A few months ago, I heard this warning from another minister as we were gathered to discuss re-opening congregations to in-person worship after a year of being shut down for the pandemic: “It’s going to be messy. Shutting down was simple—we just stopped meeting in person. Re-opening is going to be in fits and starts, and we should expect it to be messy.”
 
I’m experiencing the truth of that premonition now. The congregation has been meeting with limited in-person services for six weeks now. The rules in place stipulate no more than 30 people in our 100-seat sanctuary (although so far the most we’ve actually had is about 20). The rules also say that everyone who attends must be vaccinated and wear a mask. The COVID task force and the board of trustees both consider these rules at least monthly, and it’s hard to stay current. During the safest part of the pandemic—June and July—we were still figuring out how to do our hybrid services. By August, when we first met in person, the cases were starting to climb. Now the local situation is much worse. With the spike in cases, we considered closing down in-person worship services altogether. We decided, however, that our protocols (distanced, vaccinated, masked) made our gatherings pretty safe—and that individuals could decide for themselves if their tolerance for risk fit our safety precautions. We decided to continue with the same rules for the coming month—except we decided to suspend singing to make worship even more safe. This is based on the idea that singing expels more droplets and more air than talking.
 
The decisions of the COVID task force and the board this month were difficult, and included dissent and discussion among people with differing opinions. This is likely to continue as we wrestle each month with changing realities of the pandemic and measure those against the needs of the congregation. The way we do things one month may not be how we do things the next month.
 
The ongoing challenge of the pandemic is how it divides the congregation. During the months of Zoom-only worship, it was a digital divide: those who were willing and able to attend a video-streamed worship service, and those who weren’t. Now it is more complicated. There are those who feel comfortable enough with the precautions to attend worship in person, and those who don’t. There are those who are not vaccinated—by choice, due to medical reasons, or due to being 12 or younger—who are excluded from attending under our current rules.
 
Re-opening is messy. The world of before the pandemic is not coming back. As a minister, I am called to serve the many parts of the congregation: vaccinated and unvaccinated, young and old, those who are comfortable meeting in person and those who aren’t. As we all negotiate the changing world of this messy re-opening, I invite all of us to consider what holds us in common.
 
PRAYER:
Spirit of Life and Love, God within each one of us; God between us in the form of Love: be here now.
 
Help us to navigate the difficult transition of returning to in-person spaces. Help us to understand one another: those who are ready to take the risk of sharing space with one another, and those whose caution guides them to stay separated. Help us to remember the needs of the young. Help us to see the worth and dignity of those who choose not to be vaccinated.
 
Divine spirit within us and among us, remind us that we are all connected, that we are all one.
 
May it be so.

Rev. Andrew Frantz
September 30, 2021

On Tuesday this week I met a fellow UU minister in East Lansing for afternoon coffee. I was in town for a men’s group meeting in the evening, and I had a little time in between the two. It was a nice fall day with a sprinkle of rain in the air, and I decided to take a walk on the Michigan State University campus.
 
I soon noticed a huge old oak tree. It reminded me of one that I visit frequently in Mount Pleasant near the river, but the one at MSU was both more uniform in its growth (it is probably pruned and cared for); and it was partially surrounded by roads and sidewalks, instead of being in the woods. I kept walking and saw another ancient oak…and another. One of them I stood next to and felt its ancient presence, imagining the water running under its skin. Soon I came to a tree with a plaque on it, explaining that many old trees had been left standing when the land was cleared for the university, and that one which had blown down was measured to be about 350 years old. “Look around,” the plaque on the tree said, “many of the trees in this area are of about the same age.”
 
Let’s do the math for a second here. 2000 minus 350 would be 1650. This is the year 2021, so 350 years ago from today is 1671. These trees, then, living in the sprinkle of fall rain just like I am, were here before European colonists were here. My grandfather was born in 1902. How many generations back would I have to go to find the ancestor who was alive when this tree was a sapling?
 
This summer I visited Hartwick Pines, a stand of old-growth pine trees an hour north of Mount Pleasant. A logging museum there describes the clear-cutting of the forest that European colonists and settlers undertook in the mid-1800’s. That timber fueled the economic engine of its day, and the logging of that timber altered the state of Michigan (as we now call it) and the continent of North America. And here, in the middle of MSU campus, stand the ancient ones, trees that were 150 years old at that time—the time of the “catastrophic harvest,” as the logging museum phrased it.
 
In their solemnity and silence these trees beggar description and defy comparison. Let’s just say that they were here way before me and my people; and that a thing like the coronavirus pandemic is a blink of time in the perspective on these old ones.
 
PRAYER:
Sprit of Mother Earth, Sprit of Forest and of trees, be with me now. May I be appropriately reverent in the presence and majesty of these ancient and powerful living things. May something of wisdom and of peace fall to me, like the rain falls from the sky and like the leaf falls from the tree.
 
