Musings on Marriage

It's an odd thing . . .

Tomorrow I get to officiate the wedding of two members of the church I'm serving, two colleagues (well, one colleague and one in training), and two friends . . . all in the same day.  But that's not what's so odd.  It's odd that I have anything to do with it.

I'm told that in the Catholic tradition the only one of the seven sacraments the priest does not perform is the sacrament of marriage.  That, it's been explained to me, can only be performed by the couple themselves.  The priest is merely a witness.

So it is, I believe, in my tradition as well.  Most often, in my experience at least, the wedding is not the beginning of their relationship.  I once officiated at the wedding of a couple who'd lived together for 17 years!!!  During that time they'd raised children, faced good times, and bad.  Certainly their wedding day was not the beginning of their commitment to one another.  And, so, whatever it was that made of them a married couple, it wasn't that a religious figures "solemnized" their "nuptials."

Or consider same sex couples.  In many states -- including my new home of Virginia -- two people of the same gender are not allowed to have someone solemnize their nuptials.  There is no priest or rabbi or imam to bless their union.  And yet I can attest that many of my gay and lesbian friends are just as "married" as any of the straight people I know.

And then, of course, there are myriad of examples of heterosexual marriages that are full of abuse, and infidelity, and disrespect, and which certainly seem to me to be anything but a "marriage."

So what is it that makes a couple "married"?  Simply put, it's their love.  Tomorrow I will describe marriage as "an institution founded in nature, ordained by the state, sanctioned by the church, and made honorable by the faithful keeping of good women and men in all ages."   Truth be told, though, it's all about the love that two people have for each other.  Jamie and Pam will be married because they are making of their lives a committed union, not because of the words said, or the place in which they were said, nor the person (and persons) looking on as they say them.

I do not understand why some people can't understand that the gender of the two people really doesn't matter.  I mean, I actually do understand why some folks think that.  What I don't understand is why they aren't able to see that they're wrong.

Some day they will.  Some day our children will look back and wonder at the prohibitions against same sex marriage the way we look back at the prohibitions against mixed race marriage.  When I began my ministry there was no state in which homosexuals had the same legal right to marry as their heterosexual neighbors.  Now I have to write, "In many states . . ." because now there are states that have come to see the light.  I feel certain, now, that I will live to see this change.

Pax tecum

RevWik

Study Leave Book Reports, part 3

I know many people who frequently have two or more books open at the same time.  I think I even used to be able to do that (if I could it was so long that I can't remember for sure now).  All I know is that I generally don't do that now.  I like to read one book, focus on it, until it's done and only then move on to something else.

But last month while I was on Study Leave I had two books both calling out to me with such equal passion that I couldn't choose between them.  And since they are actually quite related to one another, I decided to give it a try.

I need to say that I am a fan of St. Francis of Assisi.  I would like to be able to say that I am a disciple, but I'm not (yet?) that disciplined.  But I have been studying his life, his teachings, and his legacy fairly seriously for the past couple of years, and I've even been involved with a group called The Ecumenical Order of Saint Francis (an ecumenical "third order" monastic community).  So I knew that I wanted to do some more reading about Francis during this time.

The first book I picked up -- and I'd been waiting to dive into this for some time -- is a classic:   Leonardo Boff's Francis of Assisi:  a model for human liberation.  I hadn't known that Boff was a Franciscan himself but he knew him as one of the premier liberation theologians, so I was eager to get his take on the "poverello."  This book was originally published in Boff's native Brazil in 1981, and I was reading an updated twenty-fifth anniversary edition published in 2006.  (Throughout I found myself wondering what Boff would say about direction the new Pope Francis seems to be taking the church.)  Boff lifts up Francis as an example of a joyful Christianity, an exemplar of a path that focuses on the poor in a radical way, and that shines a new light on humanity's interrelationship with the rest of the natural world.  It is clear that Francis has earned both Boff's personal affection and theological respect.

The second is titled Saint Francis and the Foolishness of God.  It is, itself, written by an ecumenical team:  Marie Dennis, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Joseph Nangle, and Stuart Taylor.  This is in many ways a more personal book or, to put it another way, a book that aims to help individuals bring the lessons of Francis into their own personal lives.  It can be read as a book study (and I'm thinking of using it at TJMC sometime in the future), or as a personal meditation, but either way it seems to be perfectly in keeping with what I understand to have been among Francis' own last words, "I have done what Christ called me to do; go and do what Christ is calling you to do."  The "Franciscan Way" is not about slavishly reproducing the actions and behaviors of Francis, but of bringing his way of life into reality within the reality of our own.  (Which, of course, can be said of Christianity in general.)

I will confess that I found Boff's book tough going at first. It's been a while since I've read any really dense, "heady" material. As I read on, though, and especially as I did so alternating with my second book, I found many things coming together for me.  (One thing I'll lift up is my delighted surprise as seeing Francis' way described as one which brought clergy and laity together in radically new ways that equalized them in the Order.  In fact, the earliest Franciscans were, by and large, not ordained priests, as Francis himself was not, and so in many ways it is a lay movement!  Considering my own current efforts at this same project it's nice to see that I'm on track.)

Pax tecum,

RevWik

International Dance Between the Towers Day 2013

A few years back I decided to declare a national, an international holiday!  I called it:  International Philippe Petit Danced Between The Towers Day.  It celebrates one of our history's greatest acts of holy folly -- on August 7, 1974 the French street performer and wire walker Philippe Petit stepped out onto a wire that had been surreptitiously rigged over the preceding night between the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and proceeded to "dance" between them for approximately 45 minutes.

