Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Central Michigan
Minister’s Column
 
In the news this week is a series of university student protests against Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza. This prompted me to look up the statement on the conflict from the Unitarian Universalist Association, and to reflect on war and protest in general.
 
The students are demanding an end to the military operation, and also a divestment from Israeli businesses on the part of the university. For me this recalls the (much milder) protest in the late 1980’s when I was in college: we were calling on our university to divest from South Africa in protest of the apartheid government. And it recalls an earlier generation of (much stronger) protests: the quintessential campus protests of the late 1960’s against the Vietnam war. The death of students on May 4, 1970, at Kent State University remains an infamous moment from that era—and its anniversary is this week. I just listened to an NPR story comparing the protests then and now, pointing out that today’s protests so far are much less disruptive. Still, today I hear that some students are being arrested or expelled in the protests.
 
Turning to the UUA, their website contains this statement from February, attributed to the leadership of the Association:

This conflict has been ongoing for months. For myself and maybe for many of us, it has receded from my attention, until the student protests in the news have brought it to the forefront. As in the Vietnam era, young people are acting as the conscience of the nation and stirring up controversy in order to bring attention to the problem and to call for change. The urgency of the youth is paired with the wisdom I find in the leaders of the UUA. I’m grateful to both of these sources that call me back to attention and concern. My UU values and my UU organization ground me in call to prayer and action; the university protestors inspire me with their idealism and urgency.
 
PRAYER:
May all peace-loving gods hear this prayer.
May this prayer touch the instinct for peace within every human heart.
The voice of civilians in Gaza says, Enough! No more rockets and guns.
May life-giving services be restored to the people of Gaza.
May the wounds of war be healed.
May the world move one inch closer today—one heartbeat closer in every human heart—to the day when war and violence will cease.
To this end may we dare to hope. May we lift our voices in protest of war and in support of peace.
May it be so.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz
April 30, 2024

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Central Michigan
Minister’s Column
 
Today is Passover. The holiday started last night (Monday) at sunset. One of the high holidays of Judaism, Passover celebrates the exodus of Jews from Egypt, synonymous with their escape from slavery into freedom. As a Gentile (non-Jew), I have experienced a Passover seder only a few times. The ritual connection to the exodus is powerful. As a Unitarian Universalist minister, I am called to honor holidays from religious traditions around the world and to contemplate their meaning—both within their original religious context as well as in the broader context of human life.
 
One piece of the Passover story that I am connecting with now is the sense of home safety. As the story in the Torah goes, Jews marked their homes so that the Angel of Death would pass over them. The Angel of Death came with a plague that killed the first-born child in every house—but not the houses of the Jews that were marked. Some scholars think that the Jewish ritual of Passover is connected to a more ancient ritual of home protection, where people in a clan would mark their homes with a dab of goat’s blood as a protection against demons.
 
When I moved into my home here in Mount Pleasant, Michigan three years ago, I did a blessing of the home with a prayer. I have done the same for members of the congregation who move into a new home and ask for a blessing. Through such a ritual, we express a deep human longing for safety and security. The Passover holiday reminds us of this.
 
This is a universal meaning within the Passover holiday: the desire for safety. We want to know that our homes will shelter us and our loved ones. We take action to this end in physical ways: building a strong house, fixing the roof, locking our doors. And we take action as people of spirit: we pray for protection; we burn sage for cleansing; we exorcise demons from our homes. We use ritual tools including smoke, blood, and prayer. The ancient Jews and their even-more-ancient ancestors did this; modern Jews remember this, as memorialized in their sacred text and as kept alive in the yearly rituals of Passover. May every household be safe from curses and plagues. May traditions of solidarity and freedom endure.
 
PRAYER:
May the whole world celebrate and remember this day with the Jewish people.
May we honor the ancient story of Passover.
May we honor the traditions that hold Jewish families and communities together in Israel, in Michigan, and everywhere.
May every household be safe.
Blessed be.
Shalom.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz
April 23, 2024

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Central Michigan
Minister’s Column
 
Volunteerism has suffered a decline in recent months and years, as I often hear from my colleagues in ministry. On social media this week, one Unitarian Universalist minister was asking others of us what to do when no one volunteers to lead the Board of Trustees. Several of my colleagues had advice to offer because they had been through that situation in a UU congregation themselves. In this congregation, the UU Fellowship of Central Michigan, we have some volunteer fatigue as well. Although the nominating committee was able to find people willing to serve on the Board next year, some other committees are un-staffed or under-staffed.
 
In my sermon last Sunday, I offered my annual reflection about the stewardship drive: the yearly effort to ask members and friends of the congregation how they can support the Fellowship financially and through their volunteer time. In retrospect, I think my message was more about the financial contributions and less about volunteering time.
 
The wonderful thing about volunteering time in this Fellowship is that it tends to bring you into closer contact with others who also love this place and the work we do. Volunteers set up and clean up on Sunday morning and at special events like the monthly potluck dinner. Volunteers help with Sunday morning worship, with garden and building maintenance, with our children’s program, with workshops and discussions for adult members, and with committees including social justice and communications. In most cases, the volunteer work is collaborative rather than individual—causing you to spend more time with fellow seekers from this congregation.
 
When it comes to committee work (a subset of the volunteering that is necessary to keep UUFCM thriving), I don’t love emails, or Robert’s Rules of Order, or the other formalities of committee work. What I try to see, however, is that committee meetings are a chance to connect with others in the context of a shared goal. Recently I had a meeting with some people in the Fellowship about a topic we were disagreeing about. Even in that challenging context of disagreement, I looked forward to the meeting because I truly like the people I was meeting with. The same could be true of any kind of volunteer work that we engage in here: the members and friends of this Fellowship are people whom it is enjoyable and enriching to spend time with. Believing in the mission behind the work, and enjoying the people engaging in the work, volunteer work becomes a good way to spend time: a joy and not a chore.
 
