“What I Can Do”
by Mary Oliver
 
The television has two instruments that control it.
I get confused.
The washer asks me, do you want regular or delicate?
Honestly, I just want clean.
Everything is like that.
I won’t even mention cell phones.
 
I can turn on the light of the lamp beside my chair
where a book is waiting, but that’s about it.
 
Oh yes, and I can strike a match and make fire.
 
This poem speaks to me today because it feels like everything is complicated. Computers, online shopping, Facebook, email. Complicated. The simplicity of a book seems old fashioned, although there were times in my life when that was the primary technology that I engaged with. Now, sad to say, I’m more likely to read things on my phone than to sit down and read a book.
 
Mary Oliver’s line about the washing machine makes me laugh. And her last line about making a fire is affirming. Reading a book may be simple, but fire is more simple still. Elemental. Watching a fire burn is the opposite of complicated. The poem’s title reminds me that this is my choice: I can keep engaging with my technology; I can keep engaging with a consumerist busy world of noise and stress--or I can make simpler choices.
 
I try to make time every day for spiritual practice: playing music, going for a walk, writing in my journal, or meditation. This is the antidote to the complicated world. Done mindfully, my spiritual practice grounds me in simplicity and reminds me of what is important. Like lighting a fire. Like reading a book.
 
PRAYER
God of Life and Love, Still Small Voice Within, hear my prayer.
 
May I take the time to listen in stillness. May I have the wisdom to turn off the cell phone and take a break from the computer and the radio, the car and the errands.
 
Divine One, I know that you are always there when I take time to see you, to hear you, to look within, to feel the breath, to hear the wind.
 
May simplicity bless me, and bless everyone. Amen.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz

​About twenty years ago, I was part of CATSS (Community Action To Save Strays), a local catch-neuter-release program in the small town I was living in. CATSS would sometimes get called when a box of kittens was dumped in someone’s driveway. We would take in the newborn kittens, bottle feed them, and try to find them homes when they were old enough. At one time my partner and I had more than a dozen cats and kittens in our home…which wasn’t sustainable. And with two small children in the house and two cat-loving adults, we sometimes fell in love with the kittens and kept them…which wasn’t sustainable either. This is how I got Ruby and Alice.
 
When I divorced from my partner and moved out, we divided the furniture—and the cats. Ruby and Alice came with me to my new home. They moved with me three years later when I moved in with my new partner Mary…then they moved again a year after that, when Mary and I came to Michigan.
 
Alice disappeared a few months ago and never came back. Sometimes that’s how our relationship with a cat ends. They disappear.
 
Ruby died this week, and her end was more definite. After she didn’t show up for two meals in a row, I searched the house and finally found her under the couch. This was one of her secret sleeping places, except this time she never woke up. Sometimes that’s how our relationship with a cat ends. The cat’s time comes, the cat goes and lies down to die.
 
Ruby was a good cat and a loving companion to me for 19 years. Her death is a reminder that grief is the price we pay for love.

A year ago, in January 2020, the UU Fellowship of Central Michigan held its annual congregational retreat and decided that the social justice focus for the year would be on voting rights and the environment. A year later, where do we stand? Do we continue those two priorities? With the election over, does voting rights still make sense? In today’s world, are there different priorities we didn’t see a year ago?
 
My role as the Fellowship’s minister is not to tell the congregation how to organize your efforts, but to support you in doing so. My role is nourish the spirit of the congregation in its thirst for social justice; and to encourage the congregation to think and act from the place of moral and spiritual conviction: that every person is worthy; that all are interconnected; that we are obliged to serve justice with love.
 
I think we are all catching our breath after the inauguration of a new president. We are taking stock of the events of January 6 and what it means to have armed militias as part of the fabric of American society; and to have a large minority of the country brainwashed into believing crazy conspiracy theories. This is the new normal that we are grappling with, even as we glimpse that we have a chance to control the COVID 19 outbreak. We are in a moment of taking stock, seeing the world as it is now—and deciding what we are called to do in response.
 
Our social justice response to the world of 2021 will be rooted in love and in Unitarian Universalist principles. As the congregation discerns what that is, I will be ready to support and lead the efforts as best I can.
 
PRAYER
Spirit of Life and Love, Justice-loving God, hear this prayer.
 
The world is different from what we thought we knew. We see rioters and militia in Lansing and in Washington; we see QAnon conspiracists in congress.
 
The world is just as we have always known: people are decent and loving. People want to be safe and loved in their families and communities.
 
God of love and justice, help us to see both truths: that people are goo; and that people are dangerous when deceived, fearful, and hurt.
 
Spirit of Infinite Love, guide us into the work of greater justice with determination, compassion, and humility.
 
Aho. Amen.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz

The congregation made a special vote last week to call me as a settled minister, an invitation which I gladly accepted on Sunday during the worship service. Although I have been serving the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Central Michigan as full-time minister for 17 months already, up until now my status was “contract minister.” The move to “settled minister” means that this is understood by both minister and congregation to be a long-term commitment. In employment terms, it’s like a college professor being granted tenure. In spiritual terms, here’s how the Unitarian Universalist Association defines settled ministry: The minister is understood to be a professional serving with the people of the congregation to further the purposes of the congregation’s ministries.
 
In other words, the spiritual health and well-being of the congregation, and the fulfillment of the congregation’s mission, are my responsibility in full partnership with every member and friend of the congregation.
 
Even though I had a good feeling that I would be staying, this official act makes it sink in much more deeply: I can settle into this work, and into my pastoral relationship with the congregation, much more fully. In the first year and a half you all have come to know me pretty well—the bad along with the good. I have come to know you pretty well—the strengths of the congregation along with the challenges. And I am getting to know the Mount Pleasant community pretty well–what it has to offer and what it needs from this Fellowship.
 
Now it is time to get down to work: the work of community, the work of mutual care and safety, the work of love and justice, the work of spiritual awakening and deepening. I’m excited for the future we will create together.
 
PRAYER
Spirit of Life and Love, bless the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Central Michigan. Bless every person who enters its doors and who join on its Zoom calls. Bless the founders and the early visionaries who created this Fellowship; bless those who sustained it through the years; and bless those who are its current members, friends, and visitors.
 
Bless those who served as spiritual leaders to this Fellowship over the years, whether they were called reverend, minister, worship leader, some other title—or no title at all, for true leaders need no title.
 
May the Fellowship thrive long past those of us who now serve it and call it home. May this living congregation be a light of truth, hope, love, and equity today and as far down the path as we can imagine.
 
May it be so.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz