I spent Memorial Day weekend in Ohio helping my father and step-mother settle into their new assisted living apartment. Moving and downsizing is a lot of work: the sorting and discarding, the packing and unpacking, arranging the new space. I counted my progress by the number of boxes emptied and put away.
 
A move like this, for two people in their eighties, has other challenges: allowing nursing staff to administer medications, eating in a common dining room instead of preparing your own food—and the mobility and cognitive struggles that make this move to assisted living necessary. At some point in the weekend it dawned on me that other work was happening besides moving boxes and organizing closets, and I had the presence of mind to ask my step-mother: What is the spiritual task for you around this move and this transition in your life?
 
I guess that’s what you get when you have a minister in the family.
 
Yesterday, returning to work after the long weekend, I was still thinking about progress and how we measure it. Sometimes I literally count the emails in my inbox at the beginning and end of the day to measure my progress. Sort of like counting the boxes unpacked in a move. The concrete things and the concrete tasks in our lives are usually how we measure progress. But I also like to measure progress in my day by songs sung; by poems read and reflected upon; by the quality of friendly greeting I give to strangers on the sidewalk; by the connections I am able to make, giving and receiving love in large and small ways. I’m blessed to have a vocation where poems, prayers, songs, and offering love to people are part of my job.
 
On my list of personal intentions yesterday I wrote “walk at sunset,” and after a long day of juggling many things I was able to do that. I parked the car in the Mill Pond parking lot, walked on the river path for a few minutes, greeted the family with the adorable toddler on the bridge, and stood knee-deep in the water with the moon bright above me. After a minute, a voice told me to get home as twilight was coming on--the car was full of stuff from after-dinner errands to be put away at home, and today’s email count had been pretty low. And another voice told me to stay.
 
The extra five minutes spent with my feet in the water and my prayers to the moon made all the difference. What a productive day.
 
PRAYER:
Spirit of the Moon and of the River; Spirit of Life within us and around us, be here now.
May we be reminded of what is important in our days.
May we resist to temptation to count progress by buying and hoarding, earning and spending, doing and accomplishing.
May we spend our time being and loving, breathing and feeling, knowing that we are enough just as we are.
Blessed be.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz

The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo contains daily reflections and invitations for meditation. One of the entries from last week, May 20, spoke about the way we change and grow as people. In a moment when these changes are surfacing, the author says, our friends may say to us, “You’re not yourself,” or “That was out of character for you.” And the response that he recommends is this: “I am more than I have shown you and more than you are willing to see. Let’s work our love and know each other more fully.” (Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening, Conari Press, p. 167)
 
I am more than I have shown you and more than you are willing to see.
 
This speaks a truth about human nature. We present a part of ourselves (consciously or unconsciously) depending on the situation we find ourselves in. This is not being false or fooling others, this is natural. We do not reveal our deepest and truest selves every place we go. Certainly this is true in our public and professional lives—yet it is true in our personal and intimate lives as well. We show a part of ourselves. And the other part of the statement is equally important. Others perceive us in certain ways, and this is a mixture of what we are showing and of what they want to see or are ready to see.
 
The other aspect that the author invites us to contemplate is that we are growing, and that who we are today is a different version of ourselves compared to who we were. This connects to the theme of creativity that I have been featuring in my Sunday morning messages this month. I believe that we live in a cycle of creativity, of becoming ourselves and shaping ourselves. I am more than I have shown you because I keep growing, cultivating myself, becoming a new version of me.
 
Let’s work our love and know each other more fully.
 
The fact that two human beings – be they coworkers or siblings or spouses – are missing parts of each other in their interactions isn’t surprising and it isn’t bad. And, in any relationship, we can invite one another to deeper connection. I am willing to show you more of myself if you are willing to see it. And that requires love and trust. I love the way that Mark Nepo expresses it, “Let’s work our love…” This implies that the love is already there, and that it is not static. Love is a force that has untapped potential. By “working it,” we can have deeper, more authentic, and more vulnerable relationships. To do so is to live life more fully.
 
PRAYER:
May each of us dare to creatively become the new version of ourselves. May we be open to the unfolding within us. May we welcome the more beautiful and truer parts of ourselves that emerge.
 
May we see one another in our fullness, recognizing the Divine in one another and letting go of how we expect or want to see each other.
 
May it be so.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz

This photo is one of my favorites from the day I graduated from Meadville Lombard Theological Seminary in Chicago. It was the end of a three-year Master of Divinity program that prepared me for ministry. I shared the celebration with my two children (pictured with me), my wife, and two of my sisters. It was May 2019.
 
