I think of this as the first and only pandemic I have experienced--and I thought until recently that this is true for all of us. Who has already lived through a global pandemic?
 
And then I received a message from a fellow UU minister entitled, “Lessons from my first pandemic.” He is referring to the AIDS crisis. With the wisdom that comes from surviving that dangerous time, he offers these four points:
 
• I choose to live with caution and not in fear. Fear causes me to be constantly reactive to possibility and suggestion and not present to the here and now. Caution allows me to make conscious choices that enable me to assess risk in every situation.
• Balance is important. Risk assessment includes physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. If I try to protect my body in ways that sacrifice my emotional needs, I’m more likely to make a dangerous choice at some point to meet my emotional distress.
• We are all connected. My choices impact my community. As much as I’m trying to protect myself, I’m also trying to protect others. Testing and safety precautions matter.
• Everyone makes different choices. It is up to each of us to assess our own levels of risk. I need to set clear boundaries for myself and ask that those boundaries be respected. Trying to persuade others to have my boundaries is often not worth the effort.
-Rev. Darrick Jackson, Director of Ministries for Lifelong Learning, UU Ministers Association
 
I am grateful for the wisdom and perspective of Rev. Darrick. The second point about Balance strikes me especially. In leadership conversations at the UU Fellowship of Central Michigan, this notion of balancing health risks versus the spiritual and emotional benefits of gathering in person is always present. I love Rev. Darrick’s point that if I go too far in the direction of safety, I may sacrifice my emotional and spiritual needs--and then do something more risky later to make up for it.
 
This feels very relevant to me right now. For the past two and a half weeks I’ve been in near isolation: I’m doing all of my work at my home office instead of the UUFCM building; Sunday worship is on Zoom; I leave the house only to take a walk or do errands. Yet I received a visit from my adult children last weekend. This felt clearly in line with the balance I want and need—if any risk is worth it, that one is. And, others may not have chosen what I did.
 
What choices are you weighing? How are you balancing your spiritual and emotional needs with the health risks of exposure to COVID? How are you setting boundaries and communicating those boundaries to others? What help do you need in navigating this pandemic and keeping your body, mind and spirit healthy?
 
PRAYER:
Source of All, guide us as we navigate this round of the COVID crisis.
May we lean on the wisdom of ourselves and others who have been through hard times.
May be balance our risks and our needs.
May we protect ourselves and others.
May we honor one another’s boundaries and choices.
May we ask for help when we need it.
Amen.
 
Rev. Drew Frantz
January 20, 2022

Every week I get an email message from Richard Rohr, a Christian spiritual leader who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico. The reflections and prayers that Father Richard sends out sometimes feel like just another email in my inbox. And, I try to take the time to appreciate these messages because there is always some wisdom, some peace, and a loving perspective contained there. Today I’m passing on to you a thought from this week’s email. This is not Father Richard directly, but the words of Christine Valters Paintner that he featured in his reflections this week:
 
How often do we really see another person as the beautiful gift they are? Perhaps this happens sometimes with those we love, where we are caught in a moment of grace and see them in all their wondrousness and feel full of gratitude for their presence in our lives.
* * *
We can also bring this practice out into the world. How often do we really see another person beneath their role, under our expectations? What if we paused at the grocery store and for a moment brought eyes of love to the stock clerk or the cashier. They don’t have to know what you’re doing. You don’t have to stare, just take in their image, then close your eyes for a moment, breathe, and bathe them with love. Pause and see the other person as beloved and beautiful as they indeed truly are.
 
[Christine Valters Paintner, Breath Prayer: An Ancient Practice for the Everyday Sacred (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2021), 165–166. Quoted on the Center for Action and Contemplation website at https://cac.org/]
 
The author Christine Valters Paintner invites us to see the other as a gift, as beloved, as beautiful and perfect. The other, she says, can be a cherished loved one as well as a stranger. We are all invited to see how beautiful and perfect our human companions in this life are. And I was thinking that surely this applies to seeing ourselves in the mirror, affirming the beauty and perfection we find there.
 
I had a moment to reflect on this today. I was listening again to a favorite song that I shared last Sunday in worship: “Seed” by Emma’s Revolution. I don’t have the personal beauty or the gorgeous voice of that singer, I was thinking. And then I realized that I have my own beauty and my own voice. So do you. So does your spouse, so does your baby; so does the nurse who cares for you and so does the person who delivers the mail to your door.
 
