I’ve had the pleasure of attending two student theatrical performances in the past two weeks: “Alice in Wonderland” at the Broadway Theatre, and “Mamma Mia!” at Mount Pleasant High School. For both shows I was there on opening night, in a nearly-full auditorium, (it’s still weird, three years after the pandemic started, to be in a crowded in-person space and most of us aren’t even wearing masks), and both of these experiences gave me a sense of community and joy.
 
As with any theatrical undertaking, I’m amazed by the dedication and commitment to a common goal that it takes to stage these shows. “Mamma Mia!” featured musical numbers with 30 high schoolers on stage at once, singing and dancing; “Alice” was staged with a cast of youngsters from 2nd grade to high school. Costumes, sets, live music, singing, dancing, lighting—these shows are a labor of love for the cast, crew, directors…and for the parents.
 
Both audiences were full of families: parents with flowers for the performers; grandparents; younger siblings. After each show I was able to talk with parents who were full of pride for their kids. Many of the kids in these shows find a sense of belonging and purpose and success in the theatre that they do not find elsewhere. I got a sense of that from these shows and these parents; and that’s the way it was when I was in student productions in high school as well.
 
The sense of joy and community that I had at both of these performances is summed up in one moment from “Alice in Wonderland.” Earlier, the show had been interrupted briefly by a fire alarm going off in the middle of one of the scenes. The young actors took it in stride and resumed after a brief delay, starting from the beginning of the scene. After the show, young actors, their families and much of the audience gathered on the sidewalk in front of the theater. The crowd was alive with flowers and hugs; the kids still had their make up and costumes on; proud parents were beaming and taking photos. The hugs and laughter, the love and relief and pride and joy spilled from the sidewalk into the street and brightened the cold March air. The sidewalk and street were momentarily transformed into a surging oasis of joy.
 
Long live the theatre. Long live the joy of people coming together for art and community.
 
PRAYER:
May the actors and singers and musicians be blessed. May the parents with the endless rides to rehearsals and moral support be blessed. May the directors and choreographers be blessed.
 
May every human community be blessed with art—theatre, dance, and song—may art and artists thrive in this place and throughout the world.
 
Amen.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz

“The dream of one world is our North Star,
the light we follow no matter where we are,
the dream of justice liberty and peace for all.
If we only keep that star in view,
we know for sure our course is true.”
​
These words are an excerpt from the choral piece sung by the choir last Sunday. Composer
David Wolfson took the seven principles of Unitarian Universalism and crafted choral music
with rhyming lyrics for each. In this case, the star metaphor connects to the 6th principle (The
goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all). As a singer, this line was my
favorite one musically, with a graceful soaring melody. As a minister, I appreciate how this
line—and the whole seven-part composition—reinterprets the seven principles in a fresh way
that illuminates their core meaning.

It was delightful to be part of the choir singing this music. It was wonderful to see Ricky
Courlander, UUFCM member and fellow tenor, connect with her son David Wolfson—the gifted
composer of this music—as he joined us on Zoom for the worship service. Afterwards he said
that it was a joyful experience for him as an artist to see that his work is meaningful to the
people for whom he composed it.

In the same Sunday worship service, we held a ceremony to honor and welcome eight new
people into the congregation. They each signed the book of membership, indicating that they
are committing to the ideals of this religious community: that we will see one another in our
fullness; that we will dare to bring all of our gifts and beauty (along with our woundedness) to
this congregation; and that we will seek to repair with love any time that we harm one another.

In the fellowship hall before the worship service, a group of us including the new members had
a moment to check in—going around the room and giving everyone a chance to say how they
are doing today. Like any time that we share authentically with one another, some of us
expressed joy; others were having a bad day or a tough week. Just as when we share joys and
sorrows in our worship services, those feeling joy and right next to those feeling sorrow. This is
true in our community whenever we gather. May we witness one another in our fullness as we
journey together. In the words of David Wolfson,

“Wherever our journeys take us, wherever we might roam,
if we keep our eyes on that Northern Star, we may all, at last, come home.”

PRAYER:
May the deep joy of sharing special music bless this congregation. May the message and beauty
of David Wolfson’s music bless all who hear it.

May the new members of UUFCM – David Allan, Kurt Roeder, Nancy Roeder, Daria Kingman,
Jane Douglas , Phoenix Thompson, Amy Voege, and Darlene Ritchie – find love and community
and spiritual growth here among us.

Blessed be.