Four years later now, this month I passed another milestone in my professional ministry: I have achieved the status of Minister in Full Fellowship. Many professions have levels of credentialing: for an actuary, there are a series of exams that you take to become a Fellow in the Society of Actuaries; for a professor, you complete a series of reviews based on your research scholarship, teaching, and service, and a committee of your peers grants you tenure. In Unitarian Universalism, any congregation can hire any person to be their minister, whether or not they go through a credentialing process. 

I serve on the Sex Education Advisory Board for the Mount Pleasant School District as a clergy representative. At our meeting this week, both a vote taken and the discussion surrounding it were disturbing to me. They represent the presence of extreme far-right thinking here in this community.
 
The context of the vote and the discussion were the proposed renewal of the 6th grade sex education curriculum, with updates by the author. The objections that were voiced focused on how the topic of gender expression is presented in the classroom; and on the inclusion of a lesson on intersectionality, how race and other identities overlap with sexual and gender identities.
 
The spokesperson for the objections cited the thinking of Ron DeSantis as influencing her opinions, and as a model for how we should approach sex education topics. When the question was called to a vote, 6 people agreed with her and 4 dissented, meaning that the board voted against approving the 6th grade sex education curriculum before us.
 
I have followed a lot of what Ron DeSantis has done and said in Florida. His policies are blatantly anti-transgender. His education policy prohibits teaching the truth about race, racism, and slavery in this country. Until now, my concern and outrage about DeSantis’ ideas and policies has come from afar. It was very different this week to hear the same ideas quoted and applauded in person.
 
The principles of racial equity and truth-telling; and of rights and dignity for people of all genders are Unitarian Universalist values. That is NOT what makes them indispensable principles for public education, however. Religion (even my religion, my beloved and liberal-minded UU religion) must not dictate policy in public schools. Racial equity and truth-telling, and rights and dignity for people of all genders are principles of a just society. The ideas of Ron DeSantis—echoed here in Mount Pleasant--are contrary to these principles and I will continue to oppose them.
 
Finally, I don’t believe that any people are bad people. My fellow members on the Sex Education Advisory Board who voted against me are decent human beings and I will always be open to dialogue with them, seeking understanding while being grounded in love.
 
PRAYER:
May truth, love, and compassion enlighten all of us.
May our discussions, our social justice work, and our public service be informed by love.
May love strengthen us in the struggle for a more just world where everyone is treated with dignity and respect.
Amen.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz

On Sunday I visited the Van Gogh immersive exhibit in Grand Rapids and came away moved by the work of the artist and by his story. Two things have stayed with me.
 
First, Van Gogh suffered from severe mental health disorders, leading him to harm himself (infamously cutting his own ear), to being hospitalized, and to his suicide at age 37. Knowledge of this personal history informs the way I view all of Van Gogh’s work. The self-portraits are especially interesting with the different expressions they reveal, and the exhibit features a painting of tree roots believed to have been painted the day before the artist took his own life. His work is at once serenely beautiful and unsettling.
 
Second, the startling thing that I learned from this exhibit is that Van Gogh may have been color-blind. Some researchers now surmise that he saw fewer colors (or less vibrantly) than we do, leading him to use color in unique ways including brighter colors.
 
This is one of the world’s most famous and celebrated artists, and these two things about him cause me to wonder deeply. Did Van Gogh’s mental illness press him to produce more art and to pour himself into it more deeply? Did it remove the barriers or filters that a “sane” person has between life and art, allowing him to express more emotion, more raw beauty and truth than others? Van Gogh is not the only famous artist whose genius was adjacent to madness, nor the only one whose beautiful (and challenging) art came at the cost of suicide. And the color-blindness is even more mind-blowing. Did he literally see his painting in a totally different way than I see it? Are Van Gogh’s colors different from my colors, and different from your colors? I believe that we all see different things in different paintings—we bring our life experiences, our personality, to the way we interpret each piece of art. And perhaps we bring our own way of viewing color as well. The work of Van Gogh bears repeated and close examination. There is a lot to see there.
 
PRAYER:
May all those who suffer from depression and mental illness find the hope and healing that they need.
May all those who are considering self-harm find help. May they know that they are loved and not alone.
May all artists find the ways of expressing themselves that bring joy and peace to their hearts. May humanity continue to blessed by the beauty and truth in our art.
Blessed be.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz
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