First Unitarian: The Minister's Memo

Welcome Autumn

2011-09-22T06:24:00.000-07:00

Welcome Autumn

In the past few weeks, I have closed the windows in my apartment and gone searching for my long-sleeved shirts and jackets. I have seen the first tinges of autumn in the leaves. I enjoy autumn immensely (especially my pumpkin-spice lattes), and, but this season also brings with it some challenges for many families. One of the greatest enemies of the modern family is the incredibly full calendar. So many families rush from school and work to other sports and activities and barely even take a moment to pass in the halls. My own child, Ariana, just started preschool, and my husband and I are both working new jobs. Some days I don't get home until she is already in bed, and often we're so exhausted that our family meals are in front of the TV.

We all know how important it is to spend time with our families. Those important moments of connection, whether they are the bedtime rituals or family dinners, are the moments that bond us together with the people we love the most. I think my favorite moments are the times we can never plan: a sleepy-eyed Ariana stumbling out of bed in her pajamas wanting to snuggle, evenings when she falls asleep without a struggle and Rhye and I have just a few minutes to talk, or even times when we're navigating through traffic, discovering something new. These are moments worth treasuring.

And, as Ariana grows older, I also treasure sharing with her the religious rituals of my faith. We light a family chalice together and sing the chalice song she knows from Sunday School. We say bedtime prayers together. And, when she is ready, I look forward to sharing larger, communal worship experiences together. When I was a child, family devotions were an important part of our family life. My dad often said, "The family that prays together stays together." While my prayers now may look or sound different from the prayers I said with my parents as a child, they instilled in me a love for worship. My spiritual connection was intimately connected to my family.
The etymology of the word "worship" derives from "worth" or "value." What are the things we value? How will we shape the moments in our lives to recognize their worth? In addition to the beautiful spontaneous moments (which I encourage you to savor), this year we hope to bring many opportunities for you to share worshipful moments with your family at First Unitarian. The new format for Time for Community is intended to allow families to light candles together, to share their joys and sorrows, and to connect with others in the community. Many of the "Monday Night at the Church" programs are being designed for families to engage together in a spiritual way. And this Sunday I look forward to celebrating autumn with our first Community Worship Service, a time for all ages to join together in the sanctuary for the entire worship hour. For families with young children (early elementary and toddlers), we will offer "Extended Care" beyond our normal nursery services with activities connected to the theme, but older children and youth are strongly encouraged to join with the in this time of worship. Together, we will find new ways to express worth and honor in our community.

I hope each of us will find the time in our busy schedules to connect to our families and to our spiritual community. These are truly the moments of worth.

Bright Autumn Blessings!

Jessica Gray, Director FDM
First Unitarian Church of Worcester

Candles and Flames

2011-09-12T10:55:00.000-07:00

What is it about candles and flames? In this now un-magical world, candles and flames still seem to have magical and spiritual powers. I remember a time, maybe 5th or 6th grade, when I would write my wishes on pieces of paper and burn them in my garage. I thought that committing them to the flame would, through some unknown process, make them come true. People in many traditions light candles as a vigil, as a prayer, as a way to steady the breath and the heart.

We light candles, two big candles, at the beginning of every worship service. It is the ritual that moves us from ordinary time into exalted time. Words are said at that moment, words that invoke a holy spirit.

In a ritual, meaning is shown in two ways, whenever a candle is lit. One is how it is lit. The other is what it lights.

What does it mean that the candles in the front of the sanctuary are lit, first by me as the minister, and the other by a congregant? What does that suggest? To me, it suggests that we move from the "ordinary" into the "sacred" through ordinary means.

These are not two entirely separate realms of life. What if we had a sacred fire, one we kept burning through the week and never allowed it to go out. What if we lit our sanctuary candles from an eternal flame? That would mean something different, wouldn't it?

Consider, on the other hand, how we light candles from our large candles and then, pass that light hand to hand through the congregation on Christmas Eve? One flame shared, multiplying and spreading, lighting up each other's faces. The motion is "from the one to the many."

On Sunday morning, at 10:05, a member of the Lay Leadership Council will light a flaming chalice, on a table by the door from the Bancroft Room into the sanctuary. This will mark the start of the Time For Community portion of the morning. They will say a few chalice lighting words.

On that table, there will be many small candles or tea-lights. Worshippers are invited to light a tea-light from the chalice and leave it burning on that table.

• Light a candle for someone who is sick, or grieving.

• Light a candle as a family to celebrate a birthday, or a new pet.

• Light a candle to pray for a good outcome on a test.

• Light a candle with your children; let them practice with making a prayer or a wish with ritual.

• Light a candle in memory.

Worshippers can light these candles up through the musical prelude before the service.

There will also be cards on that table, on which you can write down your personal concern. When the service starts, I will collect those cards and may refer to them as we pray together as a congregation in the service. You may identify yourself on the card, or remain anonymous.

I think of that flaming chalice as somehow being all of us, the gathered spirits of our congregation and our tradition. You can light a candle from that strong flame to be a sign of your hope or need. And all those gathered candles are all of us coming together to worship. There is both a motion of the one to the many, and the motion of the many gathered together as one. You do not weaken it all by making a bit of it yours for a moment. We are here to offer you a source of strength and hope and companionship for life's journey. Let these flames be a reminder of that.

I am looking forward to seeing you in church this week.

"You'll Do Great" by Sierra-Marie Gerfao

2011-06-09T11:14:00.000-07:00

One year ago, the Rev. Barbara Merritt, newly retiring, wrote to you: "We are like birds that spend the night in the same tree, and then, in the morning, fly off in different directions. At least that is the metaphor I heard in India to describe the transitory nature of all human relationships."

Day is a-breaking! Soon, we will fly off in different directions. Though my last day will not be until July 31^st, we have come to the end of much of our work together.

Thank you to everyone who came to hear me preach, in my staff role here, one final time last Sunday. I believe the divine spirit was present with us. Thank you for the very fun and sweet going-away party. I appreciated every detail, truly, and I know how hard so many of you worked on it. Thank you so much for the honor of the Montessori globes given to each of the Spirit Play classrooms. I am humbled and grateful. Thank you also for my Kindle, which I had wanted for so long, and for my memory book, which I already treasure dearly. And the giant card, well, my goodness how I appreciate your kind words.

Most of all, as I said last Sunday, thank you for allowing me to take this walk with you over the last four years. Thank you for your patience, forgiveness, and good humor, and for allowing me to grow into my gifts, and allowing me to be your partner as you grow into your gifts. Thank you for teaching me, and thank you for being willing to learn from me, even though I came to be what you didn't expect, and maybe what you didn't think you wanted. Thank you for being proactive and enthusiastic in the development of your own ministries, which belong to you, and of which I was only your partner, nothing more and nothing less. It has been an honor and a joy.

As I said over a year ago when I first announced my acceptance into divinity school: "You are a magnificent congregation, and you have my love, loyalties, best wishes, and affection."

Now, a few final words to all of you, as a congregation:

First, I am excited for you about your future. This coming Sunday, an announcement will be made introducing you to your new Director of Faith Development Ministries. I know you will welcome her right in, celebrate, and use fully the unique gifts and strengths she brings with her to this work. In the Fall, I understand that you will also be welcoming another new staff person with the addition of a quarter-time Youth Ministries Coordinator to the Faith Development staff team. This is the result of several years of hard work and persistence, and I know it will serve you well.

What is most exciting about your future, however, is you. In my time here, I never once presented you with a vision that was not yours. As I wrote moments ago, your ministries belong to you. Instead, I partnered with you to bring to articulation the vision that you had for your ministries, and to work toward this vision. It is this vision - this vision that arises out of you - this vision of lifespan faith development ministries - ever-more articulated each year, that makes me certain that you will do great! In our short years together, we plotted the garden, tilled the soil, and in some cases, planted some seeds for a new era in your life as a congregation. We have seen a few blooms, but mostly we have been waiting. The best years are yet to come.

Now, to mix some metaphors and return to the birds in the tree, I close thusly: Many blessings to you, as we prepare to take flight from this tree, which we have shared for a time much briefer than we thought we might, but long enough for us to see the promise in one another, and the divine spark that lives in all of us. Be well, and I trust our paths will someday cross again!

With the warmth of the chalice flame,

Sierra-Marie Gerfao

Director of Religious Education/

Director of Faith Development Ministries

"Unique Faces" by Rev. Tom Schade

2011-06-08T08:04:00.000-07:00

The Emperor Qinshihuang was the first Emperor of a unified China and the founder of the Qin (pronounced "Chin") dynasty. At the age of 13 he became the King of Qin kingdom. By 221 BCE, he defeated a combination of rivals and came to power as an Emperor at the age of 39. He died at the age of 50 in 210 BCE.

Qinshihuang was morbidly afraid of death and sought immortality throughout his life. In service of that goal, he had built a huge mausoleum and tomb for himself, outside of the city of Xi'an. It was his life's work.

As part of that burial site, a terra cotta replica of an army was buried to guard his tomb. Eight thousand terra cotta figures, horses and men. They were discovered in 1974 by local farmers.

Sue and I visited the Terra Cotta Museum on our trip to China. It is simply mind-boggling. We stood in a vast room, the size of football field at least, in which thousands of the terra-cotta warriors were arrayed, in rows and columns like an army.

In the beginning, they were standing covered by beams and a wooden structure. During a later rebellion, they were all smashed and the wooden structure burned and collapsed over the wreckage. Now, they are being painstakingly dug up and reassembled , thousands of them.

We could see them in all their stages: from faces and limbs emerging from the soil to the finally restored figures, whole and seemingly undamaged despite time. They have all faded to a dusty gray brown, but it is possible to see that they were all once brightly painted.

This vast room is 1.5 kilometers from the Emperor's tomb itself, which has not been opened yet. The entire area is full of other burial sites containing all sorts of things. Other buried objects are made of more precious materials than terra-cotta: bronze horse and chariots, armor made of linked jade panels.

It appears that near the end of his life, 720,000 conscripts were working on the tomb.

It is hard to imagine our way back into Qinshihuang's head, to see life through his eyes and to understand how he thought this was an effective way to stay death. How did he understand life and death that this all made sense to him, and to the people around him?

Death must have been, for him, a lonely journey of an isolated soul. You will be alone, except for what and who you bring with you. Compare his vision to the picture of heaven popular now. The popular imagination is that in death we will be reunited with those we have loved and lost.We talk of "the choir invisible." Since it is estimated that 95% of the human beings who have ever lived are already dead, heaven must be twenty times the size of our present earthly community.

But there must have been, in Qinshihuang's mind, other people in the afterlife. Otherwise, why bring an army? Who are they to fight?

Archeologists estimate that the terra cotta warriors are about 15% larger than the average people of that time. His army was big and intimidating.

The Chariot for the Afterlife

Yet, the bronze chariot that he was expecting to ride is about half-size with half-size horses. Did he expect to be in his physical body? It seems that this vision assumed a spirit-body that survived death that was not fixed by size or shape. Even that representations of soldiers were enough meant that it was a spirit-body, not a revived body that inhabited the other world. (There are other cultures in which slaves and soldiers were killed and buried along with the Emperors, so as to be of service in the next life in their present bodies, revived.)

In some ways, Qinshihuang was trying to build a replica of this world in the next. Other pits have revealed terra cotta figures of other occupations and roles, birds and animals. One senses a desire to take the whole world in all its variety and diversity with him into the next one.

But perhaps the most striking thing is this: it appears that each terra cotta warrior has a unique and individual face. As though each figure was a particular person who sat for a portrait in clay to be made.

People differ on the question of the afterlife. Many say, now, that there is none. But among those who say there is a life after death, some say that we retain our individual personhood, and others say that we do not. Some imagine that we will know our friends in heaven, and they will know us, and others say that this identity of ours is but a surface accident that will be left behind.

I don't know, and I don't think that anyone really knows. But I am touched, across all the centuries and cultural difference, that Qinshihuang wanted to take his army with him, not as a mass, but as individuals, people with names and faces, each one unique and irreplaceable. There is something about the "inherent worth and dignity of every person" there.

Here are some of the faces of the terra cotta warriors of Qinshihuang.

Under the Care of the Chinese Government by Rev. Tom Schade

2011-05-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

Sue and I went to China with a group from the Worcester Art Museum this month. The group was led by Professor Paul Ropp of Clark University and we had a great time. Travel broadens.

When I first arrived in China, at the Beijing International Airport, I was denied entry into the country. Some of you may have heard something about this incident. I posted it on my facebook wall at the time, but without much detail. And as Facebook is not available in China, I was not able to update the incident.

This is the whole story.

There was a mistake on my visa. I had applied to enter China before May 10, 2011. My visa however, said that I was to enter China before May 1, 2011. I arrived on May 09, 2011.

Oops.

I am a decent sort of fellow with a friendly face. I am an American citizen. I am white, middle-aged and prosperous.

"A decent sort with a friendly face

My first instinct is that people will give me the benefit of the doubt in ambiguous situations. I sort of expected that the Chinese Immigration officer would look me in my eye, see my lack of guile and benignity and conclude that this was a minor technical error, a clerical transposition of two numbers, He would wave me through.

No, that did not happen. Sue had been waved through, but I was not. Of course, a couple of supervisors also examined my papers and they all concluded that I did not have a valid visa to enter China, and so, therefore I could not.

A representative of China Airlines explained that they could book me on a flight back to the United States. Or, he suggested that I do what some people in this situation do: go to Hong Kong and re-apply for a visa there and try again.

Sue contacted China Advocates, the organization that was making the arrangements for the tour we were on, and soon, they had a representative, Dave, at the airport to talk with me. (Chinese people who are in the tourism business refer to their "Chinese Name" and to their "English Name.". Do you have a Chinese name?)

Dave arranged for me to get some necessities from my baggage, which had already entered China. And he got me on a flight to Hong Kong the next morning. Meanwhile, I was going to be under the care of the Chinese government.

Their care consisted of an orange chair, on which I was instructed to sit.

It was in a waiting area of the large room where people lined up to present their visas. I watched wave after wave of people pass through the room into China. After a while, somebody brought me the Chinese equivalent of some Little Debby cakes and a couple of candy bars.

At midnight, a Chinese border guard accompanied me into China to a small hotel facility inside the airport. I was given some soup, and shown to a small bedroom. I could take a shower but I needed to sleep with the door open, so he could keep an eye on me.

In the morning, it was back to the orange chair for another couple of hours. And then, I was walked to the plane for Hong Kong, given my passport and boarding pass and put on the plane.

None of it was cruel, or mean, or even uncaring. It was simply impersonal.

When I landed in Hong Kong, I was met by Randy from China Advocates. We went to a photobooth and made some pictures of me for the new visa application. He booked me into a hotel, took my passport and said that he would be back in 24 hours with a new visa and my boarding pass for a flight back to China. He was good to his word.

Exiled in beautiful Hong Kong.

I had 24 hours to spend in Hong Kong, a fabulous city.

All in all, the whole experience was a little nerve-wracking at first, and then a little boring, and then ultimately kind of exciting. It did feel good to get back to Beijing and see Sue again.

The story has been going around that I was delayed because I am a minister. Not so. I think that the origin of that story is this: because I listed "Minister" as my profession on my visa application, I was asked to provide a letter by some authority figure that I was not going to China to convert Chinese people to Christianity. Our moderator David Spanagel graciously wrote that letter. I am sure that he was quite persuasive about my inability to convert anybody to Christianity. That never came up again.

I will have more about my trip to China along the way. Thanks for the chance to go.

2011-05-05T06:33:00.000-07:00

Americans, it seems, not longer argue about what the government should do, or not do. We argue, instead, about what we should feel about what happens. For example, did President Obama show too little triumphant joy when he announced the death of Osama Bin Ladin? Is it appropriate to dance in the streets and shout "USA, USA" on the news? Should we feel grateful about George Bush now? Or even President Obama?

Almost everyone on Facebook has posted their feelings on the subject of their feelings. What is the precise mix of joy, triumph, sadness, forgiveness, vengeance that is to be expressed? There are dueling Bible verses being bandied back and forth. I have seen Proverbs 24:17 often quoted: "Do not rejoice when your enemies fall and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble." I also note that the proverb is about observing that your enemy has fallen, not about killing your enemy yourself.

A spurious Martin Luther King, Jr. quote is circulating. "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

Apparently, the first sentence was not King's, but the introductory comment of a contemporary person.

However, we all know from our personal lives that nothing is more futile than trying to convince another person to feel differently than they do. People "move on" from their emotions only after they have felt them enough to see their limits.

The death of Osama is another step in the long emotional journey started on 9/11/2001. One emotional path taken from that day to now has been to personalize the attack as the work of one person and to want vengeance. I remember watching a televised fundraiser in the immediate aftermath and seeing New York firefighters spitting on and shaking their fist at photos of Osama Bin Ladin. For them, it had become personal and individual. For many, it still is.

Now that emotional journey has come to its natural end. Vengeance has come. And the promise that George Bush made with his bullhorn that those to blame "would soon hear from us" has been fulfilled. And for those who needed Osama's death, there will be great joy. For some, it will be closure. For others, it will not really change a thing.

America did go crazy after 9/11. Right from the beginning, there were widely different emotional responses. Many people were irritated, angered and irked when other people responded differently.

I believe that the deeply emotional political polarization of the country was born in the emotions around 9/11. Those emotional differences became fused with politics. Liberals were sad, reflective and self-critical. Conservatives were angry, terrified and vengeful. The lines were drawn.

Someday, we will have to explain to our grandchildren why the Dixie Chicks fell so swiftly from grace. Our grandkids will think that we were nuts. (If none of this makes sense, call a random number in a Texas area code and ask whoever answers the phone to explain.)

The emotional pathways from 9/11 are coming to their natural ends. Osama is dead. There was no World War 3 or 4, no great war for the future of humanity. The great war against Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan turned into a battle between warlords and tribes in distant mountains The war against tyranny in Iraq turned out to be a orgy of sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing in a weak and fragile state. Saddam Hussien died and it changed nothing. And now, even when Arab peoples rise in their streets for democracy, we realize that all our military power is relatively useless for advancing their and our aspirations.

They say that at the end of grief's journey is acceptance. We all will come to the journey's end in our own time and in our own way. Let us not judge each other.

So after 9/11, what? There are holes in the ground in lower Manhattan. The great mass of the dead, now joined by so many Iraqis and Afghanis, have become individuals, not symbols. They are missed by their families who treasure their memories. Hopeful signs of growing interfaith tolerance and cooperation have sprung up; they will endure long after the anti-Muslim hysteria has faded. Time is working.

There is a gap in the New York skyline; we are beginning to see in it the sky, the blue blue sky.

"Not All That Special?" by Kimberly Hampton

2011-04-20T12:25:00.000-07:00

I called my mother today. After talking about other things-stuff related to graduation and the cancellation of soap operas-I got down to the question that was the most important.

"What color are y'all wearing for Easter this year?"

"Lilac."

Easter was, and is, a big deal in my family. It was, and is, a big deal in a lot of families that I know back home. Easter was, and is, a big day. Easter was such a big deal and day because on Easter we would wear an outfit that we got especially for that day. Most of the time we were all color coordinated-my father would normally wear a shirt and tie that matched in color what my mother and I were wearing-and, once I started wearing them, I got a new hat (my mother doesn't wear hats).

Easter (and Mother's Day to a lesser degree) was CHURCH-church on a grand scale. Dressing for God, only better. Little girls would have on their white tights, new patent leather Mary Janes and little purses that couldn't hold much of anything. Some would wear hats-the famed Easter bonnet. The ones who didn't would have ribbon bows and pretty barrettes in their plaited or braided hair. Little boys would be in suits and ties and dress shoes. And the church mothers, those grande dames of the church, would outshine us all-dresses or suits in every color of the rainbow and the most outrageous and beautiful hats.

For Easter to be CHURCH, it takes some planning. In my family preparation for Easter typically takes about a month, give or take a couple of weeks. First, the color has to be chosen. This would be done by my mother and my aunt (her sister). And there were two "rules" to consider; the color can't be the same color we wore last year and the color should not be black. Once the color was chosen, a Saturday was picked and all the females of the family would go shopping. Some years it was easy; the outfits would appear like manna from heaven. Other years, it was parched earth-not an outfit or hat to be found. In the parched earth years, after the fruitless shopping, it was off to the fabric store to search through pattern books and find just the right material to match the vision my mother and aunt had in their heads. Then would be the mad dash to get all the outfits made in time for the big day.

Even though in church Brother Ralph Smith, our minister, would say to the congregation every year on Easter Sunday, "Today is not a special day. We celebrate Easter every Sunday," nobody paid him any mind. We all knew what we came to church for every Sunday; to celebrate the life, death, burial and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But on Easter Sunday, we would be celebrating all of that, and then some, in our new outfits -- no matter what Brother Smith said.

Some things have changed since those days - my cousins and I are grown and two of us don't live in St. Louis at the moment. The big shopping day is now focused on my mother and aunt buying Easter outfits for my aunt's grandchildren. And since it tends to be just the two of them shopping, the shopping trip rarely occurs on Saturday anymore; Thursday or Friday morning means less crowds and easier parking.

But some things haven't changed. My cousin and her family will travel from Chicago to St. Louis to spend Easter with the rest of the family. They will be wearing lilac.

Then there's me, the one in-between. Sometimes I think Brother Smith was right; Easter isn't really all that special. We ought to celebrate the possibility of new, and renewed, life all the time. I won't be in St. Louis for Easter this year. And I won't be wearing a hat (don't think that would work too well with my robe in the pulpit). Yet I too will be wearing lilac.

