Progress Quad Cities

Letter to Roger Butts from the Muslim Community of the Quad Cities

2009-06-05T08:25:00.002-05:00

At a service Lisa Killinger from the Quad Cities Muslim Community and I put together on the idea of surrender, Lisa read a letter to me from the Muslim Community as I prepare to leave for Colorado. It was totally unexpected and a real gift. Thanks Lisa and all my friends in that community!

A Love Letter From the Muslim Community

Dear Reverend Roger,

So many years ago, you reached out to the Muslim Community in love. It is classic Roger to think and act inclusively. When you reached out, the Muslim Community was very young; we were just getting on our feet. You made sure to invite us when there was an interfaith event. You reminded others in the interfaith community of our presence, and always kept us in the loop and in your thoughts.

For a small minority faith, that meant the world to us. We have, since those early days, gotten to stand together with you and your flock at the ‘Peace in the Park’ events, the ‘Yom Heshoa Service’, and a zillion PACG gatherings. We say together at an event with rows of National Guard soldiers’ boots, remembering those who lost their lives in Iraq where we struggled to read the names of those who had died, while fighting back tears (profoundly unsuccessfully I might add.) You have generously housed so many events here in this church, in the name of peace, good stewardship of the earth, and social justice.

You are a good man, Reverend Roger, an excellent leader, and a wonderful friend. We know the mountains of Colorado have called you for service there, and soon you will answer their call, take your dear family, and go. There is no doubt that your journey will take you to experience and be a part of great things. But understand that you will be greatly missed.

This community, Muslim and Unitarian, Christian and Jewish, Pagan, and Athiest, Buddhist and B’hai, will long remember you Roger and the example of love, peace and, yes, surrender you have lived here among us. The Quad Cities have been forever enriched by your time and service here and you will never be forgotten for who you are and what you stand for. We hope your journey will some day bring you back so we can welcome you as our much beloved guest. You are a dear soul and a dear friend.

From the Muslim Community to you, Asalamualikum (May the Peace of God Be With You.) Godspeed.

A Memorial Day Litany

2009-05-25T08:33:00.001-05:00

In Memory of All Victims of War and Terrorism:

Ashes, Stones, and Flowers

For vibrant lives suddenly and shamelessly sacrificed, we lift up the ashes of our loss,
O Source of Life.

For the lives that continue, haunted forever by the pain of absence, we lift up the ashes of our remorse,
O Wellspring of Compassion.

For the conflagration of flames and nightmare images forever seared into our memories, we lift up the ashes of our pain,
O Breathing Spirit of the World.

For the charred visions of peace and the dry taste of fear, we lift up the ashes of our grief,
O Infinite.

For all the deaths that have been justified by turning the love of God or country into fanatical arrogance, we lift up the ashes of our shame,
O God.

As we cast these ashes into the troubled water of our times, Transforming One, hear our plea that by your power they will make fertile the soil of our future and by your mercy nourish the seeds of peace.

The people recite the names of the dead.

The people cast the ashes in silence into the river [or a bowl of water].

For the ways humanity pursues violence rather than understanding, we lift up the stones of our anger,
O Breathing Spirit of the World.

For the ways we allow national, religious and ethnic boundaries to circumscribe our compassion, we lift up the stones of our hardness,
O Wellspring of Compassion.

For our addiction to weapons and the ways of militarism we lift up the stones of our fear,
O Source of Life.

For the ways we cast blame and create enemies we lift up the stones of our self-righteousness,
O God

As we cast these stones into this ancient river, Transforming One, hear our plea:

Just as water wears away the hardest of stones, so too may the power of your compassion soften the hardness of our hearts and draw us into a future of justice and peace.

The people recite the names of the dead.

The people cast the stones in silence into the river [or a bowl of water].

For sowing seeds of justice to blossom into harmony, we cast these flowers into the river,
O Source of Peace.

For seeing clearly the many rainbow colors of humanity and earth, we cast these flowers into the river,
O Infinite.

For calling us to life beyond our grieving, we cast these flowers into the river,
O Breathing Spirit of the World.

As we cast these flowers into this ancient river, Transforming One, hear our plea:

Just as water births life in a desert and gives hope to the wounded, so too may the power of your nurturing renew our commitment to peace.

The people recite the names of the dead.

The people cast the flowers in silence into the river [or a bowl of water].

[Litany by Rev. Patricia Pearce, pastor of Tabernacle United Church, Philadelphia, and Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of The Shalom Center.

From Today's Washington Post--Interfaith Bridges of Peace

2009-05-23T22:35:00.001-05:00

This is such an important topic. It is of crucial importance now in the Quad Cities, as the Muslim community and the Jewish community are experiencing some tension. Let us keep building bridges of understanding!

Synagogues and Bridges in the Bronx

Today's blog is by Eboo Patel and Samantha Kirby.

Wednesday night in New York, four Muslim men were arrested for a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx, NY, and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base. They were quoted in newspapers as saying they wanted to "commit jihad" and that "if Jews were killed in this attack...that would be all right."

About three weeks ago, in New York, a Muslim man, Imam Shamsi Ali, gave a talk at the Free Synagogue in Queens about the "Essence of Islam" during an interfaith Holocaust remembrance service. After the talk, he engaged in a dialogue with Rabbi Michael Weisser, who said "Imam Ali and I share a common vision of a world in which people of all traditions will come to consider themselves as family working together to build a more harmonious world."

Which one of these stories do we want to tell our kids?

The story of how several repeat-offenders, (one of whom made statements on Islam that "often had to be corrected" according to an assistant Imam), took a twisted version of Islam and aspired to commit violent acts in its name?

Or the story of how Jewish and Muslim communities are coming together to learn from one another and ensure that one of the most horrific acts of the 20th century should never be repeated?

Or better yet - how can we transform the first story into the second story?

This is one job of an interfaith leader.

The way that communities react to events like the one that happened Wednesday night can change the story. Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), immediately came out with the following statement: "We repeat the American Muslim community's repudiation of bias-motivated crimes and of anyone who would falsely claim religious justification for violent actions."

Mayor Bloomberg said "Most people in New York City want to live together, work together, and I think we're as safe today as we've ever been before."

The first important steps have been taken: national and community leaders are speaking out against this act, refuting the religious claims of the would-be attackers and reassuring the community that the majority of people want nothing more than to live and work together in peace.

Now the next steps must be taken. Interfaith leaders must step up and work to ensure that relationships between the Jewish and Muslim communities, bonds we know exist from other events such as the Holocaust remembrance service, are maintained. They should create forums for discussion on how to keep their community safe, and talk about how to process events like these. They must host dialogues to better understand one another and the shared values among their different faith traditions, then organize service events to act on these values and better their common community.

One way to start this process is to take direct public action. In Chicago after September 11, a mosque received threats of violence against anyone entering the building. This mosque had existed for years in the community, and the Muslims who prayed there had built relationships with their Jewish and Christian neighbors. Because these communities realized that an attack on any one group is an attack on everyone, they stood vigil around the mosque during afternoon prayers to ensure that the Muslim community could pray in peace.

No matter what activities community leaders in the Bronx may choose, they should work towards one end - the end that can transform the 21st century into an era of interfaith cooperation instead of the era of global terror.

They must build bridges.

The Fall Schedule for High Plains Church (tentative, tentative, tentative)

2009-05-23T10:02:00.004-05:00

DRAFT, DRAFT, DRAFT

Subject to change after receiving input

August 2: Blessed are the _______

A sermon about three favorite peacemakers…Dorothy Day; Theodore Parker; and Thomas Merton. After a five minute introduction to each, we sing a song. A nice August service.

August 9: The Emperor of the US a reflection with ...

A reflection on identity and desire and self-awareness and self-acceptance. Light-hearted but with a message that might endure.

August 16 or 23:

Depending on the anniversary picnic, I’ll either do this and not do the 23^rd. Just depends on the schedule.

SERMON TITLE: Marginalia

Based on a poem by Billy Collins, those little moments that come out of nowhere and lead to epiphanies, new awareness, new ways of being in the world. (I’ll send you all a copy of the reading).

August 16 or 23: Lay led service.

August 30: U and I

Testimonials and other reflections on small group ministries at HPC

September 6: ??? perhaps lay led. If not, I’ll probably do something on The Meaning of Work or the Tao of Work or something like that.

September 13: Water Service. We’ll all plan together this service, I would imagine.

September 20: Lay led or if it is mine: The Tangled Bank. The tangled bank is an image that Darwin uses in his Origins of Species. This is a service on nature and contemplation and so on.

September 27: What Baby Suggs Taught

Here is the origin for me of the image of the walking stick. I use the story from Beloved by Toni Morrison of Baby Suggs preaching out in the clearing. Gia, a good time to think about a dramatic reading with movement.

Perhaps sometime in October, the RE program and the congregation could engage in a kind of a blessing of the animals?????

October 4: A Theology of the Blues

We’ll need to find a blues band. We’ll explore the themes that the blues provides and the way that the blues can help us think about really important questions.

October 11: Perhaps lay led? Otherwise, maybe a good time to reflect on animals, do a blessing of the animals, etc…

October 18: The Power of Forgiveness (Yom Kippur)

Using clips from award-winning PBS documentary, The Power of Forgiveness, we’ll talk about reconciliation—personal, political, and communal. And draw on a wide range of interfaith voices—Thich Nhat Hanh, Elie Wiesel, Marianne Williamson, etc, etc—to bring up this crucially important idea.

October 25: Perhaps Autumn Reflections or perhaps Day of the Dead.

Either way, I anticipate using lots of voices from the congregation at this time. Participatory service for sure.

November 1: The Power of Generosity

Why is generosity and stewardship so important in every religious tradition? At a bank the other day, I saw a sign that said: It’s not what you make, it is what you save. I wondered if we could say: it’s not what you make, it’s not what you save, it’s what you value and build and support.

November 8: To humanism!

November 15?

November 22: The Power of Gratitude

Why is gratitude such an important part of the journey towards wholeness? What is it about gratitude that is so compelling? What does gratitude stand for?

November 29: ?

Note: The end of Ramadan, the beginning of advent, the holidays are deep upon us. It might be a good time to talk about slowing down, self-care, family stresses. We’ll see.

I’m leaving all of December open, wanting to hear from you both about when the children’s pageant might be and what other traditions might occur during this time. Plus, I will have become a bit more aware of some of the themes that really need to be addressed, so even though I have ideas, I’ll keep this open.

December 6:

December 13

December 20:

December 27:

The rest of the sermon series in Davenport

2009-05-19T22:54:00.002-05:00

May 24: A Happy Atheist Walks Into a Church/Memorial Day readings from Molly Tiegland

May 31: Surrender with Lisa Killnger from the Islamic Community

Children's Carnival after church

June 7: What is happening at General Assembly

June 14: Music Sunday/Flower Communion

June 21: To Fathers/Child Dedication

June 28: If I had but one sermon to give

(and a bit about glbt theology since pride weekend was the day before)

After church a potluck for Roger and family as this is our last Sunday in Davenport.

Off to the second ministry

2009-05-16T08:45:00.002-05:00

As most know, I have been called to High Plains Church in Colorado Springs, CO. I am so excited.

I will be leaving for there July 1.

February 1 Order of Service

2009-01-30T09:35:00.003-06:00

The Order of Service for the Unitarian Church, Davenport
Sunday, February 1
The Four Chaplains: On Diversity and Its Uses

The reading which I love best is the scriptures of the several nations, though it happens that I am better acquainted with those of the Hindus, the Chinese, and the Persians, than of the Hebrews, which I have come to last. Give me one of these bibles, and you have silenced me for a while.
Henry David Thoreau

I do not prefer one religion or philosophy to another. I have no sympathy with bigotry and ignorance which make transient and partial and puerile distinctions between one man’s faith or form of faith and another’s—as Christians and heathens. I pray to be delivered from narrowness, partiality, exaggeration, bigotry. To the philosopher all sects, all nations, are alike. I like Brahma, Hari, Buddha, the Great Spirit, as well as God.
Henry David Thoreau

I am convinced that what is life denying, what is repressive and false, will be known as such, and people, who are basically good, will follow a new way. Let us be some of those who step out and lead the way, who dare to be the Light that blesses the world, that all the earth may be fair, and all her people one.
Marilyn Sewall

Prelude

Board Welcome

Opening Words:
If God Invited You to a Party
Hafiz

Opening Hymn: 209: O Come, You Longing Thirsty Souls

Chalice Lighting #458

Children’s Time
Singing the Children Out

Offering
Joys and Sorrows
Silence
Response: 159: This is My Song

Special Music

Reading
Sermon: The Four Chaplains: On Diversity and Its Uses

Response: Hymn 401 Kum ba Yah
Extinguishing the Chalice
Benediction
Postlude

2009-01-20T20:11:00.002-06:00

Someone writing in the New York Times has seen an echo between the first part of Elizabeth Alexander's inaugral poem and a poem, Passersby, by Carl Sandburg.

The early lines of Alexander’s poem (”Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise.”) echo, whether consciously or not, a poem from Carl Sandburg’s Chicago Poems (1916). I reread it and found it especially apt for this day:
PASSERS-BY

Out of your many faces
Flash memories to me
Now at the day end
Away from the sidewalks
Where your shoe soles traveled
And your voices rose and blent
To form the city’s afternoon roar
Hindering an old silence.

Passers-by,
I remember lean ones among you,
Throats in the clutch of a hope,
Lips written over with strivings,
Mouths that kiss only for love.
Records of great wishes slept with,
Held long
And prayed and toiled for. .
Yes,Written onYour mouths
And your throatsI read them
When you passed by.

Iraq Memorial, Unitarian Church, Davenport

2009-01-18T08:47:00.004-06:00

Today's QC Times publishes this story on the Iraq War Memorial at the Unitarian Church in Davenport.

Iraq war memorial opens at church

By Mary Louise Speer Sunday, January 18, 2009

Elizabeth Russell of Rock Island gazed at the names of fallen U.S. soldiers displayed in the “Arrival at Dover” war memorial.

One name stood out to her, Lance Cpl. Jesus Suarez del Solar, who died early in the Iraq war.

The exhibit honors soldiers who have died since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

It opened to the public Saturday at Unitarian Church, Davenport.

“I guess I would liken it to going to the Vietnam Wall memorial,” Russell said. “Seeing all those names. Seeing all those lives that were lost, and the families that lost them.”

Russell met Suarez del Solar’s father while on the “Wheels of Justice” bus tour in California and listened to his story about becoming an activist voice in the war debate.

“You walk past, you can’t take in the names of everyone. You wonder about the families they left behind,” she reflected. “I think the memory of these people demands from us the question: What do we do to honor their lives.”

Artist Jay Strickland of Rock Island hopes the work helps viewers better understand the meaning of the 4,227 U.S. soldiers who have, as of Saturday, died there since the invasion began in March 2003. The display is arranged in chronological order.

“I wanted people to see the totality of the fatalities that were coming back,” he said.

Each name also has a brief description of how that individual died, whether in combat or on duty, from injuries sustained from IED’s or while being treated in medical facilities for their injuries.

Strickland still has more names to add to the list but the ceiling-high display of names, flag-etched caskets and hanging crane mobile is on display through Feb. 1.

Strickland has a background in photography and he’s created other art pieces to illustrate the genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

The memorial’s name was inspired by the fact that bodies brought back for burial travel through the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

U.S. policy prohibits photos from being taken of the flag-draped caskets at Dover. The tiny coffins are visual reminders of how many fallen warriors have traveled through Dover, Strickland said.

“I don’t have a friend or family member who died there,” he said. “But they all died for me.”

The city desk can be contacted at (563) 383-2450 or newsroom@qctimes.com.

© Copyright 2009, The Quad-City Times, Davenport, IA

Obama Poem, former Quad Cities Poet Laureate

2009-01-18T08:03:00.003-06:00

In today's Quad Cities Times, a poem from former Quad Cities Poet Laureate and staunch Republican Dick Stahl. It is a beautiful, gracious, generous piece.

Dear Barack Obama
By Dick Stahl
I have a hope today.

I hope America turns ‘greener’ by the hour.

I hope America catches her wind
and sings electric.

I hope America shows the gasoline engine only in museums.

I hope Americans travel abroad
with respect from
all countries.

I hope Americans
redefine presidential leadership from
your character and personal integrity.

I hope Americans anticipate you writing your own words
and speaking inyour own voice.

I hope all Americans enjoy affordable
health care.

I hope America
cheers the wintering bald eagles on the Upper Mississippi River and applauds
its national symbol
visiting the working spine of our country.

I hope Americans
trim down, toughen up and exercise sound mind and body.

I hope America’s national debt drops
to zero.

I hope the American family learns from
the love of the
Obama family.

I hope all Americans make education
a life-long quest.

I hope Made in
America means
Made in the Obama Administration.

I hope Americans
visit the memory of Presidents Washington and Lincoln with you.

I hope you partner with Congress to move this country forward.

I hope America
discovers your new oratory as ‘A New Birth of Freedom.’

I hope America
springs with you
into the Twenty-First Century on
January 20, 2009.

I have a hope today.

Dick Stahl

2009-01-08T00:09:00.002-06:00

Bob Motz has seen lots of amazing wildlife in a lifetime of observing nature — giant tortoises on the Galapagos Islands, millions of monarch butterflies in the mountains of Mexico and lions in Tanzania, Africa.

But he experienced a “first” last month, right outside the windows of his Rock Island home: a cardinal that is half-male, half-female, he says. The bird’s male side is bright red and the female side is a buff brown.

This anomaly occurred during cell division in the bird’s early embryonic stage when the sex chromosomes did not separate properly to the cells, explains Motz, who taught biology at Rock Island High School for 36 years.

The result is what’s called a “gynandromorph,” a creature with half-male, half-female characteristics.Motz has never seen anything like it and neither have other Quad-City area bird watchers/experts.“It’s very unusual,” says Kelly McKay, a Hampton, Ill., field biologist and Quad-City bird expert. “I’ve never seen it.”“It’s a real mix-up of nature,” adds Mary Lou Petersen, another birder and longtime member of the Quad-City Audubon Society.

It is not unheard of, though. Motz has a photo of a gynandromorphy butterfly that he uses in the genetics class he teaches in the College for Kids program at Black Hawk College. These creatures typically are sterile and cannot reproduce, he says.

The unusual cardinal was first spotted in December when Motz and two friends — Jim Frink and his wife, Betty — were sitting around his dining room table. “Jim was facing the window and he saw it first,” Motz recalls. ” ‘He said, ‘Bob, quick, look!’”The bird was in a hawthorn tree, eating some of its fruit, and has continued to hang around since then, Motz adds.

Healing Music

2008-12-31T09:48:00.002-06:00

My latest newsletter column.

On the evening of December 30, I sat in a darkened sanctuary. A few lights toward the pulpit turned the whole place into the color of toasted wheat. The wind outside howled. David Bowlin and his crew of merry-makers known as Chamber Music Quad Cities played magical music. I closed my eyes and let the sound wash over me. I was transported.

I’ve often said that, for me, music is akin to church. Music is exhilarating. Music is renewing. Music can make me weep. Music gives me hope.

Music hits a place deep in my bones.

But there was something more on the 30th. I sat there in gratitude for my family. We have had a very good year. I sat there with the difficulties of the church year heavy on my mind. I sat there with the many blessings of the church year accompanying me. I have seen many of you in life’s most significant moments—celebrating new babies with some of you; planning memorial services with others of you; listening deeply about life’s losses and making a way when there seems to be no way. Sometimes I sat with you in less dramatic but still important times: planning worship services; exploring ideas around religion and life in the board room. There has been laughter this year. And there have been growing edges and growing pains that have been frankly quite difficult.

Life in community, with its blessings and its speed bumps.

I sat there in the sanctuary, listening to piano and violin and cello. And I for a moment felt whole. I experienced a bit of the healing power of music. The musicians were vessels, absorbed in their own process, absorbed in the mixture of giving and receiving that is at the heart of the creative endeavor.

They were vessels of powerful grace, each in the sanctuary full of their own worries, full of their own concerns, full of their own gratitudes. Each open, as they were able, to the possibilities. Each open as the child on Christmas morn—Santa’s been here! What will happen next? Each open as the birder glimpsing the first eagle of the season. What majesty. What power.

Last Sunday in church, we talked about Anna the prophet in the story in the gospel of Luke who glimpses something holy upon seeing this Jesus, 8 days old in the temple. She was a widow. She was old. She was poor. She was not terribly ambitious. But she prayed and she fasted and she had eyes to see. For the Unitarian Universalist reading that story, the invitation is to reflect upon the question: What can I do to put myself in a position to have eyes to see the holy, the miraculous, all around? How shall I put my experience through the purifying heat of the fire of thought so that I am immersed in an understanding of my life as a part of the great story of the unfolding, evolving universe and its story, holy and powerful?

What is possible? What will happen next? What majesty! And I and my little concerns all wrapped up in the unfolding life of the holy earth. Life in community, with its blessings and bumps and bruises.

Choose to bless the world in 2009, no matter what! May you be blessed and be a blessing!

Roger

Frank Rich, Obama and Warren

2008-12-27T20:43:00.003-06:00

Frank Rich has a wonderful piece in the New York Times, 12/28/08 on the controversy around President Elect Obama's invitation to Pastor Warren to give the prayer on Jan 20th.
Read it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/opinion/28rich.html?hp

I also encourage you to read Scott Wells' piece at boyinthebands.com which is also printed in this blog.

SPRING 2009 SUNDAY SERVICE DRAFT

2008-12-25T22:12:00.004-06:00

I have been thinking about spring semester. As I've done the last several years I am passing around a draft for comments.

