There’s a rumor of a blizzard across the lower 48, hammering New York City, with cars crashing, police overwhelmed. Up here in Fairbanks, it’s “March” already. Snow-wise. With temps in the thirties and forties the last two days, strong undeniable sunshine, and incredible skiing.
Marin, Annika, Teo and I met up with two mom friends and their kids on Wednesday at Birch Hill. Cooper, John and Teo were on skis. Moms Paula and Nina and I held their hands or called them back, skiing alongside. Paula was also pulling Quinn in a little sled. The sun was warm and lovely after the long dark cold winter. After a half hour, I switched out with Marin, rocking and consoling Annika, while she took the Matteo watch. Out in the world! It felt like a resurrection.
Speaking of resurrection. I’ve been working on an Easter Sunday talk for our local UU Fellowship. I was thinking of doing a straight “In Lieu of Resurrection” topic, which would be about how the friends of Jesus first experienced his death – as death, loss and oppression (by the brutish Roman invaders), and subsequently began to find the courage to realize that his life didn’t disappear with his death. His vision, his kindness, his community, and his story could continue. But only if people – they themselves – refused to cower from the challenges he confronted.
So how can that happen for us, lacking the deceptive “reward” of an afterlife? That would have been the heart of the Sunday “talk,” and the challenge would have been to address where we in our Fellowship find ourselves in the face of “brutish invaders” such as fear-of-terrorism, consuming militarism, anti-immigrant racism, runaway corporate interests, blind consumerism – lots of life-denying challenges. Where is our “resurrection,” as UU’s? Can we learn anything from the metaphors, rituals, and narratives of Christians facing the same “death-dealing?”
When I went to the Religious Exploration meeting on Tuesday, we started talking about making this topic into an intergenerational service. I began to think about it, and realized that the Jewish Passover story, the Christian Easter story, all benefit from the earlier Pagan everlasting-Spring story, not to mention the Buddhist story about discovering and embracing freedom from suffering. Hm.
The Chalice Circle questions for the coming week are about this issue – how we as individuals find resources for transformation. We have talked about our own biographies, our religious stories, the Unitarian story, and how we fit into the Fellowship itself. Now, what do we have to offer? One of the questions goes: “Are there books, authors, poets, friends, teachers, singers, radio stations, plays, communities, times of the year, places in Fairbanks, drives, walks, songs, prayers, memories, or any other "midwives" to the birth, within you, of your healthy, strong and vibrant spirit, "reliable guides" which can bring you to a sense of being deeply connected, exhilarated, at peace with yourself?”
Well, I was feeling pretty bad, personally, about this line of questioning, swirling through my post-Annika life. There was less sleep, no writing, a new exciting job with the UU’s, planning a trip to Tacoma for a UU conference next week, family visiting our little Pepita, changes, distranctions, fun and forgetting. I was going to add, “no exercise,” but we’ve been out on the trails two of the last two days.
And that’s the thing.
After skiing came, surprisingly, writing. A blog entry. After writing came a new sense of self, a confidence. Similar to answered prayer, but different. Interesting how personal this issue of “getting spiritually lost” and “recentering” has been for me the past months, not to mention the last 40 years!
Showing posts with label UUFF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UUFF. Show all posts
Friday, February 22, 2008
Monday, February 4, 2008
Contractions, Expansions
We’re sitting around clocking the time between contractions.
Marin’s found a “cat/ cow” yoga position which marshals the pain, and I’m learning how to press down with my weight on my hands low on her back/ pelvis that helps.
Marisa is here, Marin’s sister who came in from LA on Saturday night, and Matteo is basking in the energy of a new adult to cut snowflakes out with,
Marin was all awake when I got up around 6 this morning, which isn’t unusual, as she hasn’t been sleeping well for a month. But this time when I came upstairs, she had more to relate. The Braxton-Hicks contractions were pretty regular, for most of the night, ten, twelve minutes between. Eeka.
So we’ve been doing at-home preparations, packing hospital bags, digging out infant clothes from Matteo’s old stash. I’ve been making bread, a couple loaves, washing dishes, picking up. Turning up the heat on the water heater so Marin can stay warm in the bathtub. Turning up the heat in the house so she can shed a layer. Sending out a prep sheet (late) to my co-leader Rebecca for next week’s Chalice Circle, to hand out tonight.
Marin apparently re-delegated all the work she was expecting to be able today to finish up herself. She hooked up her computer, sent notes, and sent it out. All done this morning before I got up.
Plus, it’s minus 38 this morning at the airport, minus 35 here. But that means the sun is out, it’s a really pretty day.
It’s been a busy week of finishing up for Marin. And I’ve been reading and writing on a talk I gave at the UU Fellowship Sunday called “Reaching Out after Shutting Down.” It was about being “wounded” by participation in a religious community, how to talk about that, and how to “differentiate” as individuals and as a community. “Differentiating,” meaning, taking a stand on who you are, while remaining in committed contact with others, resolving the paradox of needing to be separate and needing to be connected, both as individuals and as a community.
What made it really interesting was a reaction Bev had in the Chalice Circle last Monday night, to the implication that Unitarian Universalism was a version of Christianity.
She brought it up on Sunday morning as we all gathered, at the Chalice Lighting, wanting to resist an unconscious “slide” into Christianity at the Fellowship. I got to include that energy as part of my talk, as an example of us being able to talk about these deep and challenging things without it becoming a “insurmountable difference” or a “problem,” or kicking up too much anxiety. It adds to the whole, people sharing their important questions and reservations with confidence and exuberance.
Things have totally lighted up this week politically. My friend Brian sent me the message last Sunday that Caroline Kennedy and Ted Kennedy were going to come out for Obama. I had been despairing over the possibility of a Clinton dynasty (“dynasty:” we’ve lived 20 years under two Bush presidencies, and one Clinton. Add another Clinton, get 28. Add VP Bush ('80-'88), and you get 36). The good news is that Obama is surging. I played and replayed this awesome music video, "Yes We Can," which MoveOn.org sent me yesterday afternoon, learning the chords, learning the words. Marin was amused. I was gripped. Yay! Super Tuesday looms.
Oh, and there was a UUFF Lay Leaders (people in charge of worship on Sundays) meeting over at our house on Wednesday, which I spent most of the day, on and off, prepping for. Big pot of soup, homemade bread, clean hours, expanded table, bowls, wine glasses, all the inevitable setup. Jana and I estimated a dozen and had seven, which including Marin and Matteo, was perfect. This house is all tricked out for having people over, parking spaces, outdoor lighting, space for Matteo and Marin to disappear after dinner, etc., which isn’t the case with our cabin.
Thursday I met with Margaret, my good friend who also attended Yale (years after I’d gone), and who introduced me to Marin up here. She and I do interviews of High School Seniors who’ve applied to Yale, in order to send the college a “hands-on” description of the student. We met with Emma, an oboist from West Valley. It was great fun for the two of us – Emma and me – to tell Margaret how strange and wonderful is the life of an oboist. I dated and also rented rooms in my house to serious oboe students in Philadelphia, and it’s become my favorite instrument, possibly because it’s so demanding, cutting, scraping, and tying reeds, sharpening knives to an incredible edge, all that before you can practice a note.
Oh, and the Unitarians have decided to offer me a job as their Director of Member Services, 10 hours a week, with possible expansion. They simultaneously offered my friend Bre, a lifelong Unitarian, the position of Director of Religious Exploration. A new era? I’m pretty excited, though I’m more excited about the next contraction, just minutes away.
