the abolition of slavery in England in 1833.
How could he continue in the slave trade? It seems horrifying that a person could take such tepid action against such monumental injustice. What grace history grants the present! It enables us to see clearly what those at the time could not. It allows us to think well about ourselves. Surely, if we had lived then, we would have been bolder.
But we live today. The demands of justice are as great as at any other point in history. How will history judge us?
There is an election coming. While I have serious questions with the way the United States chooses its candidates, conducts its elections and governs, I believe that who wins elections matters. If our Unitarian Universalist faith means anything, it means that every one of us has time to give and work to do. Now.
--October 2008
Showing UpA quick web search finds that there is some disagreement as to the exact percentage of life that is "showing up." It seems to vary between a simple majority and as much as 90 percent. One thing is for certain: Woody Allen is among those who believe it is a very large percentage.
Eschewing the question for now as to what exactly is that ten or twenty percent of life that is not showing up, let us move ahead to what showing up is, its relationship to life, and why we ought to do it.
Showing up requires not pre-judging your performance or anyone else's. Expecting yourself to be at your best before showing up is a prescription for either judging yourself too easily, or simply not showing up very often. None of us is at our best very often, or it wouldn't be our best. What we show up with most of the time, is not our best, it's our ordinary. One must accept the reality of our own ordinariness if we are to show up very much at all.
Nobody we meet is at his or her best all the time, either. That doesn't excuse any of us for being wretched on a regular basis, but it does make a good argument for striving toward an agreeable consistency.
All of which is a way of saying what Unitarian Universalists, even ministers, have a difficult time saying: "Come to church."
Toward the end of last spring's worship year, I was asked what could we do to increase church growth. I said, "Come to church." Attend worship regularly. Attend our special events and social gatherings. That is the single most important act that any church member does.
Many of our members show up very frequently, but others of us are less so. Sometimes this is what feels best. Sometimes one would like to attend more, but it just doesn't happen. For a congregation our size, frequent attendance is extremely important.
In only one year as your minister, I have been impressed and touched by many of our worship services and events. They are among the most meaningful and joyous that I have experienced. At least part of what makes them so is that we had a critical mass participating. Any visitors wishing to join us should see us at our best, with as many of us present as possible.
Regardless of how important showing up may be in life, it is essential for a small congregation. I don't claim to have many answers, but I have the answer to "What can I do to help our church grow?" Show up.
September 2008
It's a Long SeasonAs many of you know, I'm a big baseball fan. My team is the Detroit Tigers. It is a way of keeping my mid-western roots nourished without actually having to live there. It is a good symbolic exercise. Life in that rustbelt, automobile graveyard is often disappointing. So is rooting for the Tigers.
In the off-season, the team made several high-profile deals, the sum of which caused no small number of prognosticators to conclude that the MoTown nine would not merely excel, but prevail.
As I write this, the Tigers are in last place. Rooting for the Tigers requires decades of stoic devotion, which, thus far in my lifetime, has yielded exactly two World Series championships, the last in 1984.
Being a Tiger fan is not as woeful as rooting for the Cubs, who have not had a championship in a century, or the Mariners, who have done very little of note in their entire, if limited, existence. It is, however, similar to rooting for liberalism to triumph in politics.
Even when liberalism acquires a few heavy hitters, it seldom results in a winning team.
But it's a long season. There is still time to turn this around, get everybody on the same page, and fulfill the potential everybody saw back before the games began.
I'm not counting on it. I've seen defeat snatched from the jaws of victory too often.
There is, of course, a key difference between baseball and politics.
Baseball really matters.
Politics, on the other hand, is a shadow show, a diversion from the real issues and their solutions.
Fortunately, the Unitarian Universalist Association and its member congregations are not political organizations. They are religious. We are not, in reality, an extension of the left wing of the Democratic Party. We do not bar Republicans from membership. Really, we don't.
Therefore, as the long election season draws out to what shows every sign today of disappointing, even enraging, the vast majority of citizens no matter who is the last candidate standing, it is our calling as Unitarian Universalists to continue to work for peace and justice. Equally important, perhaps more, is our task to provide consolation, and inspire the will to move forward in a world where hopes and dreams are subverted by political processes, which change leaders frequently without changing much about how power is distributed or used.
But remember, every few decades, even the Tigers win it all.
