“Home is in the leaving”

Or, at least that's what the song I sang June 22 says. Even if it's true, the sentiment doesn't make leaving simpler. One of the things I need to do in order to be the best possible support for new leadership at this congregation and to establish my ministry with my new congregation is to bring my relationships with you to an end. In this age of social media, this includes "unfriending" UUFCM folks on Facebook. What an awful term! It does nothing to indicate that my concern and affection for you will continue even if our relationship must come to an end. However, sometime in the last weeks of July, I will stop showing up in your Facebook news feed and I'll be leaving the UUFCM Facebook group.

I'll be using some of my remaining vacation time for the last half of July. I'll be using that time to move and for Kristin and I to set up our home together in New York.  In the case of an emergency, you can still reach me by calling or texting me at my local phone number, (989) 941-6013 through the end of July.  

I know that good things are in store for you & UUFCM!  You are going into the next year with a much clearer sense of mission and of not just the possible challenges, but of your great strengths as a community fueled by love, transforming our lives and our world.

Blessings,
Joe

Outside the Box

It was wonderful to get outside the box and have our worship service at Island Park. Thanks to Kris Los for bringing the iced tea and water, and to Gisela & Tom Moffit and Hank Zeniewicz and others for helping get us set up for the worship and the picnic.

As I was putting the bin with the worship supplies into my car, I was thinking, “It's church in a box! Totally portable!”  

It certainly makes things easier when there is a box to put those things in. Then I know right where things are and it makes it easier to make use of them. And it makes them portable – I can bring those resources where I might need them.

I love a good box. Anyone who has moved with any frequency loves a good box. I've moved four times in the last five years and, in advance of another move, I'm box hunting again. I'll go out of my way for a good box, something with a lid and handles, and I'll store it carefully when I'm done using it, making sure it's ready when I need to use it again.

But we can get too fond of our boxes, just like anything else. We really get into trouble when we like a box so much that we pack ourselves inside it. It's such a comfortable box, we just make a home for ourselves in there.  I've certainly done this in literal ways, holing up in my room when I was young, and figurative ways, too. It's hard to see it when we've boxed ourselves up figuratively. We tend to forget we're in a box, that there is any “outside” out there, that there is any other way to be.

One of the most damaging ways we've boxed ourselves up is in the ideology of male entitlement. But it was heartening to me to see the #YesAllWomen hashtag go viral last week. Initially, the shooting and violence in Isla Vista was represented as the work of a crazed lunatic, someone not like us – someone not in our box, someone who could be boxed up separately from the rest of us, the rest of us who are not in a box.

But then a million and more women posted their experiences of violence, misogyny and male entitlement with the hashtag #YesAllWomen. And in a manner of days, it was clear how boxed up we are. None of those #YesAllWomen incidents are isolated. They are all of the box that we have been living in. And the way that reality became so clear so quickly to so many gives me hope.

May we continue to blow the lid off of the boxes in which we've packed ourselves!

Blessings,
Joe

P.S. Just a note that I will be preaching only two more sermons at UUFCM, one this Sunday, June 8, and the other on June 15. From June 20-30 I will be in Providence, RI, attending UU Ministers' Association events and General Assembly. When I return, I'll lead the summer service on July 6 and Kristin and I will attend the service on July 13. I'll then use my remaining vacation time to drive our rental truck full of boxes to Saratoga Springs, NY.

Thank you to everyone for the support and love that you've shown to me since I announced that I would be leaving Mount Pleasant. I am going to miss you.

I was the guest preacher Tuesday night at St. John's Episcopal Church, our neighboring faith just a few blocks to the southwest. It was an honor to be invited to be part of their Holy Week services. We need allies in this community – and we need to be in community with people who believe and practice differently than we do. It keeps us honest. We Unitarian Universalists can approach faith with a sort of smorgasbord approach, taking what we like and ignoring the dishes we don't like. But I believe that to the extent we approach faith this way, we do so to our own detriment. There is a lot in the world that it might be nice to ignore. It would be nice to live in a world where anti-semitic white supremacists don't exist, but they do, and we must contend with that. And when it comes to religious scripture and difficult stories, those stories and how they've been interpreted have played a significant role in shaping the world in which we find ourselves. We must contend with them. So I asked our friends at St. John's not to shy away from the difficult story of the passion of Jesus. That story and its legacies we must contend with.

You can read my remarks here.

By the way, the most compelling way I know of to read the story of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus is by way of some of the theories of René Girard, a anthropological philosopher. He reads the story as revealing the violence at the center of a strategy for founding community. It equips us with the ability to see when that dynamic is at work, and so to be able to call it out and commit ourselves to a new way to create community based in love and justice. I was introduced to his ideas in seminary, but recently ran across an excellent presentation of those ideas by a UU minister. If you'd like to learn more, read a sermon called “The Jesus Mystery” by the UU minister Tom Schade.

Today is Ash Wednesday in the Christian calendar, the beginning of Lent. I don't doubt that today you will see many people with the mark of ashes on their forehead. And you've probably been part of, or at least overheard, a conversation where someone is trying to decide what to give up for Lent. Someone may have even asked you what you are giving up for Lent.  For those of us who don't think of ourselves as Christian and have negative associations with the trappings of Christianity, this can be an awkward moment. The flippant answer I used to give was that I was giving up Lent for Lent.

But it is clear to me that adopting some sort of discipline, some sort of practice, can help me to clarify what is important to me and where my faith lies.

I've decided to give up something during Lent, and I invite you to join me. I'm giving up keeping my faith life a secret. I've often wondered how my life would have been different if I had known about Unitarian Universalism earlier. So during Lent this year, I'm going make sure that I wear a chalice pin or some other UU symbol every day. Maybe it will be a conversation-starter. I don't want Unitarian Universalism or this congregation to be the best-kept secret in town! And when a conversation turns to values or beliefs or justice, I'm not going to hide how these are rooted in and informed by my Unitarian Universalist faith.

Those of you who are members of the congregation most likely received a pin when you were welcomed into membership by the congregation. Dig it out of the cup of loose change on your dresser and put it on! This may even feel like an act of bravery. As a teenaged Catholic, it sure felt like an act of bravery to walk around for a day with a smudged cross of ashes on my head. Surely I can wear an attractive little pin that symbolizes a faith tradition and religious community that I've grown to love. 

If you can't find yours or you would like a pin, several nice ones are available through the UUA Bookstore. If that's not in your budget, get in touch with me and I'll help.

Blessings!

Thank you for singing along with me about the wastes of cosmic slime and life risen out of mire last Sunday! There are many startling images in that hymn, which is a setting of a poem by Don Marquis he called "Unrest" and wrote in 1925. Unitarian Universalism is a faith that aspires to be open to change. But even for one who claims to be open to change, it is pretty bold to claim: