Hope

"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good." -- Vaclav Havel

Good Governance at UUA General Assembly

From Good Grief to Good Governance

During the final plenary session of General Assembly, UUA Moderator Gini Courter spoke at some length relative to the over length of her Moderator’s Report about congregational governance. She made a lot of the same points she made at the ends of the Governance track at UU University (and, yes that was way cool having Gini be the closing 15 minutes of that two-day 10 hour affair).

I think Gini is tops, the best, and it’s obvious that she has the overall respect of the overwhelming majority of delegates and I personally have never met anyone who thinks she’s done a poor job as Moderator. Quite the opposite.

What follows is my best attempt at capturing what Gini said. I wont’ claim it to be an exact quote as I typed as fast as I could, but missed some things and had put in some words and phrases here and there.

Gini said that if governance at the UUA level is clear it can be a better model for our congregations and that over her time as moderator and that she has recognized matches and similarities between the governance of the UUA and our congregations.

Some of these similarities are – there tends to be a mystery about who holds power and how they get it. There are congregations where duly elected boards where some self appointed individual or committee is holding power and duly appointed boards are afraid to make decisions for fear of offending the self appointed power be it an individual or committee.

Some congregations are expecting ministers to parent them out of sticky situations. In good economic times things are fine, but when it comes time to make hard economic decisions in tough economic times, we pay the price for not being clear about who we authorize to make decisions in our congregations. Our vices that become habits become really bad habits in bad economic times

Gini recalled a conversation she with a minister about governance and the minister said “We’ve stopped letting the crazies ride the bus.”

Gini told us she told that minister, that was not the language she would use, but the folks who drive (our congregational busses) should be the ones who are clear that they are driving in the direction the majority want to go.

We need to have holy conversations – that generation vision, mission goals and stay on those courses.

We have to have conversations about staff compensations and things, but some negative people turn it into their personal discontent and we’re afraid of the pledge that might walk out the door, we have to say we don’t make decisions based on the pledge that walks out the door or a view of one self-appointed power or committee.

Gini recommends the practices of the governance track and said the path to power is not hold the congregation or minister hostage, or have a personal agenda.
No minister can save us or get anything accomplished in that environment. We have to get right the relationships between elected boards, called ministers and volunteer committees.

Isolation is also something we have to overcome. We have to talk to each other. If the congregation down the street is in trouble, Gini said, go be with them.

We have to note the importance of rules and how well they’ve served us at GA (I believe she was referring to plenary) and how important it is to be kind to each other, to have rules and follow them. It is important to honor the inherent worth and dignity of each other.

AMEN! Preach it, Gini!

When Gini Courter visited the UU University Governance track, she also emphasized that poor governance was one of the main reasons the UUA loses good ministers.

Gini said that we need authentic shared ministry 365 days a year. Shared ministry, she said, is not having a lay led service once a month, but having elected lay leaders go good governance 365 days a year. “We have religious professionals who do their jobs and we need to work with them.”

Then Gini addressed head on what some people call “drinking the Kool Aid.” She said, good governance is the key and the responsibility of those in the workshop was taking the information and learning home to our congregations and working hard and well to pass it on, but being under no illusions we were going to be received as people coming home with the good word. Instead we are going be viewed as suspect, but we have others who we can now network with who attended the training and we can support each and help each other teach each other’s congregations and leaders.

We were paired up with partners to make a So What, Now What “to do” list. I paired up with a colleague from my Greenfield Group ministers study group and we shared good governance goals for ourselves and I am going to check in with her in September and further on down the road to keep myself (and hopefully my congregation) on a path to good governance.

This colleague shared with me an interesting tidbit. The word hierarchy actually really means holy organization. That word carries a lot of baggage about top-down, power over structures, which I would rather not use, favoring power with, lateral structures, but we need to learn not be afraid to empower and be responsible, be accountable and hold others accountable, and have holy organization.

A wonderful quote, to keep closeby

Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity.-- Albert Schweitzer

Everyday Democracy

Launching a dialogue-to-change effort: Where do I begin?

When a public engagement initiative is just getting off the ground and a diverse group of people have come together to say, “I think this is the way to go,” there are some early and simple things that the group can do to move the discussion along.

First, have a conversation with this group by starting with the question, ‘What do we hope this initiative will accomplish?’ Compile everyone’s ideas on paper. You’ll discover that themes emerging from this list are the beginnings of a goal statement of what the initiative is all about.