I was twelve years old at the time, and the idea of this was electrifying.  A few years ago a documentary film about "le coup" -- Man on Wire -- came out and recaptured my imagination. (It also captured the Best Documentary Oscar in 2008.)  My annual ritual of watching that film began, and the declaration of IPPDBTTD was born.

In June, Nik Wallenda of the famous Flying Wallenda's family got people talking about perilous promenades when he walked a tightrope across the Grand Canyon.  Petit's accomplishment was naturally resurrected in people's minds, not least because he had considered following up his New York City crossings by crossing this same spot of the Canyon.  (Wallenda even had to remove the rigging Petit had been experimenting with.)  Still, for me, the events of August 7th still hold a unique place.  Why?

Well, firstly, it was such a surprise.  Following on their conquest of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in France and the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia, Petit and his companions prepared the Towers walk in secret, in the middle of the night.  (And for months prior.)  They did not have permits or approval.  They did not hold a press conference in advance to make sure the media were all there.  They didn't know if anyone would see them.  In a very real sense it seems to me that they didn't do this for anyone else -- they did this for themselves.  The did this to have done this.  Or, more precisely, they did it to do it.  Present tense.

And this added another element of risk.  Preparations had to be done in secret, which means that the team was limited in its ability to have their ideas tested.  And if you've read the book or seen the movie it is astonishing clear in how many ways le coup nearly didn't happen!  So many things could have gone wrong, almost did go wrong, that it's even more amazing than on face value that the whole thing worked.

One of the other things about that 1974 walk is that it was such a collaborative effort.  This seemed readily apparent to me watching the movie.  Although there's no question that it is presented as Petit's achievement and Petit's dream, it also seems unambiguously clear to me that there is no possible way he could have carried it out on his own.  This was brought home even more powerfully for me last year when I reached out to one of his co-conspirators -- Jean-Louis Blondeau -- because I wanted to use one of his black and white photos of Petit in his street performing days  for my blog post for IPPDBTTD.  To my tremendous pleasure he said that I could, and the two of us corresponded for a little while.  (I plan to send him a link to this piece and wish him a "happy anniversary.")

While those who made the walk possible did in many ways find themselves in the shadows of the spotlight that fell on Petit, that in no way diminishes their have been co-creators of that morning's magic.

Today, on what I now think of as International Dance Between the Towers Day, I am so grateful for all of those who were dreamers of this dream, and all of those who made it come true for the rest of us.  Jean-Louis said to me that there's another, in some ways even larger and more true story of that famous walk than the one I'll be watching tonight.  I hope that that story gets told.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Study Leave Book Reports, part 2

I mentioned yesterday that I'd done a lot of exciting reading this past month.  This is the book I started with -- Robin Meyers' The Underground Church:  Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus.  Meyers is "a nationally known United Church of Christ minister and peace activist.  His congregation describes itself as unapologetically Christian and unapologetically liberal."  Rev. Meyers certainly seems to be both.  He also come across as someone who sees an alternative to things as they are.  An example:

"Most of our churches are friendly, comfortable, and well appointed.  But who goes there expecting to be 'undone'?  Who expects to weep at recognizing the world as it really is, or to shudder at the certain knowledge that until we start taking risks it is likely to stay that way?  Who demands that worship should peel back the stupefying crust of a frantic, franchised culture?  Who suggests that perhaps we should plan an attack on the mall that rivals the ferocity with which Jesus attacked the temple?  Who dares to be a fanatic these days for something other than a football team?"  (p. 4)
 

I like this guy.

He makes the point early on -- and this is my wording of his ideas -- is that those who get focused on a search for the historical Jesus are doing something interesting, but that what is really essential for the church to do is to examine what the historical Jesus community was like.  What did the earliest followers of "The Way" consider important?  What did they do?  How did they strive to manifest among themselves and in the world the experience(s) they'd had while walking with this historical Jesus, and in the days, months, and years after his death?

One of the most important characteristics he lifts up -- and he does a really superb job of lifting up some pretty challenging things! -- is that the early proto-Christian communities were radically counter culteral.  They were considered, not to put too fine a point on it, a real threat to the status quo.  It's been noted often by liberal scholars that Jesus' talk about the "Kingdom of God" would have been understood by those listening as an articulation of an alternative to the "Kingdom of Caesar."  The early community of The Way existed in opposition to the way things were, as was Jesus himself.

So when, Meyers asks, was the last time that someone considered it dangerous that the church exists?  Obviously some of us in the liberal/progressive wing of religion often feel that some of the things said and done by the conservative wing are dangerous.  But when was the last time our own religiosity a challenge to the status quo?  When was your own faith -- however you understand it -- such a conterpoint to the assumed cultural norms that other people took notice?

If you're like most folk, it's probably been a while.  Unitarian Universalists have often experienced their faith as a kind of challenge to the established norms when transitioning from other faith traditions to ours -- family members or friends warn that we're a cult, or not a real religion, or a gateway straight to hell.  But once here, does the way we do our religion challenge -- or support -- the systems that are making such a hell here on earth?

That, fundamentally, is the encouragement I found in The Underground Church -- the encouragement to rediscover the essentially subversive nature of religion.  This is a book I'll come back to.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

It's Nice to Be Back!

