by Jane Rzepka, minister, Church of the Larger Fellowship
Given at General Assembly at Long Beach, California, June 2004
I’m not from here. A lot of us aren’t. The good weather, the good looking people—we’re not really accustomed to either one, most of us, and five minutes out of the airport we can tell we’re not at home. Truth be told, we’re tourists, tourists in Southern California.
I like to see a new thing or two wherever General Assembly is in a given year, so I jotted down the promises that the Web offers tourists about this part of the country.
First of all, Arnold Schwarzenegger himself welcomes us, and the website promotes the Stars of Hollywood tours, Camelot Golfland, Air Combat USA, Go Kart Racing, Paintball, Hidden Mickeys of Disneyland, and Riley’s Frontier Hoedown. More locally, a restaurant here in the neighborhood holds the world’s record for the most beers on tap, and a shop nearby holds the record for the largest selection of fashionable hats. And Knott’s Berry Farm has a hot rod roller coaster, with chrome-plated flip-top, flame-emblazoned ’57 Chevys sporting candy-apple red or purple fin-tailed hot rods, that launches you to 82 miles per hour in 2.3 seconds.
The area has a lot to offer—never mind that what it chooses to publicize is a complete mismatch with what the average, stereotypical Unitarian Universalist would want to see and do. So I looked up Southern California poets, hoping for a different perspective from the Southern California hype, and what I came up with was the “Poets of Southern California Swimsuit Calendar.”
I, myself, could quite happily launch in a candy-apple red ’57 Chevy roller coaster or buy myself a fashionable new hat. None of us quite fits any kind of mold. And we all know better, really, than to believe that the multiplicity of hats and the hot rod roller coaster and the Stars of Hollywood Tours and the poets’ swimsuit calendar tell the story of the lives and souls of Southern Californians. We know that here in this dazzling place, some people are dedicated to the Long Beach aquarium, to prison reform, to interfaith work, to providing shelter for people who are homeless, to supporting the Children’s Peace Choir—activities not mentioned at all by the on-line promoters of tourism. And we know that a number of the people here in Southern California are committed Unitarian Universalists.
To those of us who are dyed-in-the wool New England Unitarians, it seems a bit unlikely. If you’re from the East Coast, as I am, you’re thinking, “There are Unitarian Universalists here, 3000 miles from King’s Chapel, so far from Boston, so far, as we like to say, so far from the ocean? How did this happen? How can this be?”
And so begins the story. It’s true—everybody agreed, even in the 1870’s, that California was very far from Boston. So when a group of Unitarians began to gather here in Southern California, they wrote not to Boston but to a fellow in Chicago, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, for advice. “How could they start a church?” they asked. “How could they put worship services together?” Exactly the kind of letter that new groups of Unitarian Universalists write to us today at the Church of the Larger Fellowship.
Jones told them that the only ministers willing to venture out to California were men who desperately needed a change of scene, or who suffered from feeble health or a feeble mind. He told them they’d be better off on their own. So he sent them a pile of sermons to preach; he sent Sunday School materials. He offered letters of encouragement, just as we do today when small Unitarian Universalist groups contact the CLF office. The little congregation in California developed outstanding lay leadership and quickly became a fully functioning church.
Jenkin Lloyd Jones published a magazine of sermons and articles by ministers for far-flung Unitarians, just as the CLF does today. Designed for Western Unitarians (that is to say for Unitarians west of Rochester, New York), its focus was on freedom—not on God, not on Jesus, not on Christianity. The point was not to spread Unitarianism as it was known in Boston, but rather to speak the language of Unitarianism in a voice that rang true to local Westerners.
From the very beginning, this non-Bostonian Unitarianism had a different spirit. Indeed, historically, the language of reverence for these Unitarians were words like freedom, fellowship, character, truth, love—the kind of language of reverence Unitarian Universalists voted into our Purposes and Principles a century later.
