None of the Above
As I write, the President and Congress are discussing how to respond to the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Not surprisingly, the blogosphere is full of strong opinions: that we must respond to the wanton abuse of citizens with chemical weapons, that bombing Syria would be a huge mistake, that force is the only solution, that force is never the solution, and on and on.
Here’s my best assessment: there is no good solution. I am certainly no expert on the political situation anywhere in the world, and certainly not Syria. But I get a sense of things from articles I read, and, frankly, the news is not good. As far as I can tell, no one in this fight is the hero, the virtuous protagonist who is bound to win in the end. We Americans love a narrative that echoes our national story of the little guy overcoming the superpower and establishing democracy to flourish for the ages. But whether or not that narrative is justified for the US, it certainly doesn’t look like it’s a tale that’s going to play out in Syria. People are being slaughtered. The suffering is immense. It’s hard to imagine that bombing anyone is going to help, but equally hard to just stand back and tell the world that there is now carte blanche to spray people with poison gas.
I would love to tell you what is right, what I think we should do, what we should all take to the streets and the airwaves and cyberspace to promote. Unfortunately, I have no idea. Here’s what I know. Life is full of untenable positions. As a minister you are called on to support people who have to decide whether to undertake medical procedures that will undermine the quality of their life even as they extend it. You counsel people who are trapped in unhappy marriages who know that leaving would be devastating for their children. You are there for people who are looking at providing years of round-the-clock care for a parent or spouse or child who is slowly failing, who want to give everything to their ailing loved one, but still yearn for a life of their own.
It feels a lot better when you can fix things, when righteousness prevails and happiness reigns. But that happens a lot less often than the stories and the movies would have us believe. All too often, there is no good answer, and whatever the conclusion, there is suffering as well as joy. What you learn as a minister is that while you may never have the stunning piece of wisdom that will set a suffering person on the way to happiness, you can listen. You can be prayerfully present, offering your witness to what they are going through. You can hope that in the conversation something will emerge that is clearer or more creative than what the person walked in the room with.
That’s all I’m able to advocate for at the moment – that there be as much listening as possible. As much prayerful presence as possible. As broad a conversation as possible. I hope that the conversation goes far beyond the president and congress, that it includes the UN, that Syria’s neighbors who are being flooded with refugees have a chance to speak. I hope that out of the listening there will arise some greater clarity, some greater creativity, than anything that we have yet seen.
I know that hope is not justified, that there is little that we have seen from anyone in the situation, including the US, that would lead one to expect something better than bombing. So, if nothing else, perhaps those of us who are without decision-making power, who have no control, can manage to be a model of that listening and that creative possibility. It’s not a solution, but it’s the best answer I know.
A Month of Weddings
Yesterday closed out August, the first month of marriage equality in Minnesota. Fittingly, I saw it out just as I entered it in: officiating at a lesbian wedding. As I have stood before dozens of couples this month, and as I have sat in the chairs weeping for friends, I have a couple of thoughts about pastoral pieces that I think should be included in same sex weddings, at least where the law has recently changed towards marriage equality.
First, in each case there are people who love the brides, or the grooms, who are not ready yet to embrace this notion of marriage equality, and are thus not present to celebrate. I acknowledge that their love is real, none-the-less, and that we at the ceremony pray for the day when all will celebrate love, and join in witnessing same sex couples’ marriage vows. However, in the meantime, we appreciate the integrity and authenticity of those who chose not to attend, and know that they love the couple none-the-less.
This is important because in many cases there will be many conspicuous absences of key family members. Differences in family views were most evident when I officiated at the wedding of Rep. Michelle Bachmann’s lesbian stepsister, (See http://www.patheos.com/blogs/uucollective/2013/08/forty-seven-weddings-and-a-funeral/) but they have been somewhat present in every same sex wedding I witnessed last month. Family gossip lines being what they are, I am fairly confident that word of this naming and inclusion will reach the absent members at some point.
Second, because we have not yet reached a place of universal agreement about the blessing that these weddings bring to our wider community, I urge all who attend, particularly straight allies, to go back to work or neighborhood barbecues, and describe what they witnessed at the wedding. Describe the years that this couple has been together, the love that was evidenced at the service, how good it felt for people to be there, gay and straight alike. How, in fact, it strengthened participants’ own commitments to their spouses.
This is important because our campaign for marriage equality was story-driven, based on reflections of personal relationships with or on the lived experiences of gay and lesbian couples. Though the campaign for 51% of the vote is over, to reach the 80 or 90 percent of support which will ultimately bring us together, the storytelling must continue. People who voted against marriage equality need to hear about how it is actually impacting the people around them, to balance and ultimately dissolve the horror stories of mayhem and destruction of heterosexual marriage which they have heard.
Finally, I have remarked in each ceremony I’ve officiated (tip o’ the hat to my friend Kate Tucker for this frame) that, when couples have been together for decades faithfully and loyally, we are actually present to witness vows between them and the State of Minnesota as much as or more than vows between the couple. The State of Minnesota, finally, has stepped forward with a commitment to support same-sex couples for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part—by providing social security benefits and tax benefits, access to health care and hospital beds, and all of the ease which heterosexual couples expect in the aftermath of the death of their beloved—beginning with access to the body itself, and extending out to inheritance rights, and decisions about the funeral.
The first month is over, but the struggle for marriage equality continues, even as the IRS declares that married couples anywhere can file joint federal taxes. Until the patchwork of equality and inequality tips into a nation where couples don’t need to fearfully pack marriage certificates in their luggage when they travel across state lines, we have our work to do.
Meanwhile, mazel tov to all of the newly married couples in Minnesota and other states this month. Though some of us older folks might grumble that we feel as if we’re in our late twenties again, with weddings every weekend, the joy in the grumbling is readily evident. Finally, we’re being treated as adults!