At the spiritual level, doing volunteer work connects us with the deep truth that we need one another to survive. I serve you, you serve me—we each give what we can to an institution that serves us both. We work together and we are interconnected. To me, this is expressed in the following prayer, written by Matt Alspaugh:

PRAYER:
Breathe with me.
Know that with each breath we take in molecules of air
that were breathed by every person that ever lived.
Breathe with me,
and breathe the breath of Jesus, of Moses,
of Mohammed, of the Buddha.
Breathe with me,
and know that we are all interdependent,
that the spirit of life
flows through us all.
Breathe with me,
as we come together to do the holy work
of interconnection and relationship,
that our work here may be blessed.
Amen
 
Blessed be the words of Matt Alspaugh. May we all lean into our interconnectedness.
 
Rev. Drew Frantz
April 16, 2024

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Central Michigan
Minister’s Column
 
When I was a boy, my father took me with him on a journey to Winnipeg, Manitoba to see a total eclipse of the sun. I remember flying with him from Massachusetts to Minnesota; I remember driving north into Canada with my step-sister and step-mother who joined us; I remember the sheets of sun-proof film we looked through and the frozen lake where we viewed it.
 
This year the eclipse came to my father, so he didn’t have to travel anywhere: the path of totality passed through the part of Ohio where he lives. And although some other members of my family went to Ohio to see it, I decided to stay home in Michigan. So I got the free glasses from the library and decided to be content with whatever I could see from my own home—a partial eclipse.
 
The day could not have been more perfect, with warm April temperatures and a clear sky. By the time I went outside for my first look at the sun, it was already partially obscured. I spent the next two hours outside working in the garden and checking the sun every 10 minutes.
 
I was amazed by the fact that even a small crescent of the sun gives so much light. The quality of the sunshine during the peak of the eclipse at my house was similar to the quality of light when a cloud obscures the sun – but there were no clouds in the sky.
 
This makes me think of our power as humans, and I am reminded of the words of Marianne Williamson, showing that even a part of our power is powerful:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness
That most frightens us.
 
My other reflection from the partial solar eclipse was the connection and separation between the sky and the earth. I was going back and forth between gazing at the sun high in the sky – and being on my hands and knees in the garden, the first weeding and cleaning of garden beds this spring. My conclusion is that I must be both: I must be grounded in my connection to the earth, doing just what I can in this moment and not getting beyond my own abilities. Simultaneously, I must be connected with the heavens: with the celestial dance of the planets which I can barely grasp, the alignment of sun, earth and moon in the vastness of space; the glimpse of distances far beyond me and the suggestion of realities beyond me: life and death, the passage of time; the infinite stars.
 
As I sit in a coffee shop writing this column the day after the eclipse, cars are hurrying by on the road. The eclipse is over and no one today is stopping to put on special glasses and look up at the sun. Nor are those cars stopping to be present to the soil beneath our feet and our connection to Mother Earth. The lesson from the eclipse is to be grounded and to be connected to the heavens. May I remember that lesson with its humility and its grandeur.
 
PRAYER:
May the experience of the solar eclipse bring together humanity for a moment.
May we pause to reflect on what is important to us.
May we remember that we are connected to one another, and to the sun and stars.
May sunshine bless us. May we embrace each day as a gift.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz
April 9, 2024

Unitarian Universalist fellowship of Central Michigan
Minister’s Column
 
I was on spring break last week, and my study book for the week was Nothing Gold Can Stay…the colors of grief by Mark Belletini. Still dealing with my mother’s recent death, this book was a good choice for me to continue my grieving work. It has a series of short chapters such as Grief and Ritual, Grief and Theology, Grief and Life, and Grief and Anger. Each chapter is the author’s reflection on experiences of grieving in his personal life and in his life as a minister.
 
Returning from spring break, I led a memorial service on Saturday for Mitch Jones. He is the father of Aaron Jones; father-in-law of Katie Zapoluch; and grandfather of our young Felix Jones. With Felix and his cousins present, I wanted to say something at the memorial service appropriate to children: something that would explain death in a way understandable to six year-old and 15 year-old cousins who have just lost a grandparent. Everything living will die eventually: all animals, all plants. This is part of the cycle of life: just like every other animal, we live, we grow old, and finally we die. Sadness and other feelings are normal when someone dies, and there is no right way or wrong way to feel. Come to think of it, the messages about life and death that we give to a child might not be so different from the ones we give to adults. After thinking it over, I decided to give a blessing to the grandchildren of Mitch that they be aware of this person’s special place in the family and his influence on others.
 
With some deaths, there is a sense that it was the right time and perhaps even that it was welcome. For a person struggling with a long and difficult illness, there can be a sense of relief. And yes, Mark Belletini’s book has a chapter called Grief and Relief. He says,
 
"Relief is a significant chapter in the scrolls of grief. We need not feel ashamed or guilty about our sense of relief that accompanies the death of someone who has suffered. Yet as the story of my grandfather illustrates, people will experience relief from different vantage points. For my mother, who had witnessed his suffering, the relief was palpable. For me, who had not, the relief was more intellectual, something my head understood, certainly, but which my heart could not."
 
As I am learning from my personal experience of grief, and what I witness in other families in grief, it is messy and varied. Grief does not fit into a box. Different members of the same family will experience it differently, and any one person will experience many feelings / thoughts / moods in their grief journey. It is a quintessential part of being human, and a very curious one.
 
PRAYER:
May love and comfort come to all those touched by the death of Mitch Jones; by the death of Anne Frantz-Cook; by the death of Ed Damer.
May everyone grieving be touched by peace, by forgiveness, and by hope.
Blessed be.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz
April 2, 2024