Coincidence?

Quote du jour: "Coincidence is the word we use when we can't see all the levers and pulleys" ~ Emma Bull

I refuse to title this post "My Vacation" because it always seems like a boast. "Ha, ha, I went on vacation someplace fabulous and had a fabulous time". Although I did go on vacation "someplace fabulous" and there were moments of "fabulous time", temper those words with the knowledge that I spent two days holed up in the MiddleofNowhere, Colorado while several feet of snow piled up around us, the major east-west highway (our route) remained closed, and that I just happened to be all alone in the subterranean geothermal caves when the power went out. AND that there are rattlesnakes in the desert and bears in the back country.

The last morning of my travels, as I prepared to leave a campground in the MiddleofNowhere, Colorado II, I went on 7AM walkabout looking for someone to pass along unused propane and food to. (All those leftovers that weren't going to get used - not worth paying the extra air freight on, but criminal to throw away) So there I was in the Mancos State Park with my trusty cup of coffee, offering our leftovers to some of the few other campers - there was still snow on the ground - in the park. One of the campers, a woman, peered closely at me - what little was visible under hat and upturned collar. "Is that a Ferry Beach mug?" she asked Are you a Ferry Beacher?" It was indeed a Ferry Beach mug. And I was indeed a Ferry Beacher. And she, her spouse and children were Ferry Beachers, also visiting Mesa Verde, also from New England. She's someone I know from the Mass Bay District. That's some coincidence considering that this was low season in Colorado and that no one in their right mind would go camping in April less than a week after a record breaking snowfall.

Is it really a coincidence? Or are there levers and pulleys at work in our world?

I don’t believe in pre-destination, I gave that up a long time ago, but I wonder about unseen forces of attraction that draw people together. I wonder about the drift toward one pole or another, I wonder about the 100th monkey syndrome. I wonder about those perfect moments that find each of us. I don’t know exactly what they might look like, but I think there are levers and pulleys at work. Maybe one of those levers looks like a seagull logo and another one looks like a chalice. We talk about church growth and church welcome and all the reasons we can think of for engaging fully in growth and welcome. I’ve got another one. When a new family shows up, or a new kid appears on Sunday morning, perhaps, just maybe, something unseen is at work. Perhaps the levers and pulleys look just like the face you see in the mirror every day.

Churchiness and Accelerating Change

Quote du jour: If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less.
~ General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff US Army


We are nearing the end of the regular RE year and a year of experimenting with all sorts of new configurations. We've collaborated with another church in the middle school group, extended the Coming of Age year to include all high schoolers, hired a professional pre-school teacher and implemented a trail of Rotation Workshop for the primary ages. It does seem like of lot of changes. Good. One of my ongoing frustrations with UU land is that we tend to stick with things for a long time. Perhaps into the time of irrelevance.

Even our most groundbreaking curriculum, Our Whole Lives, was written before facebook, texting and twitter. We risk irrelevence if we do not attend to the realities of the world our children inhabit or speak to them in the ways they most understand. And yet, because there are many things about church which are timeless, we risk losing the inherent 'churchiness' (I've been watching Colbert) of church if we reach for the 'hook' of technology at the expense of human community.

Church inhabits a constant tension between the contemporary and the ageless. And it's not new to our time, of course. Much of our religious thought and tradition have come from radical change, and resistance to the old order rules, whoever or whatever the old order was. What is new to our time is the rate of acceleration. We do not creep along in increments of weeks, months and years, but leap exponentially from one technological advance to the next. And our culture and our kids do likewise. Ten years ago at the Rochester General Assembly, I remember making a stink about assuming everyone had the wherewithawl to own a computer and communicate electronically. Today, even people who consider themselves poor have cell phones, and the most modest households have a computer. Communication technology has become that significant. If these technologies have become so ubiquitous in the past decade, what will the next decade bring? Many of the current ideas around accelating change and collapsing singularities sound like science fiction AND - as I remember it - the science fiction of my childhood could not begin to envision the reality of my adult years.

Technology begats technology at a faster and faster pace, and if we are to serve our own, as well as our children's needs, we cannot take ten years to develop a comprehensive religious education program. We must continually evaluate and shift, rewrite, reprogram, seek out new resources, and acquire the tools kids need to deal with the moral, ethical and social demands of the new technolgies they (and we) continually encounter. At the same time, we can never lose sight of the religious grounding of our Unitarian Universalist beliefs. There is a timeless wisdom in our history, our practices and our theolgies of reason, inquiry, experience and inclusion. Striking a balance between the two is the work of faith development in the current millenium. I have often said and it bears repeating, that balance is momentary. Once we acquire it, something shifts and we must reach for balance again. Thats the cost of living in dynamic interesting, changing times. It's hard work and these days, it's some of the most important work the church can do. These words from Alfred North Whitehead put it succiently, The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order. Let our work be that art.

Long Time, No See

Quote du jour: When you meet up with a disagreeable person, never allow yourself to be upset. Say to yourself, if a dowdy like that can stand himself all his life, surely I can stand him for a few minutes. ~ Unknown


I've been absent from blogging for several weeks and now have wrapped my head back around thinking and writing. (I was thinking and writing, but most of it was nonsense, and considering the already low height of the bar, not worthy of the link)

I spent a few days last week at a pastoral care conference/training. When ever I go to one of these things, I find that along with the formal and explicit program content, the other attendees contribute equal or greater content. What people offer up for solutions, the situations they describe, and yes, the personality traits that drive me up a tree - all content. One of the reasons I took up knitting (and this does not apply to all meetings) was as a way of mitigating the frustrations of (often) pointless or endless meetings I attended in my volunteer and work lives. Whatever happened or didn't happen in a meeting was easier to take if I came home with a sock.

Because, face it - some meetings are glorious and productive and some are not. We can't have glorious and productive all the time, but at the very least I think we should strive for relational. If you are asking (as I think you must be by now) what this has to do with a teaching blog - think about the different experiences you've had. Some days, everyone is on. They are eager, attentive, thoughtful, full participants and you leave thinking "I'm so glad I did this".

And then there are the other days. The days when someone is off. Or everyone is off. Including you. You can't avoid it. Everyone has an off day, so sooner or later it's going to be your turn. Or your class's turn. And then there are the poor souls to whom every day is an off day. I watched a few in action last week swinging between the extremes of 'offness' in adults. Most of the extremes took the form of variations on the "look at me" theme, although there were a couple of "don't look at me" moments. Kids do this too. Their vocabulary is a less polished for most of it, but they either push for attention or push to be left alone. Both of those reactions in a classroom are ways of asking to be 'seen'. If you can remember that, it goes a long way to help you address "off" behaviors in a neutral, non-punnitive fashion and maintain caring relationships. Kids aren't always easy. Neither are adults. And there are some folks seem to pride themselves on being difficult. But look at it from their point of view. Poor things. They're stuck with the selves forever. We get to go home. And until then, we can knit.

(Need knitting lessons? See me!)