June 2008
A New Citizens for Responsible GovernmentFifty years ago last month the Citizens for Responsible Government succeeded in desegregating the Orange schools. Last year we celebrated this success at the church.
On June 8, from 2-5 PM in the Parish Hall, we will be taking that celebration to the next level. Dr. Mindy Fullilove, who attended one of the desegregated schools, will show a short film she made of the event. We will be inviting various education and cultural leaders of the town, to encourage them to show the film to their people. Kathy Grady will also share the works of the Arts on Cleveland project for this year.
Then we will divide ourselves into small groups to take what Dr. Fullilove calls a "Community Burn Index." Just like human beings, a town that suffers too many burns or cancers will be at risk. Armed with Polaroids and digital camera, the groups will walk various streets of Orange to record the good, the bad and the ugly of our town. We will then re-gathered to report and discuss what we found. Helping in this effort will be Pat Morrissy, Executive Director of HANDS, the redevelopment organization in Orange which has done more than any other group to heal Orange's wounded neighborhoods.
Finally, A new Citizens for Responsible Government will develop an agenda to go forward. Two primary players in the desegregation of the schools, Maggie Thompson, a member of our congregation, and Ben Jones, the first African-American to serve on the Orange Cit Council, have been central to our planning. They are living links between the struggles and successes of fifty years ago and the action that is needed today. Since our congregation has been at the same off-Broadway site for over a century, we are a natural place for such re-vitalization to move forward.
I will prepare fliers for those who choose to take around our neighborhood after church, inviting people to attend. This will literally get us out of our church and into action. For years our congregation has chosen to stay in an urban area, when many other UU churches decided it would be to their advantage to move to what they perceived as greener pastures. Perhaps in moments of doubt or frustration you have wondered if we made a wise decision, or should keep making it. June 8 will show you why.
May 2008
Earthquake or Hairball?In the fall of 1995, I was driving through Marin County, north of San Francisco, listening to a radio call-in pet show. "My cat sometimes acts strange for no reason at all," the caller began, "She will suddenly act very cautious, almost fearful, her back will arch, and she will begin to stir. Then, just as suddenly, she settles down and is fine again."
The expert host replied, "Most animals, and especially cats, are sensitive to various vibrations and sounds that humans don't perceive. In our area, for instance, there are often slight earth tremors that we don't feel, that can be very upsetting to cats. When they feel it, they don't know if a bigger earthquake is coming, or not. They become very agitated for a moment, and when the tremor subsides, they settle down again."
"Or," the expert continued, "it might be just a hairball."
Earthquake or hairball, that is the question.
How often I find myself identifying with that cat. I suddenly get anxious and fearful, from some horrible piece of information, some distant rumbling. I wonder if it is a foreboding of one of those disasters that various later-day Nostradamuses (or is it Nostradamusi?) have been predicting at least since the duck-and-cover 1050's? Soon the rumblings recede, or I am distracted by news of an important baseball trade or celebrity rehabilitation.
Then again, sometimes I find that what is affecting me is not cosmic, but personal, more hairball than earthquake. Today, for instance, my right shoulder hurts. I often misplace my sunglasses and cell phone. My multi-task list tends toward having just one too many items. Taken together, they can form a perfect storm of personal annoyance, that, just for a moment, can seem much more significant that it really is. The moment passes, and I settle down again, like the cat that has succeeded in dealing with his personal issues through creative expectoration.
I don't know if a cat's sensitivity to distant rumblings can actually cause hairballs, but I do believe that humans, with our increasing worldwide inter-connectivity, suffer personally with the shifts and fissures of the world. Whether it is the housing and credit crisis, the possibly of endless war, or melting ice caps, we humans now share with our feline friends the ability to perceive and recoil in response to forces that move mountains continents away.
So, our unsettled anxieties may be caused either from the earthquake of world events, or discomforts far more personal. They may be connected, or not. In any case, it is useful to at least try to make some determination; least we take world events too personally, or blame the world because we can't find our cell phone.
April 2008
From Carolina to KathmanduVirginia Ward was already retired from the U. S. Foreign Service when I arrived as the new minister of the First Universalist Church of Sampson County at Red Hill, in Clinton, North Carolina, in the fall of 1974. She walked with a cane, her frame bent over, her body under attack everywhere from crippling arthritis.