Maybe you can wear a hat for me instead.

Kimberly Hampton

"Holy Week for Dummies" by Rev. Tom Schade

2011-04-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

OK, you didn't go to Catholic School, or your parents only took you to Sunday school on those days that the Sunday paper had laid in puddle and congealed into a gray lump. Or, it might be that you didn't pay attention in Sunday school. Or maybe you come from a completely different tradition. Whatever the reason, you may be one for whom the whole story of "Holy Week" is confused, perhaps jumbled in the mind with some great mythic narratives you have read or seen.

As in: Jesus and his twelve disciples (That would be Peter, Paul, John, George, Ringo, Bilbo, 3CP0, Tonto, Sam, Sancho Panza, Biden, and Gollum, who betrayed him.) went to Jerusalem, were arrested, were tried before the Pompous Pilot and then was crucified, which hurt a lot. So you should be good. And wash your hands.

It's OK to be a dummy about Holy Week. Like almost everything else, it is a story that has to be learned. So, if you are confused, or just unfamiliar, with this narrative so central to Christianity, here are the basics.

Jesus, as you already know, was a Jewish preacher and healer who ministered in the countryside of ancient Judea. He and his followers, now known to us as the Disciples, came to Jerusalem, the capital and the site of the great Temple, for the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, the Passover season. Many people made this a religious pilgrimage every year.

When Jesus and followers entered the city of Jerusalem, many of the people saw a great significance in His coming. They saw Him as a returning King, descended from Israel's first great King David, of a millennium earlier. A demonstration occurred. The people put their cloaks on the ground for him to walk on, and waved palm branches.

By treating this itinerant preacher as though he were the King, they were protesting the Roman Empire. This event now comes down to us as Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter. On that day, we pass out Palm branches and sing songs that describe that event. The mood is very festive and forward-looking. We are encouraged to name our dreams.

Tradition has it that three things happened in the time between when Jesus enters Jerusalem and when He is arrested. He teaches at the Temple and gets into disputes with other preachers and officials. He chases the moneychangers (merchants who sold small animals and birds for sacrifice to pilgrims who wanted to make a sacrifice) from the Temple. And he shared a Passover Seder with his disciples, a meal that comes down to us as the Last Supper and the First Communion service. Churches throughout the world remember this event with a Maundy Thursday communion service. Kim Hampton will lead such a service in the chapel at 6:30 PM on Thursday night.

We also celebrate the Passover of the Jewish tradition with a Seder at 4 PM on Saturday. Jews and Christians use different calendars, which can cause Passover and Holy Week to not be at the same time. Honest, I was in seminary before I understood that the Last Supper was a Seder. So I never got understood how the story of Jesus and the story of the Exodus. For the early Christians (who were Jews), it was new occasion of God delivering his people from bondage.

After the Seder/Last Supper, Jesus and his disciples retire to a garden, Gethsemane, where Jesus spends the night in prayer. He knows that Judas has informed the authorities about Him, and that He will be arrested and killed. But while Jesus is struggling with this fear, weeping, and gathering his courage, the disciples keep falling asleep.

On that night, Judas leads a small group of Roman soldiers to the Garden where they arrest Jesus.

Jesus is then questioned and confronted by a series of officials: Caiaphas, the chief priest of the Temple, Herod, the King who rules with Rome's support and Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. Pilate, who holds the final authority, seems to be unconvinced as to Jesus' guilt of a capital crime and offers to spare the life of either Jesus or Barabbas, but the assembled crowd wants Jesus to be crucified.

The story is conflicted and ambiguous, never clear about the alleged crime of Jesus and who is ultimately responsible for his death.

Jesus is crucified on Good Friday, in the part of the story most familiar to all. His body is taken down and laid in the tomb of a wealthy follower, Joseph of Arimethea.

On Saturday of Holy Week, Jesus is said to have been in Hell, freeing the souls of the righteous who lived before his time.

And on Sunday, the story takes a surprising turn. At First Unitarian, we celebrate first with a Sunrise Service and then with a splendid service of celebration at our regular hour.

Holy Week is a continuous story that travels a roller coaster of joy, solidarity, adventure, terror, sorrow and joy again. Come and participate with us in the services that mark the stages of that story.

Perspectives by Rev. Tom Schade

2011-04-08T08:33:00.000-07:00

I was out walking the dogs this morning, through my neighborhood. The prompt one was done; she is more anxious and business-like. The other one is more laid-back and mellow. She likes to walk around and sniff stuff; she moves at a congressional pace, delaying meaningful action until the last possible minute.

Nonetheless, two men are walking along the street toward us and I could hear their raised voices. They are having what sounds like a good-natured argument. As they pass, I hear the one say in exasperation. "So, are we having a nuclear meltdown? No! So, shut up and quit complaining!"

"Now, there's words to live by," I thought. What a succinct summation of perspective. Compared to a couple of nuclear energy plants slowly consuming themselves and releasing radioactive steam and water into the environment, most of our problems are actually quite small.

A nuclear meltdown is a different sort of problem than most. Many problems seem very difficult to solve but only because we don't like any of the obvious solutions. For example, several different solutions to the problems of the national debt and deficit are at hand; it's just that nobody likes any of them. Or to be more precise, some large group of people really hate each possible solution and so agreement is hard to reach.

The nuclear crisis in Japan is a much bigger problem. No one seems to know what to do.

The nuclear incident in Japan reminds me of the British Petroleum oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico not long ago. No one actually knew how to stop such an oil spill. As with nuclear energy, the human race had tapped into some primal forces of the earth and the resulting problem had gotten away from the people involved. Anyone who has seen movies of the early oil wells erupting in gushers has some understanding of the tremendous pressure that holds oil within the earth. It took a long time to bring Deepwater under control and a lot of environmental damage occurred in the meantime.

We can hope that similar human ingenuity will eventually solve the Japanese nuclear accident. In the meantime, no one actually knows what to do, and the environmental damage mounts up.

"So are we having a nuclear meltdown, No? So shut up and quit complaining !"

It is a good idea to keep our local troubles in perspective. But on the other hand, we ARE having a nuclear meltdown. The entire human race, every one of us, is having a nuclear meltdown. Radiation in the air, in the ocean and ultimately in the soil and in the food supply will not distinguish between our arbitrary nationalities. The radioactive particles created and freed by this reaction will become permanent parts of the Earth. There will be another uninhabited dead zone in Japan, as there is in the Ukraine, but the radioactive particles and dust will travel the Earth forever.

Perhaps to really have perspective, we should not be shutting up, but complaining about bigger things.

Eight Good Questions About You and Your Faith by Rev. Tom Schade

2011-03-24T12:22:00.000-07:00

Doug Zelinski is the Director of Leadership Development for the Clara Barton District of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

In a recent column, he listed the following questions. Think about them, he says, and you will grow more clear of the purpose of your religious life.

My only quibble with them is that "Unitarian Universalism" is too small a title to contain all the spiritual ferment that is going on right now. There are people of every background and tradition who are taking their faith into their own hands, opening their hearts to the wonderful diversity of the human religious impulse and are growing ever more grounded into a life of love and service. Unitarian Universalism is but one expression of the liberal and free religious spirit.

That said, I am sure that thinking on these questions will be fruitful for you. I will appreciate hearing your thoughts and reflections on them.

Grasping Religion's Purpose: What do I believe is the fundamental purpose of religion and am I willing to join with that purpose?

Internalizing the UU Legacy: Which of the historic ways that Unitarian Universalism has fulfilled religion's purpose inspires and instructs me now?

Honoring the Call: What is my current calling as a UU and am I answering it?

Valuing UU as a Free Faith: As a free faith, what freedoms are most important to focus on and how do I do that as a UU?

Valuing UU as a Liberal Religion: What makes my faith liberal and how have I demonstrated this religious liberalism?

Defining the Transforming Message: How has my faith transformed me and how can it transform the world?

Translating the UU Message: What currently makes sharing the UU message difficult throughout society and how can I overcome the difficulty?

Embracing Accountability: How will I know if I am "being UU" the best I can?

If you have some thoughts about how you would answer any of these questions, and would like to share them with me, I invite you to send them to me at my church email which is tschade at firstunitarian period com.

The Underside of the Prophetic Impulse by Rev. Tom Schade

2011-03-17T10:26:00.000-07:00

It is easy to dismiss the Westboro Baptist Church, led by Rev. Fred Phelps, as nuts and bigots. After all, people who picket the funerals of US soldiers or marines killed in Iraq with signs saying that "God Hates Fags" are obviously prejudiced and lack in any desire for the goodwill of others. These are people who are getting a big thrill out of being offensive.

They are also financing themselves, in part, by being offensive. Through the 1976 Civil Rights Attorney Fees Act, their Phelps family law firm can be awarded attorney's fees when they successfully challenge a law that restricts their free speech rights. They can count on the fact that local governments will pass unconstitutional laws and ordinances to restrict their activities. The church finances its very extensive travel costs (nearly $200,000 per year) through their own congregation (about 70 members) and through the legal fees they charge to and get reimbursed from this governmental source.

The overriding issue for the Westboro Baptist Church is homosexuality.

They started their political activity campaigning against public gay sex in Topeka's Gage Park, six blocks from their church. Since then they have steadily escalated their rhetoric against gays and lesbians. Their view is that the United States, by allowing homosexuality, has entered into a full rebellion against God's Word. Consequently every misfortune that now occurs in our country is God's punishment, a punishment that the believers of the Westboro Baptist Church welcome.

Therefore, according to WBC, Americans die in Iraq because God is punishing us for condoning homosexuality. Most recently, they even argued that seven Mennonite children died in a house fire in Pennsylvania because the United States and the Mennonites have failed to stamp out homosexuality.

They picket the funerals of such beloved people, not because they intend to win souls for Christ, but they think it necessary to point out to Americans at every moment of our deepest grief that these horrible losses occur because of our rebellion. Per the WBC, to end the losses in Iraq, or to prevent fatal house fires, we need to learn, remember and act on slogan that "God Hates Fags."

It's always a bad sign when your theology reveals a God who hates the same people you do. With such theology, the only difference between you and God is that God has the power to your make your enemies suffer and you don't. The suffering of one's rivals is God's work and to be celebrated.

Some of the ancient prophets of Israel ended up in the same place. Isaiah 3:8 reads: "For Jerusalem has stumbled and Judah has fallen, because their speech and their deeds are against the Lord, defying his glorious presence. The look on their faces bears witness against them; they proclaim their sin like Sodom, they do not hide it. Woe to them, for they have brought evil on themselves."

The condemnation of a sin turns to a warning of God's punishment and then turns into a celebration of every misfortune as God's righteous anger. This is the shadow underside of the prophetic impulse.

In one way, the root cause of Westboro Baptist Church's evil ways is their irrational hatred of homosexuality. One can only speculate about why that might be. But also crucial is their small and cramped view of God as a punishing tyrant. It lets them transfer their murderous impulses to God, who does their dirty work.

Universalism has been much on our minds, these days. The theology of Universalism, the story of a loving God who hates no one, runs counter such theologies of a God who supernaturally implements our hatreds. It reminds us that God ask us to expand our circle of love, to even include those we consider our rivals and enemies.

Memo by Sierra-Marie Gerfao, DRE

2011-03-10T11:34:00.000-08:00

When I was fifteen years old, a friend who was a year or two my senior took me to our local synagogue for Dances of Universal Peace. The Dances of Universal Peace group borrowed the synagogue one evening each month. I had no idea what to expect from their gathering.

I walked into a room where people were greeting one another excitedly and entering into a circle formation. Song leaders taught the songs and showed us the dances, but the instruction was consistently brief. I learned the dances by doing them, and learned the songs by singing them. The songs were simple, often chants and sung mantras. We sang them over and over, at varying tempos and volumes, dancing in circle, and something magical and transformative would happen as the words were internalized and embodied in our movements.

The Dances of Universal Peace tradition comes out of the 1960s counter-culture, but unlike many of the movements from that time, it continued to grow through the 1990s. Having been raised in a Unitarian Universalist church, the dances invoked the familiar "circle worship" of my time in youth group. In fact, even some of the songs were familiar.

I soon grew to feel comfortable with the dances, and made it my practice to attend regularly. My friend and I eventually gathered a fairly large group of other youth, and we all went to the dances together. Some of the most spiritually moving experiences I've had occurred during the dances.

A year or so later, a group member became inappropriate with one of my friends, and we all immediately stopped going to the dances. Still, by that point my friends and I had begun to take hiking trips together in the Colorado mountains, and we always made sure to carry handheld drums and other small instruments in our backpacks. We knew the songs, and there was nothing better than getting to the top of a climb and pulling out our instruments to make a joyful noise after having discovered through our hike that we and our problems were very tiny afterall, and that rivers ran down mountains no matter what was going on in our heads and with our emotions.

Every now and then, I hear people argue that teenagers or young adults are void of spirituality. They are, it is said, focused on dating and school, on extracurricular activities and driving, and all kinds of other youthful distractions. On the contrary, I have found the teenage hormonal surge, the emotional rollercoaster of adolescence, to create the ripest conditions and the deepest cravings for the grounding that comes from spiritual practices, reflection, and experiences. There is a reason that rites of passages for teenagers around the world often involve a spiritual quest.

My wife, whose spiritual temperament and religious background is near opposite of mine, says that even she found her way to the local Catholic Church a couple of times when in her first year of college she felt lost and overwhelmed. She slipped out the back door as quickly and quietly as she came, but being in a sanctuary of worship surrounded by candles gave her a brief sense of peace while she made her way through a confusing and new adult world.

I hear the spiritual hunger in track runners, who talk about the physical endurance and the silent concentration of a good run. I hear the spiritual hunger in the choir singers, who say there is a unique sense of elation in a spontaneous harmony. I even hear the spiritual hunger of the nicotine-addicted teenager, when I take the time to sit outside with him on the bench where he smokes, breathing slowly in and out with him as he reflects on the day he has had.

We've entered the season of Lent, when many, as it has been said, "give up something to make room for something else." There is a physical immediacy in self-deprivation that is attractive and meaningful to many teenagers. The practice of a fast, or giving up of something to make room for something else, is not unique to the Christian tradition and has implications for people of all ages no matter what the particular theology behind it. How are you sharing in Lent with the young people in your life?

In Faith,

Sierra-Marie
P.S. In this time of giving things up to make room for something else, our Family Ministry Month presents a number of opportunities to fill ourselves up with something meaningful. Bring your kids and youth and try out some spiritual practices this Sunday at our Spiritual Practices Symposium after the soup and bread luncheon! Or listen by phone or online to a panel discussion this Tuesday titled "From a Disability Paradigm to An Inclusive Society: Creating a World of Welcome For All God's Children." See a full listing of events at familyministrymonth2011.blogspot.com.

The Rev. Ethelred Brown and the Harlem Unitarian Church by Kim Hampton, Intern Minister

2011-03-01T08:41:00.000-08:00

"To any Unitarian Minister in New York City," thus begins the nearly 60-year relationship between Ethelred Brown and the American Unitarian Association, which started in 1900. At the best of times the relationship was tumultuous; at the worst it was paternalistic and narrow-minded. Always it was degrading.

Ethelred Brown was born in Falmouth, Jamaica, BWI in 1875 (a short fifteen years after Rev. William Jackson appeared at the Autumnal Assembly of the AUA in New Bedford). He was one of five children from an Episcopal family (his brother would become the first Black canon of the Episcopal church in Jamaica). Ethelred came to Unitarianism at a young age, but as there was no Unitarian church in Jamaica he was, as he termed himself, a "Unitarian without a church." For twelve years he served as an organist for two Methodist congregations, and in 1900, after beginning the process to become an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) minister-he wrote a letter, the beginning of which begins this memo.

The letter ended up in the hands of Rev. Frank Southworth, President of Meadville Theological School in Pennsylvania. Southworth responded that Brown would be welcome at Meadville however there were no "colored" Unitarian churches in the United States and white Unitarians only wanted to deal with white ministers. Even with that discouragement, and several botched attempts, Ethelred began his studies at Meadville in 1910. At the end of his studies in 1912, the school ordained him and he returned to Jamaica with hopes of starting a Unitarian church in Montego Bay, not too far from his birthplace in Falmouth.

Ethelred spent eight years trying to plant a Unitarian church in Jamaica; first in Montego Bay and then Kingston. But after receiving little support or understanding from either the AUA or the British and Foreign Unitarian Associations, Ethelred and his wife boarded a boat and headed to New York City. In a letter that he wrote talking of the help (or lack thereof) that he received, Ethelred said, "No missionary Association could have done any less, and dozens have done infinitely more."

Life in New York City was not easy; in Jamaica he could work as an accountant to supplement the little income that he received as a missionary, but in New York the best work he could find in those early years was as an elevator operator.

Life was no easier in New York on the AUA front either. Ethelred established the Harlem Community Church within days of his arrival in New York-the first service was held on March7, 1921. As all missionaries do at the beginning of their mission, they have to ask for donations of supplies and such. Since relations between Ethelred and the AUA were contentious at best, Ethelred did his solicitation outside of the normal system. When word of his solicitations were received in Boston (at AUA headquarters), there began an active campaign to discredit Ethelred and the work that he was doing in Harlem.

After five years, and having only the support of John Haynes Holmes (minister of the Community Church of New York), Ethelred received a letter from the AUA stating that, since the Harlem church was "not in sympathy with the Unitarian spirit and purpose," and as he was not employed full-time as a minister, that the Ministerial Fellowship Committee saw no reason to keep him on the list of fellowshipped ministers unless he showed them otherwise. As you can see, this became a no-win situation. How could Ethelred ever gain employment as a full-time minister if no established Unitarian church was willing to have an African American as their minister AND the AUA would not give him monetary assistance in his missionary efforts? And the Harlem Community Church was set up as a Unitarian congregation, so how could it not be "in sympathy with Unitarian spirit and purpose?"

While this attempt at removing Ethelred from the fellowship roll was unsuccessful (as was a second attempt in 1928), the third attempt was successful and Ethelred was removed from the fellowship roll in 1929. It was only through the help of the ACLU and their threat of a lawsuit that Ethelred was able to have his fellowship reinstated-six years later, in 1935.

The Harlem Community Church-later the Harlem Unitarian Church-continued to exist under Ethelred's leadership until after his death in 1956.

There is so much more that could be said. If you are interested in learning more about Ethelred Brown I can point you to two books; first is Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, written by the Rev. Dr. Mark Morrison-Reed, who until his retirement served Unitarian Universalist churches in Rochester, New York and Toronto. The second book is The Origins of Black Humanism in American: Ethelred Brown and the Unitarian Church, written by Dr. Juan M. Floyd-Thomas, who is a professor of theology at the Vanderbilt School of Divinity.

*-all quotes come from Black Pioneers

Kim Hampton,
Intern Minister
First Unitarian Church of Worcester

"Sand, Sun and Study" by Rev. Tom Schade

2011-02-10T10:39:00.000-08:00

Hello from the Asilomar Conference Center in Monterey California. The conference center is right on a wild stretch of the Pacific Ocean beach where waves crash on crags, sandpipers scurry and the sun sets orange. The air smells of eucalyptus and pine. It is a long way from the snow and ice of New England. I apologize if sending the picture above seems insensitive to the suffering of others.

I am attending the Unitarian Universalist Ministers' Association Institute, a week-long conference with the purpose of Continuing Education for UU ministers. Almost 400 are here. In addition to the usual ministerial stuff, the eating, the socializing, the two worship services a day, there are week-long workshops on various subjects.

I have been spending the week studying with the Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed about the long history of African Americans in the Unitarian, Universalist and Unitarian-Universalist denominations. It's not a story that brings joy and gladness to any heart.

Check out Mark Morrison-Reed's Book

Over and over again, African American ministers, some already established in independent churches of their own, sought to become part of the Liberal Religious movements, and over and over again, were rebuffed or ignored.

White denominational leaders could not imagine that Unitarianism or Universalism could ever have a following among African Americans. They could not imagine that white Unitarians or Universalists could ever accept a black man as their minister. They could not even imagine developing a parallel denomination for African Americans, a "Colored Unitarian Association', something that almost every other mainline Protestant denomination in the USA did in the 19th century.

Assuming that any effort to spread Liberal Religion among African Americans would fail, Unitarian and Universalist leaders often reacted to any opportunity to try with suspicion and rejection.

Many of the Negro ministers who sought a place with us were highly educated and went on to have careers in academia and science. They were people just like the denominational leaders: educated, well-born, politically active, middle-class. They were often put in a double-bind. Being middle-class intellectuals, it was doubted that they could attract poor and working class African Americans. At the same time, denominational leaders did not think that a Liberal Religious movement would ever be appropriate among the masses of black people, under any leadership. So aspiring African American ministers would be unwelcome because they could not do what no one wanted them to do.

It is not useful to judge the actions of people in the past by the standards of today. Most people and institutions rarely rise above the level of their times. Who knows what they will be saying about us a hundred years from now. The purpose of studying history is not find people that seem dumber, in hindsight, than you. You can, however, see how some thoughts and patterns persist even to today. It's not always fun to study the failings and mistakes of the past; there are times I would rather be on the beach, watching the waves roll in. See you on Sunday.

"Wherever We See It" by Rev. Tom Schade

2011-02-04T07:50:00.000-08:00

Minister's Memo
First Unitarian Church of Worcester, MA
February 4, 2011
Rev. Tom Schade

" Wherever We See It "
Like many of you, my life has been divided into two different activities: shoveling snow and watching unfolding events in Egypt. Nothing like coming in from a session outside, stripping off the wet clothes, grabbing a cup of coffee or hot chocolate, putting on something comfy and watching CNN. What a change of pace from wondering how soon the plow will come by and close up the end of your driveway again!