This is an everyday practice of gratitude and love that Christine Valters Paintner invites us into: to appreciate a person we are with, appreciate their wholeness, and to exercise our human capacity to love. Bathe the person in love, she says. I invite us to do that for ourselves as well.
 
PRAYER
Great Spirit, Wisdom deep within me, hear this prayer. May I remember to appreciate and love those around me. May I take the mindful moment to see the beauty of the next person I encounter. May I hold this love and appreciation for myself next time I see myself in the mirror or on the Zoom screen. May love bless us all.
Amen.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz
January 12, 2022

May I rest in the stillness of Winter.
May I cherish my body, my dreams and intuitions.
Guide me from fear to courage.
Teach me to see deep into the mirror of my soul.
-Winter Mudra by Karen Hering
 
The words above go along with a series of motions—thus it is a mudra—and you can find a video of Karen Hering leading and explaining the mudra here:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUQoj5HwUhU
 
This speaks to me today, as winter seems to have settled in with cold and snow and wind over the last few days. I opened the window blinds yesterday to see flurries of puffy snowflakes.
 
The post-holiday time reminds me every year that Christmas and Yule mark the beginning of winter. The long cold of January and February are before us. This week the stillness and isolation of winter are increased dramatically: because of the COVID omicron surge, I am taking all of my meetings online and moved my base of operations from the Fellowship building to my home office. I have voluntarily decreased the bubble of my physical interactions.
 
The gift of winter and of darkness is the stillness. The quiet. The sacred beauty of falling snow that insists you slow down and listen to it. As I write this, I’m in a darkened room in my home; it’s after dinner and very dark outside. In the summer this hour would be full daylight.
 
What does the stillness of winter teach you? What are your dreams and intuitions? We are all forced to retreat into quiet and darkness by the COVID outbreak and by the cold weather. I believe the winter has gifts for us if we open ourselves to them.
 
PRAYER:
Gentle Goddess, bringer of snow, thank you. I accept the winter time as a reminder to slow down.
May we all reflect on what is most important. May we seek and find wisdom within ourselves  in this cold season.
Blessed be.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz
January 6, 2022

This is Christmas week. In my home, that means decorating a blue spruce in my living room that I cut down at Vander Sys tree farm a few days ago. It means Christmas shopping and making plans for a trip to Ohio to see family and friends…as health precautions allow.
 
In the UU Fellowship of Central Michigan, Christmas week means a special service on Christmas Eve. Although we are not a Christian religion, the roots of Unitarianism and Universalism are Christian. Also, a majority of the congregation has an affiliation with Christian traditions through family and upbringing. Therefore Christmas Eve is the one non-Sunday worship service that is on the Fellowship calendar consistently every year. This year, due to COVID, we are trying something new: an outdoor-only Christmas Eve service that allows us to sing our favorite Christmas carols together and to hold lighted candles as we sing “Silent Night.” I’m hoping for good weather.
 
As we celebrated Hanukkah earlier this month; as we celebrated Yule a few days ago; as we will celebrate Kwanzaa next Sunday, and New Years’s Eve after that, Christmas is one of the holidays in the American Winter Holiday Cycle. I got that phrase from Rev. Mary Grigolia, who devised a spiritual practice for this season called 12 Days. It is a series of daily reflection questions for the twelve days from the winter solstice to New Year’s Day, an invitation to use the quiet time, the dark time, the holiday time, the end of year time to reflect and take stock of our lives. I’ve been doing that spiritual practice for several years.
 
Whatever your spiritual practice these days, I hope that you find peace in this time. Maybe you have a few days of well-deserved vacation. Maybe you are gathering with family from nearby or form far away. If it is part of your tradition, maybe you are engaged with Christmas rituals this week. I hope that this season brings you good health and that you know you are loved and never alone.
 
PRAYER:
Spirit of Life and Love, may we use this season of darkness and winter holidays to rest, to heal, to reflect. May we find peace and joy in Christmas this week, in Kwanzaa next week, in every holiday we encounter. May every day be a blessing and an opportunity to connect with one another and with the divine within.
 
May it be so.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz
December 23, 2021
 
I will be taking a break from writing the minister’s column next week.
Look for another column on Thursday, January 6.