The month of July was, for me, a month away from the ordinary.  For the first two weeks my family and I were on vacation.  (A friend of mine likes to note that there's a difference between a "a family trip" and "a vacation."  To be honest, this was a bit of both.

The rest of the month my time was split between moving -- a local move to a great house closer-in to town -- and what is usually called "study time."  The first half of that split I would wish on no one.  Because it was a local move we decided to move everything we could by ourselves, and to do it a bit at a time.  That means that literally every day of the last two-and-a-half weeks of July was spent packing up boxes at one house, loading them into the car, driving to the other house, and unloading them into the new house's garage.  Heft, sweat, repeat.  I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

That second half, though -- the study time -- now that was wonderful.  I read a number of really exciting books and really good some much needed stimulation of the grey cells.  I will, over the next few days, write a bit about each of them, but I thought I'd start with the most recent.  In fact, I'm currently only about halfway through it:

The Blogging Church:  sharing the story of your church through blogs, by Brian Bailey and Terry Storch.  I have to say, I'm really enjoying it.  It is written by a couple of guys who are unabashedly evangelistic about both the church and the technology of blogging.  I've gotten a lot of ideas not only for improving A Minister's Musings, but also for possibly introducing blogging as a response (only one response, to be sure) to the perennial problem of communicating within and beyond the congregation.

Might this provide a way to make communicating not only the factoidal information that we seem always to need to broadcast, but also the ideas and even the "feel" of the community?  Would this provide a platform for two-way, conversational communication rather than the more traditional one-way delivery?  And would this be more compelling for people?  (In other words, might this to at least some extent address the problem of folks feeling overwhelmed by information in their in-boxes -- offering a new and more engaging way to keep connected?)

The authors not only share their own quite obvious enthusiasm and experience, but that of other folks who've been involved in the blogosphere for some time.  I think that there's a lot to learn here, and as I learn I am becoming increasingly intrigued by the possibilities being presented.  Oh, it's nice to be back in the saddle again.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Who Is My Neighbor?

This is the text of the sermon I delivered at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia on Sunday, August 4th 2013. 
To hear the sermon as delivered, click here.

 It was November 14, 1999.  A Sunday.  NBC aired a Hallmark made-for-TV movie called, “Mary, Mother of Jesus.”  It starred, in the title role, the actress who would go on to play Shmi Skywalker, Anakin’s mother, in the first two episodes of the Star Wars saga, and as her son Jesus, the man who would one day be Batman in the Chris Nolan trilogy.  I remember all of these details so clearly because . . . okay . . .  because I googled it a couple of days ago.  It was, actually, an incredibly forgettable film.
 

Except for one thing.  I think it was before the first commercial break, Mary was putting her young son to bed.  Like so many children before and since, the boy asked his mother for a story.  And so she began, “A man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was set upon by robbers.  They beat him and robbed him, stripped him, and left him for dead by the side of the road.”  This movie proposed the very cool idea that at least some of Jesus’ teachings came not from his heavenly father but from his very earthly mother.  I’ve never forgotten that.  It seems so . . . right.

The New Testament version of this story begins with a person identified as “an expert in the law” coming to “test” Jesus.  He asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  And Jesus, ever a model for Unitarian Universalist ministers (whether we realize it or not), turned the question back on the questioner – “What does it say in the law?” he asks.  “How do you read it?”  And the person who’d wanted to test Jesus now finds himself on the hot seat and responds, “’Love the Lord God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”  We’re told that Jesus thought that that was a pretty good answer.

And it is.  Jesus himself, in another recorded encounter, says that the greatest of all the commandments is to love God and that there is another, “like unto it,” which is to love our neighbor.  On these, he says, “hang all the law and the teachings of the prophets.”  The great rabbi Hillel the Elder, who was actually still alive when Jesus was a young boy, was once challenged to sum up all of the teachings of the Torah while standing on one leg.  The rabbi raised one foot off the ground and said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to another.  Everything else is commentary.”

So this expert in the law had given a good answer when he’d said that to inherit eternal life all he had to do was love God and love his neighbor.  That answer was perfectly satisfactory for the letter of his question, but not its spirit.  It was an answer directed to the head, and not to the heart.  And so he then asked a new and different question.

And it’s interesting that the story in Luke says that the law expert did so “to justify” himself.  In other words, he knew that his first answer didn’t go deep enough, didn’t get to the heart of the matter – or, to put it another way, he knew that he, himself, didn’t go deep enough to get to the heart of the matter – and, so, he asked, “Well . . . who is my neighbor?”

Good question, right?  I mean, I got it.  I’m supposed to love my neighbor.  But surely that doesn’t mean the folks from the Westboro Baptist Church who protest at funerals with those signs that say, “God hates fags.”  Surely not them, right?  Not the folks who are actually into mountaintop removal, who think that it’s a good idea, right?  Not the darlings of right wing media who spew such hateful and hate-filled lies, right?  Not them.  Oh, you probably have your own group – or person –  you’d like to see stay outside the circle.  Right?

