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