COVID has hit closer to me in recent days. A family member tested positive for the first time. They were vaccinated and it is thankfully a mild case. The cousin of a friend of mine died from COVID this week. They were also vaccinated, and they were an older person. Not surprisingly, the pandemic feels different when it hits someone close to me than when it is just numbers that I read about in the news. I feel scared and sad. I also feel sad and angry that so many unvaccinated people are getting sick in recent months here in Michigan. They are filling our hospitals and crowding out space and resources for other necessary health care. As we all know, almost all of those hospitalized for COVID are unvaccinated.
 
The omicron variant of the coronavirus comes at a time when Michigan overall, and Isabella County specifically, are at a sustained level of crisis already. Early research suggests that this new variant is more contagious but less deadly. Still, it may make things even worse this winter.
 
When the COVID task force for this congregation met a couple of weeks ago, we recommended to the Board of Trustees that we shut down in-person worship for the first two weeks of January. The Board agreed and has voted to do so. This will be the first time since starting hybrid worship in August that we are fully online. This step backward is an appropriate one given the fear of the new variant and the likelihood that people will travel for Christmas and New Year’s. The plan is to stay home for a couple of weeks after the holidays and keep our germs to ourselves.
 
Each of us has a personal experience with this pandemic, depending on how it has touched our circle of family and friends; and how we interact with others in public and in private. And we have a collective experience of COVID, reacting to the same news at the local and national level. May we continue to navigate the challenges of this health crisis, individually and together, with grace and wisdom and courage.
 
PRAYER:
Beloved god, we ask for mercy and for strength. This prayer is for all the vaccinated and all the unvaccinated. For the young and the old. For those who have had COVID and those who are afraid of getting it.
 
Spirit of Life, source of strength and mercy within, grant us the patience and the resolve to keep being safe for ourselves and our neighbors. To wear our masks and get our booster shots. To make good choices about where and when we gather with others.
 
May the health care workers get the rest and support they need. May they know that they are appreciated. May the public health officials, the scientists and researchers, and the politicians be blessed with wisdom and resolve.
 
May we all embrace life day by day, enjoying our good health while we have it. May we be grateful for the time we have and the loved ones with whom we share this life.
 
Blessed be.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz
December 17, 2021

"The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described Beloved Community as one of unconditional love, which seeks the fullest unfolding of the personality of every person. In the Beloved Community, racism, poverty, and discrimination would not be tolerated and would instead be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of kinship.
…
To do the work of culture change, to live into antiracist, antioppressive, multicultural practices of the Beloved Community, we need abiding compassion, grace, and practices of solidarity and mutuality. And…the liberation we all need starts with centering the leadership and experiences of those most directly impacted by systemic racism and oppression."
 
-Rev. Dr. Susan Frederick-Gray, President, Unitarian Universalist Association
 
The quotation above is taken from UUWorld, the quarterly publication of Unitarian Universalism. This arrived in my mailbox last week, and comes to everyone who is an official member of a UU congregation such as ours. I have been inspired by Rev. Susan’s leadership throughout her presidency, and I find her words here to be a guidepost leading forward.
 
This concept of Beloved Community comes to us from Dr. King and it resonates fully with Unitarian Universalist values and principles. Last week I invoked this idea when I was leading a Hanukkah service and exploring the tension of doing so as a non-Jew. Creating a space to celebrate Hanukkah in a UU congregation gives a chance for the people who identify as Jewish (or have Jewish traditions in their personal lives) to be seen more fully for who they are; and gives the non-Jews in the congregation a chance to learn and appreciate something outside of their cultural/religious heritage. This is—if we do it right—a moment of living into Beloved Community. It allows for “the fullest unfolding of the personality of every person” in “an all-inclusive spirit of kinship.” Such moments abound in a community such as this congregation—opportunities to see one another in our fullness, our difference, our uniqueness.
 
Unitarian Universalism, being a multifaith religion without a single sacred text or single belief about the divine, sometimes struggles to articulate what we do believe in. This framing of Beloved Community works very well for me. Isn’t this something we can all support? A world of love where our interest and appreciation for each other crowds out our tendency to “other” someone different from ourselves. A community in which we all feel safe expressing our full selves. This is the vision and hope of our religious movement.
 