Within two decades, toward the end of the 19th Century, thriving congregations had developed all over Southern California, and a well-orchestrated marketing campaign was underway. The first incarnation of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, the “Post Office Mission,” financed and run by Unitarian women, bought ads in newspapers and magazines inviting readers to write for “free literature about Unitarianism.” A new marketing publication, the Pacific Unitarian, carried our Unitarian message to “isolated towns and ranches, and mountain homes.” They called this magazine the “paper preacher,” designed to be “breezy and bracing, not unlike,” they said, “the Pacific Ocean.” These Unitarians were intent on spreading the word, and spreading it in their own Unitarian style.
Just like us. Just like us, they loved their religion, and they wanted to invite other people in. Just like us, they were justice-seekers, and they wanted to respond to the desperate old miners who never struck it rich, to the sailors who were stranded, and to the families whose savings had been spent on the journey to the West Coast. And just like us, they were sensitive to the common offenses of evangelism and missionary work, and balked at the very words. They wanted Unitarianism to spread, and they wanted to do it respectfully.
The Californians were successful, as we know—we only need to look at the UUA directory of congregations to see that our religion spread all over California. But the desire to grow our religion isn’t over—indeed growth is the Unitarian Universalist Association’s top priority.
I know how hard it can be to figure out what will work. Just when you think you’ve really arrived, gotten the lay of the land, familiarized yourself with the whys and wherefores of a particular place, the whole construct can so easily fall apart.
Only a few weeks ago I sat at a breakfast table in the home of a farmer. Three platters of food were on the table, and it looked pretty good. Smelled good too. I was ready to dig in when I noticed that my own plate was the size of a teacup saucer, the platters were heaped with pickled cabbage and strings of white stuff—some kind of wild grass—and a host of other ingredients that I couldn’t even begin to identify. And it became clear that eating this breakfast was going to be all about chopsticks, the use of which has been a reliable source of humiliation for me since the fourth grade.
I was in the home of farmers outside of Xian, China, and it was time to eat.
Did I mention that soup was involved? And a tiny bowl of salt? Probably salt. Salt for the soup? I did my best pantomime for “salt in the soup?” and my hosts nodded enthusiastically. Everything’s under control: I’m fitting right in.
After contemplating the logistics of getting the salt out of the salt bowl and into the soup with chopsticks, I realized that the only strategy available to me was to will the salt to stick to the chopsticks, and it worked like a charm.
Apparently, though, I was supposed to be eating the main dishes at this point, not ditzing around with the soup, so with my chopsticks I willed the sprouts and things onto my little saucer, after which my hosts modeled the right way to do it—to reach into the center of the table and eat straight from the platters, using the little saucers for seeds and peels and later, eggshells.
By now it’s painfully obvious that the salt isn’t salt, but sugar, and any numbskull would realize that sugar’s for tea, not the preserved egg congee soup/gruel that I had so successfully sugared.
The sun isn’t up yet, and I am sitting at the breakfast table of a gracious Chinese farmer, and I have food on the plate where the garbage goes and sugar in my soup. This is all to say that when you breeze into a place, it might be trickier than you think to know what’s going on. To know how best to be effective. Or even to know how simply to be a competent breakfast eater.
We are trying to grow Unitarian Universalism. I am—I hope you are too. And we sit down with a true-blue Southern Californian, a Chinese farmer, a high-school girl in Georgia who found us on-line, or maybe it’s your barber in the suburbs of St. Louis, or your brother-in-law who seems to care about weekend computer game conferences to the apparent exclusion of all else, or the 14-year old neighbor girl who’s babysitting to beat the band so she can get an iPod with a bigger memory chip and some of those new very pointy shoes. We don’t want to keep the good news of Unitarian Universalism to ourselves, but, well, how do we even begin the conversation?
Maybe we learn the lessons of Southern California.
First of all, here in California early Unitarians learned that people are different from one another. Westerners cared more about freedom than convention, they cared more about plain-spoken ethics than traditional theology. They cared more about frontier politics and Western issues of social welfare than East Coast debate. Unitarianism needed to morph a little. People are different.
They learned another lesson, too, and that lesson was that people are the same. They learned that when religion, when Unitarianism, is about freedom and community and trying to do the right thing, the people will come. If you engage church-goers with talk and action grounded in truth and grounded in love, they will find that you’re speaking right to them. Their Unitarianism became radically inclusive.
