The Democratic Process v.2008

Quote du jour:

As for that VP talk all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day?--Sarah Palin

I can't help myself. As political theatre this election has been the best ever. I'm having an odd sort of watching for the train wreck kind of fun. It beats the woeful economic news. It's official. Retirement is so 90's.

Anyhow, at the risk of violating separation of church and state and ending up in court - and I should put proper blame on our Congregational and Unitarian (they preferred to be called Arians actually) forebears in Dedham* who really started the ball rolling on that one - I will not editorialize on candidates - just on elections.

*To paraphrase: let the church take care of church business and let the town/parish take care of town/parish business -SJC Dedham Decision, 1820

Today what I really want to say is that voting is religious. Helping other people vote is religious. Upholding fair and free electoral process is religious. Even if we didn't explicitly say that "we affirm and promote the use of the democratic process in our congregations and in society at large". But since we do, I can write these words in a religious education blog. We are a faith tradition that believes we all have the right and the obligation to make our wishes known. As citizens, we should do no less.

Now, I, like many other people, have had a really hard time believing my vote counted for anything in any number of elections. I clearly backed the wrong horses. And I may be doing so again this year. but I will vote as if my opinion mattered. It does. It matters to me and it matters to every politician who took advantage of voter apathy. It matters to every child who will have the the supreme court justices seated by this generation inform their future. It matters to everyone who labors under the weight of illness or poverty, or discrimination. It matters to anyone who is in the military, or national guard and reserves. It matters to our climate and our planet. In this state, it matters to all the human service agencies who depend on tax dollars and to all the people who 'inhaled'.

It matters to everyone who believes in democracy - Democracy only works when we do. And even for the backers of the wrong horse - our numbers count. Everytime we vote, we hold open space for our views, our opinions, our wishes to be considered. Everytime we vote, we offer up a prayer for our society.

So I will challenge all of you to live your faith. Vote. Encourage others to. If you have time, consider working to get out the vote; any party would be glad to have you. And when you are in church on Sunday, remind our children and youth, that whatever your vote is, it is one we make for our today and for their tomorrow.

Vote. It's your prayer made manifest.

Ministry, yours, mine and ours

Quote du jour: Sometimes a poem says it all

Ministry is all that we do -- together

Ministry is all that we do -- together

Ministry is that quality of being in community that

affirms human dignity

beckons forth hidden possibilities,

invites us into deeper, more constant,reverent relationships

and carries forward our heritage of hope and liberation.

Ministry is what we do together

as we celebrate triumphs of our human spirit

Miracles of birth and life

Wonders of devotion and sacrifice.

Ministry is what we do together

with one another

in terror and torment

in grief, in misery and pain,

enabling us in the presence of death to say yes to life.

We who minister speak and live the best we know

with full knowledge

that it is never quite enough

And yet are reassured

by lostness found, fragments reunited,

wounds healed and joy shared.

Ministry is all that we do -- together.
Gordon McKeeman

See you in church!

Any Questions?

Quote du jour

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions." ~ Naguib Mahfouz

Last week I wrote about THE question. This week I wanted to write more about the MANY questions (Of course last week, my big question was - WHY, oh WHY did my old-enough-to-know-better son take the dog out to visit local skunks at two in the morning - with predictable results. The only answer I could come up with was to induce me to make the dog a peroxide blonde. James, my son, DOES live in LA were dogs visit hair stylists weekly. . . For those of you who have never needed to know this - the de-skunking potion involves hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dish detergent.)

Much of what we do in a Unitarian Universalist church is in service to seeking our own truth and meaning as individuals. Sermons are not holy writ. Nor are newsletter columns and . . . ahem. .. blogs; they are simply a set of questions, ideas and opinions about answers. The questions and answers your church staff come up with are not necessarily the questions and answers YOU come up with and the questions and answers teachers come up with aren't necessarily the questions and answers our children come up with. We are not here to tell others what truth with a capital T is, but rather to hold open the questions and offer our own personal response.

In our faith tradition we ask questions, and we frequently ask questions that have no easy answer or perhaps no answer at all. That doesn't let us off the hook for trying though.