But Jesus was ever Jesus, and rather than give the guy a straight answer – you know, like the bumper sticker “God bless everyone – no exceptions!” – instead of being as clear as that Jesus answers with this story.  Mike read it earlier, so let’s “unpack” it a bit:

A man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho.  He was going from the big city – the hub where everything was happening – to the suburbs.  In the last sermon he ever got to preach, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about how he and his wife had once driven on that road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  He remarked on what a dangerous, treacherous road it is.  He mentioned how steep it is.  He got his facts wrong but his idea was right – rather than dropping, as he said, from about twelve hundred feet above sea level at Jerusalem to twenty-two feet below sea level at Jericho, it’s actually quite worse than that, going from twenty-one hundred feet above to over eight hundred feet below in the span of about eighteen miles.  Talk about “going down” from Jerusalem to Jericho!

Dr. King also noted that it’s a “winding, meandering road . . . conducive to ambushing.”  It came to be known as “The Bloody Pass,” he said, because of how dangerous it was.  So it’s not surprising that the main character of Jesus’ parable was ambushed, robbed, and left for dead.

The story continues that a priest was traveling down the same path, saw the man, yet did nothing to help him, choosing, instead, to “pass by on the other side [of the road].”  Similarly, a Levite came down the path, saw the wounded man, and also went on without trying to help.

Now, in their defense, there were proscriptions against having anything to do with a dead body and, so, the priest may not have wanted to be defiled and made unclean, which would have prevented him from doing his job.  So, too, the Levite may have had religious qualms – the tribe of Levi had boasted such notables as Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, as well as Samuel, Ezekiel, Ezra and Malachi.  Both of these figures might have assumed that it was a corpse they were looking at, and getting too close, by going over to check it out, could have created real problems for them.

Even more, these guys must also have known the reputation of this road.  How were they to know that the guy lying in the ditch wasn’t faking it?  Waiting for some unsuspecting “good Samaritan” to come by so that he and his thug friends could jump up and rob them?  Or maybe the gang that had attacked this guy was still hanging around.  They might have had real concerns about their own safety that led them to want not to get involved.  I don’t know about down here in the friendly south, but I know that up north a lot of people choose now not to stop when they see a car in trouble on the side of the road.  Who knows what you might be getting yourself into?  And let’s remember, when Jesus was first telling this story there were no cell phones to call AAA.  And so the priest and the Levite just pass by.

But then there comes this Samaritan.  And he sees the guy in the ditch and he jumps off his donkey and runs over to see if he’s okay.  He was, as the story says, “moved with compassion,” and he binds up the guy’s wounds, pours wine and oil on them, and sets him on his own animal for the rest of the trip.  Upon arriving in Jericho he gets them both a room, and in the morning he pays the innkeeper to take care of the guy, promising to come back and pay whatever is owed for his care.

The Rev. Dr. King suggested that the priest and the Levite had seen the man on the side of the road, wounded, lying in a ditch, and had fearfully asked themselves, “If I go over to try to help, what might happen to me?”  The Samaritan, on the other hand, King said, saw the man and compassionately asked, “If I don’t go over to try to help, what might happen to him?”  Big difference.  And we’ll come back to this.

But first let me tell you something about this Samaritan.  For one thing, he was a Samaritan.  And that means that he was a hated outsider.  Jews hated Samaritans, and Samaritans hated Jews.  Their animosity was both mutual and about as bad as it could get.  To give you an example of how bad, shortly after the attacks of September 11^th I used this story in a sermon but changed “Samaritan” to “Al Qaeda jihadist.”  The Good Al Qaeda Jihadist.  And today?  Well, maybe I’d use Rev. Phelps from Westboro, or Glen Beck, or ask one of you to fill in the blank.

The point is, the Samaritan people were about as despised by the folks to whom Jesus was talking as any group of people have ever been despised by anyone.  And that actually should cause a problem for people who think that the moral of the story is to “go and do likewise;” that this story is encouraging us to be “good Samaritans.”

Let me take a step back for a minute and share a bit of Storytelling 101.  You want to make the main character of your story somebody that your audience will relate to; you want that man or woman to be somebody in whose place they’ll be able to see themselves.  This way, as your character has an experience or learns a lesson your audience will be able to share in it too.  It will be transferrable because your main character is someone people can identify with.

Now I’ve said that the Samaritans were as despised as despised could be.  In fact, some commentators have suggested that the reason the author of Luke has the expert in the law say that the real neighbor was “the one who showed mercy” was that he probably couldn’t even bring himself to say the name, “Samaritan.”  So the Samaritan really can’t be our main character, because there’d have been nobody in the audience who would have been able to relate to a Samaritan.  Much less consider one, “good.”

Likewise, the main character of the story can’t be the Levite or the priest because they leave the guy lying on the side of the road for goodness sakes!  Oh they may have had understandable reasons for not being helpful, but in the context of the story those reasons sure look like excuses.  So who’s going to want to identify with either of them?

And that leaves only the character I’d earlier described as the main character of Jesus’ parable, the man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and was fallen upon by robbers.  In other words, the point of this parable isn’t that we should offer help, like the good Samaritan did.  Rather, Jesus seems to be saying to that expert in the law, “friend, if you have to ask who your neighbor is then you’re in a heap of trouble.  You’ve been knocked on the head, you’ve been beaten to within an inch of your life, your things have been absconded with, and you’ve been left for dead along the side of life’s highway.  And not only that, but none of your peeps are stopping to help you out.”

Not exactly the message we’ve been conditioned to hear, but I’d contend that it’s the only message it would have been possible for Jesus’ first century Jewish audience to hear.  And here’s the kicker.  This story also tells us that when help finally does arrive for us – and it seems to want to assure us that it will – it may very likely come from a very unlikely and perhaps even unwelcome source.  The thing that helps us and heals us may be the very thing that we most wanted to avoid.