And one other thing. They learned here in Southern California that you have to get the word out. They put sermons in the mail. They took out ads. They still do that around here. They recruited their friends. They lived their religion with enthusiasm and modeled what it means to be a Unitarian.
Members of the Church of the Larger Fellowship try to remember. We’re out there on the Web, in the mailbox, on the phone, and right here in person, not only with one another in mind but with the people we haven’t met yet in mind too. We try to get the word out, knowing that everybody is different and that everybody is the same. It isn’t easy of course—the sugar’s going to land in the soup now and then—but at least we’re sitting at the table together.
It’s important work that we Unitarian Universalists are doing. Wonderful, crazy work. May we ever have the zest for it.
by Rabbi Howard A. Berman, associate clergy, Arlington Street Church, Boston, Massachusetts
Above all the popular trappings of Thanksgiving Day in contemporary US culture—the football games, the depart-ment store sales, even the Macy’s Parade and the turkey dinners—it is still the Pilgrim Story, and the mythic legend of the First Thanksgiving, that comprise the major symbolism of this beloved holiday. This powerful, inspiring story has always been among the major spiritual influences in my own life, and studying the Pilgrim story has long been one of my deepest personal interests. And lest anyone think it somewhat strange that a rabbi, of all people, be so preoccupied with the Pilgrims, let me explain that there is a reason for this consuming passion on my part. You see, in the course of my research, I have discovered that I am a direct descendent of the Mayflower Pilgrims.
Genealogy aside, my major discovery in my own exploration of the Pilgrim story has been that a surprising number of Americans do have a personal tie to the history of the Plymouth Pilgrims, a history which encompasses all of our diverse religious traditions and ethnic identities.
In terms of religious heritage, the Protestant dimension of the Pilgrim story is taken for granted—although it’s really not as simple as most people think. Perhaps the biggest misconception is that the Pilgrims and the Puritans were the same people—which they most definitely were not. There were major differences in temperament and thought between the tiny Pilgrim Colony of Plymouth and the much larger and more powerful Puritan colony that was established ten years later to the north, in Boston. Quite aside from the theological distinctions between the Pilgrim’s separation from the Church of England and the Puritans’ continued submission to the established religion of Great Britain, most of the negative images of rigidity, superstition, and intolerance that we associate with the New England Puritans simply didn’t apply to the Plymouth Pilgrims. They may not have been the most enlightened or liberal minds by modern standards, and they were subject to many of the passions and prejudices of their own time and culture. However, the Pilgrim “Separatists,” as they were called, were considered the most radical leftists in 17th century English religious life. Not only did their vigorous commitment to individual freedom of conscience and their rejection of all ecclesiastical authority set them apart as heretics and traitors to the Crown, but from the very beginning, the Plymouth Colony was an oasis of pluralism in the otherwise rigid intolerance of Old Massachusetts. The Pilgrim community included both members of the Pilgrim Church (“Saints), and Anglicans and others (“Strangers”), all of whom had full rights and privileges of citizenship under the terms of the Mayflower Compact—the first democratic constitution of modern times.
Plymouth stood in stark contrast to Boston’s exclusive theocracy, which required membership in the Puritan churches as a prerequisite for civil liberties. Plymouth never executed dissenters as Boston did, and the Pilgrims were appalled at the infamous Witchcraft Trials in Salem. Moreover, in one of the most misunderstood aspects of Pilgrim history, the relationship of the original generation of Mayflower settlers and the Native Americans they lived among was marked—for the most part—by a mutual respect and trust, with treaties and cooperation that were honored until later generations of New England colonists broke and betrayed them.
A distinctive broad-mindedness, for their times and circumstances, was inspired in the Pilgrims by their remarkable and progressive Pastor back in Holland, John Robinson. Robinson was regarded as a major figure in the emergence of a humanistic, liberal voice in the Protestant Reformation. Eventually, a number of major traditions of American Protestantism would emerge from the Pilgrim church at Plymouth. Unitarian Universalists, not to mention Congregationalists, Baptists and Presbyterians—the full spectrum of American Protestantism—all have direct roots in the Pilgrim community.