I just discovered Al Jazeera English on my computer, which gets me away from my TV for some of the time.

My sense is that most Americans are not sympathetic to Hosni Mubarark. When we hear that he has ruled for 30 years, amassed a significant fortune and wants to make his son his successor, we root for the people in the streets. Even our government doesn't like him anymore, although they did gave him $50 billion over the last three decades, Republicans and Democrats alike. Time to throw the bum out.

By and large, we hate oppression wherever we see it. Wherever we see it. Unfortunately, our field of vision is very narrow and we accept oppression and exploitation wherever we aren't looking.

While we looked at Israel's security, we were pleased that Egypt maintained a 'cold peace' with Israel for 30 years. We were also dimly aware that to implement such an unpopular policy in Egypt required an authoritarian government, but we weren't really looking there.

Similarly, if a popular revolt arose in Saudi Arabia, against the House of Saud, many of us would cheer it on, even though our prosperity since the Eighties has depended on the oil policies of the royal family.

I think that this is all very odd. It seems disloyal to the dictators we have supported for decades. Yet, it didn't seem disloyal to our democratic ideals to support those dictators all those decades.

I could say that this is evidence of mass hypocrisy. But I have to say that I hate rhetorical accusations of mass hypocrisy. I know that it is a standard refrain of the prophets, ancient and modern:

"You say that you are faithful to Yahweh, and yet you make sacrifices to false gods."

"You say that love the earth, and yet you drive a gas-guzzler."

I am not saying that these accusations of mass hypocrisy are not accurate; I am just saying that I hate them. They are moralistic, and moralism is usually based on bad theology.

Wherever you look closely, you will see oppression and exploitation of some sort. The entire world social order is a complex, interdependent web of relationships that includes people living in the most abject poverty and extreme exploitation and people living with unimaginable wealth and privilege. The world is not fair. There is no one who is not part of it, and by being part of it, cannot be accused of somehow accepting it. There is no one who can see it all.

It is an inaccurate view of the creation to imagine that oppression and exploitation are local or occasional problems. It is an inaccurate view of human beings to imagine that it is a sin to aware of one injustice but not all of them. There is no one who can see it all.

It is a more accurate view of humanity to see that oppression and exploitation are everywhere, even in most human relationships, and that we are moving from ignorance to knowledge in our understanding of the world we live in.

Harsh moral judgments are based on a belief that sin and evil, inconsistency and ignorance are the problems of individuals alone: I call that mistaken theology.

Perhaps we have not been thinking of the plight of Egypt's people for these last thirty years. Let us learn now, and apply that learning to the future. It will help us understand the world better. And even more important, it will extend the reach of our human solidarity with others, far away and in a different culture. We are moving from ignorance to knowledge and the only virtue that matters now is solidarity.

Now, back to the snow.

"Moral Questions" by Rev. Tom Schade

2011-01-20T06:47:00.000-08:00

Minister's Memo
FIrst Unitarian Church of Worcester, MA
January 15, 2011
Rev. Tom Schade

"Moral Questions"

Jared Loughner is another case study in a long-running theological debate in American religion, a debate about good and evil, predestination, free will and human nature.

It was Sarah Palin who reminded me of this debate when she called Louchner "crazed and evil". The religious conservative understands human nature to be is, by default, sinful or depraved. God, however, chooses to save some people, either because of their personal effort, their religious identity or simply by grace.

Therefore, a person's virtue or vice reflects the state of that person's soul and its relationship to God. Good and evil are individual.

Jared Loughner according to this worldview, was a human soul given over to evil, and thus, completely at odds with people who were in right relationship with God. It is possible for him to be both "Crazed" and "Evil", and as dangerous as a rabid dog.

Liberal religion, on the other hand, now understands human beings to be the result of an endlessly complex network of mutual conditioning. Why Jared Loughner shot 20 people is impossible to say with any certainty. Was it because he was mentally ill? Is mental illness the result of bad parenting, defective brain chemistry, drug use, social isolation? What are the cultural influences that would cause a young man to want to go out in a blaze of gunfire, perversely heroic? Does the political rhetoric of the day aggravate paranoia in some people?

The questions are endless and in the end, unknowable.

A religious liberal commented recently that there is no such thing as a "lone gunman." Everybody and everything is interdependent and interrelated. By the same logic, there is no such thing as a lone saint, either.

To a religious conservative, this is crazy talk. There are people who are evil and they will do evil things. Some do evil things for explainable reasons: greed, jealousy, rage. Others do evil things irrationally; those are "crazed and evil."

When liberals suggest that the tone of political rhetoric may have contributed to Loughner's actions, what conservatives hear is an accusation that they are co-conspirators: an irrational indictment. It would never stand up in a court of law. It is a libel.

On the other hand, liberals hear conservatives accusing them of enabling crime by trying to understand why people do evil actions, and the accusation drives us crazy. We feel libeled.

Hence, two worldviews contend with each other. One, religious conservatives, divides humanity into good or evil individuals. The other one imagines humanity as a huge network continuously creating, shaping and influencing each other. No one is ever completely the "other", or "not us" or outside the human family.

There are blind spots in each position. Conservative Religion has trouble understanding that different is not necessarily evil. It has trouble getting beyond the first reaction to rivals, outsiders and antagonists as morally depraved.

Liberal religion has trouble in recognizing evil in the world. Evil exists, for whatever reason, and we must deal with it. We may never understand why The Jared Loughners, the John Muhammeds, the Timothy McVeighs, the Ted Bundys do what they do. In the meantime, we have to stop them from causing more suffering.

Neither side is willing to acknowledge how much they are creating each other.

I try to imagine myself into the thought world of conservative religion, a world of spiritual warfare and where Satan is not a metaphor. I try to imagine a world where people are good or evil by choice or by fate.

But I practice Liberal Religion.

I believe that Liberal Religion is more accurate about our common moral state. People are not good or evil by choice or fate. Self-possession drives moral development. A self-possessed person is not driven by social conditions, psychological compulsions. Knowing himself or herself, they can separate themselves from others, allowing healthy compassion and reciprocity to develop. Knowing the self is the necessary precondition to living within the social network with virtue.

Conservative Religion approaches good and evil with the aim of sorting the good from the evil. Liberal Religion is more investigative and speculative.

Returning to this moment in time, Liberal Religion should not back off from our curiosity about why Jared Loughner shot 20 people. Saying he was "crazed and evil" doesn't actually explain anything. While he is responsible for his acts, we are responsible for finding out all the factors or why and how? I know that doing so will further embroil us in a theological and moral conflict in our culture. Unfortunately.

But that conflict has being going on for a long time and will continue for a long time. We live in the middle of the story. I sincerely think that Liberal Religion is right, and I am willing to speak up for it.

Jared Loughner's Question by Rev. Tom Schade

2011-01-17T07:18:00.000-08:00

Minister's Memo
FIrst Unitarian Church of Worcester, MA
January 15, 2011

Rev. Tom Schade

Jared Loughner's Question

We are told that Jared Louchner asked Rep. Gabrielle Gifford at a Town Hall meeting this question: ""What is government if words have no meaning?". He was angered, we are told, that she did not answer the question adequately.

We are told that this question indicates his mental illness. Perhaps there is something wrong with me, a potential derangement, but I think I get his question. It is more basic than the question of whether our political rhetoric is so heated as to be dangerous.

Let me take you on a trip in my personal "wayback machine" to the late 60's, when I was in college. As an antiwar activist, I, with others, had concluded that the political system was rigged and fixed. Our evidence included the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr, the nomination of Hubert Humphrey in Chicago, and Nixon's election in 1968. We said that "Fascism" had come to America.

We had not studied "Fascism" in depth, nor made a rigorous analysis of the political system. Looking back, it is now clear that the United States had not entered into a period of dictatorship in 1968.

After all, the President we thought was a power mad tyrant was impeached only a few years later.

We said that "Fascism" had come to America because we were really angry and because accusing the system of Fascism was rhetorically satisfying. Our accusation was not based on the commonly understood meaning of words, but on an exaggeration. The problem was that an untruth became accepted in some circles as truth and that led some to dangerous political actions.

How are government, politics and civic life possible if words have no meaning?

The political discourse in this country is dangerous, not because military, cowboy and violent metaphors are used by some to describe what is going on. Those metaphors come to mind because we talk about events with words untethered to reality and truth.

To quote some examples:

Modest regulation of the kind of weapons that can be legally sold or who can buy them is not "taking away people's guns." No governmental power now exists that actually permits the confiscation of anyone's weapons. Gun regulation is declining, not growing. It is not simply an exaggeration to say that President Obama wants to take away your guns; it is factually untrue.

Giving large amounts of cash to banks to improve their liquidity during a credit crunch is not 'socialism'.If anything, it is the opposite, a public subsidy of the present bank managements. You may not think it wise policy, but you cannot call it "socialism" without robbing the word of its meaning.

Setting up a modest system of subsidies for people to buy commercial health insurance is not a "take over" of the health system. Nor is permitting physicians to bill Medicare for end of life planning discussions with patients setting up "death panels" in actual fact.

I know these examples reflect my political preferences, but I suspect that any honest conservative could cite similar exaggerations made by liberals.

The problem is not political speech that can be rhetorically vivid, but that eventually exaggerated rhetoric causes words to lose their meaning. And when words like "confiscation, take-over, socialism, treason, enemy, terrorism, anti-American, murder and genocide" lose their careful, precise and exact meaning, then all sorts of dangers can result.

I do not, for a minute, believe that speech should be regulated. No "ministry of truth" should decide when an exaggerated phrase meant to shock verges into untruth. But everyone, including commentators, reporters, pundit and ordinary citizens ought to be asking "What a second, is what you are saying actually true? Are you using words according to commonly accepted meanings?"

Liberal Religion is not simply committed to the truth. It is committed to the social process of the truth. We do not claim to know the truth, but believe that the truth will emerge from honest dialogue and questioning. We insist that people tell the difference between facts, opinions, fictions, rhetorical flourishes, jokes and poetry. We are all responsible for preserving the meaning of words, so that government and politics and civic life are possible.

John Milton, the English Puritan poet, is quoted in the Responsive Reading 671 in our Gray hymnal as writing: "Let [truth] and falsehood grapple, [for] whoever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter."

Christmas Eve at First Unitarian

2010-12-15T12:05:00.000-08:00

On Christmas Eve, we open wide our doors to welcome all those of every faith tradition (and none) who are touched by story of the birth of Jesus. We gather in the darkness to tell the story of the birth of a holy child. We gather because we love the beautiful music of the season. We gather because we need to see the world bathed in candlelight. And in the midst of all this beauty and celebration, we understand that we are called to serve homeless children and their families in Worcester County, with a special free-will offering. In past years, the service has been standing room only. This year, we will be having two identical services, with the choir performing their spectacular music at each. Children are most welcome at both services. We hope that you will consider joining us, for an evening of music and poetry.

Will Sherwood, AAGO,ChM, Director of Music & Organist
Alesia Tringale, soprano
Jean Gough, soprano
Tracy Kraus
Madeline Browning, flute
Bob Gordon, timpani & percussion

MUSIC FOR 2010 CHRISTMAS EVE SERVICE
Prelude (3:40 & 5:10 p.m.) Festival Music of the Season
Musical Introit "O Holy Night" Adolph Adam (1850)
Choral Processional "Adeste Fideles"
Choir and Soloists process, then during the organ & timpani fanfare,
Congregation stands and sings "O Come, All Ye Faithful."
*Congregational Carol "O Come, All Ye Faithful" Adeste Fideles
Anthem "Once in Royal David's City" Traditional
*Congregational Carol "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" Carol C.M.D.
Offertory Anthem "Glory to the Newborn King" Moses Hogan
Anthem "O Magnum Mysterium" Morten Lauridsen
Anthem "Cover Him, Joseph"
Anthem "Before the Marvel of this Night" Carl Schalk
Anthem "Lo How A Rose E'er Blooming" arr. Sherwood
*Congregational Carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem" St. Louis
Anthem "Candlelight Carol" John Rutter (1980)*Candlelighting "Silent Night, Holy Night"
Choral Response "Ukranian Bell Carol" arr. Wilhousky
Organ Postlude Overture from "Nutcracker Suite" Tschaikowsky
(*) Congregation sings

Please go to http://www.first-unitarian.com/services/christmas-eve-services.html for more information and an audio preview of the music.

Joy to the World by Sierra-Marie Gerfao

2010-12-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

by Sierra-Marie Gerfao, DRE

It seems like the idea of happiness is coming back in vogue. I've been reading and hearing more news reports on studies having to do with happiness recently, and related subjects such as play, so I looked into it.

Apparently, at UC Berkley, there is now a whole department called "The Greater Good Science Center," devoted in part to understanding the science of happiness. If you are noodling around on the internet, you can find a short promotional documentary they have done on their center and its work at YouTube.

There is also an interesting 2003 documentary called "Children Full of Life" that has been making the rounds recently on blogs and Facebook pages. The film (directed by Noboru Kaetsu and produced by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation) documents a year in a fourth grade class in Kanazawa, northwest of Tokyo.

Early on in the film, Mr. Kanamori, the teacher, becomes serious, focused, and opens with this question: "What's the most important thing this year?" "To be happy," his students reply. "What are we here for?" he asks. "To be happy" the students repeat in unison.

It's an unusual goal for a teacher to set, but it isn't out of left field. Ask parents what they want for their children, and happiness will almost universally rank in the first three answers.

In fact, ask any person getting ready for Christmas what they hope for the holiday, and chances are, if they don't say "happiness" outright, it is implicit in the other things they say. Is not the stuff under your Christmas tree this year there to produce the effect of happiness?

Dacher Keltner, one of the researchers at the Greater Good Science Center says that happiness is an evolutionary drive, not just in terms of the need to feel happy ourselves but to help others feel happy. He refers to Darwin's writings in Descent of Man, and underscores the line "sympathy is our strongest instinct." Now this caught my attention.

I've been talking for several years now about the exciting discovery in neurological science of "mirror neurons." Even while quietly observing others, our neurons are not disengaged. Essentially, we each have a neurological "virtual world" inside our heads that engages with others in the things they do and the feelings they feel.

The folks over at the Greater Good Science Center have been studying heart rate and breathing responses to videos: a sad video, a neutral video, and finally a video about children with cancer. What we might expect in the latter is that the heart rate and breathing of participants would go up in response to the video, indicating stress. Instead, the opposite occurs.

When participants watched a video about children with cancer, their heart rate and breathing actually slowed! The researchers hypothesize that when we encounter the sadness of others, our bodies help us stay calm so that we can engage in soothing and compassionate ways. Indeed, it seems, sympathy may be our strongest instinct.

Your joy is really a joy to the world. We all know that come January or February, the elation of our new toys from Christmas will have faded into routine. Physical touch, habits of gratitude, and living compassionately, however, are examples of practices that cultivate a sustaining happiness. With all the bustling around this season, I wish for you most of all, those things that bring real joy in your lives. Merry Christmas! I'll see you at the Christmas pageant this Sunday.

Yours in Faith,

Sierra-Marie

Hanukkah Party - December 5, 2010

2010-12-08T11:13:00.000-08:00

Thank you to the Hanukkah Seder Committee for a wonderful Hanukkah Party on December 5, 2010.

"April 11, 1954: the 20th Century's Most Boring Day" by Rev. Tom Schade

2010-12-02T13:14:00.000-08:00

This just in from National Public Radio:

"Today, William Tunstall-Pedoe told All Things Considered co-host Robert Siegel that after a computer analysis of more than 300 million facts (done by a search engine called True Knowledge that he's invented), it seemed clear that ... well ... nothing great happened on 4-11-54."

But Tunstall-Pedoe insisted that while on most days, "lots of famous people are born, famous people die, there are events happening ... this particular day was extremely notable for having almost nothing happen"

Ok, I admit that when I see a name like William Tunstall-Pedoe in a news story, my P.G. Wodehouse detector inches into the red zone, and I figure that its an "Onion" story. Especially when the story is about the most boring day of the twentieth century.

I know that for many readers, April 11, 1954 was doubly boring, because you were not born yet. Ordinary ennui is at least a state of being, which is inherently more interesting than non-being. You don't have to agree.

But I remember April 11, 1954 well, and while it was boring, there were some moments of interest. I was five years old, already well-acquainted with boredom. (We didn't get a TV until much later.)

I spent the early morning goofing around in the bedroom getting dressed.

How come when you put a shirt on backwards, you can fix it without taking the shirt completely off, but you have to take the shirt completely off if you put it on inside out?

I made the very important discovery on April 11, 1954 that if you put the shirt on both inside out and backwards, it doesn't really do any good to fix the backward problem first, because the chances are that you when you take the shirt off to fix the inside-out problem, you have a 50-50 chance of putting back on backwards anyway.

Might as well wait, do the inside-out problem first and then fix the backwards problem.

I remember looking back on the many times that I had tried to put on a shirt like pants, and sighing at my lost youth. Those were good days, but I had moved on.

I went to read the paper with my dad. I only knew how to read one word, ("the") and I would help him find it in every news story of the paper.

It might have the 12th, but I think it was the 11th, that I spent most of the day looking for my shoes, the most boring game of hide-and-go-seek ever played. My shoes hid, I seeked them and my mother helped with clues. "Where did you take them off?" and "They're right where you left them."

As I remember it, they were those "Mary Jane" shoes - kind of like perforated wingtips in the front, round toes, but with a strap. A strap? Really? What were my parents thinking? I should have never found them. Just left them under the couch.

The rest of the day? Just the usual excitement. Dust motes in the air in the afternoon, especially after whacking one of the burgundy couch pillows. Petting the dog. Watching my mother take care of my little sister who was just nine months old and starting to walk around.

I remember that night on April 11, 1954, a day which did seem boring to me thinking that perhaps I missed something.

As my parents tucked me in, I asked my Dad to read me a story. He read my favorite by William Ellery Channing: Spiritual Freedom.

And when he got to the best part, I said it along with him: "I call that mind free that which discovers everywhere the radiant signatures of the infinite spirit and in them finds help to its own spiritual enlargement."

"It was a good day, Dad."

"Yes, it was, Son."

"Good night Moon."

"I think I hear your Mother calling me."

April 11, 1954

2010-12-02T02:31:00.000-08:00

April 11 1954

This just in from National Public Radio:

“Today, William Tunstall-Pedoe told All Things Considered co-host Robert Siegel that after a computer analysis of more than 300 million facts (done by a search engine called True Knowledge that he's invented), it seemed clear that ... well ... nothing great happened on 4-11-54.”

But Tunstall-Pedoe insisted that while on most days, "lots of famous people are born, famous people die, there are events happening ... this particular day was extremely notable for having almost nothing happen"

Ok, I admit that when I see a name like William Tunstall-Pedoe in a news story, my P.G. Wodehouse detector inches into the red zone, and I figure that its an “Onion” story. Especially when the story is about the most boring day of the twentieth century.

I know that for many readers, April 11, 1954 was doubly boring, because you were not born yet. Ordinary ennui is at least a state of being, which is inherently more interesting than non-being. You don’t have to agree.

But I remember April 11, 1954 well, and while it was boring, there were some moments of interest. I was five years old, already well-acquainted with boredom. (We didn’t get a TV until much later.)

I spent the early morning goofing around in the bedroom getting dressed. How come when you put a shirt on backwards, you can fix it without taking the shirt completely off, but you have to take the shirt completely off if you put it on inside out? I made the very important discovery on April 11, 1954 that if you put the shirt on both inside out and backwards, it doesn’t really do any good to fix the backward problem first, because the chances are that you when you take the shirt off to fix the inside-out problem, you have a 50-50 chance of putting back on backwards anyway. Might as well wait, do the inside-out problem first and then fix the backwards problem.

I remember looking back on the many times that I had tried to put on a shirt like pants, and sighing at my lost youth. Those were good days, but I had moved on.

I went to read the paper with my dad. I only knew how to read one word, (“the”) and I would help him find it in every news story of the paper.

It might have the 12^th, but I think it was the 11^th, that I spent most of the day looking for my shoes, the most boring game of hide-and-go-seek ever played. My shoes hid, I seeked them and my mother helped with clues. “Where did you take them off?” and “They’re right where you left them.”

As I remember it, they were those “Mary Jane” shoes – kind of like perforated wingtips in the front, round toes, but with a strap. A strap? Really? What were my parents thinking? I should have never found them. Just left them under the couch.

The rest of the day? Just the usual excitement. Dust motes in the air in the afternoon, especially after whacking one of the burgundy couch pillows. Petting the dog. Watching my mother take care of my little sister who was just nine months old and starting to walk around.

I remember that night on April 11, 1954, a day which did seem boring to me thinking that perhaps I missed something. As my parents tucked me in, I asked my Dad to read me a story. He read my favorite by William Ellery Channing: Spiritual Freedom.

And when he got to the best part, I said it along with him: “I call that mind free that which discovers everywhere the radiant signatures of the infinite spirit and in them finds help to its own spiritual enlargement.”

“It was a good day, Dad.”

“Yes, it was, Son.”

“Good night Moon.”

“I think I hear your Mother calling me.”

War on Terror Over by Rev. Tom Schade

2010-11-29T11:21:00.000-08:00

The word just in is that the War on Terror is so over, at least the Airport front. Not "over", as in not happening anymore but "over" in like "no longer cool in any way."