Eastern North Carolina was about the worst place in the world for arthritis, since it was located in the southwest corner of The Great Goshen Swamp. It was great for growing dragonflies the size of robins, bad for arthritis. Red Hill was completely flat, getting its name from the very large clumps of wild rose bushes that appeared from a distance as red hills.
Like a number of church members, Virginia had been born and raised in the Universalist Church, went away to college and career, and retired back home. It made for a congregation far more sophisticated and worldly than the locale would indicate. Virginia, for instance, had spent a number of years in Kathmandu, Nepal, helping local women better care for their families in various ways: teaching nutrition, first aid, and even a little family planning.
I loved visiting her home. Outside, it was a new townhouse in Wilmington. Inside, it was Nepal. It was the first time I had seen a real home decorated with such beautiful, exotic things. It was as though everything she used, even the smallest teaspoon, was a work of art. She was also the first person I met who had meditated, not as a New Age discovery, but as something she had learned in Asia decades ago. Her meditation helped manage her arthritis pain.
One summer, I broke my ankle and returned to worship in the fall wearing a cast. After a few weeks, it came off. I went easy on the leg, of course, while also being impatient to get back to normal. One Sunday, she called me to her after worship.
"Don't limp!" she said, most emphatically. I didn't realize it, but I had fallen into a slight limp, because I found, if I limped a little bit, I could walk a little faster. Virginia saw that I was doing something she must have worked very hard not to do for many years.
"Walk as slowly as you have to walk, but don't limp!" she explained. "If you favor the leg now, it might never heal properly. If you walk slowly but straight, you'll be fine. All it takes is fighting through a little pain now."
Of course she was right. She knew about fighting through pain. Just to leave home and come to church was an act of will.
When I visited Kathmandu in 1996, I did so at least in part because of Virginia. The way she described the land, the people and the culture made it sound wonderful and exotic and she was absolutely right. When I spent a week trekking around base of Anna Purna, I did not limp.
March 2008
"The Neighborhood of Boston"In 1978, I had four whole years of pastoral experience, but was very excited about the opportunity before me. I was to begin as minister of the First Parish Unitarian Church in Scituate, Massachusetts, near Boston, the Mecca of Unitarianism. These old "first parishes" are the historic heart of our movement. Most of them, including Scituate, were founded before the Revolutionary War, becoming Unitarian early in the nineteenth century, when liberal theology was sweeping New England.
The more conservative members didn’t sit still for having their churches taken over by heretics who thought reason had a place at worship, and took their cases to court. The Unitarians won. The judge deciding the case happened to be Unitarian. Fortunately, we know that all Unitarians are fair-minded and impartial, so naturally the case was judged solely on its merits. Basically, the decision said that the orthodox could take their theology with them, but had to leave the church communion silver and deed to the land.
So, in nearly every town square near Boston there is a First Parish Unitarian Church, and a First Trinitarian Congregational Church around the corner. Scituate is no exception.
My wife and I had just arrived. The moving van might still have been in the drive. I was away, on some early pastoral duty. The minister of the Congregational Church visited, and warmly welcomed us. As he left he said, "By the way, your church has our communion silver and we need it returned."
Later that same day, the minister of the UU Church in Plymouth visited. That, of course, is the "mother church," a few yards from Plymouth Rock. He warmly welcomed us and added, as he left, "And if the Congregationalists ask for the silver, don’t give it to them!"
My wife, not having learned the fine points of Unitarian history, asked me, upon my return, what exactly was going on. I explained that there was some disagreement over who really owned the communion silver. "Who has it now?" she asked.
"We do," I responded. "A state court even said it is legally ours, but the Congregationalists disagree. If we gave them the silver it would be admitting that their claims were correct."
"When was the court case?" she wondered.
"1825," I said.
Unitarians were once said to believe in the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, and the Neighborhood of Boston. Of these three, Boston abides.
February 2008
Crossing New BridgesOn Friday, January 18, adults and children from all the schools and many other organizations in Orange will gather at City Hall at 8:30 AM and march to the middle school, in commemoration of the march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Alabama in March of 1965, led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This was the march that, viewed throughout America on the evening news, showed marchers being beaten, and raised national consciousness of the civil rights struggle.
The key to the success of the march was the non-violent response of the marchers. Had they fought back, it would have been reported as just another race riot, police having to quell those troublesome Negroes and Yankee white agitators, who numbered among them several UU ministers.