There is also an important Jewish dimension of the Pilgrim story that is obviously of special interest to me personally. And that influence, while indirect, was nevertheless profound. There were no Jews in England during the Pilgrim period, the Jewish community having been expelled in 1290, and not readmitted until 1655, long after the Mayflower sailed. It can be argued that, in the absence of Jews as an object of bigotry and persecution in 17th century England, the small Pilgrim sect filled the void nicely. The Separatists certainly endured the same kind of torments that Jews always had. While in Holland, long a haven for religious dissenters and minorities, the Pilgrim exiles did have significant personal contact with Jews, and even held services in an Amsterdam synagogue before establishing their own church in Leyden. Even more significantly, the Pilgrims were deeply grounded in the tradition of the Hebrew Bible. They continually referred to themselves as the “People of Israel,” and saw, in their own experience, the reflection of Jewish history. They believed that they, too, were slaves, fleeing Pharaoh—King James I—crossing the Red Sea toward the Promised Land of the New World. Attempting to reclaim a simple, “pure” form of Christianity as close as possible to the early Church of Jesus’ time, the Pilgrims sought a model in the traditions of Jewish observance and worship. Most of the legal code of the Plymouth Colony, as well as its early form of democratic government, was directly based on legislation from the Five Books of Moses, as were many of the Pilgrims’ religious practices. For example, their vigorous observance of Sunday rest and worship was patterned directly on the Jewish Sabbath. They used the term “Meeting House,” a direct translation of the Hebrew word for synagogue, rather than the term “church.” Some believe that the inspiration for that first Thanksgiving celebration, in the fall of 1621, was the Biblical harvest Festival of Booths—Succot—as ordained in the Book of Leviticus.
Surprisingly, there is even a Roman Catholic twist to the Pilgrim story—even though the Plymouth Separatists were the most militant of Protestant Reformers. One of the earliest travelers to visit the Plymouth Colony was a French Jesuit missionary from Canada, Father Gabriel Druillettes. On a journey through New England in 1650, the priest was shunned and driven from most of the Puritan settlements he encountered. However, he was warmly and respectfully welcomed in Plymouth. For a week, he was an honored guest at Governor Bradford’s house—where he was even allowed to say the words of the Roman Mass, as anathema as they were to Pilgrims and Puritans alike. Moreover, Governor Bradford took special pains to serve his guest fish for dinner on Friday, even though the Pilgrims themselves, ardent Protestants that they were, usually made a special point of eating meat on that day.
And so we see that people from many different religious traditions can claim historic ties to the Pilgrim legacy. And yet, our shared heritage goes even deeper than these links to the major religious traditions. In the end, all of us, of whatever faith, race or ethnic background, share yet another dimension of common kinship with that small, courageous band. They were disenfranchised outsiders in England, despised and persecuted. And they uprooted themselves from their homes, in an unprecedented enterprise that would best be compared to 101 modern men, women and children, traveling on a space shuttle to establish the first settlement on the moon. All of this for a spiritual ideal, seeking freedom of mind and heart for themselves and their families. Each of us, no matter our country of origin or our location in the world, shares some spark of that courage to explore the unknown, the will to stand up for the right to live our convictions. It is a spiritual heritage for which we can be thankful.
There are times when the CLF’s imprisoned members need to be in touch with a minister and no one else will do. At the very least, loneliness, regrets, empty hours, and an uncertain future can all create a spiritual despair that few of us will ever know. For the past three years, the Rev. Anne Hines has been the CLF’s prison chaplain and has corresponded with our prisoner members who have sought her counsel. We’re very grateful for Anne’s ministry and wish her every good thing in her new endeavors.
We are delighted to welcome the Rev. Patricia Franz, who goes by “Chaplain Pat,” as the CLF’s new prison chaplain.
Chaplain Pat is a Unitarian Universalist community minister who has been working in chaplaincy for over a decade. While still in seminary, she served as chaplain in two high-security county jails, where she worked primarily with prisoners in “administrative segregation” who were not allowed to participate in group activities for spiritual support. She also has experience working in hospital and urban ministry settings, and is currently a hospice chaplain with terminally ill patients and their loved ones.