Marin’s found a “cat/ cow” yoga position which marshals the pain, and I’m learning how to press down with my weight on my hands low on her back/ pelvis that helps.
Marisa is here, Marin’s sister who came in from LA on Saturday night, and Matteo is basking in the energy of a new adult to cut snowflakes out with,
Marin was all awake when I got up around 6 this morning, which isn’t unusual, as she hasn’t been sleeping well for a month. But this time when I came upstairs, she had more to relate. The Braxton-Hicks contractions were pretty regular, for most of the night, ten, twelve minutes between. Eeka.
So we’ve been doing at-home preparations, packing hospital bags, digging out infant clothes from Matteo’s old stash. I’ve been making bread, a couple loaves, washing dishes, picking up. Turning up the heat on the water heater so Marin can stay warm in the bathtub. Turning up the heat in the house so she can shed a layer. Sending out a prep sheet (late) to my co-leader Rebecca for next week’s Chalice Circle, to hand out tonight.
Marin apparently re-delegated all the work she was expecting to be able today to finish up herself. She hooked up her computer, sent notes, and sent it out. All done this morning before I got up.
Plus, it’s minus 38 this morning at the airport, minus 35 here. But that means the sun is out, it’s a really pretty day.
It’s been a busy week of finishing up for Marin. And I’ve been reading and writing on a talk I gave at the UU Fellowship Sunday called “Reaching Out after Shutting Down.” It was about being “wounded” by participation in a religious community, how to talk about that, and how to “differentiate” as individuals and as a community. “Differentiating,” meaning, taking a stand on who you are, while remaining in committed contact with others, resolving the paradox of needing to be separate and needing to be connected, both as individuals and as a community.
What made it really interesting was a reaction Bev had in the Chalice Circle last Monday night, to the implication that Unitarian Universalism was a version of Christianity.
She brought it up on Sunday morning as we all gathered, at the Chalice Lighting, wanting to resist an unconscious “slide” into Christianity at the Fellowship. I got to include that energy as part of my talk, as an example of us being able to talk about these deep and challenging things without it becoming a “insurmountable difference” or a “problem,” or kicking up too much anxiety. It adds to the whole, people sharing their important questions and reservations with confidence and exuberance.
Things have totally lighted up this week politically. My friend Brian sent me the message last Sunday that Caroline Kennedy and Ted Kennedy were going to come out for Obama. I had been despairing over the possibility of a Clinton dynasty (“dynasty:” we’ve lived 20 years under two Bush presidencies, and one Clinton. Add another Clinton, get 28. Add VP Bush ('80-'88), and you get 36). The good news is that Obama is surging. I played and replayed this awesome music video, "Yes We Can," which MoveOn.org sent me yesterday afternoon, learning the chords, learning the words. Marin was amused. I was gripped. Yay! Super Tuesday looms.
Oh, and there was a UUFF Lay Leaders (people in charge of worship on Sundays) meeting over at our house on Wednesday, which I spent most of the day, on and off, prepping for. Big pot of soup, homemade bread, clean hours, expanded table, bowls, wine glasses, all the inevitable setup. Jana and I estimated a dozen and had seven, which including Marin and Matteo, was perfect. This house is all tricked out for having people over, parking spaces, outdoor lighting, space for Matteo and Marin to disappear after dinner, etc., which isn’t the case with our cabin.
Thursday I met with Margaret, my good friend who also attended Yale (years after I’d gone), and who introduced me to Marin up here. She and I do interviews of High School Seniors who’ve applied to Yale, in order to send the college a “hands-on” description of the student. We met with Emma, an oboist from West Valley. It was great fun for the two of us – Emma and me – to tell Margaret how strange and wonderful is the life of an oboist. I dated and also rented rooms in my house to serious oboe students in Philadelphia, and it’s become my favorite instrument, possibly because it’s so demanding, cutting, scraping, and tying reeds, sharpening knives to an incredible edge, all that before you can practice a note.
Oh, and the Unitarians have decided to offer me a job as their Director of Member Services, 10 hours a week, with possible expansion. They simultaneously offered my friend Bre, a lifelong Unitarian, the position of Director of Religious Exploration. A new era? I’m pretty excited, though I’m more excited about the next contraction, just minutes away.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Growing our Care
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fairbanks has this lovely yellow wood building down on the Chena River, west of town, sitting on a little hillock in a copse of trees. I tore over there Saturday morning steaming up my car windows from a recent shower, the effect of minus 35 degrees, to continue a meeting on “care” which began Friday evening.
Unlike many conventional churches, UUFF has no paid leadership, and so there’s a fun, odd randomness about people knowing each other and being able to respond to joys and sorrows in one another’s lives. As Peg Boyle-Morgan, the facilitator who came up from West Seattle to help us work on this, pointed out this morning, UUFF has moved from a “family-centered” size, say 50 or 60 people, to a “pastor-centered” size, which is 60 to 150, and we haven’t changed anything but the size. She knew that we’re losing people simply because this is an unsustainable transformation. You can’t grow and not change, without starting to hurt people, even if unwittingly. Tellingly, she said that her fellowship is moving into the 140 range, and she can’t keep track of the names of the 60 or so children (above the 140 adults).
I found it so inspiring to hang with the people who came out for this, about a dozen women and three, four men, whose hearts are touched by the hope of a community which cares for one another. By Saturday morning, people were becoming frank. Janie talked about how hard it was to be so involved in the fellowship but have only a person or two be supportive during her birth of Allie. Julia talked about having enough people in her family here for an operation she had so it was okay that the fellowship didn’t need to know about it to support her. Terry talked about the importance of there being a guarantee of privacy for people who didn’t want their particular personal “issue” to be on a phone chain, or the object of “visits” or “casseroles” from UUFF members. I talked about feeling like I had to be more “desperate” for childcare before taking up Rebecca’s offer. Everyone laughed at what I said, because Rebecca made it sound like it was about Rebecca and not about my reticence, which in fact was a hilarious spoof.
This sort of “telling truth” and being willing to be “vulnerable” in the group makes it possible for everyone to say hard stuff, true stuff. And to grow. And to laugh, sometimes hysterically.
It’s so exciting when this happens, I think. I found myself able to speak my hopes and longings for our fellowship more than ever before. I guess it was partly because people were taking risks, and partly because Peg Boyle-Morgan was there to create the sense that what we were hoping for is inspiring, attainable, important and rich.
There was the temptation simply to set up a “system,” a means to get busy with being efficient. There also was a counter move to set up “boundaries” to keep from offending people who didn’t want to be “helped.” I guess I began pushing for us to stay with the “vision,” that is, to keep talking about our experiences and to get to know one another in a way that would preclude worrying about not being systematic enough, or running roughshod over other’s reticence.
Happens all the time in churches – the first issue that comes before an “anxious” group becomes the focus of a big fight, which take two hours. And if you have 20 minutes of “check in,” people feel better about one another, feel more trust, and all the business gets done in an hour.
In other words, it all will come out in the wash. The better we know and trust one another, the easier it will be to do this. We’ll lead from our growing sense of safety, passion, and community. But that “good feeling” may also come into being by spending time together questioning each other’s motives or wisdom or whatever. The only risk is that we get so frustrated first, in a kind of Dilbert-esque, bureaucratic dead end, that people “bail.”
I’m glad for Peg Boyle Morgan’s sure guidance through these days, and that the leaders on our end are Peg Bowers, Janie, and Rebecca.
