When the call came last August, I could not believe what I was hearing. Would I be one of the fifteen ministers speaking to six hundred colleagues next march? The convocation committee for the Unitarian Universalist Ministers' Association thought it would be interesting for me to share a very personal presentation of "What nurtures my faith?" The Convocation 2002, the fifth convocation of Unitarian Universalist ministers since 1997, will provide the opportunity to reflect upon our ministries. In a panic, I called my friend and teammate, Richard Gilbert, and asked: "How can I be interesting for twenty-five minutes, who will care what nourishes my faith?" His reply was something like, "Well, they probably won't care, but you have to do it anyway." So, with encouragement like that, I said "Yes".
These past months I have been writing down the experiences I have had among Unitarian Universalists of all ages. Indeed, it has been 35 years of 'joys, sorrows, fun and frustrations', and sometimes an incident will be a mixture of two or three of those ingredients.
There was the time in the Schenectady church when we were having a terrible morning with a very active seven-year-old boy in the church school. Classes were held in a three-story house across the street from the church. The teachers were desperate, so I took Alan with me and asked him to help me to deliver the snacks and juice. We put crackers on a tray, I took the juice and we headed up to the third floor. On the landing of the second floor stairs, Alan tripped and the crackers flew. We picked them up, took them down to the kitchen, threw them away, refilled the tray and made it to the third floor when Alan spilled them again. We repeated our task for the third time and at the bottom of the first floor steps, as I was about to tell him that I would have to carry everything, Alan said, with all the confidence in the world, "You know, this time I think I should carry the juice!"
Now, that is why I love working with our Unitarian Universalist children - they are most often eager to try again, having been around adults who have faith in them and who are glad to be around them. Really, I salute the parenting I have witnessed in our churches. This past week, here, we have had three memorial services and the adult children of these three individuals, Herb Phillips, Jane Whiting and Sue Stapleton Tkach, all have described remarkable child centered households in which they grew up. It absolutely nurtures my faith to be among such families as they interact with one another. I think the seeds were planted for my intergenerational ministry when I had the privilege, as a child, to spend my summers with three and four generations of people gathered either on Cape Cod with my father's family or in North Hero, Vermont, with my mother's.
I am an off the chart 'E' on the Myers Briggs personality indicator, which means that I am, and always have been, energized by being around people and fascinated with their relationships. It is our relationships in the congregation which so nourish my faith here. It is extremely important to me that we are careful with one another.
I have served, and I have colleagues who are presently serving congregations within which there is an air of tension and rudeness - places where individuality is taken to an extreme and the good of the community is forgotten. Being careful with one another means that, feeling safe here, we can use our energy to move on to creating positive, growing experiences with one another, as well as working to make this a better world for all.
I suppose if I name the one area of my work which is definitely full of joy, sorrow, fun and frustration, but very nourishing, too, it is our church school. Our parents who teach are as dedicated as any with whom I have worked and a favorite source of the many 'fun' stories we tell. Last year, in the 5-year-old class, it came to the time we do our introductory sex education. This is usually about how special and wonderful our bodies are, plus a simple version of the sperm and egg story. But, it couldn't be simple this time because we had children in the class who had come into the world in various ways. The teachers had to explain artificial insemination, adoption and intercourse. They spent a great deal of nervous time getting their lessons ready. Their concluding statement was that the children must remember one main thing: we're all alike in that we all began as babies. Relieved that the session was over, they were amazed to hear: "Oh no," said one precocious five-year-old, "we didn't all begin as babies, we all began as monkeys." As many of you know, I love to hear and pass on these stories. I apologize if you have heard them before.
Another favorite has yet again to do with the 'Being at Home' curriculum for five year olds. A family arrived at the Chicago area church where I was in the 1980s with a concern that the grandparents felt that they were joining a cult. So, I gave them a lot of reading material about us and finally, they reported that the grandparents were relaxing. Well, in that curriculum is a lesson about the birth experience. The children are asked to bring in a sheet and while they lie in the fetal position under it, a teacher reads about how it feels to be in the uterus of your birth mother. By coincidence, of course, our family's five-year-old daughter had just received her postcard asking her to bring her sheet that Sunday. On Saturday evening, the grandparents came to dinner. They asked their granddaughter how she liked her new church school and what she would be doing the next day. "Oh, grandpa," she said, "tomorrow we're going to be born again!"
Another area of fun - probably, frustration, too - is working in a collegial relationship with Dick Gilbert. It is nourishing to have his faith in my work and to return my respect for his.
