Welcome to February

First of all, welcome to February, the month that is the shortest on the calendar, and usually feels the longest in the living of it!

Second of all, I wanted to warn you of, and thank you in advance, for my time away visiting my daughter Anna in England, Feb. 15-22. Linda, and our Community Minister Rebekah Ingram are on pastoral call while I am away, and my friend Rev. John Bursiega will be preaching in my stead on the 19^th. However, I am not getting off scot-free, as I will be preaching that day at both the Unitarian Church of Cambridge and the Evensong service at Emmanuel College, Cambridge—I am really looking forward to both experiences…

Lastly, I wanted to briefly write about my experience the other night at the Hymn-sing dinner that Paul so entertainingly lead us through. We UU’s are often a little defensive about our musical tradition, feeling it isn’t deep enough, or is just “stolen” from Christian sources with words written to the old tunes. I can’t say every hymn in our tradition is a gem, but I was sitting with a person new to us who had sang with the Trinity choir for twenty years, and I was struck by her enthusiasm and evident happiness in singing some of our “old” standards and brand new hymns for the first time.

I have been singing this material for 35 years, but it was instructive to see our music through her experience, and it made me see it all in new eyes, or rather, new voice. When we sing newer songs like “Blue Boat Home” or “Touch the Earth, Reach the Sky,” I saw that we were contributing great hymns to the next generation. And when we sang hymns that have long been UU contributions, such as “Once to Every Soul and Nation” (words by the Unitarian poet James Russell Lowell), I was struck by their power—they could have been written yesterday.

On New Year’s night at the St. Paul’s Interfaith service, a Roman Catholic priest talked about the amazing words of “O, Holy Night.” I was thunderstruck to hear him say, “We think of this as a French carol, but the words we sing in English were written by a Unitarian minister…”

We have great music to sing and to share—and I realized we should never be apologetic about our musical tradition. Sing out, and sing on!

See you in church, Stephen

Steeple Update; Reclaimed Space

We all had had fond hopes that the steeple renovation would be completed by now, but as anyone, and everyone, knows, construction schedules are a form of fiction. I contented myself over the last month that our white draped steeple was really the largest Christmas present in the city of Boston—and in some sense, it really will be, when the last of the great stones is gently placed. The delay was in getting precisely the right kind of stone from Maine—and everyone understands that there is no reason to hurry when these stones are meant to last a century or hopefully much longer. They should outlast our grandchildren, and be a proud part of Boston’s profile and long horizon.

But I wanted to highlight something else about the project. When the church burned down more than 30 years ago, the church elders, in consultation with architect Paul Rudolph, decided to leave the charred wood that framed where the old Rose window was, just to the left of the steeple. That magnificent stained glass window was melted away by the flames, and it was thought that the remnants of the frame should be preserved as a reminder to the city, and to ourselves, of the fire and the spirit that helped the church rise up, literally, from the ashes.

So for decades the charred wood encircled the space where the window was. But in recent years, there arose reflection that the city, and the church, has moved on—the memory has dimmed, and we are now whole, healed of that trauma. People would ask on the street, “What is that black mass up there?” They did not know, nor care, about the symbolism.

So at long last, and after long reflection, as part of the project we have shaved and shorn away the old wood. The wound is gone, healed at last. The clear and sharp lines of the space are newly symbolic that we are moving on, that that hard chapter of the church’s life is over at last.

And now we can think of what might go in that space—some art, perhaps, or a welcoming flag reflecting our spirit.

Who knows? It is ours to claim again.

 

To enjoy life is a spiritual discipline . . .

The five weeks that take us from Thanksgiving to Christmas and then New Year’s Day are the most intense and emotional of the year, and offer great lessons in how to live the rest of the year—even if we have to rest up so we can do it all over again!

Thanksgiving is in its essence a secular holiday. You can say a prayer or not, but one way or the other, it is an opportunity to get in touch with the wellsprings of your totally unexpected and surprising life, a gift none of us asked for or can ever fully understand. Gratitude is the background and foundation to the twin motions of offering thanks and offering blessings—like breathing out and breathing in constitute a full breath.

Then the time of Advent is a waiting game, a time of timelessness, the pause before all heaven breaks loose. The birth of a baby is the most common thing in this world, and also the most explosive, crazy, startling, and heart-rending thing as well! Christmas is a time of love, joy, peace, and a recognition that the birth of a child changes everything, forever and ever, and let chaos reign supreme!

Then another pause, and then the secular creeps back in the guise of a party, a celebration of the dying of one year and the birth of another…we celebrate again, not knowing what the new year might bring, and no matter what the old year wrought.