After nine short years of airport security procedures, the American flying public has had enough and is no longer willing to be compliant. The straw that broke our collective camel-esque humps was the choice between the body scanner and the enhanced pat-down techniques.

In the beginning, we were willing to give up meeting our friends at the gate, or saying goodbye to them as they boarded the plane. We were willing to add an hour to our airport time every time we flew. We were willing to wait in long lines. We were willing to have our carry on luggage scanned. We were willing to empty our pockets and take off our jackets, and then our shoes. We were willing to pack our liquids with special procedures. We were willing to buy more expensive bottles of water inside the security zone. We made willing sacrifices for the cause of our greater safety,

We all felt so British, so '"stiff in the upper lip area": "Keep Calm and Hold your pants up with one hand as you shuffle like a shoeless penguin through the machine."

But then, they came for our fat.

Choice number one: you stand in a scanner and some person somewhere far away sees in full detail what you look like as a naked body. Don't tell me we are afraid that someone might see our reproductive apparatuses, now technically termed our "junk". I suspect our fear is that someone won't be able to see our "junk" because there is too much "chunk" in the way.

The other choice is an enhanced pat down, where someone actually touches you. As a taxpayer and a patriot, I resent any implication by my government that I could smuggle enough plastic explosive to bring down a plane in one of my abdominal folds. And the idea that a uniformed agent of the federal government is going to rummage around in them is too much.

So, I don't know what to think anymore.

If there is a real threat to air travel, shouldn't this escalation be as acceptable as everything that came before? If it is truly necessary, then enough said.

But if there isn't a sufficient threat to justify this, then we have to ask if the whole airport security system has been a charade from the beginning, a piece of political theatre?

So, who has the authority to tell us what is real and necessary when it comes to air travel security? In today's environment, any statement from any person is suspected as propaganda or spin. There are no objective experts.

What does liberal religion offer to a world in which there are no recognized objective authorities, where everyone who speaks is seen to be a propagandist? Or where everything is significant only in how it affects "Apocalypse 2012, Obama vs. Palin". (It's still on even though a Palin surrogate lost the crucial ballroom dancing primary.)

Liberal Religion is not another final authority; I am not trying to fill Walter Cronkite's shoes. It has a different mission: when there are no objective experts anymore, liberal religion reminds us that good judgment is a personal responsibility. We will have wiser political leaders and better media when we are more careful voters and information consumers. It is our duty to find the facts, analyze the situation and come to judicious conclusions. We should be challenging others to do the same, whether we agree with them or not.

If we do not think for ourselves, no one else can do it for us.

Turkey Memo by Rev. Tom Schade

2010-11-18T11:22:00.000-08:00

My Turkey

(The other day, somebody reminded me of this memo from 2004, and I thought it set the stage for the upcoming holiday well. So, a rerun.)

I remembered this year why I don't like to make turkeys for Thanksgiving.

I had not made one for several years. We have been taking the "anything but a Turkey option" for Thanksgiving. We have had the overpriced brown sugar encrusted, spiral cut hams from the baked ham boutiques. We have had overpriced roasts of beef. We have dined in fancy overpriced French restaurants, overpriced steak houses where they brought our food to the table in giant silver carts, and even in an Italian restaurant, which raised its prices for the occasion. Sometimes, we have even eaten turkey at these restaurants, but I, at least, did not have to make it.

I am not sure why I resist making a roast Turkey for Thanksgiving; I just do.

This year, however, someone recommended to us that we buy a turkey at the local grocery store. It was assured to us that they had the very best turkeys imaginable, and that they were suitably overpriced, so that, at least, one tradition would be maintained. So that's what we did.

I had to go to the store a week in advance and speak with the turkey consultant at the special Turkey order desk. And there, after a short interview, our family was matched with a suitable Thanksgiving turkey.

Our Turkey was a splendid specimen. It had an excellent resume, and came with references. It had avoided the temptations of drugs and chemicals and was as pure as the driven snow. It was represented to me that it had spent its life, strolling about the great open plains, grazing across the range where the deer and the antelope play, (and the sky is not cloudy all day), doing whatever young, innocent and touchingly naïv e turkeys do.

Had our children been younger, I would have engaged this turkey as a governess for them.

On Wednesday, I went to the store, waited in a long line, and then, our turkey was ushered into our presence. A free aluminum foil roasting pan was included. It was not needed, because, in honor of the occasion, I had already purchased a new roasting pan. (Yes, it was overpriced, but it will last forever.)

On Thursday, I got out my Betty Crocker Cookbook, the one with the big pictures, and read the instructions for roasting the turkey.

I have to tell you at this point, that I have one of those ovens that comes with a temperature probe. You stick this thermometer into the turkey, and it turns off the oven when the bird is cooked to perfection. Could it be any easier?

I hooked everything up, set the oven and put my brand new roasting pan, holding this tender, innocent yet outdoorsy turkey in to roast. Betty Crocker said that it should take 3 to 4 hours.

90 minutes later, the alarm goes off.

The turkey is done, according to the thermometer. How could this be? Well, it looks golden brown on the outside, but that doesn't tell you whether it is cooked down in the innards. And it is only half way through the recommended time. Perhaps the temperature probe is not accurate. Perhaps I didn't sink the probe into just the right place in the turkey. ("Next year," I say to myself, "you should buy a kitchen model X-Ray machine that will guide your thermometer placement more accurately.") Perhaps my oven is too hot. I am perplexed.

So, I decide to cook the turkey some more. After all, the rest of the meal is not yet done, and not everyone is ready to eat. It seemed like a rational decision at the time. On the one hand, I had the high-tech oven, with its well-engineered temperature probe, telling me it was done. It even showed me the internal temperature of the turkey with a digital display, in case I was unable to squint enough to read a regular thermometer. On the other hand, I had a vague intuition, knowledge beyond all rational knowing, that it just couldn't be fully cooked yet.

So, I cooked the turkey for another hour. After all, if I believed in empirical evidence, I would have been called to another profession.

The result, of course, was that our Thanksgiving feast was splendid. The Schade's gathered around the groaning board; we expressed our great gratitude for all our blessings, which included the chance to live close to one another, the peace that reigns in our family, our shared sense of purpose, our satisfactions with our individual vocations, our friends and colleagues, the wonderful congregation I get to serve, our good health and fortune. Surely, we are blessed. The food was delicious and plentiful, with one tiny exception: the turkey was kind of dry. As in, Iraq is kind of dry. You didn't really slice this turkey; it sort of crumbled when touched. The best strategy for eating it was to try to glue the turkey dust together with a lot of gravy so it wouldn't blow off your fork on the way to your mouth.

Later on, during the cleanup stage of the meal, I did find the special roasting instructions that came with my very special turkey. It turns out that because the turkey is so fresh, so natural, so healthy, so close to the Platonic ideal form of turkey-ness, it cooks more quickly. Naturally, my 1987 Betty Crocker cookbook with the big pictures had not kept up with these developments. Apparently the only thing Betty Crocker has over Martha Stewart is that she is not in prison.

There are, of course, many lessons to be learned from this tragic tale, lessons for our church, our community and for our spiritual lives. One might be that holidays are not about food. Another might be that methods from 1987 may not still work. Follow the directions; you may not know everything. Consider the evidence. Spending more does not necessarily mean better results. But I think the most important lesson for us all is that every turkey must follow its own path to perfection.

2010-11-10T12:57:00.000-08:00

Minister's Memo
FIrst Unitarian Church of Worcester, MA
November 10, 2010

As our prayers end in the weekly service, the minister calls for the offering by saying "Now the morning offering will be given and received." The ushers then walk forward and the minister sends them forth into the congregation, collection plates in hand, with these words: "May our gifts be acceptable in the eyes of God."

At least that how it was done when I arrived here in 1999. And over the years since, Rev. Merritt and I have fiddled and jiggled with those phrases but always within that general framework.

From the very beginning, I sensed a little odd discomfort with that phrasing. A little disturbance in the Force, a Jedi Minister would have said. A tiny sense of disconnection and resistance. People, otherwise, seem to be in the flow with the rest of the service. They appreciate our covenant and they do want that "songs of faith and hope will arise, from all that dwell below the skies." But I could feel this little clunk when I would pray that God would find our gifts acceptable.

It's a little blip, and then the choir starts to sing and all is well again.

But then, over the last 10 years, I have noticed some other things.

First Unitarian Church, it seems, on a per member basis pledges at a lower rate than almost all other successful UU churches, even here in New England.

The pledge campaign is comparatively slow here; the pledge cards dribbling in for months after they go out. The pledge card is short and easy to fill out, yet people seem to file their income taxes more quickly.

People don't like fundraisers because they are asked to pledge; yet people don't pledge as much because we have so many fundraisers anyway.

But what should we expect: right in the Sunday morning worship service, when we come to the point that we gather up our money to do the work of the church, we do not inspire our giving with words that make sense to ourselves.

The offering liturgy "clunks" because it expresses our negative attitudes about giving. Our words sound like we are being forced to give a Christmas present to a boss we don't like. The boss is easily offended, and even angered, by a gift that does not meet his unknowable standards. So the best plan is to buy as inexpensive gift as you think you can get away with, wrap it up, slide it into the pile and pray that it is acceptable in his eyes. The words sound fearful.

I give to the church, and elsewhere, to pool my gifts with others to create something of pleasure and benefit, for me and for others. I can see the benefit and pleasure that my gifts to the church help create: a welcoming worship service of reflection, beauty and challenge, a program that awakens the faith of children, a network of people brought into caring and trusting relationship.

Faith tells me that even though the organizations to which I give are filled with people no better than me, together we can create something more than what I could do alone. If we make ourselves available, God will use us and our gifts for good. Or at least that is how the Universe seems to work.

I am start using new words to inspire our offering. I will try to inspire us with words of hope not fear. It will take a while to get these words right, so I invite your feedback and reflection. I will start this week with a new phrase:

"Through our gathered gifts, may we create a blessing for the world."

Take Time to Remember

2010-11-04T07:24:00.000-07:00

Take some time to remember people after they are dead.

It is good for you, stretching a muscle of emotion that has grown stiff from stillness. Remembering brings air to someplace stale and stifled, a secret storeroom behind a door, closed and locked.

How could it hurt us to touch again an old pain, a yearning that was once, and can still be, overwhelming? How could it hurt us to weep once more?

It is good to teach children to remember those who have died. Perhaps a generation which grows up going to an All Soul's service once a year at church will not deny the reality of death, as their parents and grandparents have.

Remembering and mourning raises the thread count of the human fabric.

As we prepare for the All Souls Service this Sunday, I remember this poem.

It is by the poet, Bill Coyle, in memory of another poet Sten Soderstrom.

"Leave Taking"

The dead, they say, are the departed. They
Pass on, they pass away, they leave behind
Family, friends, the whole of humankind -
They have gone on before. Or so they say.

But could it be the opposite is true?
Now, as I stand here in the graveled drive
At moonrise, unaccountably alive,
I have the sense that it is we, not you

Who are departing, spun at breakneck speed
Through space and time, while you stay where you are
Intimate of dark matter and bright star -
And watch the brilliant, faithless world recede.

Election Memo by Rev. Tom Schade

2010-10-27T12:46:00.000-07:00

The dozens of unanswered phone calls on my answering machine over a weekend told me it was election season. I listened to many of them; there's something about the cheerful and enthusiastic recorded greeting of an office-seeker that just lifts my spirits. But, of course, I am the type that gets a charge out of being hailed by the greeter at a WalMart.

During election season, opinion leaders engage in the ritual tut-tutting about the poor state of our democracy. Time to turn our ire on those awful TV ads that insult our intelligence. Time to trot out some aquatic metaphor for how a river, or flood, or ocean of "big money" is wreaking tsunami like damage on the political system.

Hip, smart, educated, and thoughtful people (like us) are expected to have a jaded boredom about politics and campaigns. Oh, the awfulness of the ads interrupting our TV watching, as though the ads for wireless phones and pharmaceuticals were better. Oh, the phone calls interrupting our dinner, as though we don't have caller id, and don't answer anyway. Oh, the visual clutter of lawn signs and bumper stickers, as though we were surrounded by beauty everywhere until a month ago. It seems to me that every newspaper is required by some faceless bureaucrat somewhere to run at least one article per day by some pseudo-cranky geezer about how awful the elections are. At least, it gives them a rest from writing articles bemoaning Facebook and Twitter and eulogizing their old rotary phones, as being essential to "real community".

Liberal Religion has a solution to the awful state of the republic. It's called "the Free Mind." In 1830, William Ellery Channing, the first Boston minister to claim the name "Unitarian" wrote these lines:

"I call that mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which does not content itself with passive or hereditary faith... I call that mind free which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, and is not the creature of accidental impulse... I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, and which does not cower to human opinion. I call that mind free which...possesses itself."

Everything that is wrong with our present electoral system is the consequence of the lack of self-possession of so many voters. The reason why money and fund-raising is so important is because candidates need to run ads on television. And the reason why 30-second ads are so crucial is because there are enough voters who will be influenced by an inflammatory ad to swing an election. In Channing's words, voters whose vote is "the creature of accidental impulse" seem to cast the deciding votes.

"Self-possessed voters," on the other hand, have worked out their stake in the election. They have a conscious method of determining their vote. They may vote their self-interest, or their ideology, or their principles, or their party, or the shared interests of their ethnic community, but they have decided, and are, thus, open to reconsider.

But there are voters, who like to think that they 'vote for the candidate and not the party', and having no other basis to decide, end up deciding during the campaign. They end up voting for the one they would rather have a beer with, or the one who is "one of us." They vote against someone because of their college pranks, or after hearing about single votes taken out of context, or the lurid re-tellings of their minor scandals.

No political reform can fix the problem of the unserious voter, so what stands in the way of people taking citizenship seriously? What are the obstacles to the free mind? There are too many to name; some promote an ideology of personal powerlessness and others offer illusions of power in trivial choices. (Shall we have McDonalds or Burger King for lunch today?)

There are too few voices that call upon each of us to stop and consider our own lives carefully and with the longest view, the largest perspective. Too few voices call upon us to work out the relationship between our individual selves and the larger society, so we can vote carefully to advance our own best common goals. To do so requires effort and self-possession, and it is a challenge, and a moral one, at that.

My Lavender Tie

2010-10-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

Minister's Memo
First Unitarian Church of Worcester, MA
October 20,2010

I wore my lavender tie this morning to the Clergy Academy at the Worcester Police Department this morning. It made me feel a little vulne rable, which was the point I suppose. Today was a day in which folks were supposed to wear purple to show solidarity with teens who feel threatened and endangered because of their perceived sexual orientation. So I put on my lavender tie.

I remembered the little clothing rules from high school. It was widely believed in my small Ohio high school that gay people signaled to each other by wearing green on Thursday. If you wore green on Thursday, you were subjected to a lot of derision and teasing. I don't know what happened if St. Patrick's Day fell on a Thursday. I do know that wearing anything lavender would have be like wearing a tiara.

High school can be a very wounding period of time; for some kids it is literally dangerous and life-threatening. Young people are being relentlessly and ruthlessly evaluated by other kids as to their sexual desirability and their conformity to gender expectations. Gay and lesbian kids are often bullied and harassed. Young women are often undergoing a brutal public discussion of their bodies and attractiveness. Touching and co mments that are completely unacceptable in an adult workplace are routine in high school.

It gets better as people get older. But things will get better faster, and there will be less suffering, if adults take a stand against bullying and sexual harassment among young people. Adults need to show active solidarity with those kids who are on the margins and vulnerable because they are, in some way, different.

To be more personal and specific: Gay youth have gone through our Religious Education program, including YRU2. I do not think that we can say that the First Unitarian Church ever extended itself to affirm and sup port them, our own gay youth. I think we should have. Let's not be like that anymore.

Memo by Kimberly Hampton

2010-10-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

I have done two major moves and one minor move in the last two-and-a-half years. All of which have been school-related. And I have learned a bit about myself from those experiences. As I have told my classmates, I've learned that I don't do change well (although I am getting better at it) but if I have to change, give it to me all at once and let it be done. As, finally, my things arrive from Indiana this week, I'm taking stock as to how well I've handled this latest and biggest change.

For the most part, I think I've handled it well. Other than being a little behind in my school work and not having my bed or a couple of shirts that I really wish I had packed, I've handled this transition better than I expected to. The question then becomes why. Why have I handled this change better than the others that I've done in this period of time?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that, as this was my third move, my family and I are getting into a kind of rhythm about moves. Part of the answer is the fact that with this move I was moving closer to the people that I need to be near at this point of my life. But I think the biggest part lies in the fact that I have with me both here at the office and at my apartment a copy of Kathleen Norris' book Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith and some romance novels. Once I noticed that this was the thing that connected both my life here at the church and my life outside of the church, I saw that what both Amazing Grace and my romance novels provide me is a sense of security. They are my security blankets.

What security blanket is God providing you with?

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1) We all find ourselves facing situations where panic and fear are our first and most natural choices. Some of you are trying to cope with fear right now. It's like you are trying to create this space, a sanctuary, a fortress, where fear will not take hold of you. But sometimes, just sometimes, mainly in the darkness of night, your defenses are weak and fear creeps up and finds its way into your heart. At those times; who (or what) is your light?

If we learn that God, be it in the form of a person or spirit or thing, is our light, then we can wait and wade through the darkness for the blaze of the morning. If we learn that God chooses people and things as a dwelling place, then we can choose to dwell in the house of the Lord. If we learn to recognize the work of God in the people and things around us, then we can choose to reveal God to others through our own actions.

That is courage. Courage not drawn on denial. Courage not lived pretending that threats and dangers and fears are not real; that there are not matters out there of critical importance. But what happens is that we see all of that from a different perspective. God is our light. That is what enables us to see what is actually out there. And the first thing that we see is that God is also our stronghold. We cannot be destroyed. That is the Psalmist can write that he has no one or nothing to fear. Who he is is established in a relationship to a strong and faithful God who will not let anything destroy that identity.

Do not be afraid. God has set you up on the rock. Your foot will not slip. Your enemies and your worries, whether they are from without or within, will not overpower you.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, in life can destroy you or separate you from the love of God.

Kimberly Hampton

Memo by Sierra-Marie Gerfao, DRE

2010-10-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, a minister friend of mine was caring for her father in what became his final months of life. One particular occasion, she returned home from a long day at the hospital and we chatted about her father's worsening condition.

She explained to me the medical prognosis her father had received and the care being offered, which at that point was still treatment rather than palliative care. The doctors had recommended a particular course of action for her father, and as she was his medical proxy, they had looked to her to approve the course. Seeing that her father was near his end of life, she said to the doctors, "You are concerned about his body, but my concern is different. I am concerned about his soul."

Recently, during a discussion I had about my son with the head of a unit of the special education department in the Worcester Public Schools, I thought of my friend and what she said to the doctors. She was especially concerned that my son not become "too attached" to any of his therapists – the speech, occupational, or physical therapists – as the school assignments of therapists change frequently and, "in any case," she said, "he is going to have a different class of students and a different teacher every year." In other words, he needs to get used to relationships that don't last.

What I didn't tell her is that in his short life, my son has had plenty of change. We have made a major move from Washington State to Massachusetts, and one year from now we will make another major move from the city of Worcester to the city of New Haven. In a world where too many relationships don't last, and too many of us have difficulty with intimacy, I am much more concerned that my son develop a healthy capacity for close, lasting friendships than an ability to "move on" without care for the relationship. In short, she is concerned about his ability to adapt to school, and I am much more concerned about his soul.

I trust this isn't surprising to you. Over the few years we have spent together, I am sure you know by now that as a professional in family ministry, I consider matters of the soul utmost. It is among my primary concerns with regard to everything from education to politics. With the impending change in staffing in the Office of Faith Development here at First Unitarian Church, there is an opportunity for a conversation about what exactly it is we are trying to do in the ministries of faith development for all ages.

As I ask every year in the teacher and advisor trainings, "what do we need to do to nourish the development of each soul to whom we minister?" The Reverend Schade opened this conversation recently in his memo about the Drapers, and the question of what families need most on Sunday morning and throughout the week at church.

For me, this was followed by a thought-provoking conversation with psychologist and First Unitarian congregant Peter Gray about the critical relationship between unstructured, unsupervised play and children's religious development. Congregant, physician, and yoga instructor Diane Pingeton, who also participated in the conversation, suggested that an afterschool "program" of extended, unstructured playtime followed by a short session of yoga might be an especially needed community offering for children. We talked about this and other matters of soul relating to children, and also to adults.

This conversation isn't going to happen in the secular world, where things like care of the body and care of the mind are largely considered separately from matters of the soul. There is no better place for this conversation than here at church, and no better time for it than now. I look forward to hearing more of what all of you have to say in this, my final year as your Director of R.E.

My New Things by Rev. Tom Schade

2010-09-30T07:17:00.000-07:00

I am happily on the road to over-commitment right now. It happens every fall, part of the recurring cycles of life: like leaves turning, the days shortening, the candidates calling on the phone, the Red Sox disappointing, football season starting. Add to that list of autumnal harbingers, starting up new commitments.

I started a weekly yoga class at the gym. Very interesting. Apparently, I have not taken a proper step ever in my life. I always thought of my feet as being a solid object at the bottom of my legs. God put them there to keep my legs from getting frayed on the end. I am now informed that they are highly flexible objects that move in many different ways. It is possible to distinguish between the inside and the outside of the heel, to press the ground with both, and to put my weight on the outside of the foot, and to lift my arches while spreading my toes. Interesting thought, isn't it? If I knew I was going to be so close to my toes, I would have brought my nail clipper to class. But I like Yoga.