One of my favorite times is when Dick and I escort our biennial class of twenty or so ninth and tenth graders to Boston. We keep up a constant banter, much to the delight of the kids. The trip two years ago was especially interesting (and produced another great story) when we visited the three Boston churches. I took seven teens to King's Chapel, signed us in and was going down the aisle after the usher when one of the students called out that they were going to sign the visitor's book individually. I was seated in the first box pew and after quite a while, the kids joined me. They were giggling, which was the norm, so I thought nothing of it. When the time for announcements came, the minister said that this indeed was a most unusual Sunday morning. Why, there were visitors from all over the world. There were people from Japan, New Zealand, Brazil...I noticed that my group was slowly disappearing into their seats. Then I 'got it' and whispered that they were all going to be asked to stand to introduce themselves in their native tongues. They lucked out and weren't invited to stand, and I secretly felt so pleased and amused that they could enjoy some harmless fun even in one of our more formal churches. That is a gift we Unitarian Universalists have - well, most of the time - humor.
A couple joined, here, several years ago, because when I was preaching about matters of our diets, Ed and the choir had included a piece of music which centered around belching! The couple said that if a burp was allowed in the service, this was the place for them!! I can't say that I am nurtured by the sorrows we experience together...the deaths, the cancer, the divorces, the misuse of drugs, the wars, the loss of jobs, the moving away, the strong differences of opinion; but my faith is enriched by being with you during these very hard times.
A colleague, Richard Venus, writes: "What is it that we do, really? I mean, who do we think we are? What do we do that makes us ministers? We read, meet, flush, talk, sing, 'aerobicize', fight, dance, mow the grass, find partners, eat lunch, pray, make love, think, play, ask questions, marry, bury, are puzzled, get up early, divorce. We write, take risks, get up late, paint, jog, cajole, buy, spend, save. Who are we? Sometimes we are more than what we would be by ourselves. Sometimes we reach into our deepest selves and speak from the heart. Sometimes we hold a hand, or stand beside. We cry with, we laugh with, we mourn with, we speak with, we listen with, we argue with, we wonder with. We are the hand holders, the side-by-siders. We are the do-withers, the be-withers, the there-withers, the take time-withers. That is what we are. This is what we do. Really." And, none of us forgets that it is you all who pay us to be 'be-withers'.
So that you don't think ministry is boring, there have been at least two times when I really did not know how to 'be-with.' - both times in other churches. One Saturday morning, a husband had a gun and was on cocaine - he, his wife, and I were alone in the church building when, luckily, he decided to leave.
The other happening was in Chicago when a prominent brain surgeon - member of the church - attempted to murder his wife and two children. She and I worked for weeks to be sure he would not be released from a mental hospital to come for them again. But power is powerful and he was released and she ran, with the two little ones, never to be heard from again. She had told me that she would not even be able to return to her parents' home because he would look for her there. This is her menorah, which she left for me at the church before she disappeared. I think of Sue every year, at this time.
You, in Rochester, have not been quite so exciting and I thank you!! Dick Gilbert and I whine a lot, about all our night meetings, about how long it takes to get things done around here and our joke is that when we get well, we will leave the ministry. But we're not well, we basically love it, and we will miss doing it together. I feel blessed to be with this congregation and trust that we will move gracefully through the work we have to do together, as the Gilberts move on to their well-deserved next endeavors.
When the children process in, in a moment, please remember that if it weren't for all of you, new and long-time friends and members alike, the children's parents wouldn't be sharing them with us. As you will see, they are a delight and we are most fortunate that their families are so involved here. We Unitarian Universalists are an amazing group of people and now I want to close with two more stories about us, here.
Each year, we have an animal blessing service on Memorial Day weekend. A visitor arrived on one of those few times when it was raining and all the children, adults and their cats, dogs, spiders, hamsters, guinea pigs, chickens, bunnies, goldfish, and rats were standing in the lobby waiting to process into the service. On the back of her order of service, she wrote and we later read, "Thank you, this is a lovely building and you seem like such nice people, but, even though I had heard that you were unusual, I had no idea!"
Finally, and this is the frustration about getting things done through our system of committees (bah humbug, democracy)....anyway, most of last winter, there were spotlights on our new sign, but there was no lettering because the letters needed to be redone. So, as you approached the building on Winton Road, you saw a blank sign being high-lighted. During the winter new member orientations, a young man asked if he could see me after the session. Then he whispered that he thought he was beginning to understand us a little. He said he had been puzzling about our theology, about why a church would shine a spot light on a blank sign? Before I had a chance to explain, he declared that he had figured it out - we only asked questions, there were no answers.
Amen and blessed be!
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