PRAYER:
Spirit of Life and Love, known as God, as Allah, as Goddess, as Yahweh, as the voice of truth within, be with me now. Bless the leadership and loving ministry of Susan Frederick-Gray to this nationwide and worldwide movement of Unitarian Universalism. Bless the enduring hopeful vision of brother Martin Luther King, Jr. who dared to speak up for love again and again in the face of hate.
 
May we take our place among and beside these leaders, speaking for love and inclusion and compassion.
 
May it be so.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz
December 9, 2021

I am shocked and saddened, again, by a deadly school shooting here in Michigan this week. A 15 year-old, as I read today, killed four of his fellow students with a handgun purchased by his father a few days before. Adding to the tragedy, the shooter had posted threats on social media and the parents had been called in to the school to talk to the counselor earlier that same day.
 
These tragedies are understandably political, because no other nation in the world has this problem—no other nation has the gun laws we have, nor the rabid pro-gun faction that has political power far beyond its numbers.
 
Yet this is a personal tragedy.
 
Four teenagers have been killed. These are beautiful and promising young lives, children treasured by parents and loved ones, gone in a moment of senseless violence. We lament and mourn for their loss. This is a community tragedy, where Oxford, Michigan joins the list of places across the United States that have become famous as sites of deadly mass shootings. And this is a tragedy for the young man who committed this unthinkable violence. What combination of mental illness and anger and despair drove him to do this? Why couldn’t he be led to the help he needed before turning violent?
 
We are a generation of Americans who have lived to see these events as commonplace. Students now experience lockdown drills and active shooter drills regularly. We are traumatized as a nation by this repeated violence.
 
The need for healing is enormous. What can we do to heal ourselves from the trauma of public gun violence? How can we heal the young people in our lives? I have only one answer—that it begins with love. Increasing love in yourself through self-care, prayer, meditation. Increasing love between yourself and those around you through compassion and kindness. Supporting communities and institutions that teach love, that embody compassion, that have kindness as a core value. When we exercise our will and energy to love, we help to heal both directly and indirectly. We help to create a world without violence.
 
PRAYER:
God of Love and Healing, be with us now. Our brothers and sisters, our siblings and friends in Oxford are hurting. Our nation sees another episode of gun violence and asks why.
 
Spirit of Love, be with those who are scared. Be with those who were injured. Be especially with the families of those who were killed: fill them with love. Let love surround the grieving and the mourning.
 
May tragedy and violence remind all of us that we must love to heal, that we must love to counteract aggression.
 
Blessed be.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz
December 2, 2021

A week from today will be Thanksgiving, and I take this moment to reflect on what I am grateful for. As a few flakes of snow fall outside my window and the temperatures have settled into the 30’s, I am grateful for the heat in my house—and grateful to have a roof over my head. As the COVID surge continues and Michigan has the highest percentage of cases in the nation, I am grateful for my health. In 20 months of this pandemic, only one member of my family circle has come down with COVID, and he recovered. For so many families, that is not true.
 
Indeed, the pandemic puts a whole new light on Thanksgiving. Last year we didn’t dare gather with family members because there was no vaccine. This year I know many families that are considering whether to gather based on the vaccinated status of their loved ones.
 
Family is what I’m most grateful for. I’m thankful to have a loving spouse. I’m thankful that my kids live within a half day’s drive. I’m thankful that the relationships with my siblings have deepened during the pandemic: the six of us gather on Zoom every Sunday from four different states and two different countries. I’m grateful that I can check in with my dad and step-parents on that same Zoom call; and for my mother, I’m grateful to the caregivers and hospice workers who care for her every day as she enters the next stage of her journey.
 
Finally, I’m grateful for the ministry work I’ve been called to do and the chance to do it here. This work carries the challenge and fulfillment of encountering people in need of support and offering what I can to them. This work includes the beauty of relationships that are evolving and deepening within the congregation. This work challenges me to bring my best self emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually every day. I have joy of seeing this congregation grow, and the joy of connecting with Unitarian Universalists across the state and the nation, deepening my sense of this sacred and life-affirming movement.
 
As Thanksgiving arrives, I hope that everyone is able to pause and reflect on gratitude. May we see that each day, each breath, is a gift we are given.
 
PRAYER:
Divine Light in the universe, present in the waning sunlight of these late fall days, present in the light of the full moon, present in the candle flame and the hearth fire, be here now.
 
May the light of love and truth fall upon each of us this harvest season. May the light of love and warmth bless every family with no exceptions. May all know that they are held in love.
 