Rev. Andrew Frantz

Here are two contrasting pieces of news from the past week regarding state laws that affect the LGBTQ+ community–and all of us. The first is from Michigan, as reported on the website of Bridge Michigan:

• The Michigan Senate voted 23-15 to expand state civil rights act to codify legal protections for LGBTQ communities
• Legislation is supported by a broad coalition of business groups
• Many Republicans argue the legislation goes too far and tried without success to add religious exemptions  

(from bridgemi.com, March 1, 2023)

The second is from Tennessee, as reported on the website of National Public Radio:

• ​​The bill that passed in Tennessee last week restricts "adult cabaret performances" in public or  in the presence of children, and bans them from occurring within 1,000 feet of schools, public parks, or places of worship.   

• This was passed alongside separate legislation that bans transgender minors in Tennessee from receiving gender-affirming care like puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery
• As of a month ago, at least 9 GOP-led state legislatures were pushing similar anti-drag bills.   

(from NPR.org, March 6, 2023)

I have two thoughts to share about this today. One comes from a place of righteous anger and one comes from a place of reflection.

Here and now I reaffirm my stance, and the stance of Unitarian Universalism, on LGBTQ+ rights: That trans people are divine. That discrimination and oppression of any kind–including anti-queer and anti-trans discrimination–is immoral and contrary to UU beliefs and values. That our commitment as a congregation and as a nation-wide/world-wide faith is to be welcoming to people of any sexuality and of any gender expression. That those of us who are straight (heterosexual) must do the work to understand and advocate for our gay/lesbian/bisexual fellow human beings. That those of us who are cisgender must do the work to understand and advocate for our transgender/drag queen/gender non-conforming/non-binary/they-them fellow human beings. And that we are called by our religious values to confront injustice and hateful rhetoric and policies wherever we find them, including in local, state and national governments.

Taking a deep breath, the second thought I wish to share today is reflective. There is both good news and bad news reported above. One state is affirming LGBTQ+ rights and one is attacking those rights–but my mind is consumed with the bad news. The news media that I watch is covering the bad news far more than the good news. It’s important for my mental and spiritual health to remember the good news, and it’s important for me as a faith leader to remind everyone of the hopeful truth as well as the scary truth. Let us affirm that we can and do create loving safe spaces for people of all genders and all sexualities. Let us affirm that many people–the majority of people, I venture to say–are with us on this. Let us gain strength from one another in our small circles (friends, family, congregation) who are working for LGBTQ+ rights and those in the larger circles (state and national policy makers and social justice leaders) as well. May we celebrate accomplishments as we fight like crazy against hateful policies and rhetoric. May we remember and celebrate the good news.

PRAYER:
May gratitude and blessing flow to those lawmakers who vote for inclusion, for the rights of the oppressed and marginalized, for justice and fairness and protection.
May drag queens and trans youth in Tennessee and everywhere be safe; may they know that they are divine and holy and good just as they are; may they never be alone.
May each of us do what we can to promote a world of greater equity and safety and inclusion; of greater love and community for all.
May it be so.

Rev. Andrew Frantz

I returned to my home congregation this past weekend to lead worship as a guest minister. It was a homecoming that reminded me of the joy, care, and welcome that Unitarian Universalism represents.
 
I joined the Oberlin Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (OUUF) in 2002. I was a member there, served on committees, occasionally led worship, taught children’s religious education classes and adult workshops; sang in the choir and even directed it for a brief time. My kids went there from the time they were in preschool and kindergarten. After 15 years as a lay member of this Fellowship, I discerned the call to ministry and went to seminary; two summers ago they ordained me, along with the UU Fellowship of Central Michigan, to become a minister. This was the first time I have been back to lead worship since my ordination.
 
This UU space is a community of care: I spent time catching up with old friends, sharing hugs and news of kids and grandkids, hearing about health challenges and other updates on life. I see this caring and compassion in every UU space I have ever been in.
 
This UU space is a community of deep welcome: I met people who are newer to the congregation who are finding a welcome here that they haven’t found elsewhere, due to identity and/or their theology. This is one of the hallmarks of Unitarian Universalism: we welcome people of any belief or non-belief; we welcome people of any gender or sexual identity.
 
Finally, in this UU space I witnessed spontaneous joy. The postlude to the worship service was a lively piece of recorded music that invited everyone around the world to dance. Soon a few people in the front row were standing up and dancing, leading a train of dancers that wove through the sanctuary. The music ended and there was a shout of joy. UU spaces can be places that allow and cultivate joy.
 
May all of our UU communities be places of care for one another; places of radical welcome; and places where joy thrives.
 