As guides and mentors to our young people, we have a responsibility to hold space for questions and to hold space for uncertainty about answers. Years ago, I was reminded that one of the greatest gifts a teacher can give is the statement "I don't KNOW, this is what I BELIEVE". What I often observe in our liberal world is that adults so fear brainwashing kids that they avoid sharing the answers of their own heart and mind. We aren't charged with telling children what to think, but we are charged with telling children what we believe.

Of course, how we tell them is part of the message. In this political season, I've been telling lots of people what I believe, hoping that it will inspire them to THINK and draw similar conclusions. From the glazed looks I've been getting in southern New Hampshire, I'm not sure how well that's working. I've witnessed the same glazed looks on the faces of kids in the many churches I've served.

So how about this, why don't we each ask ourselves the question "What do I BELIEVE really matters?" And when we discover what things really matter, we can live those things and speak those things and work for those things, and perhaps that will teach our children best of all.

see you in church!

THE Question.

Quote du jour

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

As we near the end of the first - somewhat tumultuous - month of the church Religious Education year, I’m grateful for your questions, your compassionate as well as critical eyes and most of all, your willingness to minister in this very special way to the youngest members of our faith. You’re all an inspiration to me.

So if the first question someone asks is 'Where do you go to church?" Chances are that the second question will be THE question, the one that’s really hard to answer "What do you believe in?" It's a particular challenge - for adults and for kids - to clearly and briefly describe our beliefs and practices in a non-creedal faith. A number of years ago, someone clever – not I- came up with a rainbow pneumonic to help children remember the 7 principles of Unitarian Universalism. I think you've had DRE's use it here.

Since it was unwieldy carrying around my Popsicle stick principle prompts I also committed this one to my memory. I’ve used it with rainbow bracelets made out of pony beads, with rainbow candles, or rainbow crayons or the oft planned but never executed rainbow vegetables and fruits (Apple, carrot, corn, spinach, yes, blue Peruvian potatoes, blueberries, eggplant.) But I never got further than donuts, snow peas, pop tarts. . . pop tarts. As you think ahead to future teaching moments with the children and youth of our congregation, perhaps this will come in handy.

Rainbow for Remembering

One strategy that is useful in recalling the principles is to use theacronym Roy G Biv and connect a color of the rainbow to each of the sevenprinciples.

They are assigned a color in the order in which the colors appear in the rainbow.

One - Red: Respect the importance and value of all beings

Two - Orange: Offer fair and kind treatment to all.

Three - Yellow: Yearn to learn throughout life.

Four - Green: Grow by exploring ideas and values together.

Five - Blue: Believe in your ideas and act on them

Six - Indigo: Insist on peace, freedom and justice for all

Seven - Violet: Value our interdependence with nature.

So when we encounter THE question, or our children do, we can give an answer of colorful principles, but as the quote above reminds us, let us also live these colorful principles.

See you in church!

Rebecca

No Rumminating This Week!

"We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities."--Bill Maher


This is mostly calendar notes and no rumminating - I figured you'd all like a week off.

This weekend I am out of the church (I will be freezing my kiester off on retreat in the mountains) so if you have any special needs before Sunday, please contact me no later than Thursday afternoon. I return next Monday, back in the office Tuesday.

The current rotation, Our Unitarian Universalist Community is winding up this Sunday and on the 19th we will begin the next rotation -our Jewish and Christian Heritage - with a story of devotion and trust and generousity, The Book of Ruth from the Torah. I will tell the story that Sunday during the Time for All Ages in the worship service, so come and hear what our children will be hearing.

Our Whole Lives group does not meet this Sunday, the 12th, nor do they meet the 19th. They'll be back in harness on October 25th - the day after the UNICEF party. Many of our OWL participants will also be participating in the Frozen Pickles hosting and games events. I encourage those of you with younger children to come along and enjoy the fun AND the candy!

Good luck to the OWL leaders on Sunday. Sugar and hormones? Oh dear.

Coming of Age has begun as well. That group also does not meet this coming weekend - the 12th. They'll be back on the 19th.

And now for the commercial - I am trying to figure out the talent pool at church. Since I'm new here (or newish) I would love to have your thoughts on people who might be interested in work parties to produce various objects to be used in the children's program. One of the story techniques we use is to have props - giving the children a visual language as well as a auditory one as we tell, or as we lead worship. My thought is that the work parties would be short and social and we'd put together props for a story basket or perhaps create some 'religion' boxes for our liturgical lessons with the older kids. Let me know if you or anyone you know and like would be interested!