This is obviously not finalized. RSC does not have any dates on this, so that is obviously going to change.

I will be writing some others for input in a few weeks, so that will likely cause it to change. But I want to begin with you all and get your input.

In the next little bit, I will ask for worship associates. For example, I know sometime in Feb or March Heather Maxwell and I will be doing a service on overcoming relationship break ups and disappointments. But some of this will change based on the give and take with worship associates.

Oh, one note: I will definitely take the lead on the Alan Egly commemoration. I love him to death. But I will not be involved in the 50th anniversary of the sanctuary. That is for the board to do, though I will help as needed.

We know these will happen and need some input:
Darwin
Easter/50th Anniversary of Sanctuary
RSC Sundays

DRAFT SERVICES SPRING 09 DRAFT COMMENTS PLEASE, COMMENTS PLEASE

Feb 1: The Four Chaplains
On diversity and its uses.
The future of interfaith relations (here in the QCA and nationally and theologically).
Gustav Niehbur (Syracuse) has a wonderful new book out on the promise of interfaith relations, and Harvey Cox (Harvard) has written in this area for a long time.
The subtitle: On diversity and its uses comes from a James Luther Adams essay which I will no doubt reference.
I will ask Ron Quay to work with me on this.

February 8: Happy B’Day Charles Darwin with Joe Lehman (and likely others too).

February 15: Nirvana with John Dunsheath (and Steve Spring invited)
What is the deal with the Buddhist conception of Nirvana. What is the idea behind it? I'll probably try to get Steve Spring (mindfulness community of the qc) and or John Dunsheath to come and be with me that day.

February 22: Transfiguration
The story of the transfiguration is a fascinating tale. Like all such bible stories, it is not meant to be taken literally. Rather it is a midrash on a story about Moses from the Hebrew scriptures. More importantly, it raises serious questions about how a liberal Christian is to read the bible after the Shoah. This is a favorite passage of mine, and the sermon will be an overview of a paper I wrote in New Testament entitled Reading the Transfiguration After the Shoah. It is an important topic, I think: supercessionism, the textual insistence on asking about the relationship between the emerging Christian community and its Jewish lineage.

March 1: The Duties of Hard Times with Lars Rehnberg Worship Associate
http://www.boyinthebands.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/the-duties-of-hard-times_line_300dpi.pdf

A very old Unitarian sermon, delivered in 1830 at First Church in Boston, asks the question: What is our duty in hard times? I’ll reflect on the sermon, and think about what it says to us in our own difficult times. Probably the biggest question in terms of mission that the church has to face next year is what shall we do given our context, which right now involves lots of economic uncertainty. It is fascinting to see the sermon reflect on economic uncertainty in 1830.

March 8: The End of the Culture Wars? With Stephen Klien
As I prepare to be a part of a panel at Augustana College on the question of culture wars, I ask the question: Will the culture wars ever end? Should they? How did they start? What do they mean? Where are they headed? What can we do to make public discourse more light and less heat?

March 15: Ethical Wills, and the spiritual discipline of writing your own obituary!

March 22: RSC SUNDAY or if it is mine: Unitarian Universalist Theology: Interdependence, Relationality, and What Saves Us...

March 29: Beloved: The Clearing
This is a service that takes off from Toni Morrison’s Beloved. We’ll compare what Emerson wrote in The Divinity School Address with what Morrison writes about with Baby Suggs.

April 5: Passover Seder. We’ll take some time to explore the seder in our church service, and we’ll do a ‘chosen family’ seder.

April 12: Easter—50th anniversary of the sanctuary celebration

April 19: Yom HaShoah Sunday: Plantations and Death Camps: Human Dignity, Religion, and Ideology
Based on a book by one of my teachers, Beverly Mitchell.

April 26: Fifty Years Ordained: A celebration of Rev. Alan Egly with Alan Egly
April 31st Thursday, dinner and lecture with Kendyl Gibbons

May 3 RSC

May 10: Celebrate the Mothers (Perhaps this could be a Music Sunday?)

May 17: The tangled bank: toward a eco-theology of responsible participation
Based on a book by Michael Hogue, teacher at Meadville Lombard Theological Seminary

May 24: Memorial Day. The power of re-membering

May 31: Surrender. This idea within Islamic Thought is powerful. What could it say to us as religious liberals/Unitarian universalists?

June 7: What looks interesting at General Assembly

June 14: Flower Communion

June 21: If I had Just One Sermon To Preach (It's about the dignity and possibility and beauty and power of humanity and the impossible idea that we are surrounded all the time by grace, grace, grace and beauty)
Likely, this is the big Ta Da!

June: 22: Off to General Assembly

Some other possibilities:
My uncle has published a book called Love as a Way of Life. I’ll take a look at it on this Sunday and share some stories about what he means to me, and what the book is about.

Heather Maxwell on overcoming disappointment and dogged strength in the face of failed relationships.

Hans Jonas, a life What Hans Jonas can teach us: about responsibility, about ethics, about the environment, about living a life well.

Today, 12.28.08 I asked during service what people might be interested in next semester: Some of the answers: living out my faith through service; simplicity; The rabbinic law and Unitarian Universalism (the suggestion was to have it be with Rabbi Samuel); and endowment.

Rick Warren, Obama, and a note from Scott Wells

2008-12-25T19:15:00.002-06:00

Scott Wells, Universalist minister, colleague and friend, writes about his upset around the Rick Warren invitation. I share it here because it is well worth a read. You can find more of his writing at http://boyinthebands.com/. If he lived closer, I would ask him to come and preach in Davenport, but alas. It is not to be.

My short response to the Obama-Warren messSaturday, 20 December 2008

The longer I ponder a response to Barack Obama’s invitation of Rick Warren to give the invocation at the Inauguration, the less likely I’ll be to finish it. So here’s the nub.

An aside to Mr. Obama:
We know you’re not a liberal, but a lot of liberals, labor people, environmentalists, feminists and others supported you because you had the organizational chops and charisma to beat the Republican. Oh, and let’s not forget The Gays, who are pretty hopping mad at you right now and have been since the election. Together, we will be a part of your Big Tent: either as invited guests or a burr in your saddle. Turn on us and we’ll turn on you. And so will the Obama Kids: there’s nothing they hate more than a hypocrite. Inviting that bigot Rick Warren is a slap in the face. Just because he’s got his head screwed on straight for a few issues of human decency doesn’t give him carte blanche to go after gay people like me, sick people who need stem cell research, anyone who wants to decide about their own reproduction or even the president of Iran.

An aside to the liberals, labor people, environmentalists, feminists and others, including The Gays:

Barack Obama isn’t a liberal; rather, the world dodged a bullet by not having a McCain-Palin administration. He will only live up to his change rhetoric if he’s held to it. Inclusion isn’t dependent on the next president’s character — the old Unitarian canard — but the power people bring or withhold from him. The last eight years of presidential unresponsiveness shouldn’t keep us from being organized, visible and loud. We need to be everywhere. More about the tactics later. For now, one word: solidarity. I do not expect non-gay liberals to pat me on the head and say I’m sorry you’re so upset. I expect them to be angry and vocal. And I’ll be there for the gag rule, card check, transit funding, and other issues that need to be reversed or improved. The Right expects us to stay apart.

A last point:
To remind y’all, my thrift shtick isn’t because I’m some tightwad. I plan to have money in the bank when the call comes: for political contributions, for issue campaigns, for legal defense funds.

Stay vigilant.

No honeymoon.

2008-12-21T09:20:00.001-06:00

TAKE HOME REFLECTIONS
December 21.
Written by Angela Chenus.

December 21st:
A magical date since times long ago, solstice, the day the ancients believed the sun had abandoned the world for good, so dark and long was the night. Celebrating the solstice is celebrating faith, faith that the sun and spring will return, that there will be a long period of darkness yet, but that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Can you find a way to embrace the cold and dark, knowing that it will not last forever?

Is there a celebration to be found in cozy days by the fireplace, adventures in the snow, hot cocoa and the warmth of shared stories and shared snuggles?

Today: read together a story from the Inuit. Their mythology is fun and powerful, they were, after all, making it through six months of winter darkness each year! Titles for children:

Raven, by Gerald McDermott from James Houston's Treasury of Inuit Legends
And/or: Light candles to banish the darkness from the corners. Making candles is a tradition we have in our family on this day; an easy method is rolling a sheet of beeswax around a wick. Materials can be easily found on bee-keepers' websites and kits in children's catalogs.

Then go for a candle light walk in the woods (or a close approximation thereof, the back yard may be adventure enough,) to welcome the return of the light that begins at midnight.

December 22nd:
Today is Hanukkah; Happy Hanukkah! and yes, Christmas is almost here, and you really don't have time to be reading these reflections, well-intentioned as they may be, there are things to do! As I look around me at this time of the year, there are inevitably a million things I have not done that I would like to accomplish, yet if I take a closer look, there is much good that has been done, and at this late date, that will have suffice.

Today: take a moment to breathe, to contemplate, to meditate. You could start your day with a personal meditation and lead your family in a collective sharing of something each is grateful for. We call our daily gathering in our house “joys and sorrows” like at church, but sometimes we banish the two categories in favor of sharing a gratitude.

Remembering how fortunate we are can help subvert the “gimmes” that have perhaps set in for the children and the despair of not doing it all for the adults.

December 23rd:
In my Catholic tradition, each year we would breathlessly await the coming of the “little lord Jesus” as my four-year-old calls him. Today is the day before the eve. The excitement is beginning to become palapable in households with children. It is also a time of awe, as we contemplate the miracle of birth, again. Here are a couple of ideas for cultivating the awe and wonder.

If your house contains a Nativity scene, you could gather around it with the kids and imagine out loud what each character might be thinking right now. Spin a story for a figure; that angel on Earth-duty for the first time, what a night for it! Joseph, first-time father; ask Dad what Joseph might be feeling. One lamb, lost among the big feet, or in the arms of his trusted shepheard, in awe at being let up this late tonight.

If your house does not contain a Nativity scene, you could create a “birth of the sun” scene, with a cradle or cushion in the middle and all of the figurines, stuffed animals and dolls your house contains all around to witness the rebirth of the sun. They surely have tales to tell as well.

December 24th, It is the Eve, the big one, Santa is probably coming to your house, ready or not, Christian or not. Breathe in, be in the moment, welcome the holy presence you believe in into your own heart first today. Your mood and attitude will set the mood for the rest of the family, take care of yourself first.

One of our favorite traditions is attending the evening service at church, then taking a plateful of cookies to the neighbors' houses, caroling through the neighborhood at the top of our (mostly the kids') voices. This always has a nice effect when it has snowed and all is still. You could find your own way of spreading cheer and sharing the joy with others today.

December 25th, Merry Christmas! If you are not Christian today, you and your family, as Unitarians honoring the lives of great religious leaders, could bake a cake for the birthday of Jesus. Enjoy the day together!

Happy Hanukkah! Merry Christmas! Happy Solstice! Joyful Yuletide! Angela Chenus

About Hanukkah

2008-12-20T08:03:00.003-06:00

A wonderful piece in the Washington Post about Hanukkah

Human Rights Central to Message of Hanukkah
By This Week's WordSaturday, December 20, 2008; B09

Rabbi Sid Schwarz is the founding rabbi of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda. He is president of PANIM: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values. His full sermon is at http://www.panim.org.

Tomorrow night, Dec. 21, which corresponds to the 25th day of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar, marks the first night of Hanukkah. Some rabbis have cynically commented that the popularity of Hanukkah is Jews' attempt to copy their gentile neighbors' observance of Christmas.

But motivations for observance notwithstanding, just as serious Christians try hard to put the Christ back into Christmas, Jews, too, must drill down to discover the power of the Hanukkah message. They will discover a message as central to Jewish teaching as any in our tradition.

It is also a message desperately needed in the world.

In 169, Antiochus Epiphanies, king of Syria, devastated Jerusalem, massacring thousands of Jews and desecrating Judaism's holiest shrine, the Temple in Jerusalem.

Under the military leadership of Judah Maccabee, Israel gradually rallied against Antiochus. On the 25th day of Kislev, the Maccabees retook Jerusalem and rededicated the Temple for Jewish worship. The Hebrew word Hanukkah literally means ''dedication.''

The custom of celebrating eight days of Hanukkah stems from the belief that the small amount of oil available to rekindle the Temple's menorah (sacred lamp) burned for eight days, even though the amount of oil was barely sufficient for one.

Whether one believes literally in the miracle of the high-octane oil, on a spiritual level Hanukkah is about a much bigger miracle. It is the miracle of faith conquering fear, of the few overcoming the many, of liberty winning out over oppression.

Every year, Hanukkah comes close to Human Rights Day, which was celebrated this year on Dec. 10. We ignore the day at our peril.

Enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are principles at the core of democracy: the right to life, liberty and security of person; equal justice before the law; protection against cruel and degrading forms of punishment; freedom of thought, conscience and religious practice.

These principles are also at the core of Judaism. Genesis 1:27 articulates the principle that every human being is made in the image of God (tzelem elohim).

I believe that tzelem elohim is the most radical teaching in the Torah. If we internalized the message in our own behavior and got societies and nation-states to abide by it, we would be well on our way to the Messianic era. But we are far from that place!

In violation of the teachings of Torah, we stand as idle witnesses to the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

We stand as idle witnesses to the ongoing repression in Burma.

We stand as idle witnesses to the illegal rule of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

In the Hanukkah story, the Maccabees fought for liberty, for the right to practice their religion, for the dignity of human freedom. Who are the Maccabees who stand for human rights in our world today?

Nelson Mandela is a Maccabee for helping South Africa emerge from a history of apartheid. He ensured that his society would be ruled by forgiveness and reconciliation, not by vengeance over the past.

The Dalai Lama is a Maccabee for representing peaceful resistance to the Chinese occupation of his native Tibet and has become a peace emissary to the world.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Maccabee by helping this country face its racism and showed us a path to a better America.

Recently, I participated in a national conference sponsored by Rabbis for Human Rights in Washington, D.C. The conference was infused with the Maccabee spirit because the organization understands that truth and honesty demand that we not only act on violations of human rights around the world, but that we need also look in our own back yard.

It is now common knowledge that our own country has been involved in state-sponsored torture of detainees, not only in Guantanamo but in prisons all around the globe. It has been documented that the prisoners range in age from 14 to 80. Most have been denied access to legal representation.

Not only do military experts tell us that the use of torture is ineffective in extracting information from prisoners, but the practice has made a mockery of America's claim to be fighting to protect democracy and human rights around the world.

Hanukkah coincides with the winter solstice. It is the darkest time of the year. And into that darkness, we are commanded to bring forth light.

We live in a dark time. In a world ravaged by war, prejudice, disease and now, an economic crisis that will put hundreds of thousands of people at risk of great suffering, we need to bring more light. Every day, we need more light, just like on Hanukkah. And to bring light, we need to become Maccabees -- people of faith who believe that liberty is worth fighting for, that human dignity is worth fighting for and that justice is worth fighting for.

Deep Freeze

2008-12-16T09:25:00.003-06:00

God of spring, summer, fall and winter.

God whose name is unknowable, whose face is too bright to behold.

Find in these deep frozen places--of the heart, of the mind, of the spirit--some place that can find new life, some place that can mend and heal and thaw.

Breathe new life into these weary, shivering bones.

And when the time comes, and the days draw especially short, remind us that the earth holds in its embrace the new seeds that will birth bright colors come spring.

Come spring. But not too soon.Let me not rush the next thing. Still my heart, o God, to rest in this season, to let the seed be--still, silent, invisible. Waiting. The seed lives. The seed endures.

The seed will grow.

Give me patience, amidst the deep freeze. Give me eyes to see the life that is all around.

Amen.

Thomas Merton and Silence

2008-12-11T16:47:00.001-06:00

Today, Sister Catherine Cleary sent this to me. What a great gift.

On this 40th anniversary of Thomas Merton's death, we offer a reflection by Frederick Smock, Chair of the English Department at Bellarmine University.

The monk/poet's journey toward silence

By Frederick Smock

Special to The Courier-Journal

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Thomas Merton's death, I want to think about silence. Certainly, Merton took a vow of silence, and he was occasionally silenced by the Vatican. But I am not thinking of those forms of silence. Rather, I want to think about silence and the poet's art.

Much of a monk's life is spent in silence. Much of a poet's life is spent in silence, too -- a poet spends a fraction of his time actually writing poems. Merton was both a monk and a poet, and thus well-acquainted with silence. Like meditation, and like prayer, poetry is surrounded by silence. Poetry begins and ends in silence. Silence is also inherent within a poem, like the silences between notes in music. As the great Chinese poet Yang Wan-li said, a thousand years ago, "A poem is made of words, yes, but take away the words and the poem remains."

Still, when we think of silence, we do not necessarily think of Merton. He was a voluble man, and a prolific writer. He continues to publish, posthumously. He always seems to be speaking to us. Bookshelves groan under the accumulating weight of his oeurvre. However, late in his life, Merton lamented the fact that he had written so many editorials, and not more poems and prayers -- forms that partake of silence. "More and more I see the necessity of leaving my own ridiculous 'career' as a religious journalist," he wrote in his journal (Dec. 2, 1959). "Stop writing for publication -- except poems and creative meditations."

"What do I really want to do?" Merton asked himself, in his journal (June 21, 1959). "Long hours of quiet in the woods, reading a little, meditating a lot, walking up and down in the pine needles in bare feet." What a man commits to his journal is, at once, the most private and the most authentic version of his self. Books written for public consumption are not errant, just not as heartfelt. In his journal for the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas (March 7, 1961), Merton wrote, "Determined to write less, to gradually vanish." He added, at the end of that entry, "The last thing I will give up writing will be this journal and notebooks and poems. No more books of piety."

Life is a journey toward silence, and not just the silence of death. Youth talks a lot -- is noisy. Old age is reticent. There is so much to consider, after all. Older men tend to hold their tongues. They know the wisdom of forbearance. To have seen many things is to reserve judgment. In this modern era, when news and politics are dominated by endlessly talking heads, silence becomes a precious commodity. The mere absence of speech sounds like silence. But true silence is a presence, not an absence. A fullness. A richness that depends for its worth on the purity of intent, not just the lack of distractions.

In a late journal entry (Dec. 4, 1968), Merton wrote of visiting the grand stupas of Buddha and Ananda at Gil Vihara, Sri Lanka. "The silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing...." Speaking of the figure of Ananda, Merton concluded, "It says everything. It needs nothing. Because it needs nothing it can afford to be silent, unnoticed, undiscovered." He also photographed these statues, focusing on their beatific serenity.

When we are silent, we can hear the wind in the trees, and the water in the brook, and is this not more eloquent than anything that we ourselves might have to say? Of living in his newly-built hermitage, Merton wrote in his journal (Feb. 24, 1965), "I can imagine no other joy on earth than to have such a place and to be at peace in it, to live in silence, to think and write, to listen to the wind and to all the voices of the wood, to live in the shadow of the big cedar cross, to prepare for my death...."

Is it ironic for a writer to praise silence? No more so, perhaps, than to praise ignorance, which is what Wendell Berry does in his poem "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front." There Berry writes, "Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered, he has not destroyed." So, perhaps we should praise silence, for as much as a man has not said, he has not lied.

Praise of silence runs throughout Merton's meditations. For just one example: of his teaching of the novices at Gethsemani, he wrote (July 4, 1952), "Between the silence of God and the silence of my own soul stands the silence of the souls entrusted to me."

Certainly, since his death, Merton has been silent -- if not silenced. There is also the soft rustle, just out of hearing, of the poems and prayers he did not live to write.

Frederick Smock is chairman of the English Department at Bellarmine University. His recent book is Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry of Thomas Merton (Broadstone Books).

Take Home Reflections--2nd Week of Advent

2008-12-06T22:55:00.002-06:00

TAKE HOME REFLECTIONS

WEEK OF DECEMBER 7-13 (2nd Week of Advent)

Theme for the year: Home

Last week’s Advent theme was hope. This week’s advent theme is peace.

Sunday December 7th
Take some time today to reflect on peace.
The cold is definitely here. Saturday night the low was expected to be around 0 degrees. This morning at church we dedicated some supplies for adults living in a shelter run by the Sisters of Humility.

Take a minute today to be grateful for the shelter that you enjoy. Take a minute to thank the house that is your dwelling. Thank the yard (if you have one) that is yours that you enjoy in all of the seasons of the year. Take a moment to honor that shelter by a special decoration (holiday) or a special nature table/corner/altar space, bringing the sacred into the home.

FAMILIES

If you have a chance this week, find the book December by Eve Bunting. It is a story about a homeless family. Read it to your children and talk about what the story brings up for you.

Monday, December 8th
Take some time today to reflect on peace.
Let us think, on a Monday, about wisdom. In Essential Spirituality, there is a passage about Tibetan Buddhism’s four great insights, known as the “four great mind-changers.” Wisdom (via experience) encourages us to learn and awaken. Learning and awakening has the potential to lead us to great peace. So reflect, today, on the four great mind-changers:

Life is inconceivably precious.
Life is short and death is certain.
Life
contains inevitable difficulties.
Our ethical choices mold our lives.

Begin by taking time to relax and quiet the mind. Then read through one idea and contemplate what it means to you. What makes your life precious? How do I feel about the idea that death is certain? What are the implications of that? Life is certainly full of difficulties…so what? So now what? What difficulties have I known? What happened? What difficulties are with me right now? How am I coping? What are the resources upon which I draw to help? What ethical choices have molded my life?