Next, ask the group, ‘What are we worried about?’ ‘What concerns do we have?’ Collect everyone’s thoughts and make sure to track them since these concerns might be barriers to watch out for during the dialogue-to-change effort.

A third step is to have a conversation with the group about your community’s assets. Assets can come in many forms: people, places, funding, geography, buildings, talents—anything that you can think of as an asset in the community is something to list and track. When you list your assets alongside your program goals, you will begin to see connections that can lead to real change.

A. Powell Davies on Unitarianism

A. Powell Davies, long time minister of All Souls Church Unitarian in Washington, DC.
"Let no one say that it is difficult to know what Unitarianism is, or that it contains no areas of agreement. It is the most affirmative of religions, the boldest in its claims, and the widest in its outreach and inclusiveness.

Instead of a creed, it agrees to follow the living truth, and sets its people free to do so. Instead of ritual pieties, it asks devotion to the deeds that make the world righteous and its people just.

It separates itself from no company of believers, whether Christian or otherwise, except as they deny its claim for freedom. It asks no wide dominion for its institution; only liberty of access for its faith. It trusts that, in the years before us, Unitarian freedom will be claimed in all denominations, all communions; and meanwhile, it must humbly do its best to lead the way."

The Power of Story

June 16, 2009

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

But Always Meeting Ourselves

By COLUM McCANN

A LONDON nursing home. The shape of a figure beneath the sheets. My grandfather could just about whisper. He wanted a cigarette and a glass of whiskey. “Come up on the bed here, young fella,” he said, gruffly. It was 1975 and I was 10 years old and it would be the first — and probably last — time I’d ever see him. Gangrene was taking him away. He reached for the bottle and managed to light a cigarette. Spittle collected at the edge of his mouth. He began talking, but most of the details of his life had already begun slipping away.

Long wars, short memories.

Later that afternoon my father and I bid goodbye to my grandfather, boarded a train, then took a night boat back home to Dublin. Nothing but ferry-whistle and stars and waves. Three years later, my grandfather died. He had been, for all intents and purposes, an old drunk who had abandoned his family and lived in exile. I did not go to the funeral. I still, to this day, don’t even know what country my grandfather is buried in, England or Ireland.

Sometimes one story can be enough for anyone: it suffices for a family, or a generation, or even a whole culture — but on occasion there are enormous holes in our histories, and we don’t know how to fill them.

Two months ago — 31 years after my grandfather’s death — I got a case of osteomyelitis, a bone infection. I was admitted to a hospital in New York for a surgical debridement and a high-octane dose of antibiotics. I got a private room, largely because I’m middle class and insured, but also because it was an infectious disease. The double doors clacked when the nurses entered, visitors came and went, but for long stretches of time I listened to the ticking of a Vancomycin drip.

There is a lovely backspin in silence.

I had brought an old copy of “Ulysses,” James Joyce’s masterpiece that takes place in the back streets of Dublin on June 16, 1904. I wanted to read it cover to cover. I have been dipping into the novel for many years, reading the accessible parts, plundering the icing on the cake, but in truth I had never read it all in one flow.

The messy layers of human experience get pulled together, and sometimes ordered, by words.

Soon my grandfather was emerging from the novel. The further I went in, the more complex he got. The man whom I had met only once was becoming flesh and blood through the pages of a fiction. After all, he had walked the very same streets of Dublin, on the same day as Leopold Bloom. I began to see my grandfather outside Dlugacz’s butcher shop, his hat cocked sideways, watching the moving “hams” of a young girl. I wondered if he had a penchant for “the inner organs of beasts and fowls.” I heard him arguing with the Citizen in Barney Kiernan’s pub. I felt him mourn the loss of a child.

He walked the city alongside Bloom, then turned the corner into Eccles Street, and then another corner into my hospital room and sat on the edge of my bed. I could smell the whiskey and cigarettes on his breath.

The book carried me through to the far side of my body, made me alive in another time. I was 10 years old again, but this time I knew my grandfather, and it was a moment of gain: he was so much more than a forgotten drunk.

Vladimir Nabokov once said that the purpose of storytelling is “to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade.”

This is the function of books — we learn how to live even if we weren’t there. Fiction gives us access to a very real history. Stories are the best democracy we have. We are allowed to become the other we never dreamed we could be.