Unlike many conventional churches, UUFF has no paid leadership, and so there’s a fun, odd randomness about people knowing each other and being able to respond to joys and sorrows in one another’s lives. As Peg Boyle-Morgan, the facilitator who came up from West Seattle to help us work on this, pointed out this morning, UUFF has moved from a “family-centered” size, say 50 or 60 people, to a “pastor-centered” size, which is 60 to 150, and we haven’t changed anything but the size. She knew that we’re losing people simply because this is an unsustainable transformation. You can’t grow and not change, without starting to hurt people, even if unwittingly. Tellingly, she said that her fellowship is moving into the 140 range, and she can’t keep track of the names of the 60 or so children (above the 140 adults).
I found it so inspiring to hang with the people who came out for this, about a dozen women and three, four men, whose hearts are touched by the hope of a community which cares for one another. By Saturday morning, people were becoming frank. Janie talked about how hard it was to be so involved in the fellowship but have only a person or two be supportive during her birth of Allie. Julia talked about having enough people in her family here for an operation she had so it was okay that the fellowship didn’t need to know about it to support her. Terry talked about the importance of there being a guarantee of privacy for people who didn’t want their particular personal “issue” to be on a phone chain, or the object of “visits” or “casseroles” from UUFF members. I talked about feeling like I had to be more “desperate” for childcare before taking up Rebecca’s offer. Everyone laughed at what I said, because Rebecca made it sound like it was about Rebecca and not about my reticence, which in fact was a hilarious spoof.
This sort of “telling truth” and being willing to be “vulnerable” in the group makes it possible for everyone to say hard stuff, true stuff. And to grow. And to laugh, sometimes hysterically.
It’s so exciting when this happens, I think. I found myself able to speak my hopes and longings for our fellowship more than ever before. I guess it was partly because people were taking risks, and partly because Peg Boyle-Morgan was there to create the sense that what we were hoping for is inspiring, attainable, important and rich.
There was the temptation simply to set up a “system,” a means to get busy with being efficient. There also was a counter move to set up “boundaries” to keep from offending people who didn’t want to be “helped.” I guess I began pushing for us to stay with the “vision,” that is, to keep talking about our experiences and to get to know one another in a way that would preclude worrying about not being systematic enough, or running roughshod over other’s reticence.
Happens all the time in churches – the first issue that comes before an “anxious” group becomes the focus of a big fight, which take two hours. And if you have 20 minutes of “check in,” people feel better about one another, feel more trust, and all the business gets done in an hour.
In other words, it all will come out in the wash. The better we know and trust one another, the easier it will be to do this. We’ll lead from our growing sense of safety, passion, and community. But that “good feeling” may also come into being by spending time together questioning each other’s motives or wisdom or whatever. The only risk is that we get so frustrated first, in a kind of Dilbert-esque, bureaucratic dead end, that people “bail.”
I’m glad for Peg Boyle Morgan’s sure guidance through these days, and that the leaders on our end are Peg Bowers, Janie, and Rebecca.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Circle Birth Day
I guess the best thing about having been a pastor came back to me last night as we convened a new Chalice Circle group last night at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fairbanks.
How do I love this? Let me count the ways.
• Included in the small talk as we got seated in a 14 chair circle was exuberant commentary about the rising moon tonight, and the setting moon earlier in the morning.
• There are always elders who are up for sharing and meeting new people, in this case, sonorously, sweetly (to my ears) accented Judy and Bill from North Carolina, who, in their seventies, decided to follow their dream to Fairbanks, where they have, in the past month, exuberantly found UUFF.
• A simple question – in the case of tonight: “what is your story, who are you, what would you tell someone if you had five minutes to sum it all up?” – generates authentic, from-the-heart, unforgettable responses. With tears, belly laughter, and intense listening on the part of all.
• I just love watching people’s faces as they tell of important things, listening to the catch in someone’s voice, being drawn into the drama of choices they faced, the relationships they struggled with, being right there as they discover things in the telling of them. “Deep listening” together takes us to a brilliant place. We’re not unlike Moses, walking his sheep around the desert, suddenly coming upon a burning bush, which speaks of ultimate things, and enlists him (us) to an epic journey. Whoa!
• Having a co-facilitator, Rebecca, with insights, support, energy. It’s so nice when someone has your back, and helps you remember things.
Laenne commented afterwards about how rare this kind of sharing is in our lives, we have spouses who know us and perhaps listen deeply, compassionately, lovingly to us. But many commented in their sharing how it just doesn’t happen for us (some of us are shy, or possibly have high expectations) during the coffee hours after Sunday services.
It may be that this is an important characteristic of our UU demographic. UUFF draws people who are “deep,” who have been through challenging and difficult things in their search for authentic spiritual connection. We didn’t fit well in the American churches which the denominations dish up for us. We sought more, and grew frustrated.
What a wonderful opportunity! It’s like getting assigned the “behavior problem” class, where their “acting out” had to do with being so perceptive and ahead of their peers that they ended up in the principal’s office. UU’s, the spiritual mischief makers.
The other thing I realized when I was listening to the stories had to do with pioneers. Mary Ann talked about people home in Ohio thinking she was nuts when she decided to make an academic move to Oregon. I was remembering how hard it was for me to figure out, from New York City, and Philadelphia, how to get myself to Seattle or Anchorage, where I wanted to be. I ended up flinging myself across the country twelve years ago. Which is precisely what Bill and Judy just did, in retirement. There were rumblings in many of the stories about being drawn by the land, to the challenges, into the basic Alaska dream.
What I always wanted people to see, in being their “spiritual leader,” was the importance of each person opening up to their experience, their hopes and dreams, their hurts and fears. But not to stop there. To bring that deepened sense of self into the context of a wider community of dreamers and wounded healers.
And only then to draw on the traditions, the practices, the celebrations, the outreach challenges, to become a “community of faith.” Start with the personal, expand into a community, and then add in the tradition and the wider society.
It’s something I think people are born with a hankering for, but when churches lead with a tradition and insert a religious leader too early in the process, people may never realize their own spiritual depths, the crucial importance of exploring their own sources of revelation, or their own capacity for harnessing change for themselves, others and their world.
At the end we held hands, and instead of singing (we ran way over our time limit), we drew close and blew out the chalice candle. “Happy Birthday” quipped Bill. New birth, indeed!
How do I love this? Let me count the ways.
• Included in the small talk as we got seated in a 14 chair circle was exuberant commentary about the rising moon tonight, and the setting moon earlier in the morning.
• There are always elders who are up for sharing and meeting new people, in this case, sonorously, sweetly (to my ears) accented Judy and Bill from North Carolina, who, in their seventies, decided to follow their dream to Fairbanks, where they have, in the past month, exuberantly found UUFF.
• A simple question – in the case of tonight: “what is your story, who are you, what would you tell someone if you had five minutes to sum it all up?” – generates authentic, from-the-heart, unforgettable responses. With tears, belly laughter, and intense listening on the part of all.
• I just love watching people’s faces as they tell of important things, listening to the catch in someone’s voice, being drawn into the drama of choices they faced, the relationships they struggled with, being right there as they discover things in the telling of them. “Deep listening” together takes us to a brilliant place. We’re not unlike Moses, walking his sheep around the desert, suddenly coming upon a burning bush, which speaks of ultimate things, and enlists him (us) to an epic journey. Whoa!
• Having a co-facilitator, Rebecca, with insights, support, energy. It’s so nice when someone has your back, and helps you remember things.
Laenne commented afterwards about how rare this kind of sharing is in our lives, we have spouses who know us and perhaps listen deeply, compassionately, lovingly to us. But many commented in their sharing how it just doesn’t happen for us (some of us are shy, or possibly have high expectations) during the coffee hours after Sunday services.