FAMILIES:

Tell you child about a wise teacher you’ve had. Ask your child about his or her teachers and what they’ve learned from them. Ask your child what he or she would like to learn about this week.

Tuesday, December 9th
Take some time today to reflect on peace.
Let us think, for a moment, about the theme of this second week of Advent: Peace. Thich Nhat Hanh has written a book entitled Peace is Every Step. In it, I believe, he speaks of the mindfulness with which he takes every step on a certain staircase in Plum Village, where he teaches and lives. He says that though he has been in Plum Village for decades, as he ascends and descends on these steps, he thinks of peace, he is aware of himself walking.
Can you spend today walking with intentionality? Can you try to take every step, while saying to yourself: I am aware that I am taking this step. I am aware that my body is moving. I am aware of my surroundings. I am at peace.

Families:
If the temperature is not terrible, take a walk with your child in a favorite park or in the neighborhood. Notice what the trees and the sky looks like. Talk about how your child is feeling and doing, in school, with friends, at home, etc.

Thursday, December 11th
Take some time today to reflect on peace.
In the Christian tradition, one of the passages read last Sunday morning from the lectionary readings is in the book of Isaiah. It begins: Comfort, o, comfort my people.
When have you known comfort? When have you comforted another? Where is a place you feel full of comfort?

Saturday, December 13
Let us take a moment to consider our theme for the year: Home. Our theme is home because our sanctuary will turn 50 and our church this year is 140 years old.
In the Jewish traditions, the Rabbis have said: Let your house be a meeting place for the wise…and drink in their words with thirst.

What kind of wisdom do you thirst for? Who among your friends and acquaintances holds deep wisdom? Have you expressed your gratitude for that person? How can you make your own home a gathering spot for the wise and the deep and the loving and the compassionate? How will you drink those words of hope and peace and wisdom?

Families:
Ask your children what questions they have about the holiday season? What do they know about Hanukah? What do they know about Christmas? What do they know about the solstice? What do they know about Kwanzaa? What can you share with them about these magical times? (For resources, contact Sarah Moulton, who has lots of books and electronic resources available on holy days and holidays. Sarah is reachable at sarahmoulton1@yahoo.com)

See you in church,
Roger

November 30 Take Home Reflections

2008-11-30T09:19:00.003-06:00

Take Home Reflections: November 23-Christmas Eve, 2008
Unitarian Church, Davenport, Rev. Roger Butts

Sunday, November 30, 2008
First Sunday of Advent

Perhaps you are a bit like me at this time of year.

You cannot hear much of anything above the cacophony of sound—rushing shoppers, maddening crowds, loud and persistent advertisements.

Maybe you long to hear that small, still voice that occupies every living thing, that place where wisdom and gratitude reside.

Maybe in the midst of the rush, you can sense a place deep in your being that says: Be still.

You can hear the Buddha-inside you say, “Find a tree, sit a while.” You can hear the Jesus in you say: Sit a while, find a dear friend, share a meal.

You can hear the psalmist say: there is no where you can go to escape love’s embrace, you might as well enjoy it while it lasts.

You can feel the goddess in you: the wind in the trees, the falling snow, notice it. Love it. Embrace it. You are part of it.

You can sense Emerson whispering in your ear: why keep looking, striving, seeking. You are at home.

Great love, grant that I might find a stillness, hold a stillness, love a stillness, so that the great call of my heart can be heard and the great love at the heart of all things might be enjoyed.

FAMILIES:
The first theme in advent is hope. Tell you children a story this week about a time when you experienced hope, how it felt to you, what it meant, how it changed your life. Ask your child about what they hope for.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Last Sunday (November 30), we introduced a number of new members into our church community. Roger used the image of wild geese as a metaphor for what it is like to be a part of a church—shared leadership, lots of encouragement, a sense of working together. When is a time that you experienced some of that in this church? What was that like for you? As you look back on the last year, what stands out as a particularly collaborative effort that you took part in, and what did it mean for you?

FAMILIES:
Let your children suggest a dinner menu in the next few days. Talk to them about who all was involved in the preparation of the food. Talk to them about Thich Nhat Hanh’s idea that we are all in everything—that the farmer who raised the broccoli is in the broccoli, that the sun is in the broccoli, that the rain is there. And give them an opportunity to name all of the things that might be in their food. Also, give them a chance to say thank you to all of those things and people.

Thursday, December 4, 2008
Pay very close attention right now to where you are, how you are sitting, what you hear, how you feel, why you are there. Pay attention prayerfully.

What am I feeling right now?

Sometimes I seek solace for my soul outside my soul, but if I listen very carefully, I can feel myself restored right now.
(From Awakening the Soul by John Morgan).

Families:
Ask your children what they might wish to learn about in the next few days. Listen carefully to their response and try to build a time to share with them what you know about what they wish to learn about.

Friday, December 5, 2008
Tonight at sunset, in the Jewish tradition, the Sabbath begins. The Sabbath is a time to express gratitude, to be with family members, to share a common meal and to go about the business of praise. All of these speak deeply to the tasks involved in the life of the spirit.

What can you do to include some or all of those components into your Friday?

Try to take a Sabbath moment in the midst of your rushing around.

Families:
Sit down with your family for a shared meal. Invite your children to pay attention to the food right in front of them. Ask them to name the food. Ask them to notice the food. Invite them to be grateful for the food.
Share a time with your children when you had an especially fun Christmas/holiday memory. Who was there? What happened?

For Sunday, December 7th: Read “Of the Coming of John” by W.E.B. DuBois. It is available at the library in The Soul of Black Folks (1903) or search for it online (the whole story is online).

Take Home Reflections Week of November 23 2008

2008-11-23T08:49:00.001-06:00

TAKE HOME REFLECTIONS
WEEK OF NOVEMBER 23-NOVEMBER 30
Our theme for the year: Home

SUNDAY November 23, 2008
In the entranceway of my house, there is a painting from Haiti by a fellow named Casimir. He painted this village market scene, full of bright vibrant colors and triangles and circles in the 1950s. It is one of my prized possessions, because I bought in Washington DC in the early 90s at a Haitian art store. I bought it when I had little business buying anything of value. I had little money. But I scraped the money together and took a chance. I love that painting. It reminds me of my starting out as a young adult in the DC area, all that energy, all that vibrancy, all those new opportunities. In a word, it stands for possibility.

What piece of art work in your house stands for something other than what is in the frame, or on the canvas? Where does it take you? How does it make you feel?

FAMILIES:
If you have children old enough to understand, tell them a story about a piece of art work in your house. Tell them about your life at that time.

What can you and your whole family create together? What are you working on just now?

Remember, I asked in early fall for you to befriend a tree. How is it doing?

MONDAY November 24
All around, you can see the energy building towards the holiday season. Christmas trees are appearing in the local hardware stores. Decorations are out and about. Radio stations are beginning to play the music of this season. It is a festive time.
What will you do to keep yourself in balance this holiday season?

FAMILIES:
Ask your child: What would you like me to teach you about this week? If you ask, they will tell you. Go to the library together and pick out an age appropriate book about what they’d like to learn about!

TUESDAY November 25
In his reflection during the service last week, Our Paths Home, Tyson Danner talked about the healing power of community, and specifically on what he valued about the Unitarian Church community. He said, that he always loved the song, There is a Balm in Gilead to heal a sin sick soul. He said that he doesn’t know if there is a balm in Gilead or not, but he knows there is one in Davenport.
What helps to keep you whole? What helps to heal the wounds that are uniquely yours?

FAMILIES:
There is an opportunity to prepare stockings with stocking stuffers for truly disadvantaged children in the community. Sarah Moulton (sarahmoulton1@yahoo.com) is leading the way. We’ll dedicate those, I think, on December 14th. Share with your children a time when you helped another person and what it meant to you. Go out if you can and buy some stocking stuffers with the kids, and tell them who they are going to help (children of domestic violence and children formerly homeless.)

WEDNESDAY November 26
Thanksgiving Day is nearly here. Some great old church person said: If the only prayer I offered up was thanks, that would be enough.
Say a prayer of thanks today. Take five minutes. Be still. And whether you offer your thanksgiving to God or to the universe or to someone who helped you, offer up thanks!

FAMILIES
Teach your children to say prayers of thanksgiving!

FRIDAY November 28
Today, stores open up at an ungodly early hour. What is your relationship with commercialization and consumerism. Sometimes I buy things to make me feel better. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. What would it be like to adopt an attitude of greater simplicity? On December 14th, the service will be on simplicity. What was a favorite holiday memory that did not include material goods?
FAMILIES
If it is not too cold, take a family walk together. Notice things that you find absolutely beautiful that are absolutely free!

SATURDAY, November 27
Tomorrow at church, the image we’ll lift up is the idea of wild geese. There is a poem by Mary Oliver by that name, Wild Geese, that you can find here
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2002/06/21
Read it and think about what it says to you.
See you in church!

2008-10-13T19:48:00.001-05:00

MINISTER’S REPORT
RSC, October Meeting
Unitarian Church, Davenport

Rev. Roger Butts

First Things First
First, thanks for all you do. It is good to work with you. Your commitment is a model for this church. I hope you enjoy the rest of the calendar year and the coming winter and find lots of good meaning and beauty all around you.
The Schedule.
October 19: What is your costume????
October 26: Celebration Sunday
November 2: With Steve Klein, Election Sermon (This is a long standing tradition in the Unitarian tradition, in which the minister lays out a discourse on what are pressing and important matters that the next administration might consider).
November 9: Kristallnacht (The Apple Story/The apple meal).
November 16: RSC
November 23: ARTS SUNDAY
Interfaith Thanksgiving Service: Edwards Congregational United Church of Christ
November 30: Roger (possibly with Greer Burke Anderson)
December 7: Assocation Sunday with Kathy Bowman
December 14: RSC
December 21: Pageant. Christmas pageant.
December 28: Roger

Music, Harmonia, Tyson, the Choir and our church.
I think Harmonia, the group that sang yesterday at the Matthew Shepard service, gave us a glimpse of what is possible around music. And having small groups lead the congregational singing was I think a nice touch. Hope to see more of that in the future.

Worship Associates.
As you can tell, I have been attempting to use lots of different worship associates. In the past few weeks: Laurie Bertsche, Ashley Klaas.

Equipment.
How is our conversation going along regarding computers, projectors, etc?

Study Leave.
I will be taking study leave, with part of my time in Chicago, in January. I appreciate the congregation’s willingness to honor this important part of the ministry here.

Sabbatical.
I will announce by early January if I am taking a sabbatical next yea.

Thinness.
Someone said to me: Guard yourself against thinness in the services. I appreciated hearing that. I know when I am off and I have suspicions when I am on. The more interaction with worship associates the better the service. The more involvement from Tyson and or Sarah, the better the service. I welcome your thoughts, your suggestions, your idea, your suggested themes, your potential readings (Unless you keep them for your service!!!). I am likely harder on myself than you’d ever be on me, but I do want you to know that I welcome any feedback. I have a commitment to my spiritual practices, and sometimes that helps me to keep a good focus and sometimes things are just too much with me and the service can slip. I’m working on it! I promise.
The six week Reflection Questions.
a. Evaluation. I have come to see that passing out a sheet on Sunday morning for six weeks is not necessarily the best way to proceed. I believe that the next installment I will try to get published as a booklet, and pass out all six weeks at the first Sunday and made available at the next five weeks for those who have not yet received a copy of the booklet.

b. Next installment.
November 30-December 24: Home for the Holidays
Kristallnacht.
November 7-9. Visit beyondkristallnacht.blogspot.com for information.

Darwin’s Birthday. Joseph Leman.
I have spent some time with newcomer Joseph Leman. He is a biology teacher at Augustana and is very interested in liberal religion and Unitarian Universalism in particular. I have asked him to be a point person on the Darwin’s birthday celebration in February. More information to come.

A Love Story

2008-10-12T23:20:00.003-05:00

Holocaust survivors tell love story
By MATT SEDENSKY Sunday, October 12, 2008 2:45 PM CDT

NORTH MIAMI BEACH, Fla. - In the beginning, there was a boy, a girl and an apple.

He was a teenager in a concentration camp in Nazi-controlled Germany. She was a bit younger, living free in the village, her family posing as Christians.

Their eyes met through a barbed-wire fence and she wondered what she could do for this handsome young man.She was carrying apples, and decided to throw one over the fence. He caught it and ran away toward the barracks.

And so it began.

As they tell it, they returned the following day and she tossed an apple again. And each day after that, for months, the routine continued. She threw, he caught, and both scurried away.

They never knew one another's name, never uttered a single word, so fearful they'd be spotted by a guard. Until one day he came to the fence and told her he wouldn't be back."I won't see you anymore," she said. "Right, right. Don't come around anymore," he answered.

And so their brief and innocent tryst came to an end. Or so they thought.

Before he was shipped off to a death camp, before the girl with the apples appeared, Herman Rosenblat's life had already changed forever.

His family had been forced from their home into a ghetto. His father fell ill with typhus. They smuggled in a doctor, but there was little he could do to help. The man knew what was coming. He summoned his youngest son. "If you ever get out of this war," Rosenblat remembers him saying, "don't carry a grudge in your heart and tolerate everybody."

Two days later, the father was dead. Herman was just 12.

The family was moved again, this time to a ghetto where he shared a single room with his mother, three brothers, uncle, aunt and four cousins. He and his brothers got working papers and he got a factory job painting stretchers for the Germans.

Eventually, the ghetto was dissolved. As the Poles were ushered out, two lines formed. In one, those with working papers, including Rosenblat and his brothers. In the other, everyone else, including the boys' mother.

Rosenblat went over to his mother. "I want to be with you," he cried. She spoke harshly to him and one of his brothers pulled him away. His heart was broken.
"I was destroyed," Rosenblat remembers. It was the last time he would ever see her.

It was in Schlieben, Germany, that Rosenblat and the girl he later called his angel would meet.

Roma Radziki worked on a nearby farm and the boy caught her eye. And bringing him food _ apples, mostly, but bread, too _ became part of her routine.

"Every day," she says, "every day I went."

Rosenblat says he would secretly eat the apples and never mentioned a word of it to anyone else for fear word would spread and he'd be punished or even killed. When Rosenblat learned he would be moved again _ this time to Theresienstadt, in what is now the Czech Republic _ he told the girl he would not return.

Not long after, the Russians rolled in on a tank and liberated Rosenblat's camp. The war was over. She went to nursing school in Israel. He went to London and learned to be an electrician.

Their daily ritual faded from their minds.

"I forgot," she says.

"I forgot about her, too," he recalls.

Rosenblat eventually moved to New York. He was running a television repair shop when a friend phoned him one Sunday afternoon and said he wanted to fix him up with a girl. Rosenblat was unenthusiastic: He didn't like blind dates, he told his friend. He didn't know what she would look like. But finally, he relented.

It went well enough. She was Polish and easygoing. Conversation flowed, and eventually talk turned to their wartime experiences. Rosenblat recited the litany of camps he had been in, and Radziki's ears perked up. She had been in Schlieben, too, hiding from the Nazis.

She spoke of a boy she would visit, of the apples she would bring, how he was sent away.

And then, the words that would change their lives forever: "That was me," he said.

Rosenblat knew he could never leave this woman again. He proposed marriage that very night. She thought he was crazy. Two months later she said yes.

In 1958, they were married at a synagogue in the Bronx _ a world away from their sorrows, more than a decade after they had thought they were separated forever.

It all seems too remarkable to be believed. Rosenblat insists it is all true.

Even after their engagement, the couple kept the story mostly to themselves, telling only those closest to them. Herman says it's because they met at a point in his life he'd rather forget. But eventually, he said, he felt the need to share it with others.

Now, the Rosenblats' story has inspired a children's book, "Angel Girl." And eventually, there are plans to turn it into a film, "The Flower of the Fence." Herman expects to publish his memoirs next year.

Michael Berenbaum, a distinguished Holocaust scholar who has authored a dozen books, has read Rosenblatt's memoir and sees no reason to question it.

"I wasn't born then so I can't say I was an eyewitness. But it's credible," Berenbaum said. "Crazier things have happened."Herman is now 79, and Roma is three years his junior; they celebrated their 50th anniversary this summer. He often tells their story to Jewish and other groups.

He believes the lesson is the very one his father imparted."Not to hate and to love _ that's what I am lecturing about," he said. "Not to hold a grudge and to tolerate everybody, to love people, to be tolerant of people, no matter who they are or what they are.

"The anger of the concentration camps, Herman says, has gone away. He forgave. And his life has been filled with love.

Matthew Shepard October 12 Service

2008-10-02T22:49:00.003-05:00

On October 12 at 11 a.m., the Unitarian Church will host a joint service with Metropolitan Community Church Quad Cities to commorate the 10th anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard. Here is an op/ed that Pastor Rich Hendricks and I wrote about the service. This letter has run in the Quad City Times and the North Scott Press and soon in the Argus/Dispatch.

From Tragedy to Hope

In 1955 African American Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Mississippi in a racist hate crime. As a result of that attack, the civil rights movement was energized and less than ten years later Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In 1998 gay American Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered in Wyoming in a homophobic hate crime. As a result of that attack, the movement towards full civil rights for God’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (“LGBT”) children was energized. See, for example, www.matthew shepard.org. Yet, 10 years later there is still NO national legislation protecting the civil rights of LGBT persons. And the hate continues.

As recently as this month, three gay men in Des Moines were attacked with thrown bricks amid a torrent of homophobic hate speech. This past July a man shouting insults against “liberals and gays” interrupted a church service at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, killing two adults and wounding seven others.

The Human Rights Campaign website states it best: “All violent crimes are reprehensible. But the damage done by hate crimes cannot be measured solely in terms of physical injury or dollars and cents. Hate crimes rend the fabric of our society and fragment communities because they target a whole group and not just the individual victim. Hate crimes are committed to cause fear to a whole community. A violent hate crime is intended to ‘send a message’ that an individual and ‘their kind’ will not be tolerated, many times leaving the victim and others in their group feeling isolated, vulnerable and unprotected.”

It is time to end homophobic bigotry, hate and violence. It pains us to know, even more so as clergy persons, that homophobic violence often finds its roots in religious-sponsored bigotry and hate. While many Christian preachers publicly espouse anti-gay rhetoric from their pulpits, very few of those same preachers also remind their congregants that Jesus denounced violence of any kind or that Jesus called on his followers to love even their enemies. When churches and individuals fail to speak up for tolerance and against hatred, they leave the world at risk to heinous crimes that should not happen. Churches and individuals have enormous power to make a difference for all that is good and right instead of promoting bigotry and hate.

People have a right to believe what they want about whether LGBT people are included in God’s love. Regardless, all people of good conscience everywhere must speak out against violence and hatred. On Sunday, October 12, 2008, the Metropolitan Community Church of the Quad Cities and the Unitarian Church of the Quad Cities are holding a joint worship service at 11:00 a.m. at the Unitarian Church, 3707 Eastern Avenue in Davenport. The service is in remembrance of the 10th Anniversary of the slaying of Matthew Shepard. The service is entitled “From Tragedy to Hope.”

We invite all who abhor violence and hate to attend the service and for all persons everywhere to spread the word that hate and violence are no longer acceptable behaviors in our land.
Rev. Roger Butts, Unitarian Church, Davenport
Rev. Rich Hendricks, Metropolitan Community Church of the Quad Cities

2008-09-22T18:20:00.001-05:00

This is an outstanding piece about David Foster Wallace. At least Jonathan Lethem, Rick Moody, Michael Chabon, Bret Easton Ellis, Donna Tartt continue on.

The Best Mind of His Generation
By A. O. SCOTT
Reviewing a biography of Jorge Luis Borges in The New York Times Book Review a few years back, David Foster Wallace attacked the standard biographical procedure of mining the lives of writers for clues to their work, and vice versa. Borges’s stories, he insisted, “so completely transcend their motive cause that the biographical facts become, in the deepest and most literal way, irrelevant.”
What’s true of writers’ lives is also, surely, true of their deaths. The temptation to regard Mr. Wallace’s suicide last weekend as anything other than a private tragedy must be resisted. But the strength of the temptation should nonetheless be acknowledged. Mr. Wallace was hardly one to conceal himself within his work; on the contrary, his personality is stamped on every page — so much so that the life and the work can seem not just connected but continuous.
Beyond this, Mr. Wallace was the kind of literary figure whose career was emblematic of his age. He may not have been the most famous novelist of his time, but more than anyone else, he exemplified and articulated the defining anxieties and attitudes of his generation.
Mr. Wallace’s vibrant body of work — reportage and criticism as well as two novels and three volumes of shorter fiction — pursued themes that in retrospect look uncomfortably like portents. His last book of stories was called “Oblivion,” and an earlier collection included the stories “Death Is Not the End,” “Suicide as a Sort of Present” and “The Depressed Person.” Even his most exuberant explorations of absurdity are edged with melancholy. “Infinite Jest,” the enormous, zeitgeist-gobbling novel that set his generation’s benchmark for literary ambition, is, for all its humor, an encyclopedia of phobia, anxiety, compulsion and mania.
The moods that Mr. Wallace distilled so vividly on the page — the gradations of sadness and madness embedded in the obsessive, recursive, exhausting prose style that characterized both his journalism and his fiction — crystallized an unhappy collective consciousness. And it came through most vividly in his voice. Hyperarticulate, plaintive, self-mocking, diffident, overbearing, needy, ironical, almost pathologically self-aware (and nearly impossible to quote in increments smaller than a thousand words) — it was something you instantly recognized even hearing it for the first time. It was — is — the voice in your own head.
Or mine, at any rate. When, as an undergraduate with a head full of literary theory and a heartsick longing for authenticity, I first encountered David Foster Wallace, I experienced what is commonly called the shock of recognition. Actually, shock is too clean, too safe a word for my uncomfortable sense that not only did I know this guy, but he knew me. He could have been a T.A. in one of my college courses, or the slightly older guy in Advanced Approaches to Interpretation who sat slightly aloof from the others and had not only mastered the abstruse and trendy texts everyone else was reading, but also skipped backward, sideways and ahead. It was impressive enough that he could do philosophy — the mathematical kind, not just the French kind. But he also played tennis — Mr. Wallace, in fact, had competed seriously in the sport — and could quote lyrics from bands you only pretended you’d heard of. Without even trying, he was cooler than everyone else.
All this shone through Mr. Wallace’s fiction. He had the intellectual moves and literary tricks diagrammed in advance: the raised-eyebrow, mock-earnest references to old TV shows and comic books; the acknowledgment that truth was a language game. He was smarter than anyone else, but also poignantly aware that being smart didn’t necessarily get you very far, and that the most visible manifestations of smartness — wide erudition, mastery of trivia, rhetorical facility, love of argument for its own sake — could leave you feeling empty, baffled and dumb.
Another way of saying this is that Mr. Wallace, born in 1962 and the author of an acclaimed first novel at age 24, anchored his work in an acute sense of generational crisis. None of his peers were preoccupied so explicitly with how it felt to arrive on the scene as a young, male American novelist dreaming of glory, late in the 20th century and haunted by a ridiculous, poignant question: what if it’s too late? What am I supposed to do now?
This is a common feeling for those of us born in the 1960s (for the record, I’m four years younger than Mr. Wallace). If you were, let’s say, a faculty brat in the 1970s, living in a provincial college town — Champaign, Ill., in Mr. Wallace’s case or Chapel Hill, N.C., in mine — you felt a weird post-traumatic vibe from many of the adults you met. And, if, as an adolescent or an undergraduate, you found your way into books, you kept seeing — on syllabuses, at the campus bookstore, on your parents’ shelves — the monuments of the previous era, most intriguingly the masterworks laid down by brave exemplars of experimentalism, iconoclasts who disassembled the worn machinery of the novel and put it back together in crazy, ingenious ways: William Gaddis and John Barth, Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut. These guys — and most were guys — pointed the way forward.
But they also blocked the path. Mr. Wallace knew this very well. He regarded the lions of postmodernism as heroes, but also as obstacles. “If I have an enemy,” he said in the early 1990s, “a patriarch for my patricide, it’s probably Barth and Coover and Burroughs, even Nabokov and Pynchon.” That’s a lot of fathers for one Oedipal struggle, and Wallace expended a lot of energy trying to assimilate and overcome their influences.
But he was not only preoccupied with staking out a position in relation to other writers. Again and again, he returned to a basic, perhaps the basic, philosophical question facing anyone with a blank screen and a story to tell. What am I going to say? How am I going to say it? It’s never an easy question, but perhaps no one illustrated its difficulty with so much energy, good humor and conceptual rigor. In the story “Octet,” a section begins “you are, unfortunately, a fiction writer” and then proceeds, hilariously and infuriatingly, to diagram the dimensions of that misfortune. One long, brilliant, crazy footnote ends: “None of that was very clearly put and might well ought to get cut. It may be that none of this real-narrative-honesty-v.-sham-narrative-honesty stuff can even be talked about up front.”
And yet Mr. Wallace never stopped trying. Even when his subject matter took him outside himself — into the world of lobsters, tennis players, cruise-ship vacationers or presidential campaigners — the fundamental problems of writing remained in the foreground. I suspect that Mr. Wallace’s persona — at once unbearably sophisticated and hopelessly naïve, infinitely knowing and endlessly curious — will be his most durable creation.
“Infinite Jest” is a masterpiece that’s also a monster — nearly 1,100 pages of mind-blowing inventiveness and disarming sweetness. Its size and complexity make it forbidding and esoteric. The other big books published since by members of Mr. Wallace’s age cohort — “Middlesex,” by Jeffrey Eugenides; “The Corrections,” by Jonathan Franzen; “The Fortress of Solitude,” by Jonathan Lethem; “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” by Michael Chabon — are more accessible, easier to connect with and to give prizes to. They are family chronicles, congenial hybrids of domestic melodrama, immigrant chronicle, magic realism as well as the more traditional kind. Not easy books, necessarily, but not aggressively difficult, either.
In their different ways, though, these novels and their authors — along with other itchy late- and post-boomer white guys like Richard Powers, Rick Moody and Dave Eggers — stand in Mr. Wallace’s shadow. Not because his version of their generational crisis was better or truer than theirs, but rather because it was purer and more rigorous. In some ways, the figure he resembles most is Ezra Pound. Not the loony, ranting figure Pound eventually became, but rather the innovative and uncompromising modernist he was in his prime. Pound, in the teens and 1920s, understood the literary logic of modernism, with its poetics of difficulty and allusiveness, more clearly than any of his contemporaries. He pushed his insights further, into an extreme, enormous, all-but-unreadable book — the “Cantos” — that is to high modernism what “Infinite Jest” is to late postmodernism.
Outside of graduate classrooms, not many readers swallow the “Cantos” whole, and a similar fate may lie in store for “Infinite Jest.” Mr. Wallace is likely to remain available to general readers in the smaller, less daunting doses of his stories and journalism. He will also survive as an ally and an influence, a link between the giants who inspired and enraged him and whoever comes next. But he will be terribly missed by those of us who were lost with him in the maze of self-consciousness and self-doubt that defined our peculiar destiny. He illuminated the maze brilliantly, even if he couldn’t show us the way out.

Going Deeper Week 3 Take Home Reflection for Families and Individuals

2008-09-21T15:50:00.001-05:00

GOING DEEPER
WEEK 3 of 6
Take Home Reflections for Families and Individuals

Our Theme for the Year: HOME

FAMILIES

In week one, we asked you to “befriend” a tree. The time is coming when significant changes will occur with your friend the tree. How is it going?

In week two, we asked parent(s) to check in on your child or children and ask them a simple question: What would you like me to teach you about this week? How did that go?

This week:
Today’s forum at 10 a.m. was about a man who lived in a box on the streets from the age of 5 until he was 12. Is it possible for you to tell you child the story of the Good Samaritan and ask: What is our responsibility when we see someone suffering? Are there opportunities that we can give back, to make our community a bit of a better place?

As a sign that you are appreciative of the privilege and abundance that is part of your life, take time at mealtime to say what you are grateful for and invite your children to truly notice what is on their plate at mealtime.

INDIVIDUALS
Today’s worship service reflected on the idea of balance, as a part of a meditation on autumn and fall.

What in your own life is seeking permission to die away? What have you been clinging to, keeping alive, that is no longer serving its purpose? How can you let that go, with appreciation and intentionality?

The leaves that are falling from trees will be the nourishment of future growth, future life. What is awaiting birth? What would you desire to see born in you, over the next year? A greater sense of purpose? A greater sense of passion? A new spiritual practice? A greater sense of expression of love?

What is the wisdom of autumn saying to you this day, this week, this season?

Want to go deeper still: Attend vespers facilitated by Kathy Bowman and Rev. Butts, Wed evenings from 6:30 to 7p.m. It is a time to refresh your spirit.
Or become a member of connection circles. Contact Laurie Bertsche, our membership coordinator, at membership.qcuu@mchsi.com

Peace, Roger

For previous reflections, visit www.progressqc.blogspot.com

Week 2 Reflections

2008-09-15T08:21:00.001-05:00

As you know, I am providing six weeks of “take home” reflections for our congregants, between our water communion (September 7) and Sukkot (October 12). You can find the reflections at www.progressqc.blogspot.com.

Here are the reflections for week 2:
FAMILY ACTIVITY
The theme for this year at the church is home because our building (our third) is turning 50 years old this year.
Give the children a tour of your home. Show them art that means something to you. Share with them what kind of music you have around and why it matters. Ask them what they love about your house. Show them some books and knick knacks and old family photographs. Sometime in the future, give them a tour of the church. Let them show you what they love here. Show them what you love about our building.

Ask your kids this week to check in on the tree (see week 1 reflection on befriending a tree).
Ask your child this question: This week what would you like me to teach you about?

INDIVIDUAL REFLECTION
Recently, I performed a funeral for an elderly woman. Her daughter recalled a precious and important memory with her mother that involved something as simple as making blueberry muffins together (when the daughter was 5) and running around in the church yard.
Letting Go of Hurry
One of the reasons that I believe that this story stuck with that woman about her mother was that in that moment all of the hurry of life disappeared. The act of making blueberry muffins was an intentional, purposeful, all consuming activity that enabled the mother and daughter to be fully present to each other.

A hurried attitude, my uncle Gary writes in his book Love as a Way of Life, even when you are alone, has an impact on how your related to yourself, to one another, to the earth. When we love intentionally, we become conscious of the way we are hurrying unncessarily and we slow down—with all of our relationships in mind.

Questions for reflection:
What would your relationships be like if you treated everyone, including yourself, as a person in a process rather than as a machine that performs?
When have you seen the patient attidue of a person change someone for the better?

Two quick updates:
A strong group of lay leaders and I are planning the Unitarian Church Spiritual Retreat. Because retreat sites are scarce and busy, we are postponing until March 20th the retreat. All will be welcomed. Workshops will be presented before the retreat to get everyone ready to retreat.

Art Wall. You may have noticed the art wall in the church. Colleen McCarty has on display beautiful original pieces. Original pieces and prints are available for purchase. 15% of the income goes to the church. Our next exhibitor will be AK Glade. Her photographs will go up October 1 and will enhance our theme for the year: Home.

See you in church,
Roger

Week 1 Reflection Questions

2008-09-07T09:40:00.001-05:00

Unitarian Church, 2008
PRACTICES AND REFLECTIONS FOR HOME:
FAMILIES AND INDIVIDUALS

Six Weeks of Going Deeper

Water Communion, September 7, 2008
Through Sukkot, October 19, 2008

Week 1: Home

“You will know you are home when you no longer feel divided within yourself.” Rev. John Morgan

Week 1: Family Activity
Befriend a Tree
Find a tree in your yard or neighborhood. Befriend it. Do not learn its official name or necessarily scientifically try to understand it. But rather become its companion.

How?
Have the kids draw what the tree looks like.
Maybe if it is a dry season, give it a drink of water.
Build a birdhouse (so it will have a friend!)
Put a blanket under the tree and have a family picnic.
Throughout the year, see how the tree changes, see how it grows and what the leaves are doing.

Week 1: Individual Reflection

Water Communion Sunday (on September 7th) is an opportunity to come back together as a community, a church community, after the travels or activities of summer.

What part of community do you find most energizing?
What is your special gift to the community? What do you contribute that is uniquely yours alone to give?
Take a moment to give thanks for that special gift.
Take a moment to give thanks for the special gift that is YOU.

Speaking of you…
I will share with you now, a favorite spiritual exercise. It is from George Kimmich Beach’s book: For Love’s Sake Alone. Rev. Beach is a Unitarian Universalist minister.

Spiritual Exercises: Who are you?
The reader should imagine a dialogue in which the “spiritual director” asks the questions and listens while the respondent (you) answers, repeating the process until it is finished. Then questioner and respondent may reverse roles. I learned this from Rev. Laurel Hallman (also a Unitarian Universalist minister).

Who are you?
I am one who questions myself, who feels alarmed at the challenge to identify myself, who wishes to hide at least some part of myself and feels ashamed of the very wish. Is it something shameful that I want to hide? This very self-questioning opens a rift in my soul…

May God be merciful. Who else are you?
I am one who would be at one with myself. Becoming aware of the rift, the open longing in myself—remembering the blessing but being not yet at peace—I am one who wants to be healed, to be whole, to say to life shalom…

May God be merciful. And who else are you?
I am one who seeks reveries but seldom invites them, who imagines a place beyond self-consciousness and yet, taking thought, cannot imagine how to get there from here. I am one able to talk to myself—“you cannot get there from here!”—and then, unselfconsciously, to laugh at myself…

May God be merciful. And who else are you?
I am one who loves to dance, who wants to find out what stones will say to me, who enjoys enjoyment. I am one who works at accomplishing taks and earning a living and being in charge, who also seeks to escape all that. I am the social animal who also wants to be left alone…

May God be merciful. And who else are you?I am one who, though self-questioning, seeks the healing strength of self-confidence—though at odds with myself, is overcome by laughter—though “lost in the cosmos” finds God very near. I am a true unbeliever and an untrue believer…

May God be merciful. And who do you say that you are?

May God be merciful.

Amen.
Two reflections from Rev. John Morgan (Unitarian Universalist) about “home.”

Some of the earliest forms of being together with others in spiritual community were what were then called “conventicles” or small groups meeting together weekly to read the Bible, talk and pray. George DeBenneville’s house church in Pennsylvania was one such conventicle, bringing together people from various religious sects for worship. DeBenneville, and others after him, believed that this kind of gathering represents the form closest to the early Christian house church. Today, thse kinds of house churches continue, across denomination, bringing people together, in very small groups.

A question for you:
Can I envision being part of a house church or small group?
Where one or two are gathered together, there (we are told!) is more. Help me to find this depth in my life.

Finding a spiritual community in which you can be accepted for who you are while also being challenged to grow is one of the most important experiences in life. Unfortunately, the search can be frustrating. Some communities seem to take an “anything goes” stance, leaving participants confused and without support. Others favor a straight and narrow path but lack heart and expansiveness. You will know you are home when you no longer feel divided within yourself.

Where, if anywhere, do I feel divided no more?

Help me to find that community where my heart and mind are one and where I am restored and renewed for life.

Rabbi Lerner and the Democratic Convention

2008-08-27T17:09:00.001-05:00

Good stuff!

The High Priests Gathered to Praise the Dems-but the Prophets Were Missing
by Rabbi Michael Lerner

For all the media chatter about how far we've come since the Democratic Convention in Chicago,1968, or the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's. "I Have A Dream Speech," if you were expecting that the words of the prophets had moved from the subway walls and tenement halls into the mainstream of the Democratic Party you'd be sadly disappointed.
I thought I might find that voice at the Dem's Faith Caucus on Tuesday,Aug. 26. I was wrong.

One minister I spoke to at the Dems' Faith Caucus meeting on Tuesday (Aug.26) put it this way: "Don't expect anything here to upset the Democrats apple cart-this is about winning, not about speaking truth to power."

Unless the power is elsewhere-in the Republican Party or in the Bush Administration. There was no lack of attacks on the perceived political enemy. And no room for Jesus' admonition to stop criticizing the blindness of the other until one dealt with one's own blindness.

Speakers at the faith caucus were some of the smartest, most principled , and in my view, most admirable voices in the religious world of the U.S. (whoops, not including Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. who were in short supply in this caucus). They were articulate and powerful in their critiques of Bush and of McCain. And they were positively ecstatic when it came to praising the Democrats for even having a faith caucus for the first time in its history.

There are two possible directions for a faith caucus. A faith caucus can be, and at the moment it fully is, a cheerleading squad for the Democrats, bringing to the churches, synagogues, mosques and ashrams "the good news" that the Democrats policies miraculously happen to coincide with the message of our holy scriptures, and on top of that, that they intend to expand funding of local religious communities as long as the specific programs funded operate within the bounds of separation of church and state.

The other direction is to be a prophetic voice within the political party, bringing to the attention of the leaders the voices of the most downtrodden, demanding that the party live up to its own principles and that it move beyond the rhetoric of peace and justice to really embody that. A prophetic voice would have asked the following questions:

*Why did the Democrats promise to end the war in Iraq in 2006, then go on to fund it in 2007 and 2008? How many dead and wounded Americans and Iraqis should be on the conscience of the party that controlled both the House and the Senate and yet voted hundreds of billions of dolloars to continue the war that they promised to end? If cutting off funds would have caused a split in the party, why should that be more feared than a split from God's command to pursue peace and justice?

*Why did the Democrats promise to restrain President Bush, then refuse to consider impeachment, but instead vote to extend his powers to violate the Constitution by increasing surveillance on American citizens?

*Why did the Democrats fail to challenge the tens of billions of dollars of windfall profits made by the oil companies, rather than passing legislation to appropriate much of those profits to be used to help poor people pay for the heating oil to survive the winter heat and the gas to enable them to get to work?

*Why did the Democrats not challenge the underlying assumptions of the War on Terror-that security comes through domination and "power over" others, and instead embrace the Strategy of Generosity that underlies the Network of Spiritual Progressives' proposed "Global Marshall Plan" now articulated in HRes. 1078 as proposed by Congressman Keith Ellison and backed by 19 other Congresspeople?

*Why did Senator Obama embrace the death penalty for childhood rape-do we really believe that as people of faith we should keep quiet when our candidate talks of extending rather than contracting who our society puts to death?

Of course, the FaithCaucus might have done both of these things, but it did not. There was not a single speaker addressing our disappointments with the Democrats in Congress (though nationwide Congress' current approval rate under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi stands at 1/3 the level of approval of George Bush-it's now at 9%).

Meanwhile, in the halls many delegates whispered to each other about the fall in Obama's polling since his campaign started moving to the "center," abandoning its own ideals, and in the process losing its most important asset: the excitement of young people around the U.S. who had allowed themselves this past Winter and Spring to abandon their cynicism and believe that this would not be "politics as usual" with the liberal candidate talking peace, justice, an end to militarism and poverty and then qualifying those to death in the actual policies they would back.

Of course, Obama's lofty rhetoric Thursday night may reinvigorate the hopefulness that won him the nomination in the first place. Yet people of faith really failed him and the Democrats when they spent so much time praising and so little time asking Obama and the Democrats to realize that in the 21st century taking spiritual values seriously in politics requires looking at the spec in one's own eyes-- and it is that kind of help that makes the absence of prophetic critique in the Faith Caucus not only ethically disappointing but substantively a betrayal of the best interests of the Democrats and of the Obama candidacy.

But don't speak too soon-the wheel's still in spin, and Obama might yet transcend all his advisors and his cheerleaders and return to his most visionary self.

--Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun magazine and Chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives which convened a series of meetings in Denver on domestic and foreign policy in the past three days.

church growth

2008-08-26T15:32:00.001-05:00

Drums matter.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0103/p01s01-ussc.htm

Process Observer Checklist

2008-08-25T22:18:00.000-05:00

General Process Observations Name Date

1. Did the Board stay on task?

2. How was the energy and focus of the group?

3. Were presenters and reports well prepared and did they use time efficiently?

4. Were handouts useful and clear? Were e mails useful and clear?

5. Was discussion productive? Expansive? Balanced? Respectful?

6. How was conflict or dissent handled? Specifically, how were "minority" perspectives heard and considered?

7. Was business concluded and decisions made in a timely and purposeful manner?

8. What suggestions do you have to improve the process next time?

Process Observations Checklist---UUA Board of Trustees--T. Payne-Alex/2002; J. Shanti/2006--J. Lund/C.Wooldridge

Facebook Success

2008-08-25T19:32:00.003-05:00

Tonight, for the first time, I received a letter from a Quad Citian seeking a meeting to discuss spirituality and religion because I have a presence on Facebook.
A very exciting development, and reason for me to continue to think about how the Unitarian Church in Davenport can continue to push the envelope around a presence on the internet.
Roger

A NOTE ABOUT THE COMING YEAR

2008-08-18T13:36:00.000-05:00

THE UNITARIAN CHURCH PEEKS AT THE FUTURE

With a new board in place, the annual board retreat was a smashing success. The board took on a serious and sustainable and do-able study of the way we view stewardship in this congregation. We were helped in our work by our stewardship consultant, the Rev. Tricia Hart. She’ll be with us a few years to work with us on adopting an attitude of can-do generosity. I cannot wait to see what kind of transformation happens among all of us around the idea of giving, generosity and vision-making.

Just think for a moment of all that has been accomplished of late, think of all that we can build upon: the cool campaign which enabled us to put in geothermal heating and cooling (including in the sanctuary); the addition to the building in the 90s which provided additional space for religious education; the lounge and the patio in the 80s; not to mention all of work for Guatemala, for community projects, or even the building which this year will turn 50 years old! Whatever the future holds, we know that this congregation responds when called to step up to a new project.

This year will hold other significant events in our collective life together:

September 7, we’ll move back to our 11 a.m. worship time period with Water Communion.
Our children and youth will be engaged in two significant learnings: OWL (our whole lives) which focuses on sexuality education and spiritual growth and good decision-making and Famous Unitarian Universalists, about the kinds of individuals who helped shape society, liberal religion and the beloved community.
In September, you’ll have a chance to participate in the first annual Unitarian Church Spirituality Retreat. A great group of lay people are working on making this retreat as powerful as possible.
On October 12th, we’ll commemorate the 10th anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard with a joint service with our friends at the Metropolitan Community Church (they’ll come to our church to join with us on that day). While honoring Matthew’s life, I anticipate that the service will be positive, proactive and empowering.
In late October, we’ll have a wonderful CELEBRATION SUNDAY, in which we all of the members and friends of the church will gather to give our pledges for the year. A powerful group of committed members are working on this, headed up by Dr. Dick Kaspar.
November 7-9, we’ll have an opportunity to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, which ushered in the worst aspects of the Holocaust. I am working with the Yom HaShoah committee to bring in Victoria Barnett, Director of Church Relations at the Holocaust Museum in DC and filmmaker Martin Doblmeier who has devoted his life to the work of justice and peace through his films.
In the Spring, Paul Rasor, a Unitarian Universalist author (Faith Without Certainty) and theologian from Virginia Wesleyan College, will come to speak about liberal religion, war and peace.
In the Spring, we’ll celebrate the 50th anniversary of our “new” (third) building, our little beacon on the hill.