Who is my neighbor, indeed?

I thought about this story in the days after the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial.  Of all the things I read the one that resonated with me most powerfully was said by the Rev. Greg Brewer, the Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida.  He said, “I want to live in a world in which George Zimmerman offered Trayvon Martin a ride home that night to get him out of the rain.”  Right?  Isn’t that the kind of world we want to live in?  But you see it seems that Zimmerman didn’t realize that he was the guy bloodied and broken on the side of the road, in need of help, and that Martin was the despised Other who nonetheless – or maybe even because – could be moved by compassion for him, and pour Skittles and Iced Tea on his wounds, and help him to heal.  It seems that all he saw was the danger.

Just as the people who fought the burial of Tamerlan Tsarnayav seem to have been able to see only his role in that abominable bombing at the marathon and, so, couldn’t see that responding to violence with love might actually be a balm to soothe their shattered souls.

I don’t know about you – although I’ll admit that I have my guesses – but I can tell you for sure that I far too often take on the role of Levite or priest.  I fearfully worry about what might happen to me if . . . and that “if” can lead almost anywhere, really.  I see people of color on the side of the road; I see transgender folks on the side of the road; I see the poor (both the working poor and the plain old poor poor), the homeless, the disenfranchised by a myriad of means; I see the environment; I see nations at war; I see all of these things wounded and desperate for help but I’m far too often afraid of what might happen to me if I get too close.  So I hold back, keep my distance, and far, far too often pass on by.

You?

As we enter into this month of considering “the web of life” I am reminded of just how truly, how radically, how deeply we all – each of us and all of us – are interconnected with everyone and everything else there is.  As Dr. King said in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail (although, admittedly, not exactly in this order), “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.  Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  We are all connected to one another.  We are all each other’s neighbors.

And I am reminded not only that when I take on the role of the passerby I leave to fend for themselves whoever is ostensibly wounded by the side of the road, but that my very capacity to walk on by is a sign of just how broken and bloodied I am and, so, I leave myself there as well.  And, paradoxically, when I instead shift my focus from asking what might happen to me if I help to asking what might happen to them if I don’t, then my own healing begins.  What affects one directly, affects all indirectly.  We are all each other’s neighbors.

So . . . in this religio-spiritual context . . . who is my neighbor?  Who is yours?  Whoever we would least like it to be, I’m afraid.  And that is exactly who we are called on to love.  Now . . . how to do that is precisely one of the reasons places like this exist – to help us figure it out.

In Gassho,

RevWik

As an added bonus:  During the service we played two videos from the incredibly wonderful Playing for Change series.  These videos demonstrate an on-going project which brings together the music of musicians who are, themselves, in physically distant places, to create a truly global ensemble.  When I was at UUHQ I contacted the folks at Playing for Change and they were excited at the idea of their videos being used in worship services.  Do check out their site, their project, and their other videos.  It's really an amazing thing.

He (Might Be) Heavy . . .

There are all kinds of heaviness.  There's the obvious -- physical heaviness.  As a people, we in the "developed" world have . . . well . . . develped into a severly obese people.  It has been said that this is the first generation of children expected to live shorter lives than their parents.  And this is largely because of the epidemic of obesity, and the myriad of conditions associated with it -- diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc.

But there are lots of ways to be heavy.

Some of us are carrying the weight of guilt and shame.

Some of us are weighed down by depression.

Some of us are lugging around a few extra worries.

Some of us have packed on problems and pressures that are crushing us.

When I was in high school I was in just about all of the school plays.  I remember that one night -- an opening night as I recall -- I had a 106 ˚ fever, but I went on anyway.  "The show must go on!" and all that.  After the show was over I was a bowl of jello, of course, but no one in that audience (except my parents) had any idea that I was feeling anything but 100%.

Right now, at this very moment -- or soon, very soon -- you will cross paths with someone who is acting in just such a valient effort to keep the "show" going on.  Perhaps it's someone you know well.  Maybe it's just an acquaintance.  It could be someone you don't know at all yet whose life will be intersecting with yours, if only for a moment.  And, of course you might be this person, weighed down in ways no one else can see.

To all those whose "weight" is not as visibile -- blessings on your day.  Remember that you are not alone (no matter how much you might wish it!).

Pax tecum,

RevWik

And Not Only Dolphins . . .

Playing in surf. Photo: ms4jah@flickr.com
License: Creative Commons attrib/noncom

The title of this post came from something I'd posted on FaceBook.  I'd been with my elder son on his 5th grade field trip to Virginia Beach. (Cool, right?  I love VL Murray!). We'd gone out on a dolphin watch cruise, and I'd posted a couple of photos of the dolphins we saw.  I titled this post "DOLPHINS!"

On the way back in we were treated to the practice session of a squadron of planes for an air show later that weekend.  For a couple of their runs they went directly over our boat!  When I posted about this I wrote, ". . . and not only dolphins!"  One of my friends remarked, "I like any post that begins, 'and not only dolphins!'"  Another suggested that it'd make a great book title.

I'm thinking, maybe, a children's book   One looking at the miracles that surround us every day, those tastes of life's goodness, what a friend of mine calls "love letters from God."  