It may be that this is an important characteristic of our UU demographic. UUFF draws people who are “deep,” who have been through challenging and difficult things in their search for authentic spiritual connection. We didn’t fit well in the American churches which the denominations dish up for us. We sought more, and grew frustrated.
What a wonderful opportunity! It’s like getting assigned the “behavior problem” class, where their “acting out” had to do with being so perceptive and ahead of their peers that they ended up in the principal’s office. UU’s, the spiritual mischief makers.
The other thing I realized when I was listening to the stories had to do with pioneers. Mary Ann talked about people home in Ohio thinking she was nuts when she decided to make an academic move to Oregon. I was remembering how hard it was for me to figure out, from New York City, and Philadelphia, how to get myself to Seattle or Anchorage, where I wanted to be. I ended up flinging myself across the country twelve years ago. Which is precisely what Bill and Judy just did, in retirement. There were rumblings in many of the stories about being drawn by the land, to the challenges, into the basic Alaska dream.
What I always wanted people to see, in being their “spiritual leader,” was the importance of each person opening up to their experience, their hopes and dreams, their hurts and fears. But not to stop there. To bring that deepened sense of self into the context of a wider community of dreamers and wounded healers.
And only then to draw on the traditions, the practices, the celebrations, the outreach challenges, to become a “community of faith.” Start with the personal, expand into a community, and then add in the tradition and the wider society.
It’s something I think people are born with a hankering for, but when churches lead with a tradition and insert a religious leader too early in the process, people may never realize their own spiritual depths, the crucial importance of exploring their own sources of revelation, or their own capacity for harnessing change for themselves, others and their world.
At the end we held hands, and instead of singing (we ran way over our time limit), we drew close and blew out the chalice candle. “Happy Birthday” quipped Bill. New birth, indeed!
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Invocation
Okay, I admit it, it was wonderful to do the prayer on Saturday morning at the Martin Luther King Community Youth Breakfast.
I got to pray again. Which we don’t do at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fairbanks.
It gives me second thoughts. About being a UU for the rest of my life, I mean. There are times I miss being one of the Jesus band. I still see him as a magnificent person: gutsy, brave, sweet, smart, audacious, fearless, visionary, hard-working, and with a profound capacity for realism and sorrow without getting drowned by it. And I know I’ll have to lay low with my admiration for Jesus in the UU kingdom as much as I had to lay low with my feminism, environmentalism, or GLBT-ism in the Lutheran corral.
Sigh.
Anyway, it was really a lovely gift that my friend from UUFF, Rebecca Clack, asked me to do the invocation. She gave me a hint at what was possible by saying “sometimes the invocation is more memorable than the featured speaker’s presentation.” Hm.
Most of the week that high expectation had me a little paralyzed. Partly it was because my style with prayer is very personal, I can’t do it unless it both comes from a deep, believing, transforming place in me, and reaches out honestly to the hearts of others. And this has to be accomplished using language that both of us know and love (why it doesn’t work with UU’s), in an nuanced, artful, truthful, heart-to-heart manner. Meaning, in part, that I need to access the awesome images and stories of the tradition without being held accountable for literal belief or others’ projections. I’m not sure if people yesterday were willing to accord me that freedom, and if not, then my effort was, at best, poetry, at worst, speechifying.
The other reason I was anxious was this media back-and-forth going on between Hillary Clinton suggesting that it was President Johnson who was needed to get legislation (the Voting Rights Act 1965) to DO SOMETHING about what Martin Luther King and friends were marching about.
This was clearly a swat at Barack Obama’s exhilarating MLK-esque orations, and his appealing beyond “race” to unify people. The Hillary camp wanted to play the race card, because they know that Obama’s greatest strength is that he’s a candidate who happens to be black, rather than the “black candidate.” I think this did end up playing a role, while not a direct mention, in the prayer.
The gathering at the J.P. Jones center down in South Fairbanks was lively and fun. Families everywhere, teenagers, toddlers, babies. Rebecca was in her element, introducing me around, finding me coffee, staying on top of everything. A spiffily dressed young minister-in-training at the Victory Baptist Chruch, Johnathan Kenney, was the Master of Ceremonies, presiding with an ease and flair beyond his years.
I was up first. “Let us gather our hearts in prayer.”
“We come before you this day O God,
and remember that you long for our love
and our presence
as much as we cry out
for your love and presence.
“You have been our God through the ages,
you are the one who called Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam,
the one who comforted Job, and confronted Ahab,
the one who inspired David who wrote and sang you Psalms
his whole life long,
you are the beloved of Mary, the father of Jesus.
“You brought us out of Egypt, you fed us in the wilderness,
you guided us home across the Jordan,
and opened to us a land of milk and honey.
You brought us back from exile in Babylon,
and helped us rebuild Jerusalem, your beautiful city,
and made it your eternal home, your dwelling place forever.
“When, in this new world, your covenant with us was defiled
by violence, brutality, and injustice, you were filled with rage.
Our desperate cries were met by your righteous thunder,
men and women heard your anguish and they spoke your word,
They risked their lives, they faced death but lifted up hope,
they made liberty their last breath, and truth their enduring legacy.
They lived by acts of unbounded courage, and earth-shaking compassion,
because they had seen your face, and knew you to be their Strong Friend.
“You taught us the way of Justice in the face of oppression,
the way of non-violent loving-kindness
to stop in their tracks those who had sold themselves to militarism.
Your beloved one, Jesus, lived among the poor and oppressed,
and died at the hands of the soldiers of the Roman empire.
They laughed at his weakness,
they mocked his frightened band of followers,
they tortured him to send a message to all who would defy their lord,
the god of War and Power. The God of the Fear of Death.
“And on that desperate hillside
where the earth dripped with blood,
where the women knelt and wept,
there a seed was planted.
A whole new way of life took root.
In the womb of human chaos and fear
God’s way of love was born.
“You raised up men and women who heard and understood.
They saw once and for all
the power of truth and courage against violence and fear.
“They carried that truth with them, they preached it, and lived it.
And even when they forgot,
and their children, and grandchildren became oppressors,
you again confronted them with your story,
with your saints, and with your word.
“Leaders spoke, people marched,
they sat down in the street,
they sat down at the lunch counters,
and in the front of the bus,
they faced the dogs, the fire hoses,
they called up and followed your promises.
They would not forget, they would not give up,
they would not cease to burn with your truth,
your promise, your deep, deep love.
“And so we come before you this day,
remembering the birth of your servant Dr. King,
and how he awakened in this whole suffering land
a sense of hope,
how he gave courage to the least of us,
how he spoke your word which ignited our hearts,
ignited a movement,
ignited a march to freedom that has no end.
“We stand today upon the shoulders of him and of many others.
We can see the horizon because they never ceased to work.
And we pray that we can take the offering of their lives
and consecrate that offering,
by your grace and our determination,
to the creation of a whole new heaven and earth
in which people and God dwell rightly,
in peace, in hope, in loving kindness together.
“But these are not easy times, God, so we come with our hands open,
open to receive the power that comes from the knowledge of your presence,
your longing for us, your joy in our presence.
“Do not abandon us in these challenging days.
Some of us are facing mounting debt,
some of us are sent to fight wars in distant lands,
some of us struggle to find blessing in our families,
some of us have lost our hope for a better future,
some of us are frustrated in our education,
some of us can’t hear what it is, o God,
that you are calling us to do in challenging times,
and empowering us to do, in days that sometimes seem too hard for us.
“Gather us together in these times, O Lord,
and move us toward solutions, toward actions,
toward justice and peace, guide us together as one.