There will be many opportunities to connect, to grow, to learn, to discover, to share your gifts and talents. There will be children to dedicate (starting with the Tim and Angela Reier’s child Amelia). There will be opportunities to say a welcoming word to newcomers. You are the greatest gift in the life of this church!

Let us begin again!

Love. See you in church. In faith,
Roger

Rabbi Lerner Writes to Senator Obama (D-IL)

2008-08-12T09:49:00.002-05:00

Clergy Appeal to Obama: Don't Lose Your Ethical Vision

n an open-letter to Senator Obama, over 140 American clergy appealed to the Democratic candidate for President to retain the ethical and spiritual vision that won him the nomination in the first place. Rejecting the "inside-the-Beltway" wisdom that a Democrat must "move to the center to win the election," the clergy disputed the very notion that this is an accurate understanding of American politics.

"The central dichotomy in American politics is not Left/Right but fear/hope," says Rabbi Michael Lerner, chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, editor of Tikkun Magazine, and an initiator of the letter. "When Senator Obama positioned himself as the prophet of a new kind of politics, he energized millions of young people, and even older Republicans and people who had become so cynical about politics that they have not voted in recent years. But that depended on him being the voice of peace against war, social justice against capitulation to the rich and the large corporations, and ecological sanity. If he now moves to what the inside-the-beltway crowd call The Center, he ends up in an election campaign in which he will be trying to prove that he is a better general for wartime than McCain, and a better mini-manager of the same old system-and that will undermine the hopefulness that was the ticket to his political success and the Republicans will become Republicans again, the youth and the cynics will return to their other concerns, and Obama's political possibilities will be worse, not better."

"Still," Lerner continued, "we approach Obama not as his political strategists but as religious, ethical and spiritual leaders to challenge him to put forward a fundamentally new ethical vision, which is actually the oldest vision-the vision of our various religious and spiritual traditions and of the wise humanistic values that pervade all religions but can be accessed without being religious. We hope that Senator Obama will allow himself to be Obama again, rather than be swallowed up by the ethical visionless-ness of business-as-usual American politics."

The Network of Spiritual Progressives will be holding a series of events in Denver at the time of the Democratic Convention and has invited all the delegates to continue this conversation. For more information: David Lapedis at 510 644 1200 or dlapedis@tikkun.org.Rabbi Lerner can be reached at 510 526 6889 or RabbiLerner@gmail.com.

The full text of the letter is below. For the full list of signatories: will@tikkun.org

Dear Senator Obama,

As strong supporters of your campaign to become President of the U.S. in our own personal lives and as leaders in the religious communities in the U.S., we understand well the pressures you must be facing to tone down your message so that you can win the election and then later be more courageous in challenging major assumptions in American public discourse that have been inserted there by a powerful conservative assault for the past thirty years by conservatives and champions of the elites of wealth and power in this country.

Others have articulated elsewhere why "toning down" or "moving to appeal to the Center" is a politically disastrous strategy, not only because it causes disillusionment and passivity among the youth who momentarily thought that something new was happening in American politics and who might otherwise return to apathy when they perceive you as "playing the game" the same old way, but also because it generates despair among all sections of the population that had momentarily allowed themselves to hope that America might become under your presidency a society that unequivocally supported a politics of peace and justice. People who thought that they would vote for you as their peace candidate who seemed more unequivocal than others about ending the war in Iraq, for example, may become less enthusiastic about a candidacy that now calls for escalation of the war in Afghanistan and talks about giving Iranians ultimatums to be followed by green lights for military attacks.

We are writing you from a different angle, not as your election strategists, but as people of faith whose primary allegiance is to be prophetic witnesses to the ethical vision articulated in the holy texts of our religion and the elaboration of those religious traditions over the course of the past two thousand years. It is our view that America needs "a New Bottom Line" so that both corporations and non-profit institutions, social practices, legislation, government activities, and even our own personal life activities should be deemed "rational, productive, or efficient" not only to the extent that they maximize money, material security, power or gratification of our sensual desires but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring, kindness and generosity ethical and ecological sensitivity, enhance our capacities to see others as embodiments of the sacred and enhance our capacity to respond to the universe with awe, wonder, and radical amazement at the grandeur of Creation.

It is from that perspective that we appeal to you to fulfill the promise and the hopes you raised in the early months of your campaign, and to sharpen the distinctions between you and past politics by articulating new principles that would govern your presidency. In particular, we call upon you to (unequivocally and persistently in your public appearances and ads) call for: *Replacing the "Strategy of Domination or Power Over Others" (that has shaped too much of American foreign policy in the past) with a new approach that gives at least equal weight to "A Strategy of Generosity and Caring for Others" (for example as manifested by the Global Marshall Plan suggested by the Network of Spiritual Progressives www.spiritualprogressives.org). You should not allow the public discourse to push you into having to prove who will be the most effective candidate for running the next set of wars, but instead insist strongly and make this central to your campaign that that strategy for achieving Homeland Security is seriously flawed. Effective security strategy must rely on two legs, one the strong military defense of our interests, and second on the strong commitment to ending global (and domestic) poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, inadequate health care, and repairing the global environment (please see House Res. 1078 introduced by Keith Ellison and endorsed by nineteen other Members of the House for some helpful language in this regard-it endorses our version of The Global Marshall Plan). Those who are ill-equipped to articulate and implement the Strategy of Generosity are "weak on national defense."

*Rejecting the notion of armed struggle with Iran and opposing any military blockade of Iran (universally understood as an act of war) would then give the Iranians a reason to attack, which in turn would provide the pretext for a war, either before or after the U.S. elections. You should publicly call on the Bush Administration to refrain from taking any such provocative actions that might lead to military conflict before the next Administration takes office.

*A commitment to sign a Presidential Order that forbids and criminalizes torture and the direct or indirect aiding or abetting of acts of torture on the part of the U.S. , directs the U.S. military to abandon Guantanamo prison and end the activities of the School of the Americas related to training people in South and Central America in the techniques of counter-insurgency and torture, and directs the next Attorney General to explore criminal charges against those who have violated US or international law in regard to torture.

* A commitment to make saving our global environment a top priority not only through encouraging individual and corporate environmental responsibility, but by alerting the American public to the full scientific evidence about the degree of threat to the survival of the planet that is likely unless we make major changes in the way use the resources of our planet, how we decide what products should be produced and how, and how we decide what items to consume. Tell the American people what the planet faces if the US and other countries including China don't make a huge global effort to reverse the patterns of destruction that are already endangering our planet.

* Affirming the need for an American health care system that is based on the principle that we have an obligation to care for each other, not on the need for the health care profiteers to make a good return on their investments.

*Affirming as a guiding principle for American society in the 21st century that we have an obligation to care for each other, and that this obligation requires a rethinking of many aspects of American law, American corporations, government programs, education, and persona life, and that you will use your time in office to encourage this new ethos.

* Calling on schools to actively engage in teaching students the skills of caring a.for each other b. for those stuck in poverty or homelessness or hunger c. the disabled d. our senior citizens. e. for their own health and their bodies g. for the environment. This should include teaching about "non-violent communication" and positive negotiation skills, but also teach about the various religious and secular traditions that have made "caring for others" central to their teachings, or have made awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation part of their approach to protecting the environment.

We are firmly convinced, Senator Obama, that these are ways of thinking about what is needed in America that are unlikely to succeed unless you build a strong foundation of support for them during your campaign. By articulating this kind of thinking now, you will not only strengthen the possibility of mobilizing parts of the electorate who have given up on politics altogether, but you will also be serving God in a way that is necessary at this historical moment.

Your advisors may warn you of political dangers. We think the opposite. But as we say, our calling is not to be your political practitioners, but to provide you with the kind of ethical and prophetic voices that you need to hear.

Finally, if you are elected, as we very much hope you will be, and as we ourselves will try to help make happen by building support for you, we urge you to meet with us during your presidency to hear the voices not of religious cheerleaders, but of those who dare to speak truth to power even when that power, as your own, is mostly for the good and mostly in service of the God of the universe. It is precisely because we believe in you and your strong ethical and religious commitment that we are daring to write this to you, even though we know that its impact might be to make it less likely that your advisors will ever allow us to connect with you directly once you are elected.

With respect and blessings, (all organizations listed for identification purposes and do not imply organizational endorsement of this letter)

Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun and Chair, The Network of Spiritual Progressives and
author of The Politics of Meaning and of The Left Hand of God

Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, Executive Director of Benetvision: A Resource and Research Center for Contemporary Spirituality, and author of Welcome to the Wisdom of the World, and of The Gift of Years, and dozens of other books on Christian Theology

Rev. Tony Campolo, Chair, The Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education, and author of dozens of books including Red Letter Christians and The God of Intimacy and Action.

Father John Dear, S.J. is a Jesuit priest and author of Jesus the Rebel and A Persistent Peace

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Chair, The Shalom Center and author, Seasons of Our Joy and These Holy Sparks

Imam Zaid Shakir, Zeytuna Institute, California

Rev. Graylan S. Hagler, National President, Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice of The United Church of Christ

Anti-Torture News

2008-08-12T09:23:00.000-05:00

Dear Clinton Franciscans and Friends,

We are happy and honored to announce that Rev. Louis Vitale OFM, one of the founders of Pace e Bene, will be returning to Clinton to speak at The Canticle, home of the Clinton Franciscans, 841-13th Avenue North, on Friday, September 12, about the campaign to end the practice of teaching and using torture techniques in the U.S and abroad.

Father Louie is touring the United States to talk about his recent 5 month prison term served for crossing the line and praying at Fort Huachuca (the military installation in Arizona where we train our American Intelligence Officers in “Enhanced Interrogation” tactics such as the much publicized water boarding, among other torture methods).

Please plan to join us. The time of his presentation will be announced within a week - it depends on his travel schedule. It will be on Friday evening, 9/12. There will be no advance registration nor admission fee.

In the meantime,
By going to the Pace e Bene website - www.paceebene.org - and selecting the JOIN THE CIRCLE OF PEACE - SIGN THE DECLARATION FOR A WORLD WITHOUT TORTURE box in the upper right hand corner of the home page, YOU can join Father Vitale in the campaign to end torture.
Go to www.paceebene.org NOW; sign the Declaration against torture; and stay tuned for details on Father Vitale's appearance in Clinton.
Peace and all good!
The Clinton Franciscan Center for Active Nonviolence and Peacemaking

Sisters of St. Francis588 No. Bluff BoulevardClinton, Iowa 52732-3953563-242-7611; fax 563-243-0007sisters@clintonfranciscans.com www.clintonfranciscans.com"Our corporate mission is active nonviolence and peacemaking, the heart of the Franciscan charism."

Beattitudes

2008-08-06T15:02:00.002-05:00

John Dear suggests a different approach to reading the sermon on the mount:
Instead of blessed, insert "walk on" or "walk forth." It provides a different angle into overly familiar words, inviting deeper reflection on what is sanitized all too often and easily forgotten and ignored.

"'Walk on poor in spirit, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.
Walk on you that mourn, for you shall be comforted.
Walk forth meek, for you shall inherit the earth.
Carry on you who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for you shall be filled.
Keep going you merciful, for you shall obtain mercy.
Carry on pure in heart, for you shall see God.
Keep after it, peacemakers, you shall be called the children of God.
Perservere you who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, yours is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are ye, when men shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.'"

The Way of the Non-Violent Jesus

2008-08-06T14:06:00.003-05:00

I'm watching, again, the documentary, The Narrow Path, about Jesuit priest and peacemaker, John Dear. It is well worth a look.

"The whole point is to take your life story and fit it in with the life story of Jesus."
Peacemaker Daniel Berrigan’s advice to Peacemaker John Dear.
John Dear goes on: So when I get discouraged, I begin to think, “how can I follow the way of the non-violent Jesus?”

Yes, there it is. It is no more complicated than that. The human Jesus and the way of nonviolence.

Let us be on our way then.

2008-08-04T18:35:00.001-05:00

RSC Minister’s Report August 3 2008 Roger Butts

1. I feel good about the service honoring Knoxville. Tyson sang a beautiful version of You’ll Never Walk Alone. Melissa Anderson Clark and Harper sang beautifully Annie. Many commented that seeing the kids file in was very effective.
2. I’m blogging a bit about church and other issues. A link is now available on our website. A lot on there about Knoxville.
3. I would like to draw attention to the two to three booklets I’d like to produce over this year. The idea is to bring home the stuff that happens in church—whether you have kids or are single or young or old, the idea is to keep reflecting on what we’re attempting to accomplish.
4. Please note that there are two special events this year: In November we’ll be doing a special event on Kristallnacht. In March, we’ll be hosting Paul Rasor, a theologian of the Unitarian Universalist variety who wrote Faith Without Certainty. His new thinking is around issues of war and peace.
5. Please note that Laurie Bertsche is attending a conference in North Carolina about small group ministries. Please note that Tyson is attending a UU Musicians Network conference this summer in Boston.
6. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your good work.
7. Love, Roger

"A person's life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art, or love, or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.” - Camus
A Play Around With Schedule 08-09
September 7 08 Water Communion: Blue Boat Home
Sept 7 to Sukkot October 19 A BOOKLET TO TAKE HOME WITH YOU. Everyday practices.
September 14: Teacher Dedication
FYI: Setpember 22 is Autumnal Equinox.
FYI: September 30 begins Rosh HaShanah
FYI: October 4: St. Francis (a good time to do blessing of animals)
October 12 08 Matthew Shepard
October 19 Since our theme is "home" Sukkot might wish to be observed here. Sukkot means hut. And at this time, Jews are instructed to construct a temporary home to symolize the huts that Jews lived in during their time of wandering in the wilderness.
October 26 Assocation Sunday
November 2: Most likely: The Election Sermon: A long enduring tradition in Unitarian history, the election sermon puts forth the minister's understandings of the important issues confronting a society before it votes (non-partisan of course, and issues oriented).
November 9 Kristallnacht
November 16:
November 23: morning: pagaent????
Evening: Interfaith Thanksgiving Service (temple or edwards)

BOOKLET: November 30-December 24: Home for the Holidays…
family, holy days, the blues, rituals and celebrations , etc etc.
December 7 or 14, Human Rights Sunday (december 10th is the occasion, we'll have to see).
December 14
December 21 Winter Solstice...Christmas Pagaent?
December 24: Christmas Eve
January 4: Roger preaches in Ames.

Roger will likely take study leave for a few weeks in January.

For the spring, it is just hard to know.
But we know that Easter, we’ll do something about the building.
And probably something about Valentine’s Day.
We also have ROPE and High School—let’s make this earlier in the year.
Teacher Appreciation and Music Sunday.

Those are constants and need to be assigned a date early.

Great Elliot Quote

2008-08-04T11:09:00.002-05:00

From Rich Clewell, Davenport school board member, Unitarian Universalist.

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's hearbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence." Elliot

2008-08-04T08:39:00.001-05:00

Monica Casteneda Reflections on the Knoxville UU Shootings

2008-08-04T08:30:00.002-05:00

Listening to the Voice of Love
Monica Casteneda

Last Sunday morning my husband made banana pancakes for breakfast. I was sitting there admiring the eating capacity of our two boys, 5 and 2, and how my husband has been increasing the quantities in his recipe over the months to satisfy their morning hunger and still have some to carry in their lunch box to go to church. After breakfast I got the kids and myself ready to go.

Then I saw my husband walk to the bathroom saying he was going to shower. We were already running a little bit late and I was surprised to see he wasn't ready and hadn't even showered yet. He said, "Why don't you go ahead with the boys and I'll meet you there later." I agreed, but when I got to the kitchen to fetch their lunch box with the pancakes I changed my mind, and decided that it was more important for us to be together as a family on a Sunday morning than to be on time. I could as easily have left, annoyed at my husband's tardiness on such a special day as this. You see, I had promised my kids that I would take them to see the play "Annie Jr." that the children of our church had put together during summer camp.

That morning I listened to the voice of love, instead of to the voice of annoyance and I will forever be grateful for it.

We got to the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church in Knoxville, TN at 10:21, right after the first police car arrived. In fact, the police car passed us on Kingston Pike and I felt the first pang of fear when I saw him turn on the driveway to our church. The second pang came when we saw the officer get out of the car with what looked like a sniper's rifle. Then a couple of young women told us there had been a shooting and while I was trying to convince myself this was probably a quarrel or a burglary, they shouted "people have been shot, you have to leave!"

At that time they didn't know that the perpetrator had been submitted and disarmed by members of the congregation.I am sure you have heard the rest in the news.

Now that the initial shock is over, I am once again reminded that there are many things in life that I cannot control, some over which I don't even have a say, but there are also many things in my life in which I can make a difference. One of these is my home, what I put in it and how I take care of it. The care of my home cannot be separated from the care of my family.

At times like these it is even more important that I create a tranquil and loving atmosphere in our home. We have many friends that were touched by this tragedy in a variety of degrees. It is important that we stay loving and centered ourselves so that we can provide support and comfort where needed. This applies to us adults as well as to our children.Work to make your home into an embrace of love. Let go of things that you don't use, don't like, don't love, and those things that are reminders of bad times. Make sure all the living beings in your home, people, pets and plants are thriving. Fix what can be fixed, hire help for what you cannot do yourself.

Make a plan, budget your time and your resources. Make sure to leave some time every day to recharge your batteries, to do something that nourishes you and that you enjoy. These are the basics of a happy home.And when you need to choose between the voice of love or the voice of fear, anger or annoyance, always choose the voice of love.May you be blessed by Feng Shui!

Monica P. Castaneda
monica@fengshuiforus.com

Rabbi Lerner's Sending this Around Re: Knoxville church shooting

2008-08-03T21:46:00.003-05:00

Shootings at Unitarian Church in Knoxville

I became a Unitarian in early 1956 because it was the most Christian church I could find in the entire state of Florida--the most Christian church I could even imagine!

Some UUs seem embarrassed to claim that part of our grand worldwide heritage, but we try hard to practice what Jesus taught and that's what matters. Rev. John Brigham of the Unitarian Universalist Association once told me that UUs don't talk much about God because, being stuck on one tiny planet, the only knowledge we possess about the vast universe is very recent. We simply don't know much and might say something that isn't true. "It's fine to make guesses and spin metaphors about God, but we certainly shouldn't make claims that these are infallible truths! It's wise just to speculate tentatively or stay thoughtfully silent," he said, adding, "Most UUs don't dismiss God, but I believe that our Puritan heritage makes us take blasphemy very seriously, and we know instinctively that insisting on the literal truth of imaginative metaphors is blasphemy. It's little more than a sales pitch, and we UUs avoid hucksters."

I agree that we are suspicious of religious sales pitches, but my life experience would add that we also abhor exploitation, whether of individual persons, spotted owls or the entire ecosphere, and I think most of us would agree that denying evidence, like that of evolution, is a major sin against oneself and society. What we embrace positively is listed in our Principles and can be summed up succinctly in St Paul's words from 1st Corinthians, ". . .faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love."

Love is not something to be directed inward. Loving ourselves and spending time on "self-improvement" just isn't high priority in an age of critical needs. Paying attention outside ourselves is important, and it takes guts. I have friends who have been arrested literally dozens of times since the Iraq War began, for pushing back the envelope of free speech that has closed in around our society and penned us in. I admire them and wish I had money for bailouts and lawyers. My arrest record is minimal. In May of '56, a brand-new Unitarian, I was taken into custody (illegally), along with others in the U. of Florida Unitarian Fellowship, for petitioning to get a highly qualified African American, an undergraduate A-student and Korean War veteran, into the UF law school. We obtained an amazing 3,000 signatures during the first three hours of the petition drive. Someone phoned the politicians up in Tallahassee who profited from racism, they got scared and sicced the cops on us, who took our petitions and either destroyed them or delivered the names to the governor's mansion. I was 20 years old and was more than scared, I was terrified, but none of us cooped up in that sweltering little room wept or wailed, there were no regrets, the grad student leader, a woman whose last name was Guerry, cracked jokes about the lack of drinking water and a toilet. Otherwise we worried silently about what could happen to us in an Okefenokee Swamplockup and waited it out till the Dean of Women, the blessed Marna V. Brady, a former WWII WAC Colonel, marched in indignantly and sprang us. (You need not ask why I joined the military after graduating.) What our Fellowship did and our behavior in distress, and learning that our Korean vet entered the law school two years later and ranked near the top of his class, made me proud of being a UU and I've stayed proud. I admit, sometimes the New Age self-absorption gets me irritated. Sometimes we concentrate too much on minor areas of reform and ignore the world falling apart around us. Sometimes I feel as though I almost have to SCREAM to plead for parishioners to break routine and come out to an important mass demonstration where numbers matter. Sometimes it seems we're not as generally well-informed as we were in the 1950s, but in this age of Idiot Box sound bites, who is? I respect and admire--even love--other religions, but am hooked for life as a UU, and maybe for life after death too, although in honesty, I can't be sure about that.

Curiously, I think that this attack on one typical Unitarian Universalist church and the congregation's amazingly courageous response will end up bringing many persons into UU churches who may never before have heard of us. When they learn of the Knoxville church's activities and its Christ-like welcome of those who are often despised in Southern culture, they may think as I did years ago, "Here is a truly Christian church!" One deranged man has created martyrs who didn't want to be martyrs any more than Viola Liuzzo did. It's rather depressing when we consider how often martyrdom makes converts. I suppose it's understandable as the psychology of hero-worship or, at least, admiration. The number of Unitarians increased significantly all over Europe after John Calvin burnt Michael Servetus for heresy. It just works that way. Historically, as this article points out, we have a grand array of activist saints; now some new ones.