In reflecting on her work as a chaplain in jail, Chaplain Pat has written:
Again and again, I am amazed at the wondrous seeds of new life that I see sprouting in people’s minds and hearts, even in the midst of all that dead, gray concrete.... I know that the society that we create for any of us is the society that we create for all of us.... My ministry embodies my message that there are no “disposable” people, that it is never too late.
Welcome, Chaplain Pat!
by Roberta Finkelstein, minister, Unitarian Universalists of Sterling, Virginia
My father was a first generation American whose family came from Eastern Europe to escape the anti-Semitism rampant in that region in the early 20th century. Much to the consternation of that family, he met and fell in love with my mother—a Pennsylvania Lutheran whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. When he first brought her home, they were a little bit flummoxed. Many of them had never had a conversation with a Gentile before; but they loved their Moisha and wanted him to be happy. All except for one cousin, who was hostile to the idea of intermarriage and was flagrantly rude to my mother that day.
A few days later, my father received a summons from a rabbinical court on the Lower East Side of New York. He assumed that they were going to try to prevent him from marrying my mother, though this was of no concern to him, as he didn’t consider himself beholden to them. But it turned out he was to come and testify against his cousin, who was accused of failing to extend hospitality to a stranger.
He didn’t want to go; in fact, at the time he thought the whole thing was ridiculous. But his mother was adamant. So he went and recounted the incident. The rabbis instructed his cousin to apologize to my mother. And they all lived happily ever after. Well, maybe not quite.
At the end of his life, my father was in the habit of recounting over and over again the stories from his early life that meant the most to him. His adventures in the Pacific during the Second World War. The horror he experienced the first time he was served a bologna sandwich with butter on it. And the story of the rabbinical court. It became one of his favorites. Even though he had, at the time, considered the whole thing ridiculous and old-fashioned. Even though he had rejected much of his heritage in his desire to assimilate and be seen as a red-blooded American, with bloodlines more like my mother’s. In his last year, he would tell the story, and then say, reflectively, “Imagine that. You know, they didn’t do it because they cared about Jeanne. Or me. I know they all wished I would drop her. But they cared about the quality of their community, and that was more important.” I can still hear his voice, somewhat amazed and slightly wistful, “Imagine that.”
Imagine what it would be like for us, Unitarian Universalists in the early 21st century, to reclaim that ancient Israelite tradition, established in the Torah, of gathering in community to ensure the quality of the commu-nity. Imagine if hospitality to strangers mattered again. Imagine if we could organize ourselves to gather, as in ancient times, to hold each other accountable for the basic practices of justice, fairness, equality and open-hearted hospitality.
Imagine that.
by Katie Lee Crane, minister, First Parish of Sudbury, Massachusetts
The CLF lost a great friend and a gifted lay leader when William A. “Bill” Donovan died on April 23, 2004. He was 86. Bill provided distinguished service to the Unitarian Universalist Associ-ation for more than 30 years and, for 25 of those years, he also served as treasurer of the Church of the Larger Fellowship. He retired from that post in 1985.
Dr. George Marshall, then the CLF’s minister, recalled in 1976 that the minister of Bill’s home church, the Rev. Dr. Clark Wells, claimed to have found “the perfect church layman” in Bill Donovan. Marshall called Donovan “Mr. UU,” for his work, first for his Weymouth, Massachusetts church home, then for the Ballou-Channing District, for the Universalist Church of America and, after the merger, for the Unitarian Universalist Association, where he served as (among other things) trustee, secre-tary, finance committee chair and first vice moderator. In 1996 he received the “Distin-guished Service to the Cause of Unitarian Universalism” Award.
Donovan’s son, Stephen, reports that his father was proud to have been nominated to serve as UUA moderator in 1984 and of being the first male member of the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Federation.