Religious or not, these five weeks wring our souls, wipe us clean, take us to the heights, and swoop to the desponds. But I notice this—the expectation, which is often a bummer, is that we somehow get our minds, hearts and souls in a proper place to celebrate. Sometimes that is hard. But we are to smile, to sing, to eat happily and with others, and to make a space in our life for joy.

Tough work, but someone’s got to do it. To enjoy life is a spiritual discipline, and never let anyone talk you out of it. So let’s get to it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slogging Through Blogging

This writing of blogs is not coming naturally to me.

Ruth, my editor and encourager in this enterprise, rightly notes that what I tend to do is write ‘newsletter columns.’ This isn’t terribly surprising, in that I have, happily, done precisely that for more than 30 years. Blogging is different—frequent, episodic, informal, on-going, more about the quality of thoughts and feelings flowing through one’s life than a formal ‘summing up’ that a column conveys. I have this in my head as a reality, but habits die hard.

Yet, as hard as it is, I find myself wanting to learn a new way of ‘dwelling’ with you, my congregation, and in a real sense, a kind of family for me. In the same way, I am trying to forge a new sermon style—more immediate, less formal, a touch less intellectual, fewer quotes.

One of the chief themes of our church is the ability of all of us to change, to grow, to allow ourselves to be transformed in the realm of the spiritual. Perhaps in seeing me struggle to grow in my ministry will be a real signal that we take all of that seriously—it’s the real deal, not just rhetoric.

By golly, I will learn this new way. A little slowly, not always gracefully, but steadily, with a desire to advance in a new mode, a way of doing what I love: ministry in a new way.

To Savor Or To Save?

The writer E. B. White once wrote, after wandering about his Maine farm one morning, “It is hard to know how to arrange one’s day—to save, or to savor, the world?”

It is a more profound than witty comment, and one that bothers me greatly, and always has. I was drawn to our faith for two reasons—one, the great artists, poets, and visionaries who make up our long history; and two, the equally great tradition of social justice and witness that makes us who we are. I admire the many social activists who fill our ranks, and realize that our broken and bruised world needs a faith that actively works to heal and transform it. I want to be one of them, to be on the barricades, to really witness.

Yet my soul is really drawn to a faith that is more contemplative than active, more drawn to poetry than manifestos, and more aesthetic than activist. It’s just the way I was made. In other words, I am a savor kind of guy—though I know the world needs saving. There is no easy way to resolve this—Emerson was dragged kicking and screaming (well—not screaming exactly, but murmuring loudly) into the issues of his day, when he much preferred to contemplate the world in his own quiet and genius like fashion. We would all be the poorer if he had not written his great Essays and instead agitated. But it is disquieting when one reads in his journal how much he missed, how much he disdained, how much he left alone, the pressing issues of his time that so affected all of us to this day. To step aside from slavery is a lot to ask of a genius—and it took him a long time to step up.

All I can do is try to be honest with myself, and try to find some balance point that allows me to follow my own star even as I realize that the world beyond us just can’t wait for our attention—that the fact that some of us are irresistibly drawn to the beauty of the world is precisely why we have to protect it and work to preserve it.

Saving the world is just another way to savor it, in the end.

 

The Far Extent of View

I was invited to climb our steeple last week, to survey the vast amount of work that has been done.  We owe a great debt of gratitude to the Trustees, and to project “manager” Ernie Carroll, for the quick and through job they have done to repair and protect the steeple, and I am pleased to report that the whole job went smoothly and without mishap or unexpected hitches.  Everything went well and that almost never happens in construction!

View From the Top of the Steeple

But at the last minute, I chickened out. 

Rosemary and Ernie made it all the way, to their credit, and you can even see the pictures!  At six foot four, I wondered just how comfortable it was going to be up there for me—so I just contented myself imagining how splendid it must have looked on that sunny fall day, looking out beyond the Charles River and the whole Back Bay before them…

A steeple is not a necessary part of church architecture, but I confess I adore them, in all their varieties and forms.  They represent something important of what we are all about—to elevate, to lift up, to soar.  It forces the eye, and the heart, to gaze upwards.  Maybe UU’s don’t have a classic heaven in our theology, but we have a sense that life is meant to be lived with our heads held high, our focus on the beyond, and the far extent of view. 

Even if you don’t decide to actually climb to the top!  I may regret my decision someday, but for now, I am just happy to see all the sheeting go, the risers taken down, and the olden steeple revealed anew.  I think it makes everyone feel better.  A little beauty that lifts the spirit, everyday—no matter what the faith, or any faith.  A steeple says, “Boston is still in business—and part of that business is that City on a Hill.”