I decided forty years ago during the Nixon suppression of law that I didn't want to be a martyr either, but could be one if forced to do so. I'm definitely not a courageous person, and know all about poor Winston Smith in "1984" and the prisoners my own nation has tortured into false admissions since 2001, but my adult life has been dedicated to studying the history of dissent and it's an awesome legacy. How could I not follow the example of my own heroes like Marguerite de Porete, John Ball, John Bunyan, Wolfe Tone, Viola Liuzzo? So I still believe they could lock me up and torture me, threaten death and even carry it out, and I would need to grit my teeth and remain a proud heretic, dissenter, political liberal, social radical, panentheist, Unitarian and Universalist--to the end. There, I've written something for the public record that many UUs would find weird or stupid. But because it's public, you see, I can't make excuses and renege. It's on record. In an era in which we know exactly who "they" are, maybe we should all think about this and take a stand, because, as UUs, we know there are ideals and goals worth putting oneself on the line for. And, as Sara Robinson points out and as the Tibetan Buddhists of China have exemplified recently, wherever the forces of Big Brother tyranny exercise complete control, the outspoken liberals of all religious faiths are likely to be the first to be persecuted for our beliefs and actions. Remember Pastor Bonhoeffer's warning.

Sandy Fulton

knoxville service

2008-08-03T08:52:00.000-05:00

Welcome to this place of hospitality and peace and healing.
Welcome to this place of memory and hope.

If you have felt lonely,
You are welcomed here.

If you have felt afraid,
You are welcomed here.

If you have known tragedy and somehow found a way to keep breathing and keep living,
You are welcome here.

If you have known loss,
You are welcome here.

If you have been at a loss for words when someone you love is troubled,
You are welcome here.

If ever you have sat with someone who was sad, held their hand, fed them soup, listened to them patiently, kindly,
You are welcome here.

If you’ve reminded yourself and others that the sun will come out again, the storm will end, a smile will return,
You are welcome here.

If you have known courage, if you have shared courage,
You are welcome here.

If your spirit is heavy this morning, may you find here a place to share with one another something of comfort and peace. May you be a blessing here.
If life is smiling upon you this morning, if you are discovering a new way, a new faith, a new day, welcome, may your joy be truly contagious and may you be a blessing here.A word about this service…
Last week, while our service included a playful and meaningful ritual that had as its refrain: You are welcome here, a devastating and shocking event took place in a Unitarian universalist church in Knoxville, Tennessee. A man, named Jim Adkisson, entered the sanctuary of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on July 27 and began shooting indiscriminately. The shooting occurred during a performance of a children’s play, Annie. 25 young people gathered to share their talents, their gifts, to put on this play, and they were interrupted by gun shot.Thankfully no children were shot.
Six were injured. Two people died. One was an usher and a board member named Greg McKendry. The other was Linda Krager, who belonged to West Side Unitarian Universalist Church but was there to enjoy the performance
In the news that followed this week, we understand now that Mr. Adkisson targeted the Unitarian Universalist church for its support of liberal causes, for its stance in favor of human liberation and freedom and dignity for all, including members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community.
We also learned that the board member, Mr. McKendry, jumped in front of the shooter, sacrificed himself, basically, in hopes that the community might be safer as a result. His is a powerful story.
This is not the service I intended for today. Instead we’ve pushed the sermon I intended for today back to August 31. Rather, today we gather in a spirit of solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Knoxville. We gather to attempt to reflect deeply on the precious and dare I say fragile nature of life—the miracle of it, the gift of it, the random accident of it and the opportunity it presents.
As you can imagine I’ve heard from many of you this week. I want to lift up one powerful thing one of you said: How can we be in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Knoxville: by being the very best Unitarian Universalist church we can be here. By standing for what it is we believe it, with passion, power and clarity.
Welcome to this service.

Let us enter into a period of reflection, which some call prayer, or attentiveness, or reflection. Whatever you call it, you are welcomed here.

Bill Welch, the congregation's minister for programs, talked about how isolating it can be to be a liberal in today's world of right-wing talk radio and conservative Christians "that talk about liberals as if we are bad people." "In our prayers, we should remember that we're not alone, that there are people who share our beliefs, that we are part of a larger body," Welch said.

So let us then gather in that spirit. Deep in your heart you have known love, I invite you to invoke that love just now.
Great Spirit of Life, Spirit of Love,
We gather today with heavy hearts. Our world is filled to the brim with senseless violence, maddening divisions, prejudice and blaming. There are strange and foolish walls that divide us. Today, in Knoxville there are families, congregations, a community torn apart by loss and fear and grieving. May they know peace and comfort, and the kind of healing that comes from deep in our human capacity for caring and compassion and solidarity. As the wounded heal physically, may they heal emotionally and spiritually. As the congregation in Knoxville rededicates itself today to its mission of radical inclusion, may they know courage and strength. May they know they are not alone, may their voices not be stilled. May the children be well. We pray for them especially. That their fear will cease and love increase.

And for the shooter. We pray that as the journey toward healing begins for the victims, that it might begin for Mr. Adkisson too. Let him too be touched by love’s long and unconditional embrace. May those who serve him medically and emotionally provide for him a healing that will bring to him a sense of peace and well-being.

May the little that we know of goodness and compassion, be enough to guide us O god, O love, O beauty, as we journey on our way to wholeness.

Let us sing.

Making Sense of Tragedy

Processing Grief

Power of Forgiveness

Culture of Guns and Violence

Our Congregation and Safety

Silence

You’ll Never Walk Alone

The Edwards Rock
Liv: Message from the TVUUC

124 Be That Guide

Building Rededication

Offertory
What can you do:
Keep courage
UUA Relief Fund
Monica and Marco

Benediction. Liv

Postlude Annie

2008-08-02T10:33:00.002-05:00

Friends,A wonderful piece in the Washington Post today, post Knoxville. Tomorrow, a special service is planned, with powerful music, a labyrinth for those who wish to do that, opportunities for conversation, and a chance to stand together in solidarity with our brothers and sisters who live in Knoxville.The Post article...

Unitarians Keep the Faith After Attack in ChurchBy Jacqueline L. SalmonWashington Post Staff
Saturday, August 2, 2008; B09

Across the country, as well as in the Washington area, hundreds of Unitarian Universalist congregations held services and candlelight vigils this week after a deadly rampage at a Knoxville, Tenn., church to show support for their denomination's long-standing progressive tradition.

Two people were killed and six wounded Sunday in a shooting at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, allegedly by an out-of-work trucker who, according to the Knoxville police chief, "hated the liberal movement." A seventh person was wounded in the ensuing chaos.

At the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax in Oakton, about 60 people from five UU congregations in Northern Virginia came together for a service Monday evening. Bill Welch, the congregation's minister for programs, talked about how isolating it can be to be a liberal in today's world of right-wing talk radio and conservative Christians "that talk about liberals as if we are bad people."

"In our prayers, we should remember that we're not alone, that there are people who share our beliefs, that we are part of a larger body," Welch said.

Since the shooting, some Unitarian churches have held education sessions to explain their denomination to the public."People are determined to speak out" and defend and explain Unitarian values and beliefs, said Janet Hayes, a spokeswoman for the Boston-based national office. "They're not hiding. They're actually reaching out and opening up."

As a denomination, Unitarianism is tiny: According to the 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape survey, conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 0.3 percent of adults identify themselves as Unitarian Universalists. The Unitarian Universalist Association has 1,000 U.S. churches with 220,000 members.

It is a faith that has long been known for unabashed liberalism in its theological and political beliefs. It has no creed. Instead, it has a set of principles that give its members wide latitude."Private religious beliefs we leave to the individuals," Hayes said.

The denomination considers itself "post-Christian," she said. "We include the teaching of Jesus and we appreciate the wisdom of the Bible, but we don't limit our sources of inspiration to the Christian faith.

"Unitarians also look to other faiths, such as Native American beliefs, neopaganism, Judaism, Buddhism and, more recently, Islam."The driving belief behind it is that there is wisdom in many places," Hayes said.

Politically, the denomination has long been in the forefront of liberalism. In recent years, its General Assembly has voted to oppose ''modern-day slavery'' conditions for migrant workers, support full legal protection for transgender people and to work to halt or reverse global warming.

"Unitarians' response to an event like this is coming together and affirming the religious values that we care about," said the Rev. Rebecca A. Parker, president and professor of theology at Starr King School for the Ministry, a Unitarian seminary in Berkeley, Calif.

In a statement, the Rev. William Sinkford, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, said Unitarians remain committed to their convictions. "Let me assure you that we will not change our beliefs or compromise our demands for social justice," he said.

"Fear will not prevent us from standing on the side of love, and we will continue to open our doors and our hearts to all people."

August Services, Unitarian Church Davenport, IA

2008-08-01T12:29:00.002-05:00

August 3. Roger Butts preaching. Worship Associate: Liv Husman.
This service is an honoring of the victims of the shootings at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville. Tyson Danner will sing You Will Never Walk Alone and Melissa Anderson Clark and Harper Anderson Clark will sing a song from Annie, which was the scheduled performance for last Sunday's service at TVUUC.
Labyrinth Walk is available.

August 10. Religious Services Committee.

August 17. Love and Death Roger Butts preaching. Worship Associate: Katie Goff.
Rev. Forrest Church, minister at All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City has a wonderful line: “To the extent that we eliminate risk from life, we may also succeed in sucking the air out of it. ‘A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for’. . . To bring ourselves to life requires courage.” Forrest Church is dying now, and I will share some thoughts from his remarkable new book: Love and Death, which he wrote in response to his knowledge that his life will now be measured in months not years.

August 24. Meredith Price. Stewardship. The Veatch Fund story.
The creation of the Veatch Program Fund at a Unitarian Church on Long Island is a remarkable story of vision and stewardship. Come and join us as we share in a story of giving that has produced millions and millions of dollars for ordinary people seeking justice around the country and the globe? What are you willing to stand up for and give to? Why?

August 31. The John Murry story. A story of hospitality and welcome and miracles, miracles everywhere you turn.

PLEASE NOTE: Our Services return to 11 a.m. on September 7

QC Times editorial on Unitarian Universalism

2008-07-31T07:43:00.001-05:00

American terrorists strike again
QC Times editorial, July 31, 2008

American terrorism strikes again, this time in Tennessee. An unhinged individual fueled by hatred attacked a church congregation Sunday for no other reason than ideology.It’s no different than the terrorist attack two years ago on a women’s health clinic in Davenport. That terrorist wrongly believed the clinic performed abortions. He put his ideology above others — and the law — and drove 430 miles from Michigan to launch a terrorist attack Sept. 11, 2006, in our community.These terrorists may have suffered some forms of mental illness. But these planned attacks can’t be dismissed as the work of isolated, mentally ill individuals. Both cases, and many others, are rooted in intolerance of contrary beliefs. Neither the Tennessee terrorist nor the Michigan terrorist knew any of the individuals they targeted in their attacks. Yet they, like their roadside bombing brethren in Iraq, put their beliefs above the lives of people they didn’t even know.In addition to the lives and property, they also destroy the credibility of law-abiding Americans who respectfully, safely and democratically express some of the same beliefs. The fact that a pro-life individual chose to terrorize our community must not implicate thousands of pro-life Quad-Citians who respectfully express similar beliefs.Sadly, the hate-filled Tennessee terrorist targeted a denomination with an admirable history of cultivating tolerance, particularly in this community. The Unitarian Universalist denomination is a Quad-City leader in promoting tolerance, partnering with many other faiths for forums and other activities emphasizing respect. A cornerstone of the Unitarian beliefs is ethical living as the ultimate witness of religion.

That tenet stands up in any faith.Add our voice to those commending the work of the Quad-Cities’ Unitarian congregation, and all faiths that hold personal beliefs alongside an ethic of tolerance for individuals who think differently. The threat of terrorism on U.S. soil from intolerant Americans remains as serious in this country as any threat from intolerant foreigners.

This I Believe

2008-04-06T18:39:00.001-05:00

From April 6, 2008 service at the Unitarian Church. It was a service entitled This I Believe, based on the NPR program. I shared my statement, at least my statement for today!

This I Believe

I believe in jazz.
Structure and improv. Call and response.

I believe in healing.
I have seen it so often—among many of you, in my own life.

I believe in story. Once upon a time.
I believe everything you ever needed to know could be found in a parable.

I believe with the psalmist that we—you and I and all of us--can know the beauty of the lord in the land of the living.

I believe in dreams. I believe in dreamers.

I believe in something bigger than me, call it god if you’d like. I will. I believe in a god the name of which is many and never to be known but one that I call: love that will not let us go. Fellow sufferer who understands. Holy spirit. Spirit of life. The inner voice of wisdom. The still, small voice. The center who listens and knows.
The god who can be found in the creative moment. Who calls us to our best self.

I believe, more than anything, in people. People who grow. People who snore. People who curse. People who build and give. People who fail. People who love, and love again. People who know wisdom, occasionally.

I believe in the Chesapeake bay. And the sea. I believe in the rising sun. And my children’s smiles. And I believe in you, in thou. In life.

I believe that anyone at anytime can know the holy way, the good way in life. That each life is holy for its own sake. We are what we’ve got, and I believe that we have more power and beauty and love and compassion than we realize.

Updated Spring Services

2008-03-30T22:56:00.002-05:00

SPRING SEMESTER, 2008 SERVICES, Roger Butts
DRAFT/DRAFT/DRAFT/DRAFT

UPDATED
3/30/2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
8:30:54 PM

Feb 3---Centering Prayer, Lay Leader Joe Maciejko
There is an increasing awareness of the importance of spiritual practices among religious liberals. We’ve seen knitting as a spiritual practice. We’ve seen praying the poets. We’ve seen walking. One of the great practices across religious traditions has been the idea of praying. Is it possible to do such a thing for the modern Unitarian Universalist? Where did this practice come from? What does it seek to accomplish? “I don’t know how to pray,” Mary Oliver says, “but I know how to pay attention.” Let’s talk.

(feb 6th begins a series of four Wednesdays on centering prayer with Sister Catherine Cleary)
Feb 10--Thirst--Mary Oliver/Emerson, Lay Leader, Ellen Kelly
Feb 17—MULTI GEN

Feb 24---RSC

March 2--- What Starhawk Can Teach Us, lay leader Meg Bolich
One of my favorite pagan writers, Starhawk constantly asks us to think about the importance of community, the importance of ritual and the importance of nature in the life of the spirit. This morning celebrates her approach to the religious life.

March 9---- WITCH HUNTS featuring a moment on the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Lay Leaders Linda G and Rev. Ron Quay
Linda G is with us for one year from Washington, D.C. She and her husband, Bob, are longtime Unitarian Universalists. Linda is a lawyer who happens to be the chair of the NRCAT. She and I talk about what torture has to do with religion.
March 16------The Bear, or Against Supernaturalism
What do you say when someone says that you’re going to hell because of your religion?

March 23 Easter///The Poetry of Denise Levertov…5th anniversary of Iraq occupation/invasion/war…Lay Leader, Dave Coe
Death of Oscar Romero 28th anniversary
5th anniversary of my ordination

Political writer, anti-war writer, religious writer, Denise Levertov has a depth that is remarkable. Here is Gloria from ….Today I tell the story of Denise Levertov. Pure and simple.
March 30…WHAT THE WILDERNESS CAN TEACH US
What the Wilderness Can Teach Us, lay leader Dane Moulton, if upstairs
Gerald May wrote a book while he was dying. A therapist, a mystic, a spiritual guide, he allows us to see what life ultimately means. He uses the metaphor of wilderness in his reflection on life, but wilderness can happen anywhere, even in an office or study, even in a suburban park. What is your true nature? How will you discover it? Where will it lead you?

April 6—This I Believe, Kathy Bowman helping to organize and others as lay leaders.
Along with the Adult Religious Education committee, let us explore our semester of crafting our own credo statements. Where are our commonalities? Where are our divergences? What can we learn from one another? What might be next?

April 13…RSC Teacher Appreciation
April 20 Pulpit Exchange with Rev. Ted Tollefson of the UU Congregation in River Falls, Wisconsin

April 27… Play (with Dee Oberlee)
There is an increasing awareness of the importance of spiritual practices among religious liberals. We’ve seen knitting as a spiritual practice. We’ve seen praying the poets. We’ve seen walking. There is a whole study of the folly and madness and foolishness of the holy person. Laughter, surprise, joy are all names for God. Is it possible to have fun and laugh for the modern Unitarian Universalist? Let’s talk about play as holy.

May 4…140th Birthday Guest---Professor Rev. Dr. Michael Hogue, Meadville Lombard Theological School. Recently awarded 2008 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise, Michael Hogue’s work focuses on the earth, liberal theology and liberation. As part of our 140th birthday, Rev. Butts invites his dissertation advisor to come and celebrate with us by preaching on the earth and faith.

YOM HASHOAH COMMUNITY SERVICE

May 11 Prophetic Sisterhood…Lay Leader, Barb Robinson
In the Midwest, from the latter part of the 19th century through the early-mid 20th century, women Unitarian ministers redefined what it means to do and be church. This is a fascinating story of women in ministry and while it is not all sunshine and light, it sure has a lot to teach us, even now, about gender, ministry, church and life.

May 18…Music Sunday, Tyson Danner

May 25…RSC
June 1…140 years celebration—the ecumenical spirit in the Quad Cities, our greatest value: Religious Tolerance, Lay Leader: Rev Ron Quay
June 8…Flower Communion, Roger and RSC MULTI GEN
June 15…140 years celebration…Beacon on the Hill, lay leader, Don Moore

UPCOMING SERVICES
Oct 12 10th anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard, “Pink Triangle”
Nov 9 70th anniversary of Kristalnacht

Remembering Romero

2008-03-25T09:21:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, march 24 was the 28th anniversary of the death of Oscar Romero. A few quotes.

"When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises."

"The church would betray its own love for God and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being . . . a defender of the rights of the poor . . . a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society . . . that prepares the way for the true reign of God in history."

What Makes People Give

2008-03-18T09:51:00.000-05:00

THE MONEY ISSUE
What Makes People Give?
By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: March 9, 2008
Not long after the 2004 presidential election, John List and Dean Karlan formed an unusual partnership, with the idea of teaching a little-known liberal group how to raise more money. Karlan, an economics professor at Yale who spent much of his time studying global poverty, was himself a liberal and disheartened by President Bush’s re-election. He had given money to this particular group in the past.