Donovan’s correspondence with the CLF gives some insight into this man of tireless service who once admitted that he had, on occasion, neglected his own business for CLF/UUA doings. “I have often said,” he wrote in 1985, “that if given an ultimatum to drop all but one of my denominational activities I would immediately say CLF stays…all others go!” Perhaps his legacy to all of us at the CLF and the Association can be summed up in something he wrote in 2000:
Keep up the good work of bringing liberal religion into the lives of people searching for an intelligent answer to their religious questions. It’s not an easy task, but it is a most rewarding one.
This is the work Bill Donovan did all of his adult life.
He is survived by his wife, Carol, three sons, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild. His family hosted a memorial service at First Parish of Duxbury last July to “celebrate his wonderful life.” The reception following the service was held at Cedar Hill Retreat in Duxbury, an old estate that he helped preserve for use by members of Ballou-Channing District. Donations in Bill’s memory may be made to Cedar Hill Retreat, P.O. Box 1371, Duxbury, MA 02331.
In June at the UUA General Assembly in Long Beach, CLF’s minister, Jane Rzepka presented the CLF’s Unsung Hero Award to Linda Eller from Walnut Creek, California. Linda was a member of the CLF Board for six years during a time of great transition for the church and was the linchpin in the reorganiza-tion of the CLF video library.
Linda and her husband Clyde have been Unitarians and then UUs for a long time. Their first taste of Unitarianism took place in Winfield, Kansas when their neighbors introduced them to the CLF, and it quickly became a lifeline. Over the years, in several different places, Linda was a committed volunteer in UU churches. She taught religious education and raised their four children as UUs.
At the Oakland, California congregation she started an elders group, served as a worship associate, and chaired the religious education committee.
Linda has worked behind the scenes for many years here at the CLF, and we are delighted to honor her with the 2004 Unsung Hero Award.
by O. Eugene Pickett, minister emeritus, Church of the Larger Fellowship
Our minister, Jane Rzepka, is on sabbatical. She has invited a series of colleagues to write the minister’s column in her absence. We hope you enjoy them. —Ed.
It has been 13 years since Helen and I retired from CLF and moved to Cape Cod. Our thirteenth summer on the Cape is now over. In New England the back of summer heat has usually broken by mid-August. Daylight shortens dramatically with the passing of each 24 hours. The shortening days of August have an effect not only on the temperature but also on my mood. With the coming of fall my feelings become a mixture of anxiety and excitement, melancholy and anticipation. This was always true as I approached the opening of each new church year and is even more manifest now that I am approaching my 80th year and I reflect on my 50 years of ministry.
In this autumn of my life a mood of quiet sadness sometimes passes over me, and I reflect on the fulfilling life and ministry I have experienced and appreciate even more the days I have left. As someone has said, “Winter is a tomb, spring is a lie, and summer is a pernicious mirage. Thus, if only by some crude law of relativity, autumn is the preferred season. Autumn is the truth.” So this season is most conducive to reflection, and I would like to share these reflections with you.
When I began my ministry over 50 years ago in Miami, Florida, there were only 11 Unitarian and Univer-salist churches and nine ministers from Virginia to Florida and from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean. Being a Unitarian minister—or lay person—was a lonely affair in the South. Important events that helped shape my ministry included the Vietnam War protests, the War on Poverty, the McCarthy witch hunts, and the civil rights issues of the fifties and sixties.
The Unitarian Church was one of only two places in Miami that would risk holding integrated meetings, which were illegal. Being a Unitarian was not only lonely, it was also dangerous. We moved from Miami to Richmond, Virginia, in 1954, the year of the Supreme Court’s school decision. I was the only White minister in the city willing to serve on interracial committees. While participating in my first protest march, in Farmville, Virginia, in an unsuccessful effort to keep the public schools from being closed, I was spit upon by deeply angry, hostile persons lining the street. After seven years we moved to Atlanta, where, though it was a somewhat more cosmopolitan and open city, our (barely) integrated congregation was repeatedly denied permits to construct a new church building anywhere within the city limits. There were protest marches for voting rights, organizing meetings to save the public schools, Selma and Montgomery, and Martin Luther King’s funeral march.