On Going to Church (Excerpt)
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I come to church—and would whether I was a preacher or not—because I fall below my own standards and need to be constantly brought back to them. It is not enough that I should think about the world and its problems at the level of a newspaper report or a magazine discussion. I must have my conscience sharpened—sharpened until it goads me to the most thorough and responsible thinking of which I am capable.
All Our Relations
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Community has been lost in today’s world. People have become so engrossed in their own wants, dreams and desires that they don’t worry about helping anyone else. One of the truest definitions of community is fellowship, and we can’t have fellowship going about life on our own.
Amongst Native culture, the importance of community is prevalent throughout their history. This becomes evident as you learn of the many different Native customs and beliefs, yet come across one common expression in nearly all Native nations and tribes. For the Lakota people the expression is Mitakuye O’yasin, for the Cherokee it is Ahwensa Unhili, and in English it translates to All Our Relations.
Who Knows You?
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Some of the old New England graveyards are serene little pockets of neglect. Their slate tombstones lean at odd angles and the elegant calligraphy is barely legible, spelling out obscure colonial names like Ozias and Zebulon. Some of the inscriptions that can still be deciphered tell poignant stories of sons and husbands fallen in long-ago wars and young wives lost in childbirth.
Clusters of brick-sized stones mark the deaths of children in some catastrophic winter. The engraved cries of lament—“Farewell, Beloved Daughter”—evoke a tug of grief even now, though the people named have been dust and earth for two hundred years or more.
From Your Minister
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By now, I have been part of too many communities to name—and I’ll bet you have too!
Though the extended community of Unitarian Universalists is a profoundly important one for me, if I had to name where I’ve learned the most about how to create deep and grounded community, it would not be church of any kind.
REsources for Living
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What communities do you belong to? Very likely there is the community of your family, and your neighborhood might or might not feel like a community, depending on whether or not you talk with your neighbors or borrow tools from one another or play in each other’s yards.
Maybe you belong to the community of a sports team or orchestra or choir—a group of people knit together in the special way of folks who depend on one another to get the job done. You might belong to a community of identity—the African American community, the LGBTQ community, the community of people with disabilities or adoptees or people who have the same chronic illness.
Reunion
Community
September 2013
“We have all known the long loneliness, and we have learned that the only solution is love, and that love comes with community.” —Dorothy Day
Articles
On Going to Church (Excerpt)
I come to church—and would whether I was a preacher or not—because I fall below my own standards and need to be constantly brought back to them. Read more »
All Our Relations
Community has been lost in today’s world. People have become so engrossed in their own wants, dreams and desires that they don’t worry about helping anyone else. Read more »
Who Knows You?
Some of the old New England graveyards are serene little pockets of neglect. Their slate tombstones lean at odd angles and the elegant calligraphy is barely legible, spelling out obscure colonial names like Ozias and Zebulon. Read more »
From Your Minister
Though the extended community of Unitarian Universalists is a profoundly important one for me, if I had to name where I’ve learned the most about how to create deep and grounded community, it would not be church of any kind. Read more »
REsources for Living
What communities do you belong to? Very likely there is the community of your family, and your neighborhood might or might not feel like a community… Read more »
Community
“We have all known the long loneliness, and we have learned that the only solution is love, and that love comes with community.” —Dorothy Day Read more »
Dreaming in Circles
It is said that if a group of people sleep arranged in a circle—heads at the center and feet out like spokes—they create a dream circle. Read more »
The Light of the Faith
Imagine stepping into the sanctuary of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva, Illinois. With narrow rows of wooden pews and the bright glow of stained glass along each side of the meetinghouse, you might think you had gone back in time. Read more »
September = Back to….
photo by Jenna Starr
It’s September, pretty much, and all-the-sudden. I feel the lure of “back-to-school” as surely as the tide pulls the sea back towards the glimmering moon. But I am not going back-to-school, I haven’t gone back-to-school in September for years. Isn’t it amazing, how integrated into our systems is the seasonal rhythm of our lives and our (cultural? national? sociological?) rituals? So many of us are not going back-to-school, and yet September still has a pull, a bittersweetness. The fresh calendar page of September can be a prodding, subtle messenger of transition and shifting, of return and newness, both. What will this year hold? Who will be in our circle, who will we be and who will we see in our lives, the way most of us once did when we gathered in something like “Homeroom”?
I took a 1/4-time job recently, coordinating the Coming of Age program for a thriving local humanist congregation, and it’s fascinating to me how delighted I am to be working again. Just that much: 10 hours a week or so, just a bit, and that is plenty for me and my family right now as far as my more spread-out energies — but it is also just enough to feel a part of something beyond our family, a part of a community and of the flow of the year, the year that involves returning, as we do, to our communities and routines, at the end of the summer.
I know there will still be some more hot, summery days here in D.C. I know that I have lots and lots of sometimes-tedious, sometimes-luscious unscheduled days with our Little Bean ahead. I know that there are many other people out there whose lives don’t shift all that much with the turning of the calendar page. I know I now have more of the juggling to do — life and home, household chores and work responsibilities, the daily tasks and the larger witnessing to the world and acting as best as I can. It actually matters again that I check my e-mail at least every day. And, what I notice most is that having a foot dangling in the water of our larger world is surprisingly exhilarating to me. I feel like I am more a part of the stream of life. As things get going, as all the “back-to-school” energy picks up around us, with students in school uniforms making their way in this direction and that, with school buses suddenly popping up again in front of me at every stoplight, I feel glad and grateful to be a part of that stream, in my own way, part of a community of people who observes the turning already of just a few leaves and feels the certain calling of fall.