While Dr. King has been remembered nearly to the point of irrelevancy, his method of non-violence has been lost. There is a cycle of wisdom to the teaching of non-violence to which Unitarianism is central. For Gandhi learned his principles from Emerson and Thoreau, those Transcendentalist New Englanders who were among the first Americans to encounter Buddhism and bring its teachings into their lives.
King learned from Gandhi, but there the teaching has not been brought forward. African American participation in the political process has increased considerably, helping all minorities to sit closer to the tables of power, but it has also given African Americans their share of corrupt politicians, just as all the ethnic groups in America that came before.
Meanwhile, the message of violence is everywhere, as is the message that winning thorough competition is the way to get ahead, with little opportunity to teach the wisdom of cooperation, or what advantage might be found in collective action. While the most fundamental goals of the Civil Rights era seem to have been met, ghettos still exist, with an increasing and evermore disenfranchised underclass, not to mention an immigrant population facing a no-nothing, nativist response a hundred years out of date.
I'm sure Martin Luther King would have vastly preferred that he be forgotten and the principles of non-violence remembered. But that would give each generation of the downtrodden a visible path to justice. Apparently, America would rather honor the memory of a man, and forget what he taught that made him memorable. I’ll be marching January 18, hoping to find new bridges to cross.
January 2008
Santa BobbyWhen I was about seven years old, Christmas was extremely important to me, and Santa Claus the center of that importance. You can imagine my elation when, on Christmas Eve, he came to visit me at my home, outside of Toledo, Ohio.
I heard sleigh bells outside the front door. I knew it was a stranger, because nobody who knew us came to the front door. I heard a deep voice loudly saying, "Ho, ho, ho!" I used my boyish powers of deduction to conclude that it just might be possible that Santa Claus himself was outside my door!
Now, I had seen Santa’s helpers at various local venues: Tiedke’s Department store, where everybody went, or LaSalle’s, which had the best toy department, or even Lampson’s, where the fancy people shopped. I knew these were not the real Santa, merely useful surrogates. But, a home visit? And on Christmas Eve? I hadn’t been that good!
My mom and dad opened the door and it was Santa! How could it be anyone else? Red suit, white trim, white beard, funny hat, bag of toys. It all fit. He was a big guy, too. Bigger than my dad, more than sufficiently round, taller than his department store helpers. I didn’t understand from the literature that Santa could have been a defensive tackle had he so desired.
Then I noticed his boots. There was something ersatz about them. They weren’t boots at all. They were shoes, with black patent leather spats over them, simulating boots. This aroused my suspicion. Hey, I recognized those shoes! They were my cousin, Bobby Berger’s! He was a big guy, just like Santa. And he was a really nice guy, which fit the playing Santa profile. I did not underestimate this, as Bobby was of an age when most guys ignored little kids or were mean to them.
I looked behind the whiskers. It was Bobby! I exclaimed this loudly. Then I didn’t know what to feel.
I first felt duped, because it wasn’t really Santa and for a few minutes I thought it was. Then I felt good, because it was Bobby, who, when I stopped to think about it, was about as good as Santa to be visiting, anyway.
Now, over fifty year later, I feel much more than just good about it. It is a primary memory of loving kindness to children that I will always have with me. Because my kindly cousin Bobby thought enough about me to play Santa and play it extremely well, I have about ten minutes of truly believing the real Santa Claus had come to visit me.
When I heard that Bobby died earlier this year, back in Ohio, after a long illness, my first memory was of his playing Santa. I am uncertain of the characteristics of immortality, but surely creating unsurpassed wonder and joy in a child is one of them.
December 2007
Could a Unitarian Universalist be Elected President?I am a big baseball fan, even following games in spring training. But I don’t think I’d follow them if they began the day after the last game of the season. The prelude to the real thing would be just too long.
Which is why I haven’t been paying much attention to this extended sparring of presidential hopefuls.
I did happen to catch a bit of a Democratic Party "debate" a few weeks ago. They were asking the candidates about their prayer lives! Did anyone else find this a sad commentary on our current civic life? I found this appalling, in far worse taste than asking candidates about their undergarments, which was asked several times when the other Clinton was running.