 

 

The Wintery Times

My first visit to Occupy Boston brought up many reactions and feelings, some of which I will hold on to until my sermon on Nov. 6, “Otherwise Occupied.”  But I loved seeing the dedication and idealism of the campers.  I have to tell you, though, that the chill wind (not a metaphor—it was amazingly whipped up on that concrete plaza) will test the dedication of everyone there in our Boston winter to come.

 I do not speak for the church, but as an individual, but I would like to help maintain that witness in the months to come. 

That will not be easy, but Tom Paine knew what he was talking about when he wrote about “the sunshine Patriot” and the wintery times “that try men’s souls.”  Paine is a Founder that we really need right now—radical and supportive of the power of freedom to transform the world.  Not too many Tea-Partiers are reading that progressive agitator right now, but they should.

I am not against capitalism—in fact, I’d like to see it come back and operate properly again.  What we are seeing now is what, in a sermon I preached two years ago, I called Hypercaptitalism, where the general purposes of the profit motive and self-reliance and free opportunity has been covertly altered so that only a few can prosper—and those at the top are so rich that they can game the system (on Wall Street and in our national politics) so that all of us can no longer properly or effectively participate.  We are getting squeezed out.

It is capitalism only for a few, instead of all of us.  And for classic capitalism to work, everybody has to have a fair shot to participate.

Why does a minister comment on this?  Well, Jesus talked three times as often about money and its effects as he ever did on prayer…

People who want to continue to game the system have long found comfort in the statement that “religion and politics don’t mix.”  Jesus missed that memo—and so did other great spiritual teachers.  Was Jesus a capitalist?  No.  Was he interested in people feeling that they had dignity, and that all were to be treated fairly?

It is going to be a long winter….we’d better dig in, and get ready.  

 

 

 

“By Ye Fruits Ye Shall Know Them”

More than a year ago, I flew to England to do the funeral of the father of a very good friend. When Dawn called to say her father had died, she wondered if I could help the family—and I did not hesitate. I had, over the years, enjoyed talking with her father, Ted, a gregarious man with two passions—playing jazz-influenced big band drums and, so Englishly, devoting himself to gardening—particularly vegetables. He taught his daughter Dawn everything there was to know about tending a garden, and she is now a prize-winning vegetable enthusiast.

So I wasn’t surprised at all when, one day as we were Skyping (the greatest invention since the light bulb) she proudly showed me her newest treasures. Dawn likes to show us her latest productions from her allotment—but these vegetables were different, almost miraculous.

During her dad’s funeral, her friends and family, knowing Ted’s love of the earth and his garden, had not sent flowers, but instead had lovingly made decorations and displays made from dozens of vegetables—some beautiful, some whimsical, all so Ted. We placed them on his grave, and walked away.

It was a long, cold winter in Britain last year, but something interesting happened under the snow. The displays all crumbled and the seeds were drawn into the earth, and one day, when Dawn went to visit the grave, an unbelievable sight greeted her. Cherry tomatoes and other vegetables were springing from the ground, adorning the grave. With delight, she picked the untended produce and took it home, thrilled that her father was still a gardener, that the loving gifts of her friends had strangely borne this crop, and that life was so irrepressibly abundant.

“By ye fruits ye shall know them,” but who knew about vegetables?

 

The Meaning of the Church

The start of a new church year is always full, with virtually every group, committee, and activity revving up to 90 miles an hour from the lull of summer.  So, what I am trying to say is that it can feel a little insane.  The important thing is this: try to concentrate on what we are really about—worship and friendliness.

Try to attend as many services as you can (I know that modern life offers a plentitude of options and necessary places to go other than First Church), just to get in the flow…and please greet more than your buddies when you do.  Lots of people are visiting us right now, trying to decide if being part of us can become part of their lives, and if no one speaks to them, the answer will be a no-brainer…

It bears repeating—speak to strangers.  Remember when you first visited?  They feel just the way you did.  The natural, normal, and very understandable feeling that we have (and I am not immune to this, believe me) is to greet and enjoy friends we might not have seen for some weeks…Still, resist this tendency if you can, within limits.  Church life is about being encouraged to be bigger, more visionary, than normal life usually encourages us to be. 

Changes That Really Aren’t

I have gotten lots of reaction to two “changes” that are, in fact, not really associated—but have indeed come together in interesting ways.  The first is the lack of robes in the two previous weeks (at least in regard to me).  I have been wondering if our ministerial robes create a bit of a distancing effect.