Show us again your loving kindness
so that we might be filled with amazement
at the deeds of our God, at the constancy of the one
who knit us together in the womb.
“Feed us with this meal, feed us with your hope,
strengthen us for all that is to come,
and remind us that you never, never leave us alone.
Amen”
It was long, as usual, but fervent. I felt like this connection was essential, the connection between the ancient stories of people led and blessed, through the more recent stories, of violation, non-violent resistance, and freedom, to this community of folks gathered together to remember, and to act. Making the connection is essential. I know how to talk about it in prayer, in preaching, in a Christian context. The words, the stories, the images keep me engaged, and may also engage some folks.
I suppose it has yet to be shown whether I can find ways to raise similarly important issues with people for whom the biblical images, characters, and metaphors just don’t work.
I got to pray again. Which we don’t do at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fairbanks.
It gives me second thoughts. About being a UU for the rest of my life, I mean. There are times I miss being one of the Jesus band. I still see him as a magnificent person: gutsy, brave, sweet, smart, audacious, fearless, visionary, hard-working, and with a profound capacity for realism and sorrow without getting drowned by it. And I know I’ll have to lay low with my admiration for Jesus in the UU kingdom as much as I had to lay low with my feminism, environmentalism, or GLBT-ism in the Lutheran corral.
Sigh.
Anyway, it was really a lovely gift that my friend from UUFF, Rebecca Clack, asked me to do the invocation. She gave me a hint at what was possible by saying “sometimes the invocation is more memorable than the featured speaker’s presentation.” Hm.
Most of the week that high expectation had me a little paralyzed. Partly it was because my style with prayer is very personal, I can’t do it unless it both comes from a deep, believing, transforming place in me, and reaches out honestly to the hearts of others. And this has to be accomplished using language that both of us know and love (why it doesn’t work with UU’s), in an nuanced, artful, truthful, heart-to-heart manner. Meaning, in part, that I need to access the awesome images and stories of the tradition without being held accountable for literal belief or others’ projections. I’m not sure if people yesterday were willing to accord me that freedom, and if not, then my effort was, at best, poetry, at worst, speechifying.
The other reason I was anxious was this media back-and-forth going on between Hillary Clinton suggesting that it was President Johnson who was needed to get legislation (the Voting Rights Act 1965) to DO SOMETHING about what Martin Luther King and friends were marching about.
This was clearly a swat at Barack Obama’s exhilarating MLK-esque orations, and his appealing beyond “race” to unify people. The Hillary camp wanted to play the race card, because they know that Obama’s greatest strength is that he’s a candidate who happens to be black, rather than the “black candidate.” I think this did end up playing a role, while not a direct mention, in the prayer.
The gathering at the J.P. Jones center down in South Fairbanks was lively and fun. Families everywhere, teenagers, toddlers, babies. Rebecca was in her element, introducing me around, finding me coffee, staying on top of everything. A spiffily dressed young minister-in-training at the Victory Baptist Chruch, Johnathan Kenney, was the Master of Ceremonies, presiding with an ease and flair beyond his years.
I was up first. “Let us gather our hearts in prayer.”
“We come before you this day O God,
and remember that you long for our love
and our presence
as much as we cry out
for your love and presence.
“You have been our God through the ages,
you are the one who called Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam,
the one who comforted Job, and confronted Ahab,
the one who inspired David who wrote and sang you Psalms
his whole life long,
you are the beloved of Mary, the father of Jesus.
“You brought us out of Egypt, you fed us in the wilderness,
you guided us home across the Jordan,
and opened to us a land of milk and honey.
You brought us back from exile in Babylon,
and helped us rebuild Jerusalem, your beautiful city,
and made it your eternal home, your dwelling place forever.
“When, in this new world, your covenant with us was defiled
by violence, brutality, and injustice, you were filled with rage.
Our desperate cries were met by your righteous thunder,
men and women heard your anguish and they spoke your word,
They risked their lives, they faced death but lifted up hope,
they made liberty their last breath, and truth their enduring legacy.
They lived by acts of unbounded courage, and earth-shaking compassion,
because they had seen your face, and knew you to be their Strong Friend.
“You taught us the way of Justice in the face of oppression,
the way of non-violent loving-kindness
to stop in their tracks those who had sold themselves to militarism.
Your beloved one, Jesus, lived among the poor and oppressed,
and died at the hands of the soldiers of the Roman empire.
They laughed at his weakness,
they mocked his frightened band of followers,
they tortured him to send a message to all who would defy their lord,
the god of War and Power. The God of the Fear of Death.
“And on that desperate hillside
where the earth dripped with blood,
where the women knelt and wept,
there a seed was planted.
A whole new way of life took root.
In the womb of human chaos and fear
God’s way of love was born.
“You raised up men and women who heard and understood.
They saw once and for all
the power of truth and courage against violence and fear.
“They carried that truth with them, they preached it, and lived it.
And even when they forgot,
and their children, and grandchildren became oppressors,
you again confronted them with your story,
with your saints, and with your word.
“Leaders spoke, people marched,
they sat down in the street,
they sat down at the lunch counters,
and in the front of the bus,
they faced the dogs, the fire hoses,
they called up and followed your promises.
They would not forget, they would not give up,
they would not cease to burn with your truth,
your promise, your deep, deep love.
“And so we come before you this day,
remembering the birth of your servant Dr. King,
and how he awakened in this whole suffering land
a sense of hope,
how he gave courage to the least of us,
how he spoke your word which ignited our hearts,
ignited a movement,
ignited a march to freedom that has no end.
“We stand today upon the shoulders of him and of many others.
We can see the horizon because they never ceased to work.
And we pray that we can take the offering of their lives
and consecrate that offering,
by your grace and our determination,
to the creation of a whole new heaven and earth
in which people and God dwell rightly,
in peace, in hope, in loving kindness together.
“But these are not easy times, God, so we come with our hands open,
open to receive the power that comes from the knowledge of your presence,
your longing for us, your joy in our presence.
“Do not abandon us in these challenging days.
Some of us are facing mounting debt,
some of us are sent to fight wars in distant lands,
some of us struggle to find blessing in our families,
some of us have lost our hope for a better future,
some of us are frustrated in our education,
some of us can’t hear what it is, o God,
that you are calling us to do in challenging times,
and empowering us to do, in days that sometimes seem too hard for us.
“Gather us together in these times, O Lord,
and move us toward solutions, toward actions,
toward justice and peace, guide us together as one.
Show us again your loving kindness
so that we might be filled with amazement
at the deeds of our God, at the constancy of the one
who knit us together in the womb.
“Feed us with this meal, feed us with your hope,
strengthen us for all that is to come,
and remind us that you never, never leave us alone.
Amen”
It was long, as usual, but fervent. I felt like this connection was essential, the connection between the ancient stories of people led and blessed, through the more recent stories, of violation, non-violent resistance, and freedom, to this community of folks gathered together to remember, and to act. Making the connection is essential. I know how to talk about it in prayer, in preaching, in a Christian context. The words, the stories, the images keep me engaged, and may also engage some folks.
I suppose it has yet to be shown whether I can find ways to raise similarly important issues with people for whom the biblical images, characters, and metaphors just don’t work.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
A Childrens' Story / Christmas Day 11
This startling day begins unassumingly.
I’m trying to write a little. It’s 7 am, Marin’s orbiting out to work, Teo is caught up in her gravity, but will be in mine five minutes from now. Time to commit – bread baking! I get out the Kitchenaid mixer my brother Ronnie sent us for Christmas. Insert bread hook. I falter when I realize that my bread recipe uses 12 cups of dry, and this mixer only allows 8. Okay, time to reconfigure all ingredients.