List, however, was a political iconoclast who, if anything, tilted to the right. He taught economics at the University of Chicago, which can fairly be described as the center of conservative economic philosophy, and he had recently finished a stint as the environmental expert on President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers. When he and I were talking on the phone last month, he referred to Karlan, who is a friend of his, as “a left-wing nut” and then let out a laugh.
But List’s interest — and, in truth, Karlan’s main interest — wasn’t to help the liberal group get more money. It was to try to find an answer to a gnawing question: What makes people give their money away?
List and Karlan considered the usual answers (to make the world a better place, to see your name printed in the back of an annual report and the like) too pat, too simple — and sometimes just wrong. Over the years, whenever one of them asked fund-raisers why they did what they did, the responses were vague and unimpressive. There didn’t seem to be much empirical evidence to support the strategies employed by most fund-raisers. So the two economists wondered whether charities were wasting a lot of effort.
The two met a couple of years earlier and talked occasionally about matching gifts, which are a staple of fund-raising. Karlan told List about a $15 million “challenge gift” that an investment banker made to the University of Chicago back in the 1990s, with the stipulation that it would receive the money only if it persuaded other donors to give as well. People around campus, where Karlan was a student at the time, assumed that such a gift would work — that it would cause other donors to give more than they originally planned — but he wasn’t so sure. And it turned out that this was just the sort of problem that List had a reputation for solving.
Thirty-nine years old, with a boyish face, graying hair and the twang of an upper Midwesterner, List went to college at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, helped by a golf scholarship, while driving trucks during the summer to make money. He became an economist, he told me, because he noticed that the economics professors at Stevens Point spent a lot of time playing golf. “I came from a poor family, and I was thinking about being a stockbroker,” List told me when I met him recently. “When I saw those economists golfing, I thought, I want to do what they do.” But a funny thing happened when he began taking economics classes: he liked them. After Stevens Point, he attended graduate school at the University of Wyoming and then began crisscrossing the country for a series of faculty jobs. By 2004, he had become known as a dedicated researcher — a workaholic, even — and was emerging as the star of a growing little corner of the field, the economics of philanthropy.
A few days after Bush won re-election, Karlan got an idea. He e-mailed a fund-raiser at the liberal group — which he and List have agreed to keep anonymous, as is common in academic research — and explained that he wasn’t just a donor. “In my ‘real’ life,” Karlan began, “I am an economist who runs field experiments to learn what works and what does not in the world of social programs.” He then proposed a field experiment, involving matching gifts, in which the group would learn how well they really work. “Have you ever done something like this?” Karlan asked. The group hadn’t, and it quickly agreed to work with him and List.
For a long time, philanthropy was mostly ignored by social scientists. It’s not an especially large part of the economy, and most charities operate on a shoestring, without the resources to finance research projects. But this is starting to change. Americans gave $295 billion to charity in 2006, equal to 2.2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, up from about 1.8 percent from the mid-’70s to the mid-’90s, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. Most philanthropy still comes in the form of small gifts, but there is also a growing group of donors, like Bill and Melinda Gates, who are interested in bringing some of the quantitative rigor of big business to philanthropy.
Academics, for their part, have come to realize that charities provide an excellent laboratory for studying human behavior, in part because so many of them are desperate for the kind of free-of-charge consulting Karlan was offering. When charities are designing their donor appeals, they often go by nothing more than a few rules of thumb, some of which may be profoundly insightful and others a good deal less so. “I think some fund-raisers have developed terrific intuitions, passed on through the fraternity of fund-raisers,” says Paul Brest, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, Calif., which often works with charities. “But a lot of the intuitions don’t work. Look at how much junk mail you get.” Matching gifts were another good example. People figured that they worked, because — well, how could they not? They seem so sensible.
Late in 2004, List and Karlan started working on different solicitation letters for the liberal group. The letters were similar except for the part that mentioned (or didn’t mention) a match. In one letter, sent to the control group, there was no match. Another letter said that a donor had agreed to match any gift, dollar for dollar. In a third, the match was increased to two to one, and in a fourth it was three to one.
Among fund-raisers, dollar-for-dollar matches are the norm, but larger ones are common, too. Public radio and the N.A.A.C.P. have both used two-to-one matches. Part of the $15 million gift to the University of Chicago that piqued Karlan’s interest in the 1990s was set aside for a four-to-one match. “Never underestimate the power of a challenge gift” is what one standard textbook, “Conducting a Successful Fundraising Program,” advises, adding that “a richer challenge greatly increases attractiveness.” The economics are simple enough. A matching gift effectively reduces the cost of making a donation. Without a match, you would have to spend $400 to make your favorite charity $400 richer. With a three-to-one match in place, it would cost you only $100 to add $400 to the charity’s coffers.
In addition to common sense, some of the earliest economic research on philanthropy supported the idea that matching gifts should make a big difference. In the 1970s, economists began studying the tax deduction for charitable giving, and they found that it clearly affected how much people gave. When tax rates were higher — and deductions were thus more valuable — people gave more. It seemed to follow that they would be equally rational about a match. When Karlan and List got their results, however, they realized that the conventional wisdom about matches was only partly right. The existence of a matching gift did very much matter. In their experiment, 2.2 percent of people who received the match offer made a donation, compared with only 1.8 percent of the control group. That may not seem like a big difference, but it is — more than a 20 percent gap between the two response rates, which is certainly large enough to justify making the effort to solicit a hefty matching gift.
But the size of the match in the experiment didn’t have any effect on giving. Donors who received the offer of a one-to-one match gave just as often, and just as much, as those responding to the three-to-one offer. That was surprising, because a larger match is effectively a deeper discount on a person’s gift. Yet in this case, the deeper discount didn’t make an impact. It was as if Starbucks had cut the price of a latte to $2 and sales didn’t increase.
In early January, I met List for lunch in the warehouse district of New Orleans during a conference of academic economists. We spent the first part of the meal talking about sports, and I asked him whether he thought there might be a parallel between professional sports teams and charities. As Michael Lewis (a contributing writer for this magazine) explained in his 2003 best seller, “Moneyball,” baseball executives spent years clinging to beliefs that were simply false. Only recently, thanks to the emergence of young executives who insisted on looking at data, had some of the myths been exposed. The research on charitable giving is still in its early stages, but is it possible, I wondered, that fund-raising would also prove to be riddled with inefficiencies? Absolutely, List replied. “I think most fund-raisers are doing this wrong.”
The results of the matching-gift experiment provided List and Karlan with precisely the sort of subtlety that they hoped to uncover. It also spoke to that fundamental question about philanthropy: Why do people give? Is it really to make the world a better place, to give back to the community as a token of gratitude? Or is giving instead about something less grand, like seeing your name on a building, responding to peer pressure or simply feeling good about yourself? To put it bluntly, is charitable giving a high-minded form of consumption?
In the late 1980s, an economist named James Andreoni argued that the internal motives for giving were indeed more important than many people had acknowledged. He came up with a name for his idea — the “warm glow” theory — and it stuck. In the warm-glow view of philanthropy, people aren’t giving money merely to save the whales; they’re also giving money to feel the glow that comes with being the kind of person who’s helping to save the whales.
This is less depressing than it may sound. For one thing, the charities are still getting the money, no matter what the donors’ motives are, and many of them are putting it to good use. For another, the warm-glow theory means that philanthropy can be more than a zero-sum game. If giving were strictly rational, the announcement of a big donation might lead other people to give less to the cause; they might figure it no longer needs their money as much. Thanks to the warm glow, though, Warren Buffett’s $31 billion gift to the Gates Foundation won’t cause other people to think that they no longer need to help fight dysentery. If anything, Buffett’s gift might make them more likely to make a donation. They can then have the sense that they’re joining forces with someone else — with Warren Buffett, no less — and becoming part of a larger cause.
Andreoni’s argument was a merely theoretical one, but the experiment by List and Karlan suggested that it was correct. Donors did not, in fact, seem to do a rational analysis of how they could best help promote liberalism. And there was one more layer to their results that made the findings even more striking. In blue states — defined as those that voted for John Kerry — even the existence of a matching gift had only a minor effect. It lifted the response rate by about 5 percent. In red states, though, a matching gift increased donations by about 60 percent. For isolated liberals living in states that had just voted for Bush’s re-election, the glow that came from joining up with another liberal seemed to be much stronger. “Giving is not about a calculation of what you are buying,” Karlan said. “It is about participating in a fight.” It is about you as much as it about the effect of your gift. As much as fund-raisers say that they understand these mixed motivations, charities often continue to behave as if donors were automatons. Thus the existence of big matching gifts.
Along similar lines, Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has conducted a mischievous experiment on the relationship between religious giving and religious observance. His inspiration was a comment his father made after he was elected treasurer of his synagogue in New Jersey. “Good,” Gruber’s father told him, with some amount of irony, “now I don’t have to go.” Somebody thinking purely about the temple might have decided that the treasurer should attend services even more often than an ordinary congregant. After all, he would need to set an example as a community leader. But someone who wanted to attain a certain commitment level — who wanted do enough to feel the warm glow of being involved in the life of the temple — would consider regular attendance and synagogue duties to be substitutes for each other.
To see how typical his father was, Gruber dug into surveys that ask people about how they spend their money and their time. Sure enough, his dad was typical. When the tax code changed in the early 1990s and made the deduction for charitable giving more valuable, the average churchgoer gave more money — and attended services less often. Gruber called his research paper “Pay or Pray.”
List likes to use another phrase to describe the larger phenomenon: impure altruism. It fits nicely with the recent explosion of academic research on the anomalies and irrationalities of life. The field is known as behavioral economics. It has shown, for example, that many people buy monthly memberships to health clubs even when paying individually for each visit would be much cheaper. Apparently, people imagine that the membership will inspire them to work out far more often than it really does. Behavioral economists don’t question that people generally want to do what’s best for themselves — and probably what’s best for their favorite cause, as well. But the world is a complicated place, full of psychological nuances that trip them up.
Growing up in Sun Prairie, Wisc., List collected baseball cards. In high school, he somehow persuaded his girlfriend, Jennifer Einerson, to come along with him on weekends to visit sports-card shows around the Midwest. They both went to college at Stevens Point and continued going to the card shows, driving to Illinois or Minnesota or Iowa. List found that he could make a profit buying and selling cards, which gave him some extra income on top of the money he earned as a short-haul truck driver. (List’s father is a truck driver, and his mother is a retired secretary.) More to the point, the card shows offered List his first glimpse into the inner workings of a market economy, with all of its rationalities and irrationalities.
After graduate school at Wyoming, List took a job at the University of Central Florida, in Orlando. By this time, he and Jennifer were married (they now have five children), and they moved to Orlando. In each of his first four years at Central Florida, he won the award for best undergraduate economics teacher. He also coached the water-skiing team for two years — leading it to an eighth-place finish at the 1999 national championships — until the university president shut it down, temporarily, in order to spend more money on the football team.
Even setting aside his time as a coach, athlete and truck driver, List’s background is highly unusual for an economist at the pinnacle of the field. In the Chicago economics department — currently home to four Nobel winners — most faculty members attended one of just a handful of top-notch graduate economics programs. List has broken the mold, and his background helps explain why he has been so open to getting his hands dirty in the real world.
Within the economics profession, the most exciting part of List’s work isn’t the road map it offers for charities. List happens to do his research on philanthropy, but what he’s really doing is helping promote methods in social science that are well established in medical science — real-world experiments relying on randomized trials. “He’s a real phenom,” says Charles Clotfelter, a Duke University economist who did much of the early research on tax deductions. “He’s very creative. And this is a completely innovative area of economics.”
For years, empirical economic research tended to come in one of two forms. Either economists gathered existing data and tried to tease out cause and effect with the help of statistical analysis, or they ran controlled laboratory experiments, which allow researchers to ask almost any question they want to ask. But lab experiments have an obvious drawback. They aren’t especially realistic. If you put a college sophomore in a room, gave her $20 to spend and presented her with a series of pitches from hypothetical charities, she might behave very differently than when sitting on her sofa sorting through letters from actual organizations. “I’d rather have a lab experiment than no evidence,” Gruber says. “But it’s an artificial environment.” Field experiments offer a way to bridge the gap. When designed well, they allow researchers to pick the questions they want to ask, while increasing the odds that the answers will be genuine. Some economists say List can sometimes be too dismissive of lab experiments, but they also maintain that he’s right to push the discipline out into the field.
At Central Florida, List found himself in charge of raising money for a new research center in environmental economics, and he decided to turn the task into an experiment. Working with David Reiley of the University of Arizona — another pioneer of field experiments (who’s now on leave to work for Yahoo) — List set out to see whether donors cared about so-called seed money. Fund-raisers generally like to have raised a large portion of their ultimate goal, sometimes as much as 50 percent, before officially announcing a new campaign. This makes the goal, as well as the cause, seem legitimate.
To see whether the strategy made sense, List and Reiley wrote letters to potential donors saying that the university wanted to buy computers for a new environmental-research center. They varied the amount of money that supposedly had already been raised. In some letters, they put the amount in hand at $2,000, out of the $3,000 they needed for a given computer; in others, they said they had raised only $300 and still needed $2,700. The results were overwhelming. The more upfront money Central Florida claimed to have on hand, the more additional money it raised. When paired with the matching-gift research, the study suggests that seed money is a better investment for charities than generous matches.
What got List noticed by Chicago, however, was an experiment with sports cards. Using data from card shows, he showed that traders became more rational — less emotionally tied to the cards they owned — as they accumulated more experience. The study fit right into the neoclassical ethos of the Chicago economics department, which holds that people are rational and that markets work. In the paper, he included a direct critique of a renowned study in behavioral economics that suggested people often hold on to an item they own (a house, for example) in the vain hope that its value will rise.
But List doesn’t align himself with the rationalists or the behaviorists; he says he simply follows his evidence to the logical conclusion. Tellingly, while he worked for the Bush administration, he found himself frustrated by its inflexibility, specifically its unwillingness to use market incentives to reduce carbon emissions. This year, his favorite candidate is Barack Obama. “A lot of people ask me, ‘What are you?’ ” List told me. “I’m just a field experimentalist. I gather data.”
One theme to emerge from List’s research, and that of his fellow economists, is that the conventional wisdom about giving tends to be mostly right and yet is still flawed in important ways. The study on matching gifts bore that out. Matches matter, but not for the obvious reasons and not in the obvious ways. Rachel Croson, an economist at the University of Texas at Dallas, found a similar pattern when she examined pledge drives by public radio stations.
As any listener knows, these stations inundate potential givers with suggested donation levels during these drives. They may explicitly suggest a $50 gift, for example, or they may list a series of items — a mug, a CD, a T-shirt — that serve as thank-you gifts for specific donation levels. Each of these price points serves as a suggestion. When Croson asked how these price points were determined, “it was really amazing to me to see how little science there was behind fund-raising,” she says.
So she and her co-author, Jen Shang, conducted an experiment in which listeners who called to make a pledge were casually told that another caller had made a gift. But the amount of the gift varied — in some cases, $75 (which was the median gift size for that station), in others, $300. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the callers who heard about the $75 gift didn’t seem to be affected by it. They gave the same amount, on average, as callers usually gave. But the people who heard about the $300 gift gave more — about 12 percent more on average — having apparently been inspired, or shamed, into being more generous.
Croson and Shang then tried a variation on the experiment at a different station, using $600 and $1,000 gifts instead. And here came the rub: the callers who heard about a $1,000 gift actually gave less than those who were told about a $600 gift. To most callers, a $1,000 donation sounded too large to be relevant. They thought to themselves, as Croson explained, “That couldn’t possibly be me.” There was a sweet spot for a radio station, but a steep penalty for overshooting it.
The economics of fund-raising are filled with such contextual nuances. In a door-to-door fund-raising drive, List found that men gave more money when the person asking for the gift was an attractive woman. (You knew this was coming: women weren’t affected by beauty, whether the solicitor was male or female.) Yet this ploy had no lasting value to the charity. When the besotted men were asked for a follow-up gift on the phone or by mail, they gave no more than people who were greeted by an average-looking fund-raiser. Offering a lottery, on the other hand, worked in both the short term and the long term. People gave more money when they were told their donation made them eligible for a prize, and they gave more the next time they were asked too.
To those of us outside academia, the notion that men often try to impress attractive women may not count as an intellectual breakthough, but for fund-raisers desperate for guidance, the research on charitable giving is a gift in itself. And it often does contain real insight. Last year, Princeton University held a conference at which List, Croson, Andreoni and others who study charitable giving got together with fund-raisers from Africare, the National MS Society and elsewhere. I spoke with three people who listened to the academics present their work, and all said they found it invigorating. “We all have different strategies and takes on how to reach out to potential donors,” said Nicole Eley of Africare, which sends development and relief aid to Africa. “Many of them work, some don’t — it’s a trial-and-error process.” It’s easy to imagine that the academic research may eventually serve as the building blocks for a unified theory of how to raise money.
For those of us who aren’t putting together fund-raising appeals, the real importance of these studies is the glimpse they offer into the human mind, and the clues about how to make the world work a little bit better. As it happens, Richard Thaler, one of the behavioral economists List criticized in his sports-card paper, and Cass Sunstein, a widely published law professor, are coming out with a book next month called “Nudge.” It’s a manifesto for using the recent behavioral research to help people, as well as government agencies, companies and charities, make better decisions.
One of their ideas directly echoes the experiment for the liberal group that List and Karlan did in 2004. Thaler and Sunstein point out that people who save money through a 401(k) often set aside exactly the amount of money that triggers a matching contribution from their employer, no matter how big or small the match. When an employer matches the first 6 percent of salary dollar for dollar, many people will save 6 percent. But they often save just as much when the match is only 50 cents on the dollar. It follows, then, that if a company wanted to nudge its employees to save a little more, it could lift the ceiling for the match while reducing the amount of the match. For instance, it could match up to 10 percent of an employee’s salary, at 30 cents on the dollar. Because the Treasury Department and Congress are involved in setting 401(k) rules — and the because the country would be better off if people saved more — there is a good argument that the government should encourage companies to make just such a change.
When you think about these findings for long enough, you start to realize they may have another implication as well, one that circles right back to philanthropy. Each year, the federal government subsidizes charitable donations to the tune of about $50 billion a year. That is the value of tax deductions that the government gives out in exchange for donations. It’s a huge amount of money, more than enough to pay for, say, universal preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds.
There are several reasons to question whether a subsidy of this size is such a good idea. Deductions of any kind complicate the tax code. This particular deduction disproportionately benefits the affluent, who have done quite well on their own in recent years. It also adds to the government’s long-term budget deficit. In an ideal world, the government would figure out a way to recoup some of this money without causing charitable giving to plummet. Philanthropies would be able to continue doing most of the good work they’re now doing without being quite such a drain on the federal budget.
Think back now to the central findings of List’s and Karlan’s research. People aren’t always clearheaded about money; sometimes the existence of a financial incentive can matter as much as its size. So what if it were possible to design a tax policy for charitable giving that wasn’t quite as generous as the current one but still led people to give nearly as much as they’re giving now? It wouldn’t be easy. As the original research on charitable giving suggested, people are often quite rational about their taxes — more rational, evidently, than they are about matching gifts. But it might not be impossible, and the potential benefits would be enormous. It’s the kind of problem that cries out for a clever field experiment by someone like John List.
David Leonhardt is an economics columnist for The Times and a staff writer for the magazine.

2008

2007-12-28T13:22:00.000-06:00

I was asked by Mary Louise Spears of the QC Times to write thoughts about the coming of 2008 and the Quad Cities faith community. This is what I wrote.

Dear Mary Louise,

Thank you for the opportunity to reflect on the coming of 2008 and what it might hold for persons of various faiths in the Quad Cities. Among all Americans, we Iowans seem especially aware that a presidential election is soon upon us. As a person of faith, I hope that the presidential election focuses on matters of great importance-addressing the increasing gap between the rich and the poor and increasing human rights, especially women's rights and equality for our brothers and sisters who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered. I hope that all states will follow the lead of the commonwealth of Massachusetts in granting the opportunity for civil marriage as a civil right.

Is it too much to ask for a serious and deep reflection from the religious
community on sustainable development? In the coming book from the Human
Rights Watch, State of the World 2008, the following argument is made:

Growing evidence suggests that the global economy is now destroying its own
ecological base and offering little to billions of impoverished people. In
response, pioneering policymakers, business leaders and concerned citizens
around the globe are creating the architecture of sustainable economies, one
innovation at a time.

Because all of the great religious traditions ask of us that we be good
stewards of the earth, and that all creation holds within it a goodness that
is definitive, can not the religious communities help to make progress in
this crucial area?

I mention these because they are crucially important, but I will focus the
rest of my comments on areas that I will monitor closely in 2008. I will focus on two
opportunities available to our local Quad Cities community.

THE 5th ANNIVERSARY OF THE IRAQ INVASION

In March of 2008, Quad Citians will have a chance to make their voices heard
on the 5th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of a sovereign state,
Iraq, by U.S. forces. I would be especially mindful of this anniversary, but
especially significant is that this anniversary falls in the time of the
Christian calendar's Holy Week.

During that time, the church is invited to think deeply about two topics
that hold great interest historically and presently: the role of
empire/imperialism and the role of the hope that the church rests upon.

The great question for the American church during 2008 will be: shall we
place our hope in the privilege that we are afforded because of American
imperialistic strength, while the overwhelming majority of the globe suffers
in poverty or shall we place our hope in the work for solidarity with the
suffering and the poor and the witness of active-non-violence and
peace-making shown by Jesus?

Specifically, I see that the big days for possible action against the war are March 15 and March 19.

If I am not mistaken, March 15 is the Saturday before Palm Sunday in the Christian calendar. There are two passages in the lectionary on Sunday that are especially worthy of reflection here. The first is the simple request of Jesus to his disciples that they stay awake. To my mind, this request to stay awake in the face of imperialistic violence has a certain resonance in our current context. After five years--the second longest U.S. war I think I read--some are tired, some are despairing, some are fatigued and fearful. There is widespread pessimism I suspect. But the peace-makers among us ask us to stay awake.

The second piece I think is
26:50 Jesus said to him, "Friend, do what you are here to do." Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and arrested him.
26:51 Suddenly, one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear.
26:52 Then Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword."
Look at how beloved the agent of imperialist domination is in the sight of Jesus. He calls him 'friend.' Then of course the sword and the lesson therein of Jesus. But I'm especially struck by this word, "friend." No matter what you do, Jesus seems to be saying, I will remain a peace-filled compassionate force.
March 19, if I am not mistaken, is Maundy Thursday. The one who had taught in his moment of difficulty that even the agent of imperialism and violence is to be called friend now shows what that kind of friendship looks like in the washing of the feet, in humility and solidarity. And the simple message of the day is everyone can glorify what is holy and good because everyone can love.
I should think that a peace-based holy week set of liturgies, ecumenical as possible, might be important for the community.

KRISTALLNACHT 70th ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATION
The second is the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht. I quote from the US Holocaust Museum website.
Kristallnacht--literally, "Night of Crystal"--is usually referred to as the "Night of Broken Glass." It is the name given to the violent anti-Jewish pogrom of November 9 and 10, 1938. Instigated primarily by Nazi party officials and the SA (Nazi Storm Troopers), the pogrom occurred throughout Germany (including annexed Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia). The name Kristallnacht has its origin in the untold numbers of broken windows of synagogues, Jewish-owned stores, community centers, and homes plundered and destroyed during the pogrom. The term became a euphemism for this brutal pogrom and does not adequately convey the suffering it caused.
Hundreds of synagogues all over Germany, including Austria, were vandalized, looted, and destroyed. Many were set ablaze and firemen were instructed to let the synagogues burn but to prevent flames from spreading to nearby structures. The shop windows of an estimated 7,500 Jewish-owned commercial establishments were smashed and the wares within looted. Jewish cemeteries were desecrated. Mobs of SA men roamed the streets, attacking Jews and killing about 100 persons. In despair at the destruction of their homes, many Jews, including entire families, were driven to suicide.
My plan is to work with the Yom HaShoah Committee and Rabbi Henry Karp and other community faith leaders to bring attention to the commemoration of this God-forsaken event. We imagine a community event with artists, scholars and a service of some sort. I personally plan to bring in Martin Doblmeier, the filmmaker of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Pacifist, Nazi Resister and others to shed light on the continuing implications of the Holocaust, and especially Kristallnacht, for contemporary persons of faith. Bonhoeffer is a leading example for me at least of the kind of witness to the God who sides with the oppressed and the marginalized that must never be forgotten. He wrote:
1. Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear rather than too much. Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now. Christian should take a stronger stand in favor of the weak rather than considering first the possible right of the strong.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Sermon on II Cor. 12:9)
________________________________________
2. There remains an experience of incomparable value . . . to see the great events of world history from below; from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled ---- in short, from the perspective of those who suffer . . . to look with new eyes on matters great and small. Letters and Papers from Prison

I believe that we have a great chance with the 70th commemoration of Kristallnacht to engage the community in serious and sustained conversation about what it means to be a person of faith in such a privileged society as ours. I look forward to many different kinds of congregations engaging in this conversation.