Today is Bloomsday, the 105th anniversary of the events of the novel. All over the world Joyce fans will gather to celebrate the extraordinary tale of an ordinary day. There will be Bloomsday breakfasts, and Bloomsday love affairs, and Bloomsday arguments and, indeed, Bloomsday grandfathers hoisting their sons, and their sons of sons, onto the shoulders of never-ending stories.

As for me, with a clean bill of health now, I finally know where my grandfather is buried — happily between the covers of a book, where he sits, smoking and drinking still.

Colum McCann is the author of the forthcoming novel “Let the Great World Spin.”

Language of Reverence

From Tom Owen-Towle, formerly of the First Unitarian Church in San Diego:

A meditation:

O, __________________

I know you (when, as, if, etc) _______________________________

Sometimes I wish/Sometimes I long for __________________________

A question I have ________________________________________

Thank you for ____________________________________________

O _____________________________________________________

Possible Adult Education Offerings--First Year

For the church year 2009-2010, one of these adult education courses is a possibility.

I will check in with the congregation in a variety of ways to see which has the most interest. Perhaps there will even emerge a co-facilitator with me if there is someone with special interest and desire.

Please note: Whatever the topic, participants will be encouraged to go deeper with practices, readings, and exercises that can be done at home throughout the month.

What do you think??? Anything strike your fancy? Let's begin the conversation.

Mary Oliver as Guide for the Life of the Spirit

A half day retreat, off-site (to be determined)

Picking half a dozen poems from the award-winning nature poet Mary Oliver, we'll see how her poetry provides a road map, a guide to the life of the spirit: waking up, looking about, being open and receptive, experiencing the 'miraculous' occasionally, responding, giving back, praising, being transformed, and asking the questions that matter (and thus, starting all over again). It is not linear, but it is there.

Emerson as Guide for the Life of the Spirit

Four to Six sessions, on site.

Though we may debate whether Ralph Waldo Emerson is primarily a poet, an essayist or a philosopher, for Barry Andrews, he is above all a spiritual teacher. His fiery genius ignited not only Thoreau but also Whitman, Fuller and many others. Though his life was riddled with loss, including the deaths of his first wife, two brothers and his first son, this remarkable man produced dozens of inspirational essays and poems and became the most widely quoted author in America today. Andrews' commentary shows a new generation of Americans how Emerson's spiritual journey joined an open heart with a critical mind. This will appeal to readers who consider themselves spiritual though not necessarily religious.

Thoreau as Guide for the Life of the Spirit

Four to Six Sessions, on site

Thoreau and the Trancendentalists tried to achieve a balance in their lives between work and leisure, nature and civilization, society and solitude, spiritual aspirations and moral behavior. This guide helps one "walk" through Walden again and find its soul while expanding your own.

Reason and Reverence

Format undetermined. On site

Based on the book by Bill Murry, former president of Meadville Lombard Theological School, a book that inspires conversation about humanism.

From Amazon:

Answering the critics who find humanism lacking the power to inspire, Murry brings a new vision of religious humanism?one that evokes compassion, spirituality and a language of reverence while grounded in reason, community, social responsibility, science and ethics. Along with an accessible account of humanism's historical development, theological challenges and future directions, on these pages readers will discover a more open and inclusive humanism, one that speaks to the heart as well as the mind.

Sabbath

This may have to wait until year 2.

Otherwise: once a month for six months.

"Wayne Muller's call to remember the Sabbath is not only rich, wise and poetic, it may well be the only salvation for body and soul in a world gone crazy with busyness and stress."

I would like to find another group to do this with as a co-venture. This is a rich, interfaith approach to an important topic in our busy world.

Essential Spirituality

Once a month for seven months. On-site.

Psychiatrist and philosopher Roger Walsh looks at seven common practices of the world's major religions to tease out a guidebook for contemporary spirituality. With gleanings from Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, Walsh offers seven chapters devoted to enlightenment.

First Session: Introductions, getting to know each other. Goals and hopes.

Topic: Transforming Your motivations

Second Session:Cultivate Emotional Wisdom

Third Session:Living Ethically

Fourth Session: Calm Your Mind

Fifth Session:Seeing the sacred in all things

Sixth Session: What about wisdom?

Seventh Session: Giving Back//Moving on//what we'll take from this//Fare Thee Wells//Next steps

Now, it is up to you. Any thoughts about what we should pursue together? Leave a comment or send me an email (revrogerb@msn.com)

All the best,

In hopes of wholeness,

In faith,

Roger