PRAYER:
Spirit of Life and Love, bless the congregation of the Oberlin UU Fellowship. Bless the frail elders and the new members, the lay leaders and the children and the visitors.
 
May every Unitarian Universalist space be a place where old friends hug and share news of the journey of life; may every UU space be the place where the pagan, the non-binary person, the lonely seeker of any identity finds a welcome. May every UU space be a place where joyful dance breaks out unexpectedly, because life is short and loving community is precious.
 
Blessed be.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz

I didn’t want to spend my Valentine’s Day like this, reaching out to friends in Lansing and to college students here to see if they are OK; listening to the news for more details on the deadly shooting. It is Valentine’s Day, and so far this calendar year there have been 68 mass shootings in the United States of America. The number of guns per capita in the U.S. – 120 guns for every 100 citizens – is more than double that of Yemen, the country second on the list. I learned that from watching the news reports. I also watched the police chief give his briefing, the governor at this side; from the same podium I watched the doctor break down in tears trying to describe the all-night efforts of surgeons to save the lives of college students whose bodies were pierced by bullets.
 
My first contacts reaching out today were to the college students in our UUFCM community. The victims in East Lansing are their peers. The mass shootings in public places, as we all know, include K-12 schools as well as colleges and universities. We all feel vulnerable in this society awash with guns and gun violence, and students have a special vulnerability. My first contact that I received today was from a UU minister from another state, a lament for the violence and a prayer of solidarity to the UU ministers of Michigan as we cope with the aftermath.
 
Unitarian Universalists can and do work for legislation to curb gun violence. We must continue to do this work. And our congregations are communities dedicated explicitly to love and compassion and healing. We especially must continue to do this work. It is the work of welcoming the stranger; the work of connecting with the people we spend Sunday mornings with at other times during the week. Our work is the life-saving, world-changing work of creating a loving community within our walls, connecting that community with Unitarian Universalists everywhere, and extending love, compassion, equity and justice beyond our walls. On this day we extend love and compassion to our neighbors and families, and especially to that branch of our human family at Michigan State. We must do whatever we can, through political action, through prayer, and through human compassion to heal from this tragedy and to prevent the next one.
 
PRAYER:
Abiding Spirit of Love, may your presence be felt by the people of East Lansing. May the students, faculty and staff of Michigan State University feel that they are not alone. May our human prayers and compassion reach to that community, devastated by violence; may the more-than-human power of love, of goodness in the universe, of comfort from Mother Earth, reach them also.
 
May peace prevail. May we have the strength and courage to make it so.
 
Amen.
 
Rev. Andrew (Drew) Frantz

The first sound check went fine. On the second sound check, everything went sideways.
 
Every Sunday, the people with speaking parts in the worship service rehearse almost two hours before the service, to practice cues and slides, to check microphones and internet connections. This past Sunday was more complicated because we were doing a joint Zoom service with the UU Fellowship of Midland, our closest UU neighbors. So I included a second sound check, to double check everything before we started. That’s when a persistent, metallic, squawky feedback started sounding through our speakers. We tried everything we could think of to fix it, as the starting time for the service came and went.
 
We ended up starting 10 minutes late, doing the best we could and still having some glitches throughout the service.
 
And still, I was able to hear the spoken joys and sorrows from the Midland sanctuary 30 miles away. And still, the two congregations lit the chalice in each of our sanctuaries in recognition of shared UU values and traditions. And still, I was able to connect with those in the Mount Pleasant sanctuary and those on Zoom with a message of hope. During the service, with the chaotic technology glitches, I felt like our determination to connect with one another and the love we show in doing so is stronger than the challenges we face.
 
For almost three years we have been forced into a new place where we rely on technology to connect us in the congregation (and elsewhere in life). The majority of times, the technology works as expected. We can and should seek to constantly make the technology the best it can be. It will never be perfect, there will always be mistakes--and the connections between people are what matters. Let us commit to creating and strengthening those connections, in person and on Zoom and any other way that we can.
 
PRAYER:
May love unite us, in our families and friendships and congregations. May love unite all Unitarian Universalists in our homes and in our sanctuaries.
 
May we use the tools that humans have created: the written word, the telephone, email, text and video conferencing—to enhance our connections; to understand one another better; to connect in love and hope; and to bring yet more love and hope to the world.
 
May it be so.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz
​

On Sunday morning I got up early to get ready for Sunday worship. Often it is my practice to check the news for a moment, to be aware of anything current happening before coming to the Fellowship building, rather than being surprised by the news after I’m there.
 