So, of course, there's the sight of of a family of dolphins, frolicking in the waves.  And not only dolphins, there's:

• The sight of a  group of Japanese macaques sitting in the hot springs with snow falling around them.
• The feel of a cup of hot chocolate warming your hands after a long day in the snow. 
• Sun on your shoulders and a cool breeze on your face. 
• The smell of salt at the beach. 
• Getting into bed with fresh cleaned sheets
• The smell of baking bread . . . or cookies. 

These are some of my ideas.  What are some of yours?

In Gassho,

RevWik
 

Walking Around Shining Like The Sun

Today I got to live out one of my dreams.

I know that even the best of us are, well, like the rest of us -- each and every human being has the potentials for greatness, and each and every one of us has gifts that are only ours to share.  No person is worth of "worship."

And, yet, there are some people who have a profound effect on individuals . . . or on the world.  To me, Father Thomas Merton is one of those people.  And today I stood on the street corner in Louisville at which Fr. Merton famously had an epiphany.  This is how he described it in his book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander:

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

I can honestly (yet I hope humbly) say that I've had this same revelation; I believe I know exactly what he was experiencing.  And that is one of the many things that makes Merton such a powerful teacher for me.  So the opportunity to stand where he stood?  One of the things I've long wanted to do.

After this, though, it got even better.  My friend James Ishmael Ford (whose on blog, Monkey Mind, is well worth following) drove me about an hour out of town to the Abbey of Gesethemi.  This is the monastery where Merton lived . . . and where he's buried. It was, as much as any place on earth, his home.

As a way of thanking this teacher -- not only of me but of millions -- I placed a set of my prayer beads at the base of his stone.  I got to live out one of my dreams . . .

In Gassho,

RevWik

And So It Goes With God . . .

A couple of nights ago both of my children were sleeping over at a friend's house, so my wife and I fired up the DVD player and popped in something I'd seen in the cinema but which she'd not seen yet -- The Life of Pi.  (I saw it originally when I'd taken my kids to watch Wreck-It Ralph.  We got there we saw that Ralph was sold out and I suggested that we go to Pi instead.  Turned out to be not exactly a one-for-one trade!)

At the end of the movie, and apparently the book as well, after telling two very different versions of his tale the main character asks which is the better story.  When the journalist (in the movie) chooses "the one with the tiger," Pi responds, "And so it goes with God."

I've heard several interpretations of what this line is intended to convey, but here's what Yann Martel, the author of the book and, so, the line itself, as said:

". . . Pi makes a parallel between the two stories and religion. His argument (and mine) is that a vision of life that has a transcendental element is better than one that is purely secular and materialist. A story with God ("God" defined in the broadest sense) is the better story, I argue, just as I think the story with animals is the better story. But you choose." 

(I found this in a transcript from the ABC's Good Morning America Q & A with the author as part of their "Read This!" book club.)

A lot of time and intellectual energy by a lot of people has gone into the project of coming up with convincing arguments for a belief in God and here Martel, through his character Pi, is essentially saying that the reason to believe in God is that it makes for a "better story."  And he acknowledges that it is, fundamentally, a choice.

I've thought this for a long time.  It's not my only answer to the question of why I believe in God (and, as Martel says, "defined in the broadest sense") but it is one of my favorites.  And last night, coming across this "argument" again I remembered two of the sources that long-ago influenced my thinking.

One is the wonderful book Illusions:  adventures of a reluctant messiah, by Richard Bach.  Bach had gained huge fame with his earlier Johnathon Livingston Seagull, but it was Illusions that really grabbed me by the collar and has refused to let go.  It tells the story of Bach himself, during one of the summers he spent barnstorming around the country in an old biplane.  The story tells of his meeting a man named Donald Shimoda who, it turns out, is actually the Messiah who had returned to earth but had essentially quit that job when it became clear that people really didn't want to listen to his message.  Still, one doesn't quit being Messiah too easily and, so, he agrees to teach Bach what he knows about the meaning of life.

Word eventually gets out about this mysterious stranger and the wonders that seem to follow him, and he gets interviewed on the radio.  After sharing some of his teachings the host asks him why he believes such things.  Instead of saying, "I live my life this way and it works" or something even faintly convincing like that he says, simply, "I believe it because it's fun to believe it."

This is, I think, echoed in another book that shaped me -- The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castenada.  One of those teachings has to do with "the path with a heart."

"All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long long paths, but I am not anywhere. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you."

All paths are the same -- they lead nowhere.  Still, you need to chose, and so you might as well chose the path witha heart.  The path with a heart will be more fun.  It will make for a better story.

And so it goes with God.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Vice Versa

I can no longer remember who I was reading at the time, but a Christian author made the following assertion:  in every encounter each of us has we have two options -- to see Christ in the other person, or to be Christ for the other person.

I've been thinking about that a lot for a while, trying hard to remember it.  (Although, I'll admit, I've probably only gotten to the point of trying to try to try to remember it, if you know what I mean.)  Yet while this particular phrase resonates with me, I realize that it may well be "too Christian" for lots of folks.  So here are some alternatives:

In every encounter you have you will have the opportunity to be either a teacher or a learner.

I every encounter you have you will have the opportunity to either be a healer or receiving healing.

In every encounter you have you will have the opportunity to either rise to your best self or to help someone else to rise.

This last one kind of gives it away, doesn't it?  I mean, it's hopefully become obvious that these are not really two things.  Truth is, there's only one option.  Because . . .

if you rise to your best self you will naturally help others to rise as well;

and if you are a healer you will receiving healing in the process;

and there is not a teacher worthy of the name who is not also a learner.