Of more immediate concern in my own congregation is to continue to work on issues of social justice, to continue to lift up the idea of freedom as a crucial component of the religious way, and to provide opportunities for people to connect—with one another, with their own best instincts, and with what is holy and enduring in the world.

Thanks for this opportunity.

Rev. Roger Butts
Unitarian Church
Davenport, IA

Spring Semester Services, Unitarian Church, Davenport

2007-12-18T23:25:00.000-06:00

DRAFT

Friends,
This is a draft of the spring semester at the Unitarian Church.

SPRING SEMESTER, 2008 SERVICES, Roger Butts

DRAFT/DRAFT/DRAFT/DRAFT

Feb 3---Centering Prayer, Lay Leader Joe Maciejko
(feb 6th begins a series of four Wednesdays on centering prayer with Sister Catherine Cleary)

Feb 10--Thirst--Mary Oliver/Emerson, Lay Leader, Ellen Kelly

Feb 17—Witchhunt, Lay Leader Rev. Ron Quay

Feb 24---RSC

March 2---National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Lay Leader Linda G

March 9----What Starhawk Can Teach Us, lay leader Meg Bolich

March 16------Robert Frost, lay leader Vivian Becker

March 23 Easter///The Poetry of Denise Levertov…5th anniversary of Iraq occupation/invasion/war…Lay Leader, Dave Coe

Death of Oscar Romero 28th anniversary

5th anniversary of my ordination

March 30…Play (with Dee Oberlee)

April 6—This I Believe, Kathy Bowman and others as lay leaders.

April 13…RSC

April 20….Earth Day (April 22)-------Walden---Tyson, Roger and possibly lay leader Mary Beth Kwasek

April 27… What the Wilderness Can Teach Us, lay leader Dane Moulton, if upstairs

May 4…140th Birthday Guest---Professor Rev. Dr. Michael Hogue, Meadville Lombard Theological School. Recently awarded 2008 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise, Michael Hogue’s work focuses on the earth, liberal theology and liberation. As part of our 140th birthday, Rev. Butts invites his dissertation advisor to come and celebrate with us by preaching on the earth and faith.

YOM HASHOAH COMMUNITY SERVICE--Temple Emanuel I think this year.

May 11 Prophetic Sisterhood…Lay Leader, Barb Robinson

May 18…Music Sunday, Tyson Danner

May 25…RSC

June 1…140 years celebration—the ecumenical spirit in the Quad Cities, our greatest value: Religious Tolerance, Lay Leader: Rev Ron Quay

June 8…Flower Communion, Roger and RSC

June 15…140 years celebration…Beacon on the Hill, lay leader, Don Moore

UPCOMING SERVICES

Oct 12 10th anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard, “Pink Triangle”

Nov 9 70th anniversary of Kristalnacht

MLK Sunday, The Healing of Namaan

2007-12-12T14:50:00.000-06:00

Martin Luther King Sunday (The Healing of Namaan)
Rev. Roger Butts
January 19, 2003, Unitarian Church, Davenport
________________________________________
Reading
2 Kings 5:1-14
5:1 Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy.
5:2 Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman's wife.
5:3 She said to her mistress, "If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy."
5:4 So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said.
5:5 And the king of Aram said, "Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel." He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments.
5:6 He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, "When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy."
5:7 When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, "Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me."
5:8 But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, "Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel."
5:9 So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha's house.
5:10 Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean."
5:11 But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!
5:12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?" He turned and went away in a rage.
5:13 But his servants approached and said to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean'?"
5:14 So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
________________________________________
Sermon

I took the second of two required courses on preaching at Wesley Seminary during the summer of 2001. Ten or twelve of us gathered for an intensive, two week course, offered by Professor Bobby McLean, preaching teacher, a contemporary and friend of Martin King. We met every night for two weeks, and we each had to preach twice within ten days. There was little time to think, little time to breathe. We had to pick a couple of slots and pick our readings quickly. Picking became a matter of instinct--one reading had to be from the first testament--the Hebrew scriptures--and one reading had to be from the second testament--what some call the New Testament.

It came time for me to pick a topic and reading, and I remembered a conversation I had the week before with my best seminary friend, Amy Yarnall. We spoke by phone on July 3rd. I was in Washington. She was in Wilmington Delaware, where she served a Methodist church. What are you doing, I said. “I am trying to write a sermon before I head to the beach with my family.” Oh what is it on? “The healing of Namaan.” The healing of what? It a story from 2nd Kings, full of drama--prisoners of war, feuding kings, leprosy gained and lost. I remember being intrigued and resolving to read the story. It was fresh in my mind when Professor McLean asked what we wanted to explore. I’ll do Namaan, I said.

The night came to preach and I preached the Namaan story. Namaan is a mighty warrior and he is seriously in a bind. He is beloved by his king for his bravery and his military know how. Recipient of the prizes of conquest. He was Dick Cheney. He was Colin Powell. There was only one problem. He had bad skin, really bad skin--Leprosy. You get the sense that he has looked and looked for a cure.
One of his war conquests is a little slave girl belonging to his wife. She mentions one day that she knows a prophet in Samaria that could take care of his situation.

This is a great inspiring text--Martin Luther King loved it--because it says, Now what have we come to here? The mighty warrior having to listen to the little nobody, the little slave girl without a name, a foreigner, a prisoner of war. This mighty warrior is powerless to find his way to wholeness and health and restoration without being forced to listen to the most marginalized character possible. And the king can’t help either.

So Namaan listens.

I was preaching The Namaan story now in the summer of 2001 at Wesley Seminary, and I tell a story in this sermon about Henry Nouwen--beautiful Catholic writer and his recollection of going to Selma. He was working as a chaplain in Kansas at the Menninger Clinic, when King put out a call for all clergy to come down to Selma. Nouwen heard the appeal, but ignored it. And soon he became restless in his spirit. His sleep was interrupted, often, by the question gnawing at his spirit, “Why aren’t you in Selma?” He had many good excuses and all of his friends said that his desire to go to Selma was a desire for excitement. He says that he had to decide how and to whom he would pay attention. He got in his car and drove down to Selma. In Vicksburg, he came upon a black man standing at the side of the road, Charles, aged twenty. “God has heard my prayer.” Charles said as he piled in Nouwen’s car. I’ve been standing here for hours and nobody would pick me up. No one saw me, or when they did they tried to run me over. But I prayed and prayed to get to Selma and now here you are. My answered prayer.

Nouwen took a chance and heard a remarkable tale of five imprisonments, the death of his friend Medgar Evers. He heard about conditions in Mississippi, and as this stranger kept talking a deep fear rose up within Nouwen. He said out of that fear I received new eyes to see, new ears to hear.

Who we listen to matters on the road to healing and peace, I preached that July evening. Namaan found that out. So did Nouwen. And what we see depends a lot upon where we stand. If Nouwen had not decided to get in that car and drive down to Selma, he never hears Charles story. His life is never touched by this completely different person than he, the very definition of the other. If he hadn’t decided to take a stand and stand in a new place, his life may have turned out very differently. Where we stand depends on what we’ll see and who we’ll hear, on our road to peace.

Where we stand is determined by any number of factors--the color of our skin, the degree of our financial security. It has a lot to do with class. Middle classs white people in America are desperate to believe that all is well, and we do what we can to reinforce that belief. SINCE WE WON’T EASILY CHANGE THE PLACE WHERE WE ARE STANDING, WE WILL AT LEAST HAVE TO START BY LISTENING TO PEOPLE WHO ARE STANDING SOMEWHERE ELSE AND ASK THEM WHAT THEY SEE.

Well, my sermon went on like that for a while. I preached on Nouwen’s reflections on who arrived there in Selma, “God’s fools he said. Social outcasts. Crazy, odd characters. Not a cent to their name but they came to march with the oppressed in Selma.

I delivered my sermon. All of the students gathered round in a circle. Bobby McLean said, I was at Selma. There were some odd characters there. I remember, he said in his old, somewhat still Southern African-American voice, I remember one night Martin looked at me and said you’re preaching tonight. Professor McLean said that night my text was Namaan. That rocked my world.

The Namaan story put me on a quest for deep reflections on the nameless, the voiceless, the marginalized. The first thing you notice in that story is that slave girl’s namelessness, her total lack of status. But also that she holds all kinds of power, if she would just be heard.

So I went off on a quest for reflections on the nameless, the voiceless those easy enough to ignore.

I soon encountered W.E.B. DuBois, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison. It is W.E.B. DuBois that identifies a great veil, a veil that separates the white world and the black world. “How does it feel to be a problem?” So said a little white girl to W.E.B. DuBois while he was but a little boy. And from there he begins a lifetime reflection on what it means to be black in America. To have to see oneself through the eyes of the other world. As my professor of systematic theology writes, “It hit Dubois. A little white girls’ particular embodiment of the question stung him into the realization that he was “Shut out from the white world by a vast veil.”

From the instant DuBois encountered that little girl and her question, he began to exercise an inner strength; he began to assert his will within the veil. He embraced this veil which shut him out of the mainstream. Through that veil he gained insight into his world, into himself and into the other world.

Toni Morrison’s collection of essays, really lectures, Playing in the Dark, comes to illuminate a will that refuses to see the self through the revelation of the other world, the white world. While DuBois said that one ever feels this twoness--an American, a Negro. She writes, “American means white, and Africanist people struggle to make the term applicable to themselves with ethnicity and hyphen after hyphen after hyphen.

Playing in the Dark argues that white America, as reflected in the white American novel, reveals America’s ambivalence toward blacks. She aptly calls this ambivalence American Africanism, which signifies an entire range fo views, assumptions, readings and misreading that accompany Eurocentric learning about black people.

This veil plays out in this way, according to DuBois. The problem of anti-black racism, means that the African American in order to have a true self-consciousness, must constantly measure self consciousness against racist images. It is peculiar sensation, DuBois writes, this double-consciousness, this sense of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

His question, How is it possible to be both black and American, is the very heart of Baldwin’s entire writings--America means white, Baldwin always said, and is the heart of Playing in the Dark as well.

The old Anglo-Saxon world is at the root of those views, assumptions, readings and misreading that define white attitude towards African Americans. The phrase that Morrison uses is American Africanism, which captures nicely the misreading by whites (Americans!) of people of African descent. The old pioneers in search of the city of God, Morrison argues, fled apostate lands, and came after adventure. Here, the desire for freedom is preceded by oppression; a yearning for God’s law is born of the detestation of human license and corruption, the glamour of riches is in thrall to poverty, hunger and debt. The pioneers in other words sailed to America in quest of a blank slate. But she argues this land that would wipe the slate clean and make possible a new beginning was inlaid with the Old World’s contradictions: Those who had bowed low to the Crown became sovereign, the vassal became powerful. The tension she identifies in this way:

One could be released from a useless, binding, repulsive past into a kind of history-lessness, a blank page waiting to be inscribed. Much was to be written there: noble impulses were made in law and appropriated for national tradition; base ones, learned and elaborated in the rejected and rejecting homeland, were also made into law and appropriated for tradition.

In these essays, Morrison wants to show how in America this tension between noble and base impulses gets to be explored in popular fiction--Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, through the slave population.

In those writings, time and again the characters of color are nameless, are speechless except in cases where the white person is served; and are mythical--either savage or harmless servant. The Namaan story, writ over and over.

In Morrison there is a deep African american spirituality, what my professor defines as the African American’s ability to see from within the veil, that is to see one’s own virtue and one’s oppressors vices and to rail against anti-black racism because of a dogged inner strenth. The spirituality of Morrison is this: the insight is this: that the pendulum exposed in white literature about African Americans--jungle savage or harmless servant--exposes and measures the souls of white folk, not the souls of black folk.

Out of that veil, you see Morrison comes to a place of liberation and freedom.

Because she wishes to be healthy, not racist, Morrison has forged a well integrated self-consiousness, within the veil. She knows she is a problem to the other world, and overcomes two warring ideals lest they break her: Fate has mined her American language with “hidden signs of racial superiority, cultural hegemony and dismissive othering. How to render blacks truly? How to maneuver ways to free up the language from its sometimes sinister, frequently lazy, almost always predictable employment of racially informed and determined chains. Living in a nation of people who decided tha their world view would combine agendas for individual freedom and mechanisms for devastating racial oppression presents a singular landscape for the writer. So, we get from her, from her wisdom within the veil, Beloved and the Bluest Eye. We get from her the beautiful image of her holding up the mirror so that white america might yet see.

Of course, the person that we celebrate on this day, did that very thing, within his own veil in the middle half of the 20th century. And that of course is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.

When King was a student at Boston University, the big theological foundation there was called Personalism. One other thing that Bobby McLean my preaching professor told me was that a whole slew of African American students at Boston nearly became Unitarians, because of this idea of personalism. In fact, Bobby McLean spent half a year as the interim at First and Second in Boston, one of our oldest Unitarian parishes. Personalism gets right to what we are talking about here around the whole issue of Namaan and the slave girl, and DuBois, Baldwin and Morrison and their veil. Personalism is a uniting theology that says, at the root of all of theological reflection, must be a deep and abiding respect for the human personality--unique, divine and of ultimate importance. The idea of the human person is tied up with the idea of the Divine Person---that the divine person is diffused if you will in each human being and therein lies our optimism about humanity’s movement toward the good.

This kind of image of God in all persons is related to what Forest Church suggests might be the best model of God in the 21st century--the hologram, no matter how much it is split up, it still works. It still has impact.

The great question, this cycle of the Commission on Appraisal, the body that looks at big issues confronting Unitarian Universalism is this: Is there a core to our faith. I nominate Personalism. King never really left personalism as a theological construct, though he modified his view of human nature over time to be a tad more realistic. That the human personality is ultimate because each carries the image of the divine is a unifying faith of an unrepentant liberal.

The second thing King does is remind us that the church has power, social power in social contexts. A famous quote: The gospel at its best deal with the whole (person), not only his soul but his body, not only her spiritual well being but her material well being. Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic condition that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

The last thing that I want to say about King is that he had hope. He believed in the coming of justice and peace. He believed that God worked in history--as did our greatest Unitarian thinkers--Theodore Parker, James Luther Adams, Channing. In his speech, Facing the challenge of a new age, King wrote: I have talked about the fact that God is working in history to bring about this new age. There is the danger that after hearing all of this you will go away with the impression that we can go home, sit down, and do nothing, waiting for the coming of the inevitable. You wil somehow feel that this new age will roll in on the wheels of the inevitable, so that there is nothing to do but wait on it. If you get that impression you are the victims of an illusion wrapped in superficiality. We must speed up the coming of the inevitable.

To speak of God working in history is to speak of concrete human experiences, concrete human dilemmas, especially around social and political power.

A time for confession. I believe that my personal political views need not dominate the views of my sermons--I believe, in other words, that there is room within Unitarian Universalism for all kinds of political views and we are called to be the church not to be a political action committee. But I do believe that politics and religion sometimes meet, as in King’s Letter to a Birmingham jail, and there are times when the minister must address concrete political realities. The confession is this: In this day, it is perhaps an overwhelming task.

I survey the Administration in power and I do not know where to begin. I need your help. I cannot do it all alone. We need to build this place into a laboratory for the human spirit and that means that we must all take up the important, concrete questions and issues of our day.

Are you most concerned with the secretiveness of this administration? The clinging close to the chest information about how decisions are made about war, about Iraq, about Korea? About Columbia, the Phillipines? I grow concerned.

Are you most concerned about the unilateralism, the kind of Texas stagger that insists that we need not have our allies on board in order to go to war in Iraq?
Are you most concerned that the victims of repression--Iraqis and Afghanis and North Koreans are going to hear that the only solution we can come up with are additional weapons of mass destruction, that our imagination is so limited that we can conceive of no other way out of this mess?

Are you concerned that the Democrats have completely lost their way?

Are you concerned that there is a war on the poor in this country, that as we speak social safety nets are being quietly and efficiently taken away?

This King that I lift up on this day is one that asks us to respond to the fierce urgency of now, in love and faith and hope. Asks us to ensure that we remember the dignity of each person, the call to compassion and hope. That everyone might have a voice, that everyone might have a name, that everyone might have peace.

5th Anniversary of iraq war coming

2007-12-12T13:35:00.000-06:00

FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF IRAQ WAR, Lenten Reflections

I am trying to get a fantastic chapter transcribed on faith and peace-making written by Father John Dear. The chapter serves as the foreword to Henri Nouwen's Peacework. I hope to have that done before the war's anniversary and maybe even before Ash Wed. It might be a good read for some who are hoping to ground their peace work in some kind of deep reflection.

I see that the big days for possible action against the war are March 15 and March 19.

If I am not mistaken, March 15 is the Saturday before Palm Sunday in the Christian calendar. There are two passages in the lectionary on Sunday that are especially worthy of reflection here. The first is the simple request of Jesus to his disciples that they stay awake. To my mind, this request to stay awake in the face of imperialistic violence has a certain resonance in our current context. After five years--the second longest war I think I read--some are tired, some are despairing, some are fatigued and fearful. There is widespread pessimism I suspect. But the peace-makers among us ask us to stay awake.

The second piece I think is
26:50 Jesus said to him, "Friend, do what you are here to do." Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and arrested him.
26:51 Suddenly, one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear.
26:52 Then Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword."

Look at how beloved the agent of imperialist domination is in the sight of Jesus. He calls him 'friend.' Then of course the sword and the lesson therein of Jesus. But I'm especially struck by this word, "friend." No matter what you do, Jesus seems to be saying, I will remain a peace-filled compassionate force.

March 19, if I am not mistaken, is Maundy Thursday. The one who had taught in his moment of difficulty that even the agent of imperialism and violence is to be called friend now shows what that kind of friendship looks like in the washing of the feet, in humility and solidarity. And the simple message of the day is everyone can glorify what is holy and good because everyone can love.

I should think that a peace-based holy week set of liturgies, ecumenical as possible, might be important for the community. In fact, I believe Father John Dear has a lenten reflection somewhere out there. And I believe that there are some Unitarian lenten reflections (called meditation manuals, but they come out twice a year and they used to correspond to Lent and Advent) that involve the peace-making invitation always before us. There are also other holy days in other traditions (muhammed's birthday I believe is in that time period; the day marked for the teachings of the Buddha, etc). Oh, the possibilities.

In good old inclusive radical peace-filled and hope-filled faith, Roger

My first Interview

2007-10-06T19:03:00.000-05:00

An imagined conversation where someone is asking me
some questions about the nature of my faith.

What does it mean for you to say “I am a person of faith?”

First and foremost, it means to me that we can know, as the Psalmist says, ‘the goodness of the holy in the land of the living.’ It means that I recognize that the world does not revolve around me. It means that I, in my coming and going, attempt to live a life of integrity and goodness, while recognizing that I need to both receive and give a sense of grace and strive for reconciliation. I am a person of faith, because I believe, with a sense of urgency, that we are all brothers and sisters and that we are somehow connected one to another and to all creation.

What is the nature of your faith? Upon what does it depend?

I believe in a God whose primary characteristics, based on my experiences and learnings, are compassion and creativity. With Paul Tillich, I affirm that God is ‘being-itself.’ With Henry Nelson Wieman, I say that God is ‘creative event’ and ‘goodness.’ My faith rests upon the idea that at the heart of all creation there is a goodness. That goodness is definitive. God is this process which works through and in nature and humanity. In order to receive God, or experience God, one must experience the creative interchange that is possible between and among humans and all of creation. I hope that my thinking and believing is always open to growth and development and reconsideration. I attempt to live my life in this way. Having said that, I cannot imagine a faith that is not somehow dependent upon this kind of creative interchange. Even when I thwart or obstruct the goodness at the heart of all creation, which I have done more often than I would like, I still stand in awe of the possibility of moving toward the good in every situation, I still stand in awe of the possibility of reconciliation and wholeness.

You call yourself a UU Christian. You serve on the UUCF national board. Why?

I believe that Jesus points the way to this God of creativity and love in ways that surpass other prophets and teachers. I believe that the humanity of Jesus, his teachings and his life, are worth lifting up as a strong guide to the idea of coming to faith. When I see that Jesus is corrupted by political agendas that devalue life and the earth, I feel compelled to lift up the vision of Jesus who a) never asked someone who needed help anything about their theological beliefs, b) stood against empire and domination and oppression while maintaining a strong stance of non-violent witness; c) who stood against the moral guardians of the law in favor of a common sense approach to lifting up humanity and d) who still to this day provides in his teachings and his life the way of compassion and love.

Are there other influences on your faith?

So many: the powerful teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and Howard Thurman. The liberationist theologians of South America, especially Oscar Romero and Leonardo Boff. Father John Dear and the Berrigans. The religious humanists like Nancy Haley in Iowa City, Mark Stringer in Des Moines, Brian Eslinger in Ames, Fred Muir in Annapolis and Bill Murry formerly of Meadville Lombard Theological School. Jazz, especially Theolonius Monk. Annie Dillard. Mary Oliver. A perfect sunrise. The ocean. The mountains. The prairie.

Now, that I’ve said my piece. What do you say?

Roger