Worse, every candidate answered using his or her best approximation of piety! Oh, how I longed to hear anyone say, "My attitude and practice regarding prayer is as personal and deeply held as any value I hold. Therefore I will keep it private, which is where it belongs in an American public political forum."
"If elected, I promise to uphold the constitution, which guarantees that no religion shall be held superior to any other, and indeed, there be no religious test for office, and that no citizen shall be held in higher or lower esteem in the eyes of government based on one’s practice, or non-practice, of religion. My administration will return to a traditional American value that has been sadly, tragically missing: tolerance."
Could a Unitarian Universalist be elected President today? Adlai Stevenson received the Democratic nomination twice, of course. Even given the average UU's liberalism, I believe the greater stumbling block would be explaining his or her "religion." What, you haven’t been born again? You believe there is room for many religions, not only in the world, but in the same congregation! You believe atheists and agnostics can be moral? Male and female, gay and straight, are equal? You have no sin, no hell, no damnation? You don’t believe your religion is the one true faith?
You think Mitt Romey has trouble explaining why he doesn’t have three wives, or Rudy Giuliani has trouble explaining why he did have three, just imagine a Unitarian Universalist trying to explain, well, anything. UU doesn’t fit well into a sound bite, current national advertising attempts notwithstanding. With a fair number of the electorate insisting on a president with a child's grasp of salvation, and even the relatively reasonable candidates pandering to them, I don’t think a UU could be elected today. Which is sad for the UUA, and sadder for the USA.
November 2007
"Dancing Baptists"Billy Peterson is a birthright member of the First Universalist Church of Sampson County in Clinton, North Carolina, where I was ordained and served the first four years of my ministry. He has a carefully written letter by his great-grandfather, dating from the 1880’s, resigning his membership in the local Baptist Church.
The issue, it seems, was fiddle playing. That is, the Baptists didn’t like Mr. Peterson to play his fiddle, especially not for dancing. His resignation quotes copiously from the Old Testament about David and Solomon playing something that wasn’t too different from a fiddle, states that the "joyful noises" recommended to be made to the Almighty seems to him rather like fiddle playing. He became a founding member of the Universalist Church. I can attest that the Universalist congregation did indeed rejoice in fiddle playing, guitar playing, banjo picking and various other ways to accompany the many dances they hosted.
Winnifred Chestnutt, who was well into his 90s when I was there, summed it up best. "There wouldn’t be any Universalists around here," he told me, "If the Baptists had just let us dance."
So, sometimes, when people ask me about Universalists, I say that they are "dancing Baptists."
When the Zen master D. T. Suzuki fist visited America, he was asked what was the theology of the Buddhists. He said, "I don’t think Buddhists have what you call theology, as I understand this word."
"Well, what do you have?" he was asked.
"We dance."
It is often said, sometimes even by Unitarian Universalists, that we suffer from a lack of theology. I’ve studied theology. I’ve known theology. From my experience, we are far better served by dancing.
Oct.2007
Bringing an Old War HomeThe teenagers arrested in connection with the murder of three college students in Newark may not have been members of the Salvadoran gang, MS-13, but there is evidence that they were at the very least enamored of them. It has been reported that their MySpace pages were full of admiring gang references, though Newark Mayor Cory Booker has stressed that there is no evidence linking the murders to gang activity. The victims were, however, killed in ritual, gang-like fashion.
MS-13 has its origins in the Salvadoran Civil War. Salvadoran immigrants, coming to Los Angeles in the 1980s, banded together in response to the Mexican and other gangs already at work there. Early gang members had been members of various warring factions in that civil war, in which the United States supported a right wing military government that they had aided in coming to power, against various leftist and Marist rebels. U.S. government policy considered the rebels part of the Communist threat. Therefore, anything to defeat them was justified.
These immigrants, displaced from their nation, were experienced in violence, which tore apart their families and homes. Now, future generations have institutionalized this violence in the form of gang and other criminal activity. And so three young college students die in Newark because of a Latin American civil war twenty years ago.
This isn’t new. Frank and Jesse James, the Younger Brothers, many of the outlaw gangs of the Old West were former Confederate soldiers, or men of their next generation.
We have often heard in recent years that "We have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here." What a lie. There is no "here" as opposed to "there." There is no "us" and "them." There is only one earth and only one humanity. We either support peace everywhere or we support peace nowhere. Which of our children will die in twenty years because of the violence our government is exporting now?
August 27, 2007