And that's it. My words of inspiration this week are very brief. In spite of the market meltdown and the profiteering, we have an excess of abundance in our lives. We have the blue sky and the painted up autumn of New England. We have the affection of our children and the support of our families. We have this church and each other. We're rich. Very rich. I intend to remember those things every time I look out the window at the hail of golden ash - and I hope you can find time to do so as well.


see you all in church.

rebecca

Happy New Year!

Instead of a pithy quote, I offer up this poem for Rosh Hashanah by ---Alicia Ostriker


the birthday of adam

the innocent earthling
and the day hagar and ishmael

found water in the desert
in memory of whom

mud staining our shoes

water flowing in handfuls
we sniff the smell of living dying things
reach into our pockets

for the bread that represents our sins, toss it in, praying . . .
release us, help us,
forgive us

the river answers

by swallowing our crumbs
do our prayers travel upward

do they defy gravity

like rain splashed on the windshield

of a car speeding through storm
in ten days we will go hungrier

pray harder



In a little more than a week, it will be Yom Kippur and the faithful will have a chance to start again. The book of life is opened between New Year (at Rosh Hashanah) and The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). And in those intervening ten days one takes advantage of that in between to make amends if possible, ask for forgiveness, bury the hatchet or whatever needs doing to erase the sins of the past year. Some times you can’t do any of those things. Sometimes you can only feel remorse for sins committed and expiation is truly impossible. Ancient wisdom, recognizing that there is only so much good that can come out of perpetual guilt and remorse, built some time limits on it. Up until Yom Kippur people have an opportunity to make things right between them, and on Yom Kippur, a chance to make things right with G*D. Then after the day of prayer and fasting and true remorse, what is done is done, and it’s time to move on.

As the High Holy days of the Jewish faith inform our pluralistic religion of Unitarian Universalism, I am reminded of and grateful for the promise that we can let go and begin again. That is true on the micro as well as the macro scale.

Because so many of us reading this (and the writer too) work with the young, we are particularly challenged to let go and to let a child begin again. I speak from experience. We’ve all that kid – the one who can’t sit still, or bonks their neighbor on a regular basis, or talks back, or ignores you, or sticks the pipe cleaners up their nose or any other set of annoying or disruptive behaviors.

And sometimes, in spite of our best intentions, that kid gets under our skin and their bad behavior becomes a personal affront.

What to do when that happens? My advice (which I take early and often) is to chant over and over. They’re kids – if they were fully socialized they wouldn’t need teachers or parents or CHURCHES. They come to us along a whole continuum of understanding and capacity for appropriate social behaviors. I have four ‘categories’. (Even though I say I transcend labels – here I go, labeling)

Some kids have mature understanding and capacity.

Some kids have very clear understanding and limited capacity.

Some kids have limited understanding and greater capacity.

Some kids have limited understanding AND capacity.

The first group is easy. We like them. They listen, follow instructions, cooperate with peers and generally are a joy to be around.

The second group usually improve over time. If a child understands, then it’s often just a matter of coaching them in paying attention or responding to others. Sometimes it’s a special needs consideration. A lot of children with attentional issues really WANT to be attentive. They just can’t. We owe their better natures an opportunity to shine and a structure in which they can succeed.

The third group is the group that needs frequent reminders and appeal to their reasoning powers. They have the skills to work well in groups, they just don’t ‘get’ the why. As with the second group – it usually gets better over time.

The fourth group is a small percentage of our population, and yet, sadly, they often become the kids we give up on. Or the kids who go on to live out self-fulfilling prophecies. As a faith committed to the inherent worth and dignity of everyone, we owe those kids a fight – a fight for their whole and best selves. How we do that may be beyond the logistical reach of a Sunday morning program, but it is not beyond the reach of our collective wisdom and our open hearts.

If you’ve got that kid in your group, let’s talk about it. Let’s find a way to embrace the spirit of each child. Let’s find a way to start again and again. Let’s find a way to let a child have a fresh page and the opportunity to write a new story on it.

See you in church

Rebecca