Then next half hour is about getting all the ingredients ready, the yeast and honey into warm water (Teo loves to lick fingers with honey on them, his highlight of the process), the dry ingredients, the new machine. It all works as planned. When the machine is done, some hand kneading is still required. Which is what Teo has been saying the whole time: "Papa, don’t forget to knead the bread."
Then when it’s all put away for first rise, and I want to write about worship for the UU’s for Sunday, Teo begins to turn off all the lights in the house. He wants to sit and sing to the Christmas tree. He’s already sitting as I join him. "Further away," he commands – I’m sitting too close to the tree. All the details have to be correct. His template for this "liturgy" is all of two weeks old – we’ve done this half a dozen times evenings before supper.
Teo starts singing "O Tannenbaum" and I try to help him with the German (I don’t actually know and therefore can’t teach an English version "O Christmas Tree") but he cuts me off. "By myself!" he commands. And he manages to get through it, the whole thing, in sort of German, while exuberantly spinning himself in a circle beside me on his butt. Choreography!
Then I start "Away in a manger," followed by "Silent Night," which he lets me lead. His enthusiasm returns when he starts what to Marin’s chagrin may endure on his list of Christmas songs, a Christmas-invasive song from my guitar teaching, Bob Marley’s "I Shot the Sheriff."
As the morning picks up steam, and I’m dressing Teo downstairs, we stumble upon a new game. I hum out the melody of a song he knows, and Matteo explodes with delight when he figures out which one it is, charging forth with the words, and demanding another challenge. As with "Tannenbaum," I’m amazed at his feats of memory.
It’s another banner day at the pool. He takes off on his noodle, "walking" himself all over the pool, chasing balls, squirting me with water from his mouth, having fun. So different from just one week ago, when I was still "wearing" him around my neck. Now he’s expansive. He even tries getting off the noodle, and manages to stay up in the water, but panics. He’ll get this in another couple weeks, no question.
After swimming, we join three other families across the street at the library for the two-year-olds’ storytelling hour. It’s all about kitty cats, with three story books, a felt board, just good fun. On the road again to the Post Office, we are bathed in orange light. The sun is knifing through under the clouds, and there’s a sun-dog shining like the end of a rainbow toward the south. "Teo, a sun dog, over there, see it? See it? Like a rainbow. See it? Over there." I’m not sure he gets what I’m talking about but there’s no missing my enthusiasm.
All day long I’m trying to digest Barak Obama’s and Mike Huckabee’s remarkable victories in the Iowa caucuses. It seems so long since there’s been a sign of hope for our poor, earnest, abused, exhausted nation. Seems like voters in Iowa wanted to shake things up. What luck! In mid-afternoon, while Teo pretends to sleep, and the bread’s in the oven, I web-stream KCRW’s "Left Right and Center" in Santa Monica to hear what Matt Miller, Arianna Huffington, and Tony Blankley have to say about Iowa. They’re giddy that, after months of jawing over the so-called "inevitable" nominations of Clinton and Guiliani/Romney, there’s been an across-the-board upset, and cynicism is legitimately replaced by amazement.
Hearing a peep downstairs, I go looking for Teo. He’s not in our bed, where I read him to sleep an hour earlier. The peep is coming from his bedroom. I look for him to be playing in the dark on the floor. Instead, he’s managed to scale his crib from the outside in, and was curled up in his "nest" with blankies, stuffed critters, and a half dozen books. Not sleeping. Whoa.
I urge him to reconsider sleeping, and I have the sense that he’s ready. It’s part of what is happening between us, he’s growing up, there’s more relationship there than there used to be, more reciprocity, more trust.
Then, back to the computer: KCRW had put me on the trail of U Tube and Obama’s Iowa victory speech. I listen to three minutes of 15 before I have to leave. It was goosebump material. I am amazed at the Martin Luther King moral authority and confidence and gratitude he conveyed in just his opening. I walk down to the garage after Marin arrives home (and we tag-team off on both bread and child) greedy for more, but brimming with a sense that I could feel at home in my country again. Thank you Iowa.
Driving out to meet a friend for coffee, I was suddenly catapulted into another ecstasy. Sunset, that same sub-arctic sun of the morning, was prying the late afternoon clouds up with a molten hot blade of light. The omnipresent plume of smoke from Aurora Energy downtown was rising silently into the stratosphere, twisting in rose-colored slow-motion like an erupting volcano.
When I get back in an hour, Marin is meeting with two birth-assistants, the term is "Doulas," the Greek word means "helpers/ servants." We talk about Obama and hope. Remarkably, we all felt today the fear that the nearly impenetrable darkness at the heart of our nation the past 7 years could easily rear up, a cosmic Dick Cheny, to blow our hope away. This dreadful, cowering fear is often what characterizes abuse victims. But, concerning the birth, they are confident and have lots of supportive, thoughtful suggestions for making our birth a peaceful transition, rather than a harrowing, risky ordeal. Now that’s "good shepherding." After winter, new life.
Later, at supper, when Marin and I are discussing dog mushing, talking about dog positions – the lead dog, the team dog, the wheel dog – Teo pipes up, exuberantly, "Sun Dog!"
How serious and joyful is his play at making meaning. We all have much to learn from the children, who never cease to "worship" and who blithely amend our light-in-the-darkness rituals with just the right choreography, singing our song while spinning on their butts.
I’m trying to write a little. It’s 7 am, Marin’s orbiting out to work, Teo is caught up in her gravity, but will be in mine five minutes from now. Time to commit – bread baking! I get out the Kitchenaid mixer my brother Ronnie sent us for Christmas. Insert bread hook. I falter when I realize that my bread recipe uses 12 cups of dry, and this mixer only allows 8. Okay, time to reconfigure all ingredients.
Then next half hour is about getting all the ingredients ready, the yeast and honey into warm water (Teo loves to lick fingers with honey on them, his highlight of the process), the dry ingredients, the new machine. It all works as planned. When the machine is done, some hand kneading is still required. Which is what Teo has been saying the whole time: "Papa, don’t forget to knead the bread."
Then when it’s all put away for first rise, and I want to write about worship for the UU’s for Sunday, Teo begins to turn off all the lights in the house. He wants to sit and sing to the Christmas tree. He’s already sitting as I join him. "Further away," he commands – I’m sitting too close to the tree. All the details have to be correct. His template for this "liturgy" is all of two weeks old – we’ve done this half a dozen times evenings before supper.
Teo starts singing "O Tannenbaum" and I try to help him with the German (I don’t actually know and therefore can’t teach an English version "O Christmas Tree") but he cuts me off. "By myself!" he commands. And he manages to get through it, the whole thing, in sort of German, while exuberantly spinning himself in a circle beside me on his butt. Choreography!
Then I start "Away in a manger," followed by "Silent Night," which he lets me lead. His enthusiasm returns when he starts what to Marin’s chagrin may endure on his list of Christmas songs, a Christmas-invasive song from my guitar teaching, Bob Marley’s "I Shot the Sheriff."
As the morning picks up steam, and I’m dressing Teo downstairs, we stumble upon a new game. I hum out the melody of a song he knows, and Matteo explodes with delight when he figures out which one it is, charging forth with the words, and demanding another challenge. As with "Tannenbaum," I’m amazed at his feats of memory.
It’s another banner day at the pool. He takes off on his noodle, "walking" himself all over the pool, chasing balls, squirting me with water from his mouth, having fun. So different from just one week ago, when I was still "wearing" him around my neck. Now he’s expansive. He even tries getting off the noodle, and manages to stay up in the water, but panics. He’ll get this in another couple weeks, no question.