I have started the Worcester Police Department's Clergy Academy: a 9 week program for local clergy in which we get to see the city through the eyes of the police. The men and women we have met so far have been very dedicated, proud and anxious for others to understand their work. And I like the police.

I have started singing with an organized group for the first time in my life: Jim Scott's Community Chorus. We meet in the Bancroft Room on Tuesday nights. Jim Scott, perhaps one of the most renowned musician in Unitarian Universalism, leads the group and we sing songs of peace, justice and the earth. I have always been a free-range singer, moving lightly from note to note and part to part as the free spirit leads me, coming in and going out as I chose, and keeping time to the beat of a different drummer. So, it is taking some effort to accept being herded and shepherded toward what the rest of the group is doing. But I like this singing. By the way the group is looking for more members and is, obviously, open to all.

I am starting up again with my personal trainer at the gym, after some time off, while I fattened up for the fall. My trainer is not some muscled up jock, which would trigger traumatic memories from my high school locker room, but a female dancer. She advises me while I lift weights, sweat and try to remember to breathe. Apparently, I have not taken a proper breath in my life. It's a miracle I'm still here. We also talk about "So You Think You Can Dance." But I even like the gym now.

It's fall; time to start something new. The church is full of new energy now, too. Shake loose the doldrums, the depression and the ennui and start something new, something that you haven't done before, something that will stretch into a new shape. There will be plenty of time later for feeling over-committed and tired. You can prune back then.

Do The Drapers Go To Church?

2010-09-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

There was a child went forth every day,

and the first object he'd look upon, that object he became,

and that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day

Or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

-- Walt Whitman

I, too, have been watching Mad Men, the AMC dramatic series on Sunday night. Set in the early 1960's at an advertising agency, it dramatizes the transition from the 50's to the 60's. Everything: drugs, the counter-culture, black liberation, the war, and feminism, especially feminism, is sneaking up on the advertising guys, who think that they have the world by the tail, but really don't a clue.

The main character is Don Draper, who is smooth, handsome, casually brilliant at what he does, and a womanizer. If he is not an alcoholic, he sure is drunk a lot.  

I sometimes think of myself as Don Draper, but in reality, Don is of my father's generation, and would be in his eighties or nineties now. I could be a peer of Don's children. I was their age back in the early 1960's. So one of the reasons why I watch the show is to jog my memory about childhood.  

Don and Betty, his wife, pretty much ignore their children as much as possible. Which squares with my memory. Don and Betty are on TV, hence rich, and they have a housekeeper, and even though Betty doesn't work, she doesn't have to take care of the kids either. They have taught the kids how to mix drinks, so when the neighbors are over for cocktails, the little ones tend the bar.   

There is no clue that the Drapers ever go to church; if they did they would either sit with the kids service and pinch them frequently or, they would send them off to a Sunday School class where they would do something or another, while out of sight and out of their minds.  

When our generation grew up and had kids of our own, we got rid of that whole sitting quiet and pinching thing: too much work and conflict. Besides it was a mark of feminist progressivism that mothers always had the choice to be free of their children. So the kids went off to do whatever at Sunday school. 

Now our children have grown up, and while my own have not had children (hence, our dogs) I am watching young families and their children here in the church.   

Lo and Behold, the parents want to be with their children and their children want to be with their parents. More mothers are staying home if they can. More families are home-schooling their children. They want to be together as a family.  

And church doesn't make that easy.   

A family can sit in the service together. Most services are not going to be developmentally appropriate for that kind of age range. So, there is a lot shushing, wiggling and coloring.  

The family can go to Sunday School. There the kids are split up into different classes by age. The parents are asked to teach a lot, and they feel that they are missing the service.   

So how does a family go to Church and Sunday School as a unit, together? What does that look like?   

Everything changes, usually just when you think you have it all figured out. Ask Don Draper. How to make this change, about families and church, is one of the questions we are working on.   

We need your ideas.  

"The Theatre of Scandalous Acts" by Rev. Tom Schade

2010-09-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

The story when it came to me via Facebook amused me no end. Down in Amarillo, Texas, a local Protestant fundamentalist preacher announced that he would burn a Qu'ran at the local Sam Houston Park.

The local Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Amarillo mobilized an interfaith body to protest the Qu'ran burning. When the pastor put the gasoline-soaked book on the BBQ grill, the protestors put their hands on the grill.

During the vigorous clash of opinions that followed, a skateboarder whizzed up behind the pastor and grabbed the Qu'ran and sped off with it. He later presented it to the local Imam.

I linked the story on the church's Facebook page.

A conscientious member of the congregation raised the question as to whether the pastor's rights to free speech and free expression had been violated by the skateboarder. A very good question that got me to thinking. No conclusions yet, just a lot of thinking.

Somewhere else during these last couple of weeks, I read a short comment somewhere reminding us of the great controversy over flag-burning. Had the Right and the Left switched positions on deliberately offensive acts of symbolic protest?

There are some similarities and some differences between flag and Qu'ran burning.

Both are deliberately offensive acts, not words, but acts that are theatrical and symbolic. Presumedly, the destroyed object is the private property of the person destroying it. Certainly I would have the right to burn my own baseball cards of Papelbon, Pedroia and Youkilis in protest of the performance of the Red Sox, no matter how offensive that would be to others.

But whatever the ownership of the actual object being destroyed, who owns the symbol? For an American to burn the American flag is different than someone else burning that flag, isn't it? It's an expression of how alienated one of "us" is from the rest of "us". It may be shocking, but perhaps the rest of us need to hear it.

But for a militantly Christian pastor to burn the Holy Book of the Muslims? And to do so, in a community which is overwhelmingly Christian. I wonder if it is in the interests of a free society for the people to allow others to try to mobilize the empowered majority against an unwelcome minority. The relative power of communities does matter.

On the other hand, such acts are political theatre, and therefore, practically harmless. There is a world of difference between burning an individual copy of the Qu'ran in a park, and the State confiscating Qu'rans and burning them in bonfires on the street. So why not just let the theatrical act play itself out: perhaps on the theory that people should have the right to complete their acts of political theatre. Did protestors to the burning restrict the pastor's rights when they laid hands on the grill and dared him to burn people as well as books?

Everything is theatre now. YouTube and the Internet mean that any action can be enacted on a global stage

If it is just theatre, why not let the audience play a role as well? To propose to symbolically burn a Qu'ran is to invite someone to try to symbolically rescue it. Would it be a restriction of the rights of a flag-burner to douse the flames with a fire-extinguisher? Would it make a difference if it was a private citizen, or a city-owned firehose?

Think that most religious liberals would agree that laws against Qu'ran or flag burning would violate the rights of free expression. And most of the people who oppose the Islamic Center in lower Manhattan would concede that a law requiring mosques to meet stricter legal standards would be wrong. So, in the end, these questions come down to matter of ethical behavior among the free citizens of this very multi-cultural, contentious society of spectacle. What role in the theatre of scandalous acts will we play?

See you Sunday.
Tom

*Adrienne Rich, "Origins" Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995, New York, W. W. Norton & Company.

The unabridged stanza reads:

Turning Points. We all like to hear about those. Points
on a graph.

Sudden conversions. Historical swings. Some kind of
dramatic structure.

But a life doesn't unfold that way it moves
in loops by switchbacks loosely strung
around the swelling of one hillside toward another

(there's more.)

Some Goals for the Fall

2010-09-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

My summer was good: sunshine and stars, lakeshores and ocean beaches, cold shrimp sandwiches on a Norwegian fjord, weddings, family and friends, dogs. And I painted some woodwork in the house, a still unfinished task.

And now it is fall; the old word for this upcoming Sunday is Ingathering; some churches have changed the name to Homecoming, which makes me think of football. There is a lot to do before 'the church year' begins again, and I am not sure that I will remember everything. I miss Barbara's mastery of the details.

The church leaders are gathering this Saturday for a goal setting exercise. I'm all for it; we have so much that we can offer to the world that we ought to do everything we can. But these should also be our goals:

1. To come to church more often;

2. to greet more people with warmth and interest

3. to find some new close friends and

4. to let a few friends get a little closer.

5. To be curious about some people of whom you rarely think. (May I suggest immigrants, or muslims, or transgender people?);

6. to learn how to listen to some music that sounds strange at first;

7. to get friendly with some children not your own;

8. to be more at peace when the room goes silent;

9. to more comfortable with your grief and regret;

10. to share more of what you have, especially you.

Church is not supposed to be hard work. Maybe for me, but not for you. It is a time to rest and recover and relax into a more joyful and purposeful life.

It is where you drink of the living water, brimming with stars.

See you Sunday.

Tom

*(Joseph Stroud, Of This World: Port Townsend, Washington, Copper Canyon Press, 2009.)

"What I Meant To Say" - Retirement Sermon of Rev. Barbara Merritt

2010-06-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

“What I Meant to Say
Retirement Sermon by Rev. Barbara Merritt
May 23, 2010

COMMON PRAYER

Where I wander – You!
Where I wonder –You!
Only You,
You again,
You always.
You, You, You.
When I am joyful – You!
When I am sad – You!
Only You, everywhere You!
The Sky is You!
The Earth is You!
You above!
You below!
In the beginning,
at every end,
Only You
You again,
You always!
You.

- Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchov
(1740 - 1810)

FIRST READING
Micah 6, 8
What does the Lord require of thee
but to do justly
to love mercy
and to walk humbly
with thy God.

Matthew 22: 36-39

Master , which is the great commandment in the law?

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

SECOND READING
from “Imperfect Birds” by Anne Lamott

“Each has to enter the nest made by the other imperfect bird.” -Rumi

“Elizabeth (speaking to Rae, her best friend,) ‘Life on earth is a head-scratcher for anyone who’s paying attention. This place has been a bad match for me since I was four. It has been a life wasted in a ping-pong game of narcissism versus self-loathing, punctuated by sloth and depression. What are we supposed to do?’

Ray replied, ‘You stop pretending life is such fun or makes sense. It’s often messy and cruel and dull, and we do the best we can. It’s unfair, and jerks seem to win. But you fall in love with a few people. Like I love you, Elizabeth. You’re the angel God sent me.’

Elizabeth thought this was ludicrous; there was no one less angelic. She used to protest, ‘But I’m so erratic and depressed.’

Rae answered, ‘Hey, I like that in a girl. Look, if you don’t have a bad attitude and lots of things wrong with you, no serious person is going to be interested. If you feel scared, outraged, confused most of the time, come on over. Have a seat.’

We’re all afraid of the same stuff. Mostly we’re afraid that we’re secretly not okay, that we’re disgusting, or frauds, or about to be diagnosed with cancer. . .

There is wilderness inside you, and a banquet. Both. . .

Most of ‘life’ is just people faking it, trying to stay busy so they feel important and not afraid of their shadows. But my friends and I know that this busyness is like collecting Franklin Mint plates. You have to fight for meaning in you life, for truth and goodness and authenticity.”

from “Commencement Address” by Anne Lamott

“How are you going to spend this one, odd and precious life you have been issued? Are you going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances?

I want to tell you that what you’re looking for is already inside you. You can’t buy it, lease it, rent it, date it or apply for it. The best job in the world can’t give it to you. Neither can success, or fame, or financial security — besides which, there ain’t no such thing. J. D. Rockefeller was asked, ‘How much money is enough?’ and he said, ‘Just little bit more.’

Like Breaker Morant said, ‘You have to live every day as if it’s your last, because one of these days, you’re bound to be right.’ When you think you’ve finally got your ducks lined up, they turn and peck you to death. You imagined how life and time were a conveyor belt moving you along, and the blessing came when you realized it wasn’t your conveyor belt. And that no matter how protected and noble you felt, how much in control, we were all being conveyed, all the time, borne astride the Möbious strip of time.

I know you can feel the spirit and hear it in the music you love, in the bass line, in the harmonies, in the silence between notes; in Chopin and Eminem, Emmylou Harris, Bach, whoever. You can close your eyes and feel the divine spark, concentrated in you, like a little Dr. Seuss firefly. It flickers with aliveness and relief. . . In the Christian tradition, they say that the soul rejoices in hearing what it already knows.

We can see spirit made visible in people being kind to each other, especially when it’s a really busy person, taking care of a needy and annoying person.

We’re all yearning for something, for connection and meaning and peace of mind and a sense that life sort of makes sense and that love is real and powerful and that we are good people. Everyone is on God’s payroll, whether they know it or not. Everyone is part of God’s scheme, having been assigned to either help you, or drive you crazy enough so you give up your own bad plans and surrender to God’s loving ways.

Sermon
“What I Meant to Say” by Rev. Barbara Merritt

The Rev. Mike Scroggins, of blessed memory, a former minister at First Baptist in Worcester, used to say to me: “Every sermon is a different kind of failure.” Why? Because the preacher is trying to capture what is what is ineffable, trying to describe what is undescribable, pointing in the direction of hope and truth and reality, but knowing those more as an ideal, than as a constant experience. And it’s not as if the ground under our feet ever stays the same for more than a minute and a half.

I love Anne Lamott’s descriptions of how complicated we are. Inside of us? — a wilderness and a feast. And outside? — our personalities are all over the map. We are erratic,; we get depressed and distracted, and are often too busy collecting Franklin Mint Plates (and other prized possessions.) We can be tender and thoughtful and generous one moment and then soon afterwards, selfish and hard-hearted and judgmental.

Welcome to the First Unitarian Church. Full of people just like you and me: scared, gifted, confused, sometimes angels — sometimes anything but. Negotiating complicated relationships in a complicated world. Having inherited many imperfect nests from those who came before us. And leaving imperfect nests to those who come after us.

Upon the occasion of my retirement sermon (kind of like the terminal dive of a whale) what I’d like to be able to say is: “Job well done! Mission accomplished! My, haven’t we whipped this religious institution into shape!” And we have done a great deal together since I arrived at the tender age of 34 in 1983.
.

* We have gone from being one of the weakest churches in downtown Worcester, to being one of the strongest.

* The talents and gifts of this congregation have been used to bring some grace and healing to a broken world. We have welcomed the homeless and fed the hungry, and visited the sick and cared for those in grief. Not enough, never enough, but we have been of service.

* And together, we have created some beauty. We have been good stewards of this magnificent building. Will and the choir have created moments of exquisite beauty with their music. There is now beauty in the garden outside and in the Sunday School. We took the bricks out of the windows in the Chapel. You knit prayer shawls for the homebound. We marshalled the resources to rebuild after the fire. We have collectively put our shoulders to the wheel and have had the great privilege of bringing some beauty into the world.

We have done a lot of things right.

But me (being me,) I can’t help but also focusing on how often we have gotten lost, how we have missed the mark, how we have failed to reach our goals or to be for one another what we are called to be.

* We have tried and failed to be able to sustain the model of having two ministers.

* We have not grown to be the 600 member congregation that Worcester needs, and that this huge building requires to sustain itself.

* And of even greater concern to me, we haven’t always given our hearts to one another. I’m pretty sure that we haven’t given all the love that we could have given. And I’m very sure we haven’t been receiving all the love that is available. At least I haven’t.

Ted Loder, an eloquent Methodist minister, quotes Henri Nouwen, one of my favorite Catholic writers.

Henri Nouwen said: “The most difficult thing of all is learning to be loved.” Why is it so hard to learn? I suppose love is what we long for most. And yet . . . we proud ones resist. Why?

We resist because love is always a gift. It’s nothing we earn, nothing we deserve, nothing we can force, control, win—all those ways, all those things that pride insists we have to do. Earning, deserving is what we’re conditioned to do. Gifts are hard for us. Rewards, we’re better at. And yet . . . love is always a gift. Some person’s love for us. God’s love for us all. The only way to have it is to accept it. Simple and hard, as that.

Every Sunday, I say it. “This is the day the Lord has made.” But do I believe it? As Loder writes:

It isn’t our day at all, except as a gift. It is really God’s day. Ultimately God is in charge of it and every day, and of what happens in them, or to us, or to anyone.”

In Richard Jones’ hymn we sang this morning, he wrote: “We were born this love to know.” I believe this is why we are here on earth! To learn about love. How to give it — how to receive it.

Over the years, I have been urging you to open your hearts to love — to increase your capacity to love and to be loved. I hope you’ll remember very basic themes which I have returned to, over and over again: courage and trust, humility and gratitude, persistence and self-acceptance, and the endless striving upwards towards God — towards truth — towards joy.

I have urged you to adopt these virtues because of my own continued failure to remember them: I constantly forget the love and the truth and the guidance I have received. So we try. We fail. We get up again. We fall down again. Worship is what we do in the midst of the struggle. Singing our songs of praise in the midst of our confusion and bad attitude and discouragement. As Leonard Cohen put it so poignantly: “Even though it’s all gone wrong. I’ll stand before the Lord of Song, with nothing on my lips but alleluia.”

Choir: “Broken Hallelujah”

Alleluia (broken though it may be) is to be sung now and always — in the best of times and in the worst of times. With our songs of praise we acknowledge the fact that we have been given gifts — real gifts — sustaining gifts — gifts beyond our imagining. As one family taught me, “We have been given everything that we need, and more than we know.”

I have adopted a new custom with the couples that I am marrying. I have them turn around in the middle of their wedding ceremony and actually look at the smiling faces of those who have gathered — who share in their happiness — who have come to bless their union.

Today, I ask you to participate in that same exercise. Look around you. (Now!) Look at the ones God has given to you to share this spiritual journey! Open your hearts! Try to take in the enormity of the talents and the capacities, and the bad attitudes, and brilliance, and the dumb mistakes, and the hilarious and life-giving humor that is assembled in the sanctuary right now. What a blessing! What a gift! You are a wealthy, wealthy congregation, and I’m not talking about what’s in your bank accounts. You have everything you need to go forward. You have been given more than you know — from generations past. And the stranger who will come through the door next Sunday, will be bringing gifts that are essential to your spiritual progress. (As Anne Lamott puts it, some of the people will be so annoying that they will drive you straight into God’s arms.)

As wonderful as you are as a congregation, and as much as you have allowed me to share, and as much as you have opened your hearts to me and to Tom and to one another — I haven’t been as clear as I have wanted to be. Sometimes, I haven’t said what I believed out of sheer cowardice; afraid of being misunderstood or simply fear of disapproval. Sometimes I have not wanted you to know just how much I struggle. Mostly, vulnerability doesn’t come easily to me. So this is my last chance, and I’m going for broke.

There are a few things I want to say now. They are personal. I hold them dearly. (This being a Unitarian Church, feel free to disagree.)

The first is that I personally believe that if you want to make real, interior, spiritual progress (so that you don’t have faith in God, but you experience the kingdom of God within you) then you will need a spiritual teacher. Not a minister, not a therapist, but a spiritual master who is enlightened himself or herself.

I have always had a spiritual teacher in India, and he gets credit for virtually everything I know about the life of the spirit. His light, his wisdom, his strength have accompanied me on every step of my ministry.

When Thomas Merton, the Trappist Monk, was asked what had impressed him most in his travels, he said: “Oh, it was India. What struck me (and what I think we have to learn from India) is the importance of the guru, the master, the spiritual master.” He added, “This is something we have lost in our Catholic tradition, and we have to return to it.” I doubt very much that having a spiritual teacher will ever be a part of Unitarian Universalism, but it is my personal belief that if you spend your whole life searching for a spiritual leader, (who can show you how to experience God within yourself) it is a life well spent.

When St. Augustine said, “My heart will be restless until it rests in Thee” I believe he was speaking on behalf of all spiritual seekers. There is a journey we are invited to take, and we do not take it alone.

Which brings me to the second thing I never told explicitly. And that was how often I have wanted to run away. Especially in May, every May, when I was exhausted and had no more sermons left in me, I would patiently explain to my husband, Jeffrey, that I was quitting the ministry — 34 speeches, in various months, that Jeffrey listened to patiently and sympathetically, and then he quietly talked me off the ledge. Jeffrey also listened to three (count them, three) letters of resignation I wrote to this congregation at moments of great frustration, supreme annoyance and sheer orneriness. Again, he listened, he sympathized and he helped me to see that while they were good letters to write, they were not good letters to send.

When I get mad, or sad, or discouraged my first impulse is to run away. I first ran away from home when I was four years old. I quit school in the second grade. My psychoanalyst calls me an “emotional fundamentalist.” Translation: “If I’m feeling it, it must be true!”

I have never really shared with you how much my ministry has rested on Jeffrey’s strength. He has been my rock. He is a lot more stable than I could ever be. I have not sung his praises from the pulpit, because I have observed that ministers who go “on and on” about what a wonderful marriage they have with their spouse, usually get divorced. But you need to know now that the person most responsible for my being able to spend a whole lifetime in this ministry is Jeffrey. Please thank him after the service if you’re glad I stayed for 26+ years. (Conversely, if you wish I’d left earlier, you can say with a sneer, “Thanks a lot!”

I haven’t done this ministry alone. I have been assisted at every turn with the love and grace and encouragement of friends and family, colleagues and parishioners, and sometimes by miraculous divine intervention.

Because, you see, I, like you, don’t know what I should be doing. Only in taking refuge, taking shelter with a love powerful enough to carry us, can we hope to make it through this day, let alone the uncertain times ahead.

Choir: Prayer of Unknowing

“Give me the strength and the wisdom
to be glad for what you have given me,
and for where you keep me.”