Naturally the inverse of each of these is true as well -- learners are always teachers, those who receiving healing themselves offer healing, and those who help others to be the best have already become their own best selves.

But what of that first one?  It works this way too, because the surest way of being the Christ for another is seeing it in them . . . and vice versa.

Now maybe because I've written it down I might remember.  If I do, I'll remind you;  if I forget, I'm counting on your.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Where Did It All Begin?

Last week the staff with whom I work had a "retreat."  It was really just an ever-so-slightly longer than usual weekly staff meeting, but we did have a different agenda.  Well, again to be honest, we had our usual agenda but we whipped through it double-time so that we could do something different -- we wanted to intentionally work on deepening our relationships with one another. After all, we're all working for a church -- an intentional faith community -- and so it seems to make sense that we shouldn't just be to each other people who happen to work at the same place.  We, too, should be about cultivating connections among ourselves.

And, so, after our usual work was done I invited everyone to think of a time when they most fully felt their "calling."  I was purposefully vague by what I meant about that, and I offered alternatives to the question such as:  "Can you think of an early spiritual experience?"  "When did you first feel yourself stepping on to the path you're on now?"  "Would you talk about a time when you felt profoundly alive?"  (To be honest, I figured that folks would all have their own interpretations of the question anyway, no matter how specific I got, and after all the point really wasn't the particular answer as much as the sharing.)

When it was my turn I talked about a time when I was at either Camp Westminster or Denton Lake.  (Both were Presbyterian camps that I attended during elementary school.  I think it was around 5th or 6th grade that I switched over to the Methodists, so this event happened pretty early in life.)  I remember a conversation between a couple of counselors that had begun around the camp fire which eventually moved over to the picnic table near our cabins.  This conversation has a lot to do with who I am today, what I'm doing, and why I'm doing it.

One of the two was a guy we all called "Rev. Ev."  His name was Evan, and he was going to be going to seminary that next year.  He'd earlier that evening told us the story of his sense of "call."  He'd been in a terrible car accident a year or so before.  The entire car had been demolished, it was truly totaled, except for the driver's compartment.  His door opened easily, and he was able to walk out of his mangled car without a scratch.  And right then and there he dedicated himself to serving the God he believed had saved him.

The other participant in this late-night conversation somewhere around forty years ago was one of the female counselors.  I don't remember her name.  But I remember the way she challenged Rev. Ev, the way she pushed, and prodded, and refused to accept too-simple answers.  My memory is that she wasn't being mean, although I think she was certainly somewhat enjoying the discomfort she knew she was creating.  But at her core she was truly curious; she really wanted to understand; and she took all of this too seriously to be satisfied with pat answers.

Visually I remember the way the campfire highlighted only their eyes as they talked.  And if "eyes are the windows of the soul" then there was a true conversation, perhaps even a true communion of sorts, between those two souls.  I can close my eyes today and be vividly back there in an instant.

And one of the things I believe that evening did for me was to awaken a delight in such conversations that has only grown over the intervening years.  I find them thrilling.  Delicious.  ("Taste and see that the Lord is good," is one of my favorite of Biblical verses for describing the delight of the spiritual life.)  There are few things that bring me to life more than really engaging deeply and courageously with someone else's spiritual journey; seeing how it's been for them and sharing how it's been for me.  And as an ordained minister -- a professional spiritual person -- I get to have these kinds of conversations a lot.  Not as much as I'd like or as my non-clergy friends might imagine, but a lot.  And every so often I get to have one during which it seems that everything else fades away but our eyes, and I can almost smell the woodsmoke.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Musings on Money

Last Sunday, Mother's Day, I noted that I'd much rather preach the annual canvas sermon to my congregation than the annual Mothers' Day sermon.  (I said, "Nobody wants to talk about money, but some people actually like their mothers . . ."  I said that on Mothers' Day it's harder to find the right balance.)

But that got me thinking about money and, specifically, the giving of money to the church.  That and the fact that last week we also announced to the congregation I serve that a goodly number of people have paid nothing on this year's pledge and that, two months out from the end of our fiscal year, if we were to add up all of the currently unpaid pledges from folks who've paid 50% or less of this year's pledge we'd be looking at approximately $100,000.  That's $100,000 that our community members have promised to one another, and that we've budgeted for, but that at least so far looks like won't be coming in.  (And if we add up all the pledges from folks who've pledged for this year but not yet for next year then we'd be looking at $200,000 of shortfall next year.)  And, yet, most of the folks I see on Sunday mornings seem to be feeling really good about our congregation; seem to be feeling really engaged and energized.  So something's not clicking; there's some kind of disconnect.

I know that a lot of people from Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist read this blog, yet a lot of folks from other UU churches (as well as from churches of other stripes and no churches at all) do too.  So I'm really not musing here about the fiscal foibles of the congregation I'm currently serving.  I really am thinking about money, and the giving of money to the church, in a wider context.  I'm really dancing with a pretty generalized question.

Why is it that so many faith communities have so much trouble raising the funds needed to do the things they do from the very people who are the primary beneficiaries of those things?  

It seems odd, and I know is frustrating to church leaders widely, that this is so.  In general congregations -- again, at least the liberal/progressive congregations I know the most about -- are almost always one small problem away from disaster.  No matter how excited their members are about what's happening in the church the annual budget process is always a matter of figuring out how to squeeze the most out of every last dollar.  Year after year congregations "muddle through," knowing how much more they could do if they were better funded, yet not being able to increase the congregation's financial offerings.  There's an old joke -- the minister ascends to the pulpit and says, "I have good news, and I have bad news.  The good news is that we have all the money we need to create the church of our dreams!  The bad news is that most of it is stuck in your wallets." 