After swimming, we join three other families across the street at the library for the two-year-olds’ storytelling hour. It’s all about kitty cats, with three story books, a felt board, just good fun. On the road again to the Post Office, we are bathed in orange light. The sun is knifing through under the clouds, and there’s a sun-dog shining like the end of a rainbow toward the south. "Teo, a sun dog, over there, see it? See it? Like a rainbow. See it? Over there." I’m not sure he gets what I’m talking about but there’s no missing my enthusiasm.
All day long I’m trying to digest Barak Obama’s and Mike Huckabee’s remarkable victories in the Iowa caucuses. It seems so long since there’s been a sign of hope for our poor, earnest, abused, exhausted nation. Seems like voters in Iowa wanted to shake things up. What luck! In mid-afternoon, while Teo pretends to sleep, and the bread’s in the oven, I web-stream KCRW’s "Left Right and Center" in Santa Monica to hear what Matt Miller, Arianna Huffington, and Tony Blankley have to say about Iowa. They’re giddy that, after months of jawing over the so-called "inevitable" nominations of Clinton and Guiliani/Romney, there’s been an across-the-board upset, and cynicism is legitimately replaced by amazement.
Hearing a peep downstairs, I go looking for Teo. He’s not in our bed, where I read him to sleep an hour earlier. The peep is coming from his bedroom. I look for him to be playing in the dark on the floor. Instead, he’s managed to scale his crib from the outside in, and was curled up in his "nest" with blankies, stuffed critters, and a half dozen books. Not sleeping. Whoa.
I urge him to reconsider sleeping, and I have the sense that he’s ready. It’s part of what is happening between us, he’s growing up, there’s more relationship there than there used to be, more reciprocity, more trust.
Then, back to the computer: KCRW had put me on the trail of U Tube and Obama’s Iowa victory speech. I listen to three minutes of 15 before I have to leave. It was goosebump material. I am amazed at the Martin Luther King moral authority and confidence and gratitude he conveyed in just his opening. I walk down to the garage after Marin arrives home (and we tag-team off on both bread and child) greedy for more, but brimming with a sense that I could feel at home in my country again. Thank you Iowa.
Driving out to meet a friend for coffee, I was suddenly catapulted into another ecstasy. Sunset, that same sub-arctic sun of the morning, was prying the late afternoon clouds up with a molten hot blade of light. The omnipresent plume of smoke from Aurora Energy downtown was rising silently into the stratosphere, twisting in rose-colored slow-motion like an erupting volcano.
When I get back in an hour, Marin is meeting with two birth-assistants, the term is "Doulas," the Greek word means "helpers/ servants." We talk about Obama and hope. Remarkably, we all felt today the fear that the nearly impenetrable darkness at the heart of our nation the past 7 years could easily rear up, a cosmic Dick Cheny, to blow our hope away. This dreadful, cowering fear is often what characterizes abuse victims. But, concerning the birth, they are confident and have lots of supportive, thoughtful suggestions for making our birth a peaceful transition, rather than a harrowing, risky ordeal. Now that’s "good shepherding." After winter, new life.
Later, at supper, when Marin and I are discussing dog mushing, talking about dog positions – the lead dog, the team dog, the wheel dog – Teo pipes up, exuberantly, "Sun Dog!"
How serious and joyful is his play at making meaning. We all have much to learn from the children, who never cease to "worship" and who blithely amend our light-in-the-darkness rituals with just the right choreography, singing our song while spinning on their butts.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Mystical Babies Only / Christmas Day 1
It’s Christmas Eve, somewhere in the wee hours of the morning. Marin turns to me in bed and says, everyone else wants Christmas, and we’re hoping for the opposite.
She was referring to the fact that she’s been feeling generally under the weather all day, which turned specifically into having contractions all evening. Her gynecologist didn’t return a message she left. And a friend, a midwife we were thinking of calling, had a Christmas Eve car accident and broke her collar bone.
Our Christmas Eve was outside, the UU "Advent Garden," held in moonlight and candlelight. Some of us at the Fellowship stamped out a 30-foot spiral in the snow after the service Sunday. Tonight, while we sang traditional carols together, 40 of us meditatively, one by one, walked the spiral to the center, lit candles stuck into apples, and set the flaming apple-candles into the fir boughs which defined the spiral against the white snow.
A simpler, sweeter Christmas eve celebration I have not seen. As usual the UU sense of levity mixed in with the ceremonial seriousness, people laughed with me when it turned out that one of my favorite carols, "Lo how a Rose ‘ere Blooming," was known only to me. Someone noted, after the first verse came out without participation, "nice solo."
"Must be a Lutheran song," I quipped back. Merriment ensued.
As in the Solstice service last Sunday, there was a lot of time to think. It wasn’t all programmed. The time it took for people to arrive and get into place with candles and songbooks around the spiral circle, gave everyone a chance to settle in, heartwise. A friend Carrie with her daughter Naomi came, their first UU experience. I’d sent her "Irving the Snowchicken is Coming to Town" (see yesterday) and we laughed about it. It was so fun to see her. Also Trista, one of my Yoga teachers, came with her son, her sweetie, and another family. I never thought of the UU Advent Garden as an outreach service.
I still am being surprised by the healing, joyful potential of belonging to a non-religious Religion.
At a reception we went to afterwards at Larry and Terry’s, Matteo managed to sneak, it was rumored, two pieces of cheesecake. Art on all the walls, some of it Terry’s, what a nice thing. Maybe for us someday... Marin confirmed the cheesecake rumor, which he must have snagged when we were both in separate rooms from the dessert table. "Ringed with chocolate," is how she described his guilty mouth.
Makes sense, then, that he was bouncing off the walls when we got home at 10. And I couldn’t get him to settle. Marin went straight to bed. He and I watched an episode "Peep and the Big Wide World," a National Science Foundation funded cartoon. Then, after tooth brushing, we had a standoff about stories. He wanted two, I wanted to tell one. After five minutes of silence, he gave in. And I told the Mary-Joseph-Baby-Jesus-Shepherds-Angels story. And reminded him that Santa was bringing gifts because it was Christmas eve. "What Christmas eve is?"
Later, when he cried out in the middle of the night, Marin, who couldn’t sleep more than an hour at a stretch, came to sleep with him. He told her, "Papa told me a story about Jesus," and he started the process of waking get up. Marin: "Oh, you’re too early, you have to sleep a little bit more." Teo’s response: "It’s already that day, but I don’t remember what it is, Mama."
And now, much later than normal (7:30 am), he’s awake. We’ve decided not to make much of the "Santa" connection (since presents will be showing up for the next two weeks...), but managed to get the first installment wrapped and placed under the tree. He hasn’t noticed yet.
He’s being the "birdie" in his "nest," which is Marin’s lap, drinking "juice and nurse." And the little one kicking inside her to get out, is still holding back. Time to run!
She was referring to the fact that she’s been feeling generally under the weather all day, which turned specifically into having contractions all evening. Her gynecologist didn’t return a message she left. And a friend, a midwife we were thinking of calling, had a Christmas Eve car accident and broke her collar bone.
Our Christmas Eve was outside, the UU "Advent Garden," held in moonlight and candlelight. Some of us at the Fellowship stamped out a 30-foot spiral in the snow after the service Sunday. Tonight, while we sang traditional carols together, 40 of us meditatively, one by one, walked the spiral to the center, lit candles stuck into apples, and set the flaming apple-candles into the fir boughs which defined the spiral against the white snow.