Which brings me to the final thing I have never really told you before. What you have meant to me, as a congregation. Some of you have told me, with enormous graciousness of spirit, that I have meant something to you — for which I am grateful, humbled and, of course, somewhat surprised. ( I am always surprised by compliments. . . and weirdly obsessed and fascinated and oddly comforted by criticism — go figure.)

But I haven’t told you what the First Unitarian Church means to me.

Everything:

You are the first real home I’ve ever had.

And you have been like family to me.

You have inspired me.

You have provided a caring community in which to raise our wonderful children, Robert and David.

You gave me a job that was endlessly challenging, never boring.

And you paid me to read Dante, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis and Frederick Buchner; Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, Dostoevsky, Emerson and Emily Dickinson and Annie Dillard and Anne Lamott. I’ve been so lucky!

You were my window into what loving families looked like. You showed me what it meant to not run away. To build together. To stay open and engaged and curious.

I have experienced your forgiveness, your forbearance and your unbelievable kindness.

You have valued my gifts, learned to live with my limitations and encouraged my risk-taking and enthusiasms. You have found ways to accommodate my impatience, my insecurity and my being an introvert.

Here, in this parish, I have gotten to know and to be blessed by an enormous range of people. People from every generation and of every “stripe”; people who, outside of an inclusive Unitarian community, I never would have gotten to have a meaningful conversation with.

And here is the secret. You offer these gifts not just to your ministers. Everyone who walks through these doors has a place at this table, and is invited to the feast.

We made it to this day together. We have held hands through death and illness, and fire and flood. We’ve cried together (a lot) — but laughed together even more.

Shakespeare said that, “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” But right now I can’t figure out what is so sweet about it. This saying “good-by” is much more difficult than I imagined it would be. It is overwhelming. It is breaking my heart. It is beyond my own strength.

Which is why I need help through the storm of change — through the darkness of my own incapacity to see the way forward. We all need to be reminded that we are held, we are accompanied and we will find our way home

Choir: “Precious Lord”

I want to leave you with a Hassidic story called “Without a Doubt.” (from Hassidic Tales: translated by Rabbi Rami Shapiro.

His congregation asked their Rabbi if he were certain that he was assured a place in the World to Come.

“Absolutely,” the Rebbe replied without hesitation.

“And how, Rebbe, can you be so certain?”

“When we die in the world, we go before the heavenly court in the World Above. Standing before the divine court, we are asked certain questions. Answer these properly and you will go to the World to Come.”

“And you know these questions, Rebbe?” the students asked.

“Yes.”

“And you know the answers?”

“Yes.”

“And will you share them with us?”

“The questions are the same for all of us. Your answers must be your own. Yet, I will tell you just what I’ll tell them. They will ask: Rebbe, did you study Torah to the best of your ability; did you do your spiritual practice?’ And I will answer honestly: ‘No.’ They will then ask: ‘Rebbe, did you fully surrender to God in worship?’ And I will answer honestly: ‘No.’ They will then ask me: ‘Rebbe, did you do the mitzvos and good deeds you could do while alive?’ And I will answer honestly: ‘No.’ And then they will say: ‘If so, then you are telling us the truth, and for that alone are you welcome into the World to Come.’”

Our covenant (in this church) is all about truth. A truth that walks with us now and always. Not an easy journey (which is a shame, because I like easy) but a journey worth every bit of our heart, mind and soul.

A Unitarian woman, Julia Ward Howe, wrote a hymn about the Civil War. For me the song is about the battle of human existence — the one that the Bhagavad Gita describes, the battle between what is best in the human spirit (that moves us in the direction of love) and what is worst (our fear, our selfishness and our conviction that we are separate and alone.) It is a battle between hope and despair, between running away and staying engaged. Between what is eternal and what is transitory Through it all, even when it all seems right, even when it all seems wrong, ttruth is with us, holds us up and promises the ultimate victory — the victory of joy.

Congregation: “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”

"Kim Hampton Chosen as 2010-2011 Ministerial Intern" Memo by Rev. Thomas Schade

2010-06-07T13:04:00.000-07:00

Rev. Schade announces that Kimberly Hampton has been chosen as the 2010-2011 Ministerial Intern. Ms. Hampton is a student at Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana, a Quaker seminary. She is expecting to graduate in 2011.

Ms. Hampton is a 1997 graduate of Texas Women’s University in Denton, Texas.

Ms. Hampton began her involvement with Unitarian Universalism in St. Louis becoming active in the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis. She has been lay member of the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship for over 10 years, and served on their national Board of Directors from 2000-2008. During that same period, Rev. Schade served on that board and he and Kim became friends. Tom was one of many ministers who urged Kim to pursue a theological education and become a minister. Ms. Hampton now also serves on the General Assembly Planning Committee, a national elected body that organizes the Unitarian Universalist’s National Convention, the General Assembly, every year.

Ministerial Internship is a learning opportunity for the developing minister, and consequently, it is important that their learning experience is directed at meeting their goals. Ms. Hampton lists as her learning objectives:

First, I would like to learn more about the administrative side of the ministry. I am getting a bigger glimpse of it now that I am taking a Church Administration class, but I want to see how this is applied in a parish setting.

I haven’t had the opportunity to spend much time with children lately, so I would like to learn about the depth and breath of Religious Education options available to Unitarian Universalist congregations.

Another thing I want to learn is how one goes about giving pastoral care in a parish setting.

Finally, I would like to learn how good my preaching skills are in front of an audience that doesn’t know me as well as other audiences.

First Unitarian Church of Worcester is an excellent place to learn these aspects of ministry, and the long relationship between Tom and Kim predict success in the learning environment.

Kim also writes:

I am a native Mid-westerner, born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri and currently living in Richmond, Indiana (right on the Indiana/Ohio border). However I consider myself a transplanted Southerner; my father’s family is from Mississippi and my mother’s family is from Alabama. I also consider myself a Southerner because I went to college in Texas (in Denton, 35 miles north of Dallas-Ft. Worth).

I have been in or around Unitarian Universalism fifteen years. My home congregation is the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis and I am currently a member of the Church of the Larger Fellowship.

For the past two-and-a-half years I have been a student at the Earlham School of Religion, the oldest Quaker seminary in the country.

I have a number of friends in the Northeast (my best friend lives in New York City) and New England (Vermont and Maine mostly). And I have a number of UU connections in the greater Boston area (heavily at the Winchester Unitarian Society, but also in other places).

I love reading, and my not-so-guilty pleasure is Harlequin romance novels. Rest assured though, I read in just about any subject. I also write, not much as I want, but I have lots of outlines for projects.

I am looking forward to being in Worcester and getting to know as many of you as I can.

Help is Needed.

An Intern support committee has been formed, composed of Christy Clark, Sue Stafford and Wendy Innis. The committee helped read through the many applications and helped Rev. Schade make the decision to offer the position to Ms. Hampton. If you are interested in helping our intern, discuss being on the intern committee with Rev. Schade.

Kim will be starting work on August 16, 2010. Before then, she will need to find a suitable living situation here in Worcester. If you have any information about an economical apartment that would be good for a low-paid intern, please contact Rev. Schade as soon as possible.

Same for a car. Kim does not now own a car, now and would need one to be effective here. Any information that can help?

"My Last Memo" by Rev. Barbara Merritt

2010-06-01T07:38:00.000-07:00

We are like birds that spend the night in the same tree, and then, in the morning, fly off in different directions. At least that is the metaphor I heard in India to describe the transitory nature of all human relationships.

The Hassidic tradition tells of an enlightened Rabbi, who was visited in his home by a traveler. The visitor was startled to see that the apartment was furnished with only one small table, a chair, and a bed. He asked where all the rest of the Rabbi’s possessions were. The Rabbi replied, “ I am only a visitor in this world. I have no need to accumulate (or to take care of) a lot of extra baggage that I cannot take with me, when I leave this existence.”

Birds in mid-flight; a holy man living with intentional simplicity; neither of these images are any comfort to me now, as I leave the church. My career has spanned 27 years in Worcester, 35 years in parish ministry, and counting seminary, 38 years where my identity has been thoroughly invested in being a Unitarian Universalist minister.

You cannot imagine how many books I have accumulated in this time period. (Talk about not traveling light!) Old sermons fill several file cabinets. After so many years at one church, things felt pretty comfortable at 90 Main St. Here, there were rituals and routines and relationships that seemed like they might go on forever. Nevertheless, even the endless discipline of a weekly memo (or a semi-weekly memo) is coming to a close for me. This is my last memo as the senior minister of First Unitarian.

I sincerely thought that saying good-by would be easier. I have been ready, for a while, to say good-by to committee meetings, and evening meetings and denominational politics. I have given my entire adult life to this profession, and it was a good run. But I knew in my heart, and in my bones when it was completed and over. Yet I find myself utterly unprepared to say good-by to the people of this parish: to you, the members and friends, to the staff, to Tom. THIS is formidable. THIS part I simply don’t understand how to do.

The Unitarian Universalist Minister’s Association has an ethical code which I must, and I willingly, submit myself to. It gives clear instructions for a minister upon retirement, and concrete expectations for a Minister Emerita.
These “best practices” have been honed through decades of accumulated experience around the departure of clergy, and the start-ups of new ministries.

The rules can be briefly summarized as follows:
1) I am no longer the settled minister at First Unitarian. The Rev. Thomas Schade is now “the one and only” minister of this parish. All requests for marriages, christenings and funerals must go directly to him.
2) For the first year, I am to have no contact with parishioners, with the exception of a handful of personal friends. (Friends, in this situation, are strictly defined as those I have previously vacationed with.)
3) My central job as Minister Emerita is to support the ministry of the settled minister, in this case, my colleague and friend, The Rev. Schade. We have worked with remarkable co-operation over the last 11 years. In order to continue to live in that “right relationship” I will not be available for any consultations, or commentaries on what is happening in the church, now that I am gone. I can greet you at the grocery store, and talk about the weather, or the environmental devastation in the Gulf of Mexico. But I am not permitted to share my opinions (favorable or unfavorable) about the radical new placement of the furniture in the Bancroft Room, or anything else about the parish.

These strict rules were not invented by Tom, or the Prudential Committee. They have been shown to increase the health of churches, as ministers and congregations navigate through the real and complex emotions that arise, as we face the challenging task of letting one another go.

Up until this week, I had thought that such severe boundary settings were good protection for the congregation, the institutional church and the new minister. Now I discover that I need them too. Frankly, I don’t want to say good-by to members or staff. I don’t want to have to wait a year before I can listen to our wonderful choir again. Having gotten exceptionally comfortable, over these many years, in this present constellation of relationships, it is extremely tempting to put my faith in what has been. In times of change, it is natural to be nostalgic about the past, and to wonder why we can’t just say in the same tree, for all time. Here, we might build some permanent nests! Here, we might capture, and preserve a reality we have come to appreciate!
But no one, not even long-tenured ministers, or 225 year-old congregations can stay static in any one time or place. This creation, being what it is, is always changing, always presenting us with new challenges, new opportunities for growth, new limitations, and new horizons.

So let my last benediction, not be about what has passed between us. Let it be about what is to be. A future that I truly believe contains more joy than the past could ever hold. The words from a Broadway song, said it best:

The Sweetest Sounds, I'll ever hear
are still inside my head
The Kindest Words I'll ever know
are waiting to be said
The most entrancing sight of all
is yet for me to see....
and the dearest love in all the world
is waiting somewhere for me.

That song has always reminded me, that someday we may experience the love that God has for each of us. What I wish for all of you, and for myself as well, is to move closer to that love: to hear more music, to experience greater kindness, to see more beauty. All of that possibility lies in front of us. Thank you for providing me (and my family) with a wonderful, if temporary, spiritual home. May your love of truth, and your willingness to take seriously the spirit of Jesus, allow you to worship God, (as you understand the holy), and enable you to be in the service to humanity, and to all that lives. May you experience God’s greatest blessings in the days and years ahead.

"Faith Formation and the Future" by Sierra-Marie Gerfao

2010-06-01T07:30:00.000-07:00

It is with mixed feelings that I share with you the news that I have been accepted into the Master of Divinity Program at Yale Divinity School. I am very excited about the opportunity to study for ordination and to enhance my ministerial skills through academic work and internship experiences.

Where my mixed feelings come in is that it has become clear to me that after the coming academic year (2010-2011), I will need to work fewer hours. I have shared this with the Rev. Thomas Schade, the Rev. Barbara Merritt, the Prudential Committee, and the Religious Education Committee. Your elected leadership thus wisely decided to assemble an “RE Futures Team” to engage in a thoughtful process to consider and make recommendations regarding what will be best for the Religious Education/Faith Development ministries and the church, for the near-term and long-term. This team was assembled by our Moderator, David Spanagel, and has already shown its capacity to lead us through the decisions to come.

The team members are: Cindy Cordova (RE Committee Chairperson), Ken Mandile (who was on the DRE search team three years ago), Linnea Palmer Paton (a young adult member of the congregation), Paul Belanger (a newer member of the congregation), and Carrie West (who also served on the Future Ministries Task Force). This is a diverse and thoughtful team of varying ages and with varying experiences in the life of the church.

The questions facing First Unitarian Church of Worcester in this moment are: who do we want to be in five years in relationship to our Faith Development ministries, and how do we get there? Finally, what is the best way to create a Faith Development staff team that supports us in getting there? Fortuitously, the urgency of these questions has arisen at the same time that we have voted for a new five-year strategic vision that calls us to extend our hands across generations. The urgency of these questions has also arisen at a time of interdenominational re-examination of practices that create relevant Faith Formation opportunities for all generations in a rapidly changing and technology-centered world.

Recently, for example, a Christian organization called Lifelong Faith Associates has organized an effort to study demographic and societal trends and their implications on the course of religious growth and development throughout the lifespan. The result is a “Working Paper on Faith Formation 2020,” an initiative to help congregations speak to the deep needs of people of all ages in our society throughout the societal changes expected over the coming ten year period. You can read more about this effort at www.lifelongfaith.com/faithformation2020.htm.

Your RE Futures Team is incorporating this type of information into their process, which allows them to consider a wide breadth of options that have the potential to position the congregation well for depth and growth over the coming years.

I have expressed to the RE Futures Team and the other leadership of our congregation my willingness to be helpful in decisions regarding my employment. They may explore options which employ me on a staff team beyond July 2011, potentially through the up to six-year duration of my studies. The purpose of such an ongoing relationship would be to together carry out the strategic actions we have initiated for the progressive growth of our Faith Formation ministries. Alternatively, when it becomes clear that a new full-time DRE is what is most needed to carry this vision forward, whether sooner or later, the congregation has my full support in searching for that person. I want all the best for you!

You are a magnificent congregation, and you have my love, loyalties, best wishes, and affection. I am confident that a good path forward will be found, and whatever it is, I look forward to witnessing the continued growth and development of your ministries for people of all ages.

Warmly in Faith,
Sierra-Marie Gerfao

"A Banquet" by Rev. Barbara Merritt

2010-05-25T07:13:00.000-07:00

Words cannot begin to capture my gratitude for yesterday’s celebration. This congregation, on a normal Sunday, knows how to sing, how to laugh, how to graciously welcome and how to pray. But the beauty and the spirit that was present in our midst upon the occasion of my retirement was beyond anything I have ever experienced.

It is still somewhat of a mystery to me. The only way I can describe it is that for a moment the veil dropped. Our hearts were open. I saw every one of you as perfect, whole and playing the exact part in this existence that you are called to play.

It might have been the music, which was glorious. It might have been the strange combination of laughter and tears. It had to be our capacity to feel loss and abundance at the very same time. It had to have something to do with how generous all of you had been in planning this amazing day.

Your cards, your heartfelt good wishes touched me deeply. (I want to send thank you notes to all of you who sent me a thank you note, but when would this exchange end?) The Bancroft Room became a stunning garden, a breathtaking setting for fellowship. And seeing the congregation having such a good time at lunch was the perfect benediction.

How can something be sad and joyous, simultaneously? What does it mean when we are both blessed and challenged? How can the same person, who at one moment is troublesome or annoying, turn around and reveal himself, or herself to be affectionate and supportive? I don’t know if my rational, linear brain will ever recover from such a surfeit of kindness and generosity and love and delight. A Shaker song written in 1848 may explain.

“When we find ourselves in a place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend, we shan’t be ashamed
To turn, turn, will be our delight
Til by turning, turning, we turn right round right.”

Sunday, May 23, 2010 it felt to me like the whole sanctuary was “turned right.” We were present to one another. We bowed to the holy spirit that was present in our midst. I got a glimpse of what the kingdom of heaven must feel like: where you know you are seen, loved, forgiven and accepted.

I haven’t recovered yet. I may never. Your exceedingly generous gift of $15,500 will mostly go straight into my retirement fund, plus one vacation for Jeffrey and me. And I have a lot of beading and gardening to do, and I now have the supplies to do just that!

Today I am still smiling and crying, and generally feeling overwhelmed. It could be that I am not constitutionally able to keep my balance in the presence of so much affection. But I’m going to try to learn to navigate this new territory where my heart is full. I find myself grinning at odd hours of the day and night. And I know in my bones what a privilege and a honor and a joy it has been to serve this parish.

"Coming and Going" sermon by Rev. Barbara Merritt

2010-05-18T12:58:00.000-07:00

Sermon: “Coming and Going”
by Rev. Barbara Merritt
Worship Service of May 2, 2010

First Reading: from 2 Corinthians 12: 9-10

And Jesus said to me: “My grace is sufficient for you. For my strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, gladly will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of the Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions and in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then am I strong.”

Second Reading: from “The Haunt of Grace” by Ted Loder

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Can a man with a few scraggly followers, and with nail holes in his hands and feet, overthrow Rome and change the course of the world?

Can anything good come out of you with your weaknesses and limitations? The gospel says, “Yes,” if you accept them and throw them in the pot with all the rest of us and our weaknesses and limitations: husbands, wives, kids, all the disabled in the neighborhood, and the welfare moms, the addicts, the homeless, the jobless, the strangely deprived rich, the isolated macho pretenders, all the rest. Do what you can, and that’s commitment. Give what you have and are, and that’s courage. Then it’s about God, and that’s faith, hope, trust. It’s about grace being sufficient, power working through weakness, and through us.

I’m thankful when I’m wobbly . . . and I’m getting wobblier.”

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”—that run-down-at-the-heels no place, that den of dullards, that swarm of zeros. Can some “mere human being” like Jesus, a marginal peasant preacher-healer who doesn’t meet anyone’s rational measure, be someone in whom God comes close? Can anything good come out of the unlikely, the dismissible, the unsophisticated, the irritating, the rejects, the disagreeable, the different, the “lesser,” the opposition?

When we remember how often we’re wrong—(and so remember we could be wrong again), only then might we realize that being wrong is less an embarrassment than an epiphany. Such a realization is a visitation from a larger world than we’ve yet recognized. It’s an occasion in which God moves quietly to stretch our spirits and our minds.

I’m grateful when I’m wobbly. I’m good at pretending to be smart and strong when I really feel inadequate and wobbly. I pretend to be sure and self-sufficient when I really need help, challenge, correction.

Sermon: "Coming and Going"

T. S. Eliot, in the Four Quartets, writes:
“There is a time for building –
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane –
And to shake the wainscot.”

Well, there has been a strong wind for change moving through the First Unitarian Church of Worcester, Second Parish.

Even though we’ve had phenomenally long ministries in this church (making me only number 10 in 225 years); even though I’ve held this job for 26 years – “the times they are a-changing.” With the announcement of my retirement, with the vote in two weeks to affirm the Rev. Schade as your sole minister, this church is undergoing some dramatic upheaval.

T. S. Eliot suggests that the only effective resource when we are facing loss and transformation and the unknown is humility. “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”

So rather than getting really busy or becoming really anxious, or becoming either ecstatic over the new possibilities ahead or paralyzed with fear, Eliot suggests that we enter into the darkness and the unknown; curious, attentive – stilling the mind to see what will happen next.

He uses the image from live theater of a scenery change, of props moving around in the dark.
“I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights re- extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing façade are all being rolled away –”

In the merry month of May, there will be a rather radical scenery change in this pulpit. You will move from having two ministers to one. You will no longer have a long serving woman minister as part of your clergy. And First Unitarian, which has been reassuringly the same for so long, will be different, entering new and unknown territory.

Of course it is an absolute myth and falsehood that the church hasn’t been changing in constant and dramatic ways over the last 26 years.

Ted Loder quotes from “ The Belle of Amherst. Emily Dickinson reads the newspaper to her sister Vinnie one evening. It goes like this: Emily says, ‘Oh here’s one you’ll love, Vinnie. ‘TRAIN HITS WOMAN ON MILL RIVER TRESTLE” “Cornelia Snell, fifty-four . . . was killed last Wednesday by the Belchertown express as she struggled vainly to free her foot from a railroad switch.’ Her foot, Vinnie! ‘Engineer Grover W. Putnam declared, ‘By the time I saw the poor lady and her dog, it was too late.’ . . . Oh, the dog survived! It jumped clear! . . . Her children are planting an evergreen in her memory near the spot. Isn’t that sweet, Vinnie? Then after a long pause, Emily says in simple wonder, ‘I wonder why she didn’t take off her shoe?’

The question is the same for each of us: What do we need to take off, to let go of, if we are going to live—or begin to?

Again, from Ted Loder: “a little girl riding home from church asked her father, ‘Daddy, why does the Bible always say, ‘And it came to pass,’ and never says, ‘it came to stay’?”

Well, how would you answer? The reason is because nothing ever comes to stay. Change is inevitable.”