The fight for civil rights was not the only challenge. Abortion was illegal, and I and other Unitarian ministers in the South were frequently the only sources for abortion counseling—helping to make arrangements for women to have safe abortions, in New York or Puerto Rico or Mexico. And with the Vietnam War came draft counseling and helping draftees get to Canada. These events not only shaped our ministry at the time, but the work we did had lasting influence. Enormous changes took place during this time, but not without struggle and violence.
Yet it was also a time of organizing new UU fellowships and new ministries. There was a mood of expansion and enthusiasm. This growth brought vitality and influence to our movement in the South at a time of crucial social change. The values and ideals of liberal religion made a difference for the better. And now many of the values we struggled for—civil rights, a more equal and just society—are being threatened again, posing new challenges for our churches and ministry.
Having begun ministry 50 years ago in a state of great ambivalence, I have been both pleased and surprised at how well it has all turned out. The varieties of ministry that I have enjoyed—parish, UUA staff, UUA president, and Church of the Larger Fellowship—have enriched my own experience and deepened my appreciation for ministry.
For me, the CLF was a very different type of ministry, and I thought it ironic that central to this, my final ministry, should be the two professional activities I used to enjoy least: answering correspon-dence and writing newsletter columns! But it was a rich exper-ience and personally very rewarding.
And now, for my final chapter, I’m moving from the pulpit to the pew. I have found the transition from minister to lay person more difficult than I had anticipated. On retirement I especially had trouble being part of a worshipping congregation. I would sit through services thinking about how I would conduct the service, how I would preach the sermon—all of which ruined the worship experience for me. After some time and a concerted effort on my own part, I finally have been able to let go, relax, and be involved, even if things aren’t the way I would do them. I have come to thoroughly enjoy being a layperson and have just finished serving a term as president of our local congregation!
And now I am looking forward with hopeful anticipation to the richness of my remaining years and am enjoying the beauties of this autumn—the preferred season.
by Katie Lee Crane, minister, First Parish Sudbury, Massachusetts
What is your favorite part of the holiday season that in the U.S. runs from Thanksgiving through New Years Day? Special foods? Presents? Special family traditions such as songs you always sing? I love all of those things, but I think my favorite part of the holidays is having people come visit. Whether it’s friends and family gathered around a full table at Thanksgiving or our annual “Bonko” party on Christmas day, I love having guests over to share in the richness of my life.
It is a custom at Unitarian Univer-salist congregations throughout the world, to “welcome guests at our table” during the holiday season. This is not just Aunt Tillie and Uncle Harry, although I suppose they may be coming again this year. These guests are people we don’t know. People around the world who are struggling for food, education, safety and justice.
The Guest At Your Table program is a project of the Unitarian Universa-list Service Committee. The UUSC was founded in 1939 to help people escape from Nazi-occupied Europe. Since then, the UUSC works with its partners around the world as public educators, as activists and advo-cates working for justice and basic human rights for all people. They help by training people to work for laws that treat everyone fairly. They support programs to make sure everyone has a place to live where they can be safe and healthy and never hungry. When we participate in the Guest At Your Table project, we, quite literally, put our money where our mouth is: we put our faith into action.
It’s simple and easy to do, but profound in its power. Here’s how it works. Starting on Thanksgiving (or choose a day in November if that’s not a holiday where you are) place an extra bowl at your table, setting a place for your “Guest.” Then, when you sit down to meals, place some money in the bowl—perhaps enough to feed another person. You might need a big bowl! Keep collecting through the holiday season, then, on January 1st, add up the total of the money you’ve collected. ither write a check for that amount to “UUSC” and mail it to 130 Prospect Street, Cambridge, MA 02139, or go to www.uusc.org and click on “Support Us” to donate over the Internet.
Participating in the Guest At Your Table project is a way of learning more about the work of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, certainly. But much more important than that, it’s a way of inviting people from around the world into our homes and our hearts and helping them, just as they help us to understand how blessed we are.
To help your imagination get going I’ve invited a few of those “guests” to tell us their stories. Your contributions to UUSC will help people like these to live stronger, healthier lives.
Mary: I am five years old, and