May it be so.
 
Rev. Andrew (Drew) Frantz
November 18, 2021

Here is one of my favorite poems. It’s by e. e. cummings. He didn’t give his poems titles, but this one is usually referred to as “Loneliness: a Leaf Falls.” I hope you will be able to see it on your electronic screen the way that the poet intended to present it on paper:
 
 
l(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness
 
 
I love the way that this poem uses just four words to combine a feeling (loneliness) with an image (a leaf falling). I love how e. e. cummings broke all the rules of poetry to create his own art form. In this poem, I notice that the shape of the letters on the page are like a leaf fluttering down through the air and then landing. I also notice that the two “L’s” together in the fifth line look like two people together, and the single “L” in the second to last line looks like a person alone. I honor Professor Larry Daub, because it was in his college poetry class that I first encountered and learned to appreciate this poem.
 
This poem is appropriate today as the leaves are falling and have fallen in my yard and my neighborhood. Today I walked through sidewalks thick with leaves—bright yellow; bright red; red and yellow with a few green ones sprinkled on top. My feet go shush shush through the leaves. I love that! When I came to my sacred spot in the woods where two giant oaks stand, their leaves were a golden russet brown, thick on the ground and falling steadily through the air.
 
In contrast to the above poem that I celebrate so much, the feeling that I have on this day of falling leaves is not loneliness. I feel mostly joy and connection with nature. On the other hand, I was alone on my walk and I know that for me to be healthy I need connection with other people. I think we all do.
 
If you are feeling lonely, I hope you will reach out. I believe that connection is possible and that there are people who care. If the autumn leaves are falling where you are, I invite you to experience their beauty in whatever way is accessible to you.
 
PRAYER:
Sprit of Life and Love, Spirit of Beauty, be here now.
May we all find ways to appreciate the beauty around us. May we know that we are connected to trees and to earth in this time of changing seasons.
May those who are lonely find companionship. May every human being know that they are not alone and that they are loved.
May it be so.
 
Rev. Andrew (Drew) Frantz
November 11, 2021

The weather turned cold enough this week that I got my winter coat out for the first time. The Magician in me loves storing things in the many pockets of this coat, and there they were: tissues and lip balm; gloves; a face mask--so that’s where that purple one has been all these months!
 
The day was November 2, which Mexicans call Dia de los Muertos and Pagans call Samhain and astronomers know as the day exactly halfway from the fall equinox to the winter solstice. Because of the tilt of our planet and my location on the northern hemisphere, this day is the beginning of the dark quarter of the year. Noting the day’s spiritual significance, on this day I began a new commitment to practice yoga and meditation every day from now until December 21.
 
November 2 was also Election Day this year. There were only two items on the ballot in my district: a city commission race and a school levy. The polling place was quiet. However, my reflections on elections elsewhere today—and on the election a year ago today--are disquieting. A year ago I spent Election Day as a poll watcher in a Detroit suburb. I experienced the tension of activists and officials from both sides verbally clashing; I remember the stressful days and nights waiting for the votes to be counted in Arizona and Pennsylvania and Georgia. This week, I watched with growing worry as the Virginia’s governor race was decided in favor of a candidate who used racial fear about schools as a key issue. I agree with Charles M. Blow, who writes in today’s New York Times that this is the latest iteration in a long line of issues that white Americans use as a vehicle for their racial anxiety about Black, Indigenous, and People of Color—from the war on drugs to the fear of immigrants to Critical Race Theory in schools.
 
Election Day has come and gone for another year – now we return to the work of building the society of love and equity that we dream of, including holding accountable whoever is in elected office. The Day of the Dead has come and gone for another year – and we continue, every day, to remember our loved ones who have passed on, to heal any old wounds and to be blessed by their memory. The cycle of the year turns: weather is colder, daylight is shorter day by day. Our time is what we make of it, through intention and connection.
 
PRAYER:
Beloved Goddess/God, present in the sunshine on the fallen leaves, bless me now with the courage to do what I can do in my work and in my family and in my time alone, to spread love in this world. May all who live in the North of this planet embrace the growing dark in this season.
 
May all who vote in elections be moved by the purest intention to improve human society; and may those elected fulfill their sacred duty with integrity and transparency and humility.
 
May it be so.
 
Rev. Andrew (Drew) Frantz
November 4, 2021