But it is a nice myth, a reassuring myth, a comforting myth that while the whole world spins and changes and surprises, the church will be a constant. Oil spills in the gulf, water pipes bursting in Boston, suicide bombers in Times Square, Wall Street scandals – at 90 Main Street we will just repeat our covenant, say the Lord’s Prayer and enjoy great music!

I think what has surprised me most, after my announcement that I was retiring after 35 years in the parish ministry and 26+ years here, was your surprise.

And then, while celebrating our 225th, it became clear to me that those of you present here this morning will be telling the stories to the generations that follow about what went right here (and what went wrong here during Rev. Merritt’s ministry. You’ll point to the oil portrait in the Bancroft Room and tell stories! You will be the historians and the meaning makers.

So I decided I’d give you my version of the story.

Human beings like to idealize, like to blame, like to tell all kinds of amazing stories. But in our covenant, we pledge “in the spirit of truth.”

So, I wanted to share some of my understanding of what was true upon my arrival here; my decision to stay and my decision to leave. Not that any of us actually understand the truth of our own story (or anyone else’s) but it is very human to try.

How I got here was Wallace Robbins, the 8th minister of the parish. The UUA, our national association, did not put me on the “approved” list. I was (as it was explained to me by the head of the Department of Ministry) completely unqualified. He explained to me that I was too young and too sensitive and too emotional – i.e. no women’s names would be included on the approval list sent to Worcester!

But Wallace had asked a few of his friends who the “up and coming” new ministers were, and my name kept popping up. So the search committee took a risk and interviewed an “unapproved” (and unrecommended) candidate: me. And they liked me, and I loved the church.

When I found out I was pregnant (before the congregation made the decision to call me), I told my husband, “I can turn down any church in the country, except Worcester. That is my dream church.”

Why? Because you had a long tradition of spiritual depth.

Because you wanted to grow (Indeed as a congregation you had a change in the culture; you knew that if you did not grow and pull together, the church would close.)

Because I was awed by the beauty of the sanctuary (and still am.) Though having to paint it a few times was a challenge. And I am glad I lived to see the chandelier polished.

This church took a huge risk calling me – 26 years later, I think we can safely say that things turned out well, for the most part.

Which brings me to how I came to stay. Twenty-six year ministries are unusual. And I had no intention of staying this long. I am, by nature, a wanderer. The longest I’d ever lived in one place before Worcester was eight years. (And three years before that.) I have also always been quite ambitious, for good or ill. I love new challenges, changes of scenery, new territory to explore.

And then in 1998, I suddenly became “a hot property.” Having given the keynote address at General Assembly, having a lot of writing published in the national UU World, being a leader in several denominational initiatives, suddenly, I was getting invitations practically every week to go to a new church, and virtually all of them were larger churches with greater prestige and offered bigger salaries.

Why did I say “no”? More importantly, why was it so easy to say no? The answer is simple: It was your fault. No upgrades were possible when it came to the parish ministry.

First. The people in this congregation were (and are today) first class, imaginative, creative, deeply spiritual, bright, energizing – dear. Not everyone! (and not everyone has ever been all virtue and light.) But there have always been enough individuals who were spectacular in my book (deeply flawed and weak and wobbly, of course), but spectacular, none-the-less. I will name six and keep the list to those who have either departed this world, or this town (in order to protect the spectacular people here today and the fragile egos of the current congregation.) If you have known any of these people you’ll know how lucky we were to walk with them for a season, and how you won’t find better, anywhere. Maybe as good (maybe), but not better. Six names: Helena Sarty, Ken Waugh, Sara Glenn, Mary Melville, Don Sansoucy, Peter Levine (and this list could go on and on.)

Now, there is a dark side to this observation that there are wonderful people in this church. And that is: there are also members here who have driven me straight up the wall – people with whom I have never agreed on any subject. The Rev. Parker Palmer assures me (and you) that such individuals are guaranteed in any church. Indeed, he claims that they are essential to the blessing of the place – part of what makes us a sacred and beloved community. From these troublesome individuals we learn good boundaries, we learn self-differentiation. We learn we are not here on earth to please everyone, or to like everyone. (We are here to use our gifts in service to God, in service to the highest values we understand.)

But it wasn’t just the congregation (though that was the primary reason I stayed.) I also stayed for the music. More than a few visitors have observed that we have one of the best choirs in the United States and one of the best music directors.

And I stayed because here I have always had complete freedom of the pulpit, and a congregation that was eager for complexity, depth and challenge.

Finally, I have stayed because you have continued to take risks. You called me. You called Tom. You’re always willing to try new things. In 26 years I have never been bored.

When I was a teenager I thought I would marry a poet and live in Boston. Instead, I have lived in Worcester and my own attempts at poetry have been few and far between. I’m about to show you why.

In 1998, frustrated by the flood of invitations to go take my ministry to another church (apparently the UUA thought I was less young, sensitive and emotional), I finally became irritated by a series of search committees refusing to take “no” for an answer and calling me multiple times. I wrote the following poem to the head of ministerial relocations. It is written in the classical tradition of Dr. Suess’ immortal poem, “Green Eggs and Ham.” I prefaced the poem with these words: “I though I had made it pretty clear that I am not in the market for a new church!”
I do not want one on the coast,
I do not want one southernmost,
I do not want one in Duluth,
I do not want one; that’s the truth!
I do not want one in a jam.
I like the church where-in I am.

I do not want another flock,
I really like the one I’ve got!

I only want to make it clear,
I hold my parish very dear.

I do not want to move my kids,
I do not feel a crisis “mid”,
I cannot ask to uproot my spouse,
I do not want to change my house.

(There’s more, I’ll just skip to the last verse.)

I’ll never eat green eggs and ham,
Because a vegetarian, I am.
But if this church should fire me,
I’ll eat these words, in front of thee.

I’m surprised and delighted that you never fired me. I was completely convinced you would fire me. (And Tom, they are now running out of time.)

Instead, I have made the decision to retire.

Why retirement? Why now?

Let me focus on the personal reason, which is primary. If I had to boil it down to one word, that word would be “Fallon,” the health plan, or what I imagined was a health plan. My youngest son’s terrible bike accident in January of 2009 was a devastating blow to my son and to our family and to me as a mother. But then, to have Fallon deny any further medial treatment through a dishonest and deceitful health insurance policy, broke my heart and broke my spirit.

It was bad enough being told by the surgeon that my son would die without immediate and extensive medical treatment in the next six months. But the next blow was to find out that if we didn’t come up with $65,000 cash in six months, he would die. So we somehow raised the money, wiping out a lifetime of saving. And then, I found out something far worse. That approximately (and conservatively) 30,000 people do die every year in the United States from treatable medical conditions that health insurance companies refuse to cover. 30,000 families are grieving the death of their loved ones because they couldn’t come up with the cash.

Leadership (especially religious leadership) is a great privilege. But there are tsunamis – personal, medical and individual circumstances – that sweep away the emotional agility and resilience that are essential to doing this work.

And this minister got swept away. By the end of last summer there was nothing left of my strength, my confidence, or my fighting spirit. Fallon defeated me. (Or perhaps, stated more accurately; the American system of health care defeated me.) I had given all I had – heart, mind and soul. There was nothing left to give.

Back to T. S. Eliot, a few lines:
"And what you do not know, is the only thing you know.
I said to my soul—be still—and wait without hope
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing . . .
There is only the fight to recover what was lost.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
As we grow older—the world becomes stranger
The pattern more complicated."

In that complication and darkness and wobbliness—the scenery shifts. Not just for me, but for all of us. My coming and going is not different from yours.

What brought you to this church? To your work? To your various communities and relationships and commitments? What has prompted you to stay? To persist? To keep trying? And when do you let go? Is it at the moment of weakness or the moment of strength? As Emily Dickinson asks, “If your foot is caught in a railroad track, are you willing to sacrifice your shoe?”

In a world where the scenery is always shifting, where we are constantly entering into an unknown future, can we trust that out of this terribly complicated mix of strength and weakness, danger and opportunity, that something good lies ahead for each of us?

As Alicia sang so beautifully this morning: “I don’t mind the gray skies, they’re just clouds passing by. With God’s blessing, we can make it through. (Through all the scenery changes.) We can make it through all the way to eternity.”

In both our coming and our going we are given these amazing opportunities to build, to engage, to serve, to bless one another on our way. Just remember, the story is not over for any of us.

I close with Eliot’s words.
"We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning."

"Thank You" by Rev. Thomas Schade

2010-05-18T08:35:00.000-07:00

Thank you.

I appreciate the confidence that you, the congregation, have shown in me in affirming my ministry with you; I hope that I am able to live up to your high expectations. However, I doubt that I will.

Churches are, in some senses, heartbreaking institutions. They carry so many of people’s highest dreams and aspirations that it is inevitable that they will fall short at some point. Ministers, too. So, it is important to temper our expectations with mercy and to remember that forgiving another’s shortcomings is the most common way people show their love.

That said, I think that we are in for some exciting times ahead. I hope that the next few years can be a time of our growth in all directions: bigger, broader, higher and deeper, stronger.

A few other comments about yesterday’s meeting:

I can see why the citizens of Lancaster have chosen David Spanagel to be the moderator of their town meeting. We are lucky to have him to moderate our congregational meetings. When you consider that we did three pieces of major business yesterday, which necessitated a suspension of one article of our by-laws, group-wide wordsmithing of a statement, paper ballots, procedural votes and substantive debate, with such efficiency and clarity, we have to appreciate David’s skill. He made it all seem easier than it was in actuality.

Not everybody voted to affirm my ministry. I am sure that those who, in effect, voted to look for another minister were acting in what they saw as the best interests of the congregation. I don’t know who they were and don’t really care to find out. Knowing that they are among us will keep me on my toes. I am reminded of that old story, so often told, about the monastery that had fallen into squabbling, arguing, and general crankiness. In desperation, they sought out an outsider for help, turning to the local rabbi. The rabbi said he couldn’t really help, but had received a sign that that the Messiah was to emerge from out of this cantankerous, divided, dysfunctional, and unhealthy little monastery. Everyone’s behavior promptly improved as each monk began to treat all others as a potential Messiah.

I suspect that I will be a better minister if I treat everyone as potentially one of those who voted to look for another minister.

And finally, there was a very close vote on an amendment to the proposed vision statement. The vision statement turns us toward the task of gathering and empowering the next generation of religious liberals. Some thought the statement underemphasized our continuing work as a church to gather and to encourage the present generations. An amendment was offered which aimed at correcting this imbalance. It failed very narrowly, and then the statement was passed almost unanimously.

I think that we will find ourselves in this situation again and again for a while. We are trying to do two somewhat contradictory things at the same time; we want change and we want continuity.

Change and continuity are like the oil and vinegar in a salad dressing. They will blend, but you have to keep shaking the bottle.

At any given moment in time, or in the midst of any effort, there may be some of us who feel that we are over-emphasizing change and others that feel the church is over-emphasizing continuity. It is inevitable that we will not be at the right blend all the time. All we can do is keeping shaking the bottle.

The meeting also detoured for a few minutes into a discussion of the use of the term “Liberal Religion” and “Religious Liberals” in the vision statement. This is a very rich topic for discussion, because it is about our understanding of who we are and what we stand for and how we relate to others near to us in the religious spectrum. I would like to pursue this further in the year ahead. But let me offer this brief summary: Unitarian Universalists are Religious Liberals, but not all Religious Liberals are Unitarian Universalists.

Discuss.

And, thanks again.

"A Shared Ministry" by Rev. Barbara Merritt

2010-05-11T06:35:00.000-07:00

For 11 years now, The Rev. Tom Schade and I have been working side-by-side. That’s longer than any two ministers have served together at this parish in our 225-year history. Our co-operative ministry is also rare in the larger association of Unitarian Universalism.

When I attempt to analyze why we have had the remarkable good fortune to have been able to do this team ministry, with very few stumbles, I am mystified. Both of us have strong egos. Both of us have firm convictions and opinions. Both of us like to be in the pulpit.

Part of what has made this partnership strong is that we share very similar visions of the church. Each of us believes that at the heart of this institution is worship. We believe in the covenant of this parish, and in its enormous implications; that loving the truth and taking seriously the spirit with which Jesus lived his life will move us as a spiritual community to worship God (as we understand the holy) – and will allow us the privilege to serve our fellow human beings. Both of us have believed in the potential greatness of this church; that the best days are ahead, that we can grow and be a vital urban presence, that we can become more generous in our commitments, in our giving and in our discipleship. The other quality we share is a fairly developed capacity to laugh at ourselves, and at the many ironies of liberal religion. A sense of humor can carry you a far distance.

What you might not know are the many ways that Tom and I are quite different.

* I am a “Luddite,” a non-digital, non-technical, non-networked individual. I miss the paper newsletter terribly. I know all the great reasons we went to an electronic format: environmental, timeliness and space. Doesn’t matter. I loved the weekly folded hard copy. Tom, to the contrary, has brought the church into the present millennium. He has organized and marshaled our web site, our face book, our capacity to inform the entire congregation at a touch of a button. He has linked us to new generations and a much wider world. (We often get 900 hits on just one sermon.) He has put us on the radio and has made sure that that worship services are recorded and available

* Anger management. When I get mad, I sulk. I go silent. I rant in the privacy of my own home, and am icily polite in public. Then I hold a grudge. Tom, on the other hand, when he gets angry, he lets you know he is angry. (He has let me know, upon a few occasions, that he is furious with me.) And then he is done with it. He moves on. He gets back into “right-relationship” rather quickly. We have two very different ways of managing our feelings.

* Working styles. I believe I am more disciplined when it comes to meeting deadlines. I know that Tom is much better organized than I am, and is able to find and retrieve important information quickly.

* You might have noticed the gender difference. Having a male brain and a female brain working together on problem-solving is an excellent strategy. I tend to be more intuitive. Tom tends to be more analytical. Together, we do a fairly good job at assessing the reality in front of us.

* Experience. I have had 35 years of experience in the parish ministry and have seen a lot of “water under the bridge”. Tom, in his 11th year of parish ministry is much more in touch with new ideas, theories and innovation. A perfect example of Tom’s more modern approach occurred at the dedication of the new sanctuary after the fire of 2000. We had invited the Mayor, all the workers and engineers and craft people who had rebuilt and refurbished our building. When I thought of the best, most celebrative music for such a special occasion, I immediately dreamed of a string quartet (order, harmony and beauty!) But Tom, correctly I believe, said, “No” to the 17th century art form. He argued we needed to showcase our own gospel choir. When presenting a fresh face to the wider community, we wanted it to be as warm and as welcoming as possible. (I’ve been right a few times as well . . . but we won’t go into that.)

The point is that two brains, working together and listening to one another, offer a wider range of experience, perspective and possibility. This congregation has been lucky to have two full-time ministers. But because of my retirement and because of real financial constraints, that model of having two clergy professionals is not on the horizon in the immediate future.

I can’t describe what the future at First Unitarian might look like. But what I see right now is that the ministry of this congregation already extends far beyond two ordained Reverends.

As each layperson takes responsibility for the church’s mission, your sensitivity, experience and wisdom moves the parish forward. As individuals bring their own gifts and insights to our discussions and our work together, the church develops a particular culture: hopefully one of welcoming, encouraging and empowering. The women’s group (The Sisterhood), the various music programs, the Building and Grounds Committee, the Membership Committee, our Sunday School and our governing board, the Prudential Committee, and so many other groups within the church, are all examples of shared ministry. And Deb Wild, our Executive Director of Jericho Road Worcester, who is matching skilled volunteers in our congregation with nonprofit organizations in need, is functioning as one of our community ministers.

Tom and I have had a good run. A shared ministry will continue to lead this church into a bright future.

Expiration Date? by Rev. Thomas Schade

2010-05-04T06:36:00.000-07:00

Reverend Merritt's retirement comes closer and closer.

As I have been explaining my vision and my goals for the congregation over the next period of time, people ask the most about my intention to retire in about five years.

It’s not the way most ministers in our tradition do it; the conventional wisdom among my colleagues is that it is best to delay announcing one’s retirement until the last possible moment. The fear is that you have no authority to lead when you are a lame duck.

So, why would I put an expiration date on my solo ministry?

1. The last time First Unitarian had a full-blown ministerial search process was 1983, when Rev. Merritt was called. Ministerial searches are lengthy, expensive, and tedious affairs. They disrupt whatever momentum the church has going; people find it hard to make long term commitments to an institution that is going through a two or three year interim process. But ministerial searches can be very good for a congregation. They give a church a chance to look at itself and decide for itself where it wants to go. By setting a retirement date for myself, I send a message that a search process is inevitable and coming. First Unitarian can prepare for it and make the most of it.

2. I want to dispel the illusion of unchanging timelessness in the church. The biggest negative to my becoming the solo minister is that it sends a message that change at First Unitarian is unhurried and perhaps even unnecessary. And yes, religion and spirituality do deal with what is either eternal or endlessly recurring about the human condition. But as an institution in time, we need to be constantly changing and adapting to the world we live in. By saying that in five years, I will be leaving, I am asking “where do we want to be in five years? Not someday in the gauzy future, but in five very concrete years from now?”

3. I think that our major challenge as a congregation is to become the institution of the next generation – to pass the torch of leadership to the post-baby boomer generations. That means me, too. There is such a danger that our whole culture will get caught in the worldview of my generation. It will be good for the church to consider doing in 2015 what it did in 1983 – calling a young and talented newcomer to its pulpit.

4. My plan to retire in five years has the advantage of being based on the truth. People are like gum; they lose their flavor when they get chewed on for a long time. I will be at the customary retirement age in five years, and while I have the secret of eternal youth (chronic immaturity), I will be ready for a new and less hectic lifestyle.

5. Finally, I want to retire in five years and do whatever comes next in my life. Of course, events may intervene and I may need to stay longer or leave sooner, but we will see all of that coming together.

None of this is a sign, though, of any lack of enthusiasm for you or for the work that we are doing together. Our congregation is healthy, harmonious and optimistic. We have been gathering strength and commitment. More people are involved in the life of the church than ever before. I think that we are well on the way to be able to say to people with confidence:

Come to First Unitarian and you will have the opportunity to engage in deep and meaningful worship.

Come to First Unitarian and you will find an atmosphere that will be good for your children, helping them flourish into thoughtful, open-hearted and open-minded people.

Come to First Unitarian and you will find many opportunities to deepen your spiritual life.

Come to First Unitarian and you will find opportunities to give your gifts, develop your talents and express your best self.

Come to First Unitarian and you will find many opportunities to act on your dreams of a better and more just world.

Come to First Unitarian and you will become part of a social network of people who are building the kind of community we dream that Worcester and Central Massachusetts might be.

Memo by Sierra-Marie Gerfao, DRE

2010-04-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

Memos are typically reflective, but this week, I am breaking the mold. I have recently begun engaging in a “spiritual check-up” of sorts, like an annual physical at the doctor except there is no office, and I am consulting multiple “specialists.” I am looking for signs of spiritual health, and signs of areas in which I need to better attend or seek help. I am asking myself how my spiritual practices have been going lately, what my spiritual outlook or affect has been, and how I am feeling about my current relationship with God.

I can see signs of health or dis-ease in my daily experience of family, vocation, recreation, and worship. “How is it with my spirit when I first wake up each morning? How is it with my spirit by lunch? Around dinner? When I first head to bed and when I drift off to sleep? Are there times in the day when I am feeling particularly peaceful and close with God? Are there times when I feel anxious or isolated?” These are helpful assessment questions and point the way to my spiritual health needs.

I highly recommend this practice, especially around the change of seasons when the earth offers the tangible reminder that there are cycles of life that are bigger than us as individuals. And while this is a wellness check, aside from seasonal transitions, other transitions in our lives are good times to keep an eye on our spiritual health. In the spirit of this recommendation, I offer a “check-up” exercise taught to me by my friend and colleague Tandi Koerger. To start, imagine that you are involved in something like a nutritional check-up. Draw on a piece of paper a triangle, and draw three parallel lines inside the triangle so that it is divided into four sections. It should look something like the food pyramid.

Fill the very top section of the triangle, the mini-triangle, with all those things that suck your energy. Energy-suckers, say Tandi, are “activities, situations, circumstances, kinds of people or places that suck the energy right out of your nostrils and set your jaw on edge. These are the things you avoid doing at all costs. These are the things that inspire wild procrastination. These are the things you resent.” It’s a small section, so if you run out of space, spill over into the general area on your paper and use arrows to mark that these belong in the top triangle.

In the section just below the top, list your growing edges. These are things you are working on, aspects of your being in which you would like to grow more fully but currently find challenging. These can be skills, behaviors, tasks, relationships, attitudes, practices, and ways of living and relating.

Below that, in the section that is second from the bottom, list items that relate to your joy and vision. This is the place for your wildest, most joyful dreamings. Tandi recommends that when you start to fill in this section, consider what you would do “if you had an extra 24 hours handed to you on a silver platter and you could spend it however you want” without concern for money, resources, and time.

Now move to the bottom section, and fill in your solid ground. These, say Tandi, “are the skills, talents, activities and aspects of yourself that are solid, stable, and proven. You know this stuff so well, it’s in your bones. People seek out these talents or perspective from you.”

When your diagram is complete, take a look at it as your “recommended daily allowance” pyramid for spiritual health. Just as the fats and oils on the food pyramid are vital to your health, but should not dominate your daily intake, energy-suckers are often critical tasks, but do not constitute a balanced life. How can you delegate these items? Reduce their number? Share them with others? For spiritual health, Tandi prescribes: “Liberally fill your spiritual
diet with a solid diet of what is already working well. Then build on it with large portions from your joy and vision. Stretch your muscles with nutrients from your growing edge.”