May it be so.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz
September 23, 2021

Dr. Elias Ortega is the president of Meadville Lombard Theological School, the Unitarian Universalist seminary in Chicago. He offered this reflection on the 20-year anniversary of 9/11:
 
Two decades after 9/11, we have an opportunity to move beyond nationalistic impulses and take stock of what our national response to that event unleashed in our world ever since. It has been a curious phenomenon that seeking justice as our nation did has an underside that often escapes our attention. Perhaps, at this moment, as we grieve our losses anew in remembrance of 9/11, we will find it upon our collective spirit to expand the circle of grief.
 
Every place visited by armed conflict bears the slow healing of ecological wounds and devastation. Lands are polluted in ways that take decades to decontaminate and may never be restored. Contaminants in the food and water supplies leave their imprints in bodies with long-term health effects.
 
As a nation, we don’t always honor the sacrifice of those taking the oath of service and risk their lives, and worse yet, fall short on our promise to care for them by making lackluster decisions and politicizing their care after service.
 
As a nation, after 9/11, we have also agreed to sacrifice individual liberties and civil rights for the sake of national protection, in ways that unduly impact members of color and religious minorities in our communities.
 
As we cross the threshold of the two-decade-long wake of 9/11, with a deep sense of urgency, we should ask ourselves: How do we remember and memorialize the tragedies that shift our lives? What are our responsibilities of care to heal the personal, collective, and even global wounds resulting from our response to 9/11? What will the subsequent generations learn from witnessing how we chose to move from this day forth?
 
May compassion, not pride, guide our actions.
May care for the world temper our responses.
May we truly love justice to nurture hope instead of hate.
 
I am moved by the words of Dr. Ortega and the ways in which our Unitarian Universalist faith calls us to reflect and respond on this somber anniversary. His message affirms that war always leaves scars on human survivors, and on the earth itself, for generations. As UU’s we are called to work for peace and to oppose war. Dr. Ortega simultaneously affirms the need to honor and care for veterans while opposing war itself. As Unitarian Universalists, we are called to honor the worth and dignity of these veterans. Finally, Dr. Ortega reflects on the race and religion-based oppression that surfaced after 9/11 and continues to this day. As UU’s we are committed to honoring racial and religious diversity while actively working against oppression in all forms.
 
9/11 is an event that we understand in terms of nation; and politics; and international relations. And we understand it in human terms: the violent loss of life; the hatred that fueled the violence; and the response to that violence and hatred. It is here, the response to violence and hatred in our communities, that religion has an important role to play. Hatred and violence are not going away. How do we heal the harm done by violence? How do we work for a more just and loving world, where hatred is less able to flourish? This is our work as individuals and as a community of faith. May we claim our place in society as healers and as activists for love and justice.
 
PRAYER:
Spirit of Life and Love, be with those who lost loved ones on 9/11. Be with the communities that were attacked, and be with all of us who lost an innocence on that day.
 
May we use this anniversary to feel the sadness of lives lost in the attacks and in the counter-attacks that followed.
 
Spirit of Peace, bless this world with a renewed vision for harmony; for cultivating and creating, not destroying; for living together through differences, not fighting over them.
 
Amen. A Salaam Alaikum.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz
September 16, 2021

On September 1st, 2019 I started my ministry here at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Central Michigan. As I begin my third year, now as a settled minister, I am reflecting on my goals for the year. The Board of Trustees has articulated their own goals for this year, including: social justice work; anti-racism work in particular; emphasizing community in the Fellowship; and “nimbly responding to the realities of the pandemic.” Two of my goals correlate with these last two Board goals.
 
This congregation is a community of communities, or a community of relationships. As minister, one of my most important tasks is to cultivate and strengthen relationships. This is especially true as I begin this year as the settled long-term minister for this congregation…and it is especially true as we all move forward (cautiously) into in-person engagement with other vaccinated people. I am making time in my schedule for individual meetings with people in the congregation to deepen our relationship and our understanding of one another. Nothing is more important than this. As we build trust and get to know one another, we can more effectively do the work of love and justice that we are called to do.
 
The other goal I see for myself is similar to the board’s goal of “nimbly responding to the realities of the pandemic.” Our worship services and, increasingly, other events are online now--and I don’t think that’s going to change. We join other UU congregations for worship and they join us. Our presence on Zoom allows people to connect from far away—and from nearby when health risks or personal choice lead them to do so. What does this mean for who we are, our purpose, and our place in the community? I think we are all discovering this, and my goal this year is to keep this conversation going as we figure it out together.
 
PRAYER:
Divine Spirit, bless this new beginning as the calendar turns to September and the Fellowship year renews. May all of us embrace the possibilities of this year. May we move forward with a respect for the past, with the lessons learned from the past, but never clinging to the past. Let this day, this month, this year, bring the best version of ourselves: our best as individuals and our best as a congregation called to transform our lives and our world through love.
 
May it be so.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz
September 2, 2021