A simpler, sweeter Christmas eve celebration I have not seen. As usual the UU sense of levity mixed in with the ceremonial seriousness, people laughed with me when it turned out that one of my favorite carols, "Lo how a Rose ‘ere Blooming," was known only to me. Someone noted, after the first verse came out without participation, "nice solo."
"Must be a Lutheran song," I quipped back. Merriment ensued.
As in the Solstice service last Sunday, there was a lot of time to think. It wasn’t all programmed. The time it took for people to arrive and get into place with candles and songbooks around the spiral circle, gave everyone a chance to settle in, heartwise. A friend Carrie with her daughter Naomi came, their first UU experience. I’d sent her "Irving the Snowchicken is Coming to Town" (see yesterday) and we laughed about it. It was so fun to see her. Also Trista, one of my Yoga teachers, came with her son, her sweetie, and another family. I never thought of the UU Advent Garden as an outreach service.
I still am being surprised by the healing, joyful potential of belonging to a non-religious Religion.
At a reception we went to afterwards at Larry and Terry’s, Matteo managed to sneak, it was rumored, two pieces of cheesecake. Art on all the walls, some of it Terry’s, what a nice thing. Maybe for us someday... Marin confirmed the cheesecake rumor, which he must have snagged when we were both in separate rooms from the dessert table. "Ringed with chocolate," is how she described his guilty mouth.
Makes sense, then, that he was bouncing off the walls when we got home at 10. And I couldn’t get him to settle. Marin went straight to bed. He and I watched an episode "Peep and the Big Wide World," a National Science Foundation funded cartoon. Then, after tooth brushing, we had a standoff about stories. He wanted two, I wanted to tell one. After five minutes of silence, he gave in. And I told the Mary-Joseph-Baby-Jesus-Shepherds-Angels story. And reminded him that Santa was bringing gifts because it was Christmas eve. "What Christmas eve is?"
Later, when he cried out in the middle of the night, Marin, who couldn’t sleep more than an hour at a stretch, came to sleep with him. He told her, "Papa told me a story about Jesus," and he started the process of waking get up. Marin: "Oh, you’re too early, you have to sleep a little bit more." Teo’s response: "It’s already that day, but I don’t remember what it is, Mama."
And now, much later than normal (7:30 am), he’s awake. We’ve decided not to make much of the "Santa" connection (since presents will be showing up for the next two weeks...), but managed to get the first installment wrapped and placed under the tree. He hasn’t noticed yet.
He’s being the "birdie" in his "nest," which is Marin’s lap, drinking "juice and nurse." And the little one kicking inside her to get out, is still holding back. Time to run!
Monday, December 24, 2007
Raven Speaking, Dante Leading / Advent Day 23
In the candlelit darkness of our drum-beat-heart-beating UU fellowship, Raven arose and told the people sitting in circle yesterday (Sunday) morning the story about how he had met in council with all the animals discussing the encroaching, endless darkness. And how he had succeeded in entering the lodge of the sky, by transforming himself into a spruce needle which the daughter of the chief drinks, and later gives birth to, as Raven Boy! Miracle! Raven Boy opens the three nested, glowing boxes in the corner of the lodge of the sky, transfigures himself back, and flies through the open roofed lodge with the glowing sun in his impervious talons.
The UU service worked. Not the least of all because we drummed for a half hour at the beginning of the service while people arrived late to the circle and chairs had to be found. And still we ended early. Nice to have some meditation time in the circle of the gathered people, in the gentle darkness of the Alaska dawn.
Marin had the observation that the UU’s probably won’t use the same story next year, which is probably true, Jana and I already discussed other wonderful folk stories we could use to illustrate the return of the light.
Maybe that’s where the Unitarians go wrong. Instead of having a yearlong cycle of beloved, recurring stories, we keep ranging out and sampling other people’s stories. Are we failing to attend to the repetition which would make the stories our own?
Last night, after Marin and I had queued up in our DVD player "the Lives of Others," a movie about the Stasi in East Germany, when we heard bumping in the bedrooms below. Matteo, back (after a month sleeping upstairs) downstairs in the guest bedroom to sleep, wasn’t. I went down, annoyed, to take a look, but chilled out as soon as I lay down beside him, arm around him, telling a story about Pooh characters throwing Christopher Robin a birthday party.
Then I launched into the story of Santa Claus, which might be his first exposure to that great American myth. He listened closely. "Where North Pole is?" he asked in his lilting, new-to-language little voice.
Then, sleep not coming anytime soon, I launched into a cultural piece de resistance, the Nativity Story. Mary, Joseph, traveling on a donkey, to a town with no hotel rooms, having a baby like Mama’s going to have a baby, then Angels singing ‘Glory Halleluah," and shepherds ("what’s a shepherd?") watching their sheep to protect them from wolves, and kings riding camels (Teo knows about camels) with gifts of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh, all duly explained.
He still wasn’t about to sleep, and ended up ejected from the guest bed back into his crib, and the movie went by the wayside. The 45 minute wait had driven Marin to bed before I got done.
But the stories I told, are stories that Matteo is going to hear, each and evey year, for better or worse, until he stops wanting stories or I lose my way in life. And I wish he’d hear the same Raven story at UUFF every year as well, since it’s what cultural identity comes from.
Stories guide us into who we are, they are Virgil to our confused and lost Dante (Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto 1), showing us the opening into the real world of meaning, a mysterious, difficult, darkling passage no one can find on their own.
The UU service worked. Not the least of all because we drummed for a half hour at the beginning of the service while people arrived late to the circle and chairs had to be found. And still we ended early. Nice to have some meditation time in the circle of the gathered people, in the gentle darkness of the Alaska dawn.
Marin had the observation that the UU’s probably won’t use the same story next year, which is probably true, Jana and I already discussed other wonderful folk stories we could use to illustrate the return of the light.
Maybe that’s where the Unitarians go wrong. Instead of having a yearlong cycle of beloved, recurring stories, we keep ranging out and sampling other people’s stories. Are we failing to attend to the repetition which would make the stories our own?
Last night, after Marin and I had queued up in our DVD player "the Lives of Others," a movie about the Stasi in East Germany, when we heard bumping in the bedrooms below. Matteo, back (after a month sleeping upstairs) downstairs in the guest bedroom to sleep, wasn’t. I went down, annoyed, to take a look, but chilled out as soon as I lay down beside him, arm around him, telling a story about Pooh characters throwing Christopher Robin a birthday party.
Then I launched into the story of Santa Claus, which might be his first exposure to that great American myth. He listened closely. "Where North Pole is?" he asked in his lilting, new-to-language little voice.
Then, sleep not coming anytime soon, I launched into a cultural piece de resistance, the Nativity Story. Mary, Joseph, traveling on a donkey, to a town with no hotel rooms, having a baby like Mama’s going to have a baby, then Angels singing ‘Glory Halleluah," and shepherds ("what’s a shepherd?") watching their sheep to protect them from wolves, and kings riding camels (Teo knows about camels) with gifts of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh, all duly explained.
He still wasn’t about to sleep, and ended up ejected from the guest bed back into his crib, and the movie went by the wayside. The 45 minute wait had driven Marin to bed before I got done.
But the stories I told, are stories that Matteo is going to hear, each and evey year, for better or worse, until he stops wanting stories or I lose my way in life. And I wish he’d hear the same Raven story at UUFF every year as well, since it’s what cultural identity comes from.
Stories guide us into who we are, they are Virgil to our confused and lost Dante (Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto 1), showing us the opening into the real world of meaning, a mysterious, difficult, darkling passage no one can find on their own.
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