I found this exercise helpful in my own spiritual check-up, and in a way, it is also what we are doing as a congregation through our strategic planning process and the annual goal setting and evaluation processes led by the Lay Leadership Council. At this time of great transition, when grief and change is in the mix alongside excitement and possibilities for the future, it is a particularly good time to keep an especially close eye on how the “spirit” of our church is doing. How are we eating? We can support the best in ourselves and in our shared congregation through good, balanced nutrition. May we all eat well!

"Chasing the Music" by Rev. Barbara Merritt

2010-04-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

Homily from the April 18, 2010 worship service to celebrate the 25 years of Will Sherwood's music ministry at First Unitarian.

My image of Will Sherwood is of a man in motion – not only with his fingers flying across the keyboard – but also moving at a fast clip between the organ and the piano, running down the middle aisle to catch up with the choir and speed walking between the piano (at the front of the sanctuary) and the organ (in the balcony at the back) in order to accompany a hymn.

So there is a way in which Will actually literally embodies the phrase “chasing the music.” But this morning, I want us to focus more on a spiritual and metaphorical understanding of that phrase, and to reflect together on the meaning of “sacred music.” What is the relationship between song and the holy? What happens in our own heart, mind and soul when we hear exquisite melodies and breath-taking harmony?

The poet Rabindranath Tagore tries to describe it in words:
When God commands me to sing, all that is harsh and dissonant in my life
melts into one sweet harmony.
I know that only as a singer, do I come before thy presence.
I touch, by the edge of the far spreading wing of my song –
what I could never aspire to reach. . .
The light of your music illumines the world.
The holy stream of thy music breaks through all strong obstacles.

In this particular spiritual community, it is the music that our music director, Will Sherwood, creates that beats through the strong obstacles of our hearts and our minds. How does he do it?

The choir, who knows him best, has said (and I quote): “We love Will not only for his exquisite musicianship, but also for his amazing improvisations on the piano and organ, his good cheer and wacky sense of humor and his uncanny ability to coax us to perform consistently above our own musical abilities.” (Among many other things.)

I have had the privilege of working with Will for 25 years and one thing I have learned: he likes to deflect attention away from himself and towards the choir, the music, the organ – pretty much anything other than Will Sherwood.

So, rather than make Will even more uncomfortable than he already is, this morning I want to talk about some of the music that he will be performing at the 1:30 p.m. concert this afternoon. To Will I say, “I am only quoting from your early program notes: helping the listeners to understand with greater depth, what they are about to hear.”

And to the congregation I say, “All musical notations are biographical. If you want to understand Will (and if you want to understand what it means to work creatively with your own life and gifts) then listen to what Will has to say about this music.

Here are the ten rules to great musicianship, or what I would call ten rules for the life of the spirit.

1. You must fall in love for a lifetime. Will describes falling in love with the music of Duruflé the first time he heard it in high school. Likewise with Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue. He says they are his “soul pieces”: they tugged at him forty years ago – they tug at him now. What have you always loved? God? Jesus? This city? Your partner? A lifetime of love is required.

2. I’m quoting Will, “Each person resonates to different music and musical styles.” His stretch includes romantic and impressionist, all the way to baroque and formal. We are all full of wonderful contradictions and seemingly incongruous affections. Celebrate that richness!

3. You are going to be asked to do much more than you think is possible. This afternoon Will has been called to this particular smorgasbord of skills: choral conducting, organ performance, choral composition, piano performance, hymn production (including descants) and he did the graphic design for the poster and the program. Plus he’s always repairing the organ and making sure the instruments are maintained. And he made sure the paper was 100% recycled. This list is endless. So is yours.

Which brings us to rule:

4. You must practice. Or as Kodály puts it,
Musician, you must behave like a warrior!
Do the exercises and practice your art.
Show the skill of your body.
And the sensitivity of your heart.

To which I can only add:
Unitarians, you must behave like a warrior!
Do the exercises and practice your art.
Show the skills of your body
And the sensitivity of your heart.

5. From the notes on Bach: “A magnificent marriage of the 'strum and drang tension' and the playful dance.” Welcome to your life and mine sometimes a terrible and difficult struggle – sometimes a playful happy, delightful dance. (Go figure.)

6. In the midst of this complexity of emotion and life story, the true musician is called to: first, improvise as “freely and as daringly as imagination will allow” and second, obey the strict discipline and rules of harmony and counterpoint. Freedom and obedience in music. Freedom and obedience in the life of this spirit and in pursuit of the holy.

7. There are going to be surprises. Speaking of Bach, “just when some kind of harmonic stability seems to arrive, Bach jolts the music into a whole new pitch realm.” Oh yes, we will be surprised.

8. Listen. Pay attention. Kodály begs us to, “listen to the chorus of the organ – to the king of instruments – listen to the choir which sings with the organ – painting each phrase – with a brilliant canvas and passionate variety of chromatic passages and words – listen to the whole of this music and the whole of your human life with humble attention.” A variety of colors are demanded: from the quietest and most subtle, to the kind of notes that shake the roof.

9. Will is not the only one who has to chase the music. What we love and strive for will always be just out of reach. What is true, what is real, what is sacred call to us and with all of our heart, mind and soul – we move, we leap, we travel in that direction.

And finally:

10. With whatever song runs through us, we are called to serve God. Our songs, our gratitude, our yearning, our discipline and our playfulness are all our chance to chase what is real. Today and every day, we journey in the direction of what is true and sustaining. May our song join in the chorus of souls. It is the song of God and we are all invited to sing.

The Fourth Funniest Person in Worcester by Rev. Thomas Schade

2010-04-20T07:19:00.000-07:00

First Unitarian members and Rotarians Ken Harling and Alicia Lenahan are persistent people, so this was the second year that they asked me to participate in Worcester Rotary’s contest to name the “Funniest Person in Worcester.” All I had to do was 5-7 minutes of “clean, family-oriented comic material” in a contest with a few other amateur comedians. Everybody would pay money to see such a thing and Worcester Rotary would give half the money for relief in Haiti and half to local charities. Good causes; what’s not to love about this deal?

Ken and Alicia kept emphasizing the “Clean and Family-Oriented” part of the rules, which surprised me a little. After all, I am a minister – I work in a church – did they really think that I didn’t know any clean jokes?

Well I do. Four, in fact.

Really, I know five clean, family-oriented jokes, but I can only remember four of them at any one time, so I just say “four”.

Actually, I know many more, but they are not actually, you know, funny, in and of themselves, so I don’t count them. My daughters say that some are kind of creepy, so I leave them out as well.

Four jokes, five minutes. No sweat. As you all know, I can spend three minutes just arranging my papers on the pulpit before I start preaching and another two minutes announcing what I forgot to announce earlier in the service. That leaves two minutes for the corrections to the order of service and we’re good to go. So I figured that this Rotary gig would be easy.

But I knew that I was representing, so I prepared carefully, for the sake of the congregation, the long history of our church, organized religion in general and liberal religion in particular.

I mentally rehearsed those four jokes, which I have told so many time already they are like the Five Smooth Stones with which David slew Goliath, including the one he had trouble remembering, in my hand.

I gave them short coded titles, so I could easily write them down. The titles were cryptic and did not refer to the punch line of the joke, just in case my notes fell into enemy hands. Suppose they would steal my joke about Mother Teresa in heaven, or tell it before me, stealing my thunder? You see my point.

I listed them on a sheet of paper and stared at them all morning. I rearranged them and stared at them all afternoon. At night, I slept fitfully, as they arranged and rearranged themselves in endless sequence, while I slept. For a while, I even considered telling all the jokes without the punchlines and then giving the punchlines in random order during the last 15 seconds and letting the audience figure which laugh went with which joke on their own. Very postmodern in German grammar sort of way.

The night of the contest came and I appeared, ready to go. I was delighted to see a goodly number of congregants gathered to cheer me on. If judging was to based on an “applause-o-meter” left over from “Queen For a Day.” I was in good shape.

Unfortunately, there were judges, whose names will not pass my lips, out of respect for their honor. Their honors had numbers, 1 through 5, with which they could suck the comic juice out of our efforts and reduce our art to dry numbers and statistics. Sigh.

The first contestant was a funny retired doctor. His jokes were mostly clean and sexless, but given how much he made fun of his wife, I imagine they were true to life.

I was the second guy. All modesty aside, I killed. I cracked myself up. I told the joke about the guy who had to give up coffee. I told the story about man who sought advice from the Bible. I told another one I can’t remember now. I told about Mother Teresa in heaven. And for a bonus, I told about the two chocolate bunnies in the Easter basket. I was a hoot. I had to lay my head down on the podium and just snuffle and snort my way to full composure.

The judges looked at me with all the seriousness of a parole board considering releasing a sex offender to a halfway house across the street from their daughters’ sorority.

They had some concerns. Why, for example, did I stand in one place, behind a podium? Why didn’t I move around?

Why did I tell so few jokes, and take so long to tell them? I’m glad I hadn’t worn my robe; they probably would have not liked that either.

They did say that I appeared to be comfortable speaking in front of people. I appreciate the words of encouragement.

Two of the other comedians were genuinely funny – to others and not just to themselves. One guy told unabashedly racist jokes, without a trace of irony. I think one was a semi-professional comedian; the other was a morning radio personality.

At the end of the evening, I did score higher than the racist guy, proving that we have made considerable social progress toward inclusion.

Rotary made a lot of money for some good causes. I’m not quitting my day job.

"The 800 Pound Gorilla" by Rev. Barbara Merritt

2010-04-12T10:27:00.000-07:00

Not the metaphor: the actual wild mountain gorilla. Biologists estimate that there are fewer than 700 anywhere in the world, living in their natural habitat. One such location is near Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Last weekend my oldest son Rob went with some friends on a guided tour up the jungle trail to observe these gorillas.

This was not a walk in the park. The group was issued machetes to help clear a path up the mountain. After three hours of climbing, they came upon a family of 36 gorillas. The local guide explained that they only had one hour to watch this group of adults, adolescents and small babies.

Rob found it fascinating to observe their behavior and antics. The small ones did silly play, and acrobatics, including falling out of the trees, gracelessly and hilariously. A young adolescent male made a provocative swipe at Rob’s leg. The mothers took tender care of their babies. And the great 800 pound silver-back male, the leader of the tribe, looked at the human watchers suspiciously. At precisely 60 minutes (had someone given the gorilla a digital watch?), the silver back jumped up, slammed his hand on the ground, made three loud barking noises, barred his teeth, and mock-charged the human tourists.

As Rob tells it, the silver-back scared the living daylights out of all the humans. They decided that their viewing time was definitely over, and they started to descend down the mountain. What can we learn from their experience? Clearly, if an 800 lb gorilla is sitting in his own natural “living room” he is not going to remain sitting there forever. Eventually, he’s going to announce his presence, in the strongest possible terms. And you had better be prepared to move, and to move quickly.

Until now, I have always enjoyed the metaphor of the 800 lb gorilla that sits quietly in our midst, as we tiptoe around. Always having been a big fan of denial, I thought this behavior could go on indefinitely. But nature has a way of illustrating what is real, and what really happens.

This has me thinking about three rather large gorillas that have been staring me down, for some time now.

The First Gorilla: I am soon retiring, after 35 years in the parish ministry. While this decision once seemed abstract and distant, I am now down to 6 more Sundays, 3 more sermons (4/25, 5/2, and 5/23), and 3 more memos. Every time I choose a hymn, it is the last time I’ll get to select that one. Each song the choir sings now has to go into my store of memories. Too many people are coming up to me and saying, “This will be your last Easter, your last Monday night seminar, your last Jericho Road meeting.” And while I am currently feeling like the very lamest of ducks, the other, equally compelling truth is that right now, I’m still here! Every Sunday worship service is another chance, not only to repeat our covenant, but to live it. And since, because of ministerial rules, I won’t be able to visit our church again for quite a long time after my retirement, I am newly appreciative of the great privilege that it is, to see and speak with our members. (“This is the day the Lord has made…”) We need to live in the present moment, because that is what is real right now.

The Second Gorilla: My spiritual hope, for years now, has been that I might say to God, “Do with me as you will.” (and mean it). My aspiration is to trust reality, and to surrender completely to that power of love and truth, and the source of our being, that is far greater than my own desire and plans. I fail at this constantly, yet it is still my faith, my hope and my intention.

But have you considered the alternative? The only viable option to surrender, is to scream at the reality you don’t like, “Don’t mess with me!”, or some variation thereof. You can yell, “You can’t do that!” You can argue, “That is not how my life was supposed to go!” Or, “How dare you deliver to my door so much suffering, trouble or hardship!” Shaking our fists at God, or at life and its unfathomable twists and turns, is an ancient and universal response to receiving what we do not want. What the 800 lb gorilla would ask at this point is, “How is this protest of yours working out for you?” Has reality or God or the cosmos ever replied, “Oops. My apologies… I never meant to cause you such unhappiness. I’ll stop immediately!”

It occurs to me that the real people of faith are the atheists, the agnostics, the skeptics and the contrarians, who keep screaming at reality, “Don’t do that!” They say to other people, “Don’t be the way you are.” They address politicians and declare, “Don’t hold the values that you hold.” Despite a 100% fail rate, (reality has never capitulated to their objections and demands) they keep up their protests, their refusals, and their harsh judgments. Now THAT is an indomitable faith. (Those of us who just work for small incremental changes, don’t make so much noise, but our labors may yield a better return.)

Gorilla Number Three: Change always, constantly, in our families, our churches, our workplace and our world. If your life is difficult, and full of anxiety, stick around; it will change. If everything is going beautifully, and smoothly and happily, pay attention; there is trouble ahead. Our assignment on this mysteriously moving planet is to stay agile, awake and responsive. New challenges and new duties lie ahead.

Wherever your personal 800 lb gorillas have taken up residence, treat them with a healthy respect. They are powerful. They will eventually command our full attention. And they will let us know when it is time for us to move forward.

Photo by Rob Merritt.

"Our Worship" by Rev.Thomas Schade

2010-04-06T05:54:00.000-07:00

People ask Unitarian Universalists the following question: What holds a congregation together if you don't have a list of things that you agree about?

It's a good question.

What holds us together at the First Unitarian Church of Worcester is the way that we worship together. The people who are here are the ones for whom the way that we worship works. The Sunday morning experience does for them what it is supposed to do: it comforts and challenges, satisfies the emotions and stimulates the intellect. People will choose to worship where the experience helps them grow.

There are a lot of elements that go into a worship experience. Every congregation does it a little differently which makes every church a unique experience.

Here's how we mix and match the elements at First Unitarian Worcester.

1. Our Liturgy is theistic in theology and generally in the Protestant tradition. The overall elements of the service presume that the people there find the concept of "God" to be a serviceable way of talking about what is ultimate and transcending in life. Note what is said and not said in that description. We use a fairly standard Protestant order of service - some introductory rituals, readings, prayers, choral music and hymns and a 15-20 minute sermon.

2. Our Rituals: We have a candle-lighting by a lay person, and a standard call to worship (This is the Day the Lord Has Made; Let us Rejoice and Be Glad in it" (Deuteronomy), congregational recitation of our covenant and a sung doxology, a responsive reading from Songs of the Living Tradition.

3. Our Prayers: We pray in church; in fact, we pray three times. Once, in a Common Prayer which is said together, is composed and changes weekly; once in silent prayers; and once in the Lord's Prayer. The message is that not every prayer has to be perfect. In a community that prays together no single prayer will fit everyone's needs or language preferences. The important thing is that we pray together, respecting the prayers of others.

4. Our Texts: We read either from the Jewish or Christian scriptures each week. We read for spiritual inspiration, reading stories or passages that have an immediate message to all who hear it, whether they are Christian or Jewish or not. We do not read scripture for theological instruction, as though it was the final authority about God. Finally we do not read the Bible to demonstrate that the Bible is the instruction manual for life, or the answer book for life's questions.

We also read from many other sources of wisdom: world religions, modern writing, poetry, philosophy, psychology, popular culture.

5. Our Preaching: Our sermons are humanistic in the highest sense of the word. They are the authentic words of the real people who are our ministers, talking about real issues in real life in real terms. We do teach the intellectual tradition and history of liberal religion; after all, if we don't, who will? But in the end, our sermons are not aimed at educating or informing, but at provoking the listeners to honest self-reflection about the lives they lead.

6. Our music aims at beauty and excellence. The repertoire is broad and ever-expanding as the musicians and singers challenge themselves with new music from new sources.

7. The atmosphere of our worship is comfortable, relaxed, forgiving. We laugh and we cry. We are glad to be together for worship and we enjoy each other's company. It is a warm and welcoming congregation that gathers for worship, but it is not a particularly intimate community. It is a little too big for that.

These are seven defining qualities of the worship at First Unitarian Church of Worcester. Other churches make other choices in how they pray, what they read and what they expect from a sermon. Others seek more or less informality, or more or less intimacy. Those differences are to be expected, and welcomed. No church can be all things to all people.

People have asked me about my vision for the future of our worship service. I am committed to the way that we worship, and to keeping the same mix of qualities that I have listed above. Our worship style is at the heart of who we are, and we should be what we are with confidence and boldness. After all, if we don't, who will?

I believe that many more people, of all ages and backgrounds, would find our worship service to be an inspiration in their lives. Our unmet challenge is to invite them to come.

"Right As Rain" by Rev. Barbara Merritt

2010-03-29T07:48:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Oprah, and her narration of a new series on TV about animal life, I am learning about the myriad survival strategies that living beings have adopted, in order to avoid being eaten. I was especially intrigued by the creative adaptations of some tiny frogs in South America. Both suffer from what, in a frog, appears to be a fatal flaw. Neither has developed the capacity to hop. So how are they to evade their predatory enemies?

The one species that lives in the canopy of the rain forest has sticky, grasping hands. When a snake or a bird swoops down upon this little creature, he simply steps off his branch/platform into the open air. As he free falls through the tree limbs and leaves, he stretches out his hands on his way down, eventually able to grab hold of a branch. The other frog, who is also about the size of a postage stamp, lives on top of some rocky formations on some isolated buttes in Venezuela. When a tarantula approaches with the intention of having a frog dinner, this “non-hopper” rolls herself into a stiff ball, and hurls herself over the side of the cliff. Because she is so light, and her skin is so tough, she merely bounces down the rocks and boulders until she arrives at the bottom. Then she uncurls, dusts herself off, and gets back to the business of being a frog.

The infinite number of strategies found in the animal kingdom that promote physical survival is awesome. But the same observation can be made about the numberless spiritual practices that human beings have selected, to help them make their way in the world. The extraordinary range of possibilities was strongly illustrated to me last Saturday, when I sat in worship at a Trappestine Abbey in Wrentham. I led a workshop at a retreat for UU Harvard Divinity students, (who had chosen this Abbey for their meetings). After my work was completed, I wandered over to attend the noon worship services at the Church.

In attendance were about 50 nuns; all chanting songs from the Bible, all living apart from society, all engaged in corporate, and individual prayer throughout the day. They made candy, to support their monastery. These women had dedicated their lives to God, as they understood God within the context of the Catholic Church. I was impressed with the focus and the discipline they brought to their practice. And I was astonished to see how profoundly different their path was from mine.

Even with the same ultimate goal, to dedicate your life to the highest truth you have experienced, or can imagine, we human beings come up with an infinite variety of ways to proceed. Some believe their focus should be on service. Some conclude that only financial security, and/or power and influence will result in a good life. Others are convinced that the highest achievement is creativity. Some seek pleasure, and some the denial of pleasure through asceticism. Some want to protect the planet. Some want to alleviate suffering. Sadly, far too many conclude that only they know the only right way to serve God, or humanity. They suppose that their adaptations, insights and rituals are not simply self-evidently true; they also believe that God has given to them the exclusive franchise that guarantees salvation and human happiness. As far as the self-righteous are concerned, their answers are as “right as rain”: obvious, authentic and trustworthy.

“Right as rain” is an idiom that has a lovely, alliterative quality. It’s origin can be traced back to the turn of the 20th century. According to author Michael Quinion, the expression originally referred to what was “satisfying, safe, secure and comfortable.” Some etymologists believes that it is a reference to rain falling straight down, and is therefore admiring of the straightforward qualities of rain. Others suggest that in an agrarian culture, nothing was more obvious that the blessings and the necessity of rainfall. Still others believe that rain is a symbol for what is pure and wholesome, and falls as a free gift from the heavens. (Here in New England, in the last few weeks, we are not so quick to idealize the rain that floods our streets, our basements and our Sunday School.)

“What is right?” and What is wrong?” are two core questions that humanity tries to answer. There are clearly right answers in mathematics, and science and even in moral decision-making. But when it comes to how people find the resources to spiritually survive, I am a committed pluralist. There are many, many, many creative and adaptive spiritual practices. As individuals search for a vision of earth and heaven that strikes them as “satisfactory, safe, secure and comfortable”, some will make their home in orthodox traditions. Some of us will want all of our doubts and skepticism out in the open. Some will want to meditate alone in their closet. Some will worship in cathedrals.

Wherever your path takes you, I hope that the stories that guide your steps are transformative. The Passover story, that is commemorated this week, reminds us of the redeeming journey from slavery, into liberation and freedom. The Easter story tells us that there is new life, after pain and death. As the light increases, as the rains come and go, may we find our own way to sing the songs of joy.