I think that there are probably several reasons for this.  Here are three:

People no longer know what's appropriate to give.  This is a big one, especially in congregations in which a lot of folks grew up outside of "the church."  This is definitely true of a lot of Unitarian Universalist congregations -- where in many cases a majority of members grew up in other denominations or outside of any organized religion -- but it's increasingly true within all liberal faith communities. That institutional memory of just what it takes to keep a church alive -- and the institutional commitment needed to do it -- just hasn't been passed down efficiently from one generation to the next.  My parents, and even more my parents parents, knew and understood the meaning of the phrase "sacrificial giving."  They understood that the goal of giving -- especially giving to a church -- was not to try to get away with giving as little as you can, or to give only what one is comfortable giving, but to give to the point that you feel it.  To give to the extent that there's a little sacrifice in one's giving.  I'm afraid that this is a foreign concept to the majority of people in the majority of today's congregations.

I've known double-income couples where one is a doctor and the other a lawyer and yet whose annual pledge to their church was less than that made by a single-income elementary school teacher.  To be fair, the former probably also gave to other charities as well, and may have had other expenses like country club dues and marina fees for their boat that the teacher didn't have.  It really doesn't work to compare one person's donation to another's on a dollar-to-dollar basis.  It is fascinating, though, to think about our giving on a percentage-of-income basis.  (And, as my mentor was fond of saying, "if you're asking gross or net you're missing the point.)

So . . . my family and I give roughly 3% of our income to the church.  It's a stretch for us, yet one that feels really worth it to us.  We believe in what church, in general, and Unitarian Universalist churches, in particular, can do for individuals and for the community.  And while 3% is nowhere near the tradition of a tithe -- 10% -- I feel pretty good about.  In part that's because it's an amount that, as I said, is a stretch for us.  In part it's also because I know that I've heard the figure that the average Unitarian Universalist gives 1% or less.  (And if you add up all of their charitable giving it comes in at less than 3%.)  I know that there are plenty of people giving considerably more than that, but there are considerably more who are giving a whole lot less.  In fact, I've heard it said that if everyone in the average congregation were to give only 2% of their income to the church -- and that means both that the folks below that mark increase but also that those above decrease to it -- most congregations would be able to double, if not triple, their budgets.

Another reason for the challenges many churches have in this area is that churches never really learned how to ask for money.  If you think about the congregational appeals you may have received -- or participated in -- over the years I think you'd agree that the vast majority of them sound something like this:

Well!  We barely scraped by last year, and that only because we cut everything to the bare bones.  We'd really like to do some good things this year, so we really, really, really hope you'll give our church some money because otherwise we're going to be in serious trouble . . . again.

Right?  Yet have you ever received an appeal from any other non-profit that sounded like that?  No matter how tight things might have actually been, most non-profits frame their appeals for donations in terms of all the good they are doing and all the visions they have of the future.  Rather than begging you to solve their desperate problems they invite you to help create new solutions.

This observation comes from a wonderful new book that I recently discovered.  (Actually, I didn't discover it.  A colleague who's recommendations I greatly respect, Tandi Rogers, mentioned it on FaceBook a month or so ago, and I immediately ordered myself a copy!)  The book is Not Your Parents' Offering Plate: a new vision for financial stewardship by J. Clif Christopher.  Rev. Christopher, a long-time parish minister and now professional fundraising consultant for churches, challenges much of the conventional wisdom of congregations about how to ask for money and, for that matter, why we do it.  A bottom-line summary of the book might be this:  organizationally, the church is a non-profit, so it might be wise to heed the lessons learned by virtually every other non-profit when it comes to successfully soliciting donations.

Here's one practical ramification of this notion -- how many other institutions give each and every one of their potential donors their entire line-item budget?  Not many.  Pretty much none, actually.  That's because these other institutions realize that people don't give to support such a detailed description of costs incurred; nobody donates to ensure that an organization can buy more copy paper next year.  People donate to a vision and, even more, to a vision enacted -- people give their money (as well as their time and their energy) to people served, lives changes, impact made.  Yet it is the rare congregation that actually engages its constituents at this level come pledge time.  More often it's making a plaintive plea for folks to increase their pledges enough so that they might be able to make a minute adjustment to a budget that barely allowed them to scrape by this past year.  Not particularly inspiring.

There may be another, perhaps even more fundamental, reason than this.  Today I was listening to the TED Radio Hour on NPR and heard a wonderful program about giving.  One segment looked at Dan Pallotta, whose original TED Talk is below.  Pallotta asserts that even non-profits really don't understand what's needed when it comes to inspiring philanthropic giving and that, "the things we've been taught to think about giving, and about charity, and about the non-profit sector are actually undermining the causes we love and our profound yearning to change the world."  As I listened I thought about the situation at TJMC, and the situation in liberal/progressive faith communities generally, and I thought it worth sharing some of these musings.

I know I've been away from the blogosphere for a while, and I know that this is an awfully long re-introduction, but I hope that you'll give this topic just about 18 more minutes so that you can listen to what Dan Pallotta has to say.  I hope you'll find it as worthwhile as I have.

In Gassho,

RevWik