Checking the NPR news app on my phone, there was a big one: 9 People Dead in a Mass Shooting in California, the headline read. Shooting occurred at a Lunar New Year festival, was the subtitle. This is a breaking story.
 
I knew that this was Chinese New Year, more accurately called Lunar New Year. The horror of another mass shooting struck me—and the near-certainty in my mind that it was targeted: targeted against Asian Americans the way that nightclub shootings have been targeted against LGBTQ people. I imagined a white male shooter committing a hate crime.*
 
On my phone and I scrolled down a little farther. There was another story about the Lunar New Year, but this one was a video—a rap song, as the caption explained, created by elders in the Asian community in San Francisco. I clicked on it and watched the one-minute video.
 
The joy and spunk of these women in their 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, doing a rap that celebrates Chinese culture, and the Chinese-American experience in a real and light-hearted way, moved me to tears. Overwhelmed with emotion, I didn’t know if I was laughing or crying, and realized that it was both at the same time. My sadness and fear and anger, thinking of the families of victims of yet another shooting, brought tears of rage and despair. My joy, in seeing the hilarious video of elders celebrating a minority culture with pride and dignity and humor, brought tears of exhilaration and hope. Both types of tears were mixed and simultaneous.
 
And what was clear to me in that moment was this: the joy is a necessary answer to the violence. Joy and song and dancing and laughter give us resilience in a world of violence and hate crimes and mass shootings. It was then I knew that sharing the video during morning worship, as part of the children’s time in a worship service devoted to Elderhood, was the right thing to do. Joy is the message and joy is the way forward. A link to the video is here.
 
*As I learned (and we all learned) later, the shooter was a 72 year-old Asian American with personal ties to the dance hall where the shooting happened. Therefore the event is probably not characterized as a hate crime. The ultimate death toll was 11 dead and 9 wounded, and the gunman also killed himself when confronted by police.
 
PRAYER:
May God bless the families of those who died in the Los Angeles Lunar New Year shooting. May God smile warmth and radiance and healing on those wounded in the attack.
 
God, you are Chinese; you are Asian; you are American; you are a dragon and you are a rabbit.
 
God, I hear you in the voices of the Grant Avenue Follies and their sacred, joyful, funny rap song. God, you are alive in their dancing and in the traditions they celebrate.
 
May the Year of the Rabbit bring good luck and peace to all of God’s creatures, with no exceptions.
 
Blessed be.
 
Rev. Andrew (Drew) Frantz

On Monday I celebrated Martin Luther King Day with others from this Fellowship at two local events. In the morning, we attended the CommUNITY Peace Brunch at Central Michigan University which featured three student speakers reflecting on the meaning of the day. In the afternoon, we carried our UUFCM banner in the march from the university campus to downtown. We finished the day by warming up with hot chocolate in the UU building, sharing our take-aways from the day’s events.
 
My take-away was one of the student speeches from the morning brunch. He spoke about anti-Asian prejudice and violence, and his leadership on campus in the Asian-American community. As I was sharing this over hot chocolate after the march, I heard for the first time about the stabbing attack in Indiana last week. Looking up the news, I saw the horrific details: a 57 year old white woman stabbed an 18 year old Asian American college student on a city bus. A bystander followed the attacker off the bus and alerted the police to her whereabouts, leading to her arrest.
 
The most chilling aspect of the story is what the attacker said about her motivation. Here is the reporting from NPR:
The suspect told police she stabbed the victim because the victim was “Chinese,” adding that it “would be one less person to blow up our country,” according to an affidavit shared with NPR.
 
On Martin Luther King Day, we rightly reflect on the civil rights era, on anti-Black racism as it was manifest in those days, and on the nonviolent civil disobedience that Dr. King used to respond to that racism. And, on this occasion we should always reflect on what is happening in today’s world and how we can respond. For me, the student’s speech in the morning and the current events I became aware of in the afternoon reminded me of the presence of Asian hate in my country today. It inspires me to recommit myself to addressing all forms of hatred: anti-Black racism, Asian hate, antisemitism. These things and more are part of life today. Just as Dr. King responded in his day, I must do what I can in my time to stop hate and to spread love. This includes using my voice to denounce racism and violence whenever I can.
 
PRAYER:
Living spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., be with us now. May your words and intentions breathe through our living souls. May we be inspired to speak and act for justice, to confront the words and actions and policies of racism—and to awaken well-meaning but passive liberals to the urgency of this work.
In the name and faith of all people of good conscience,
Amen.
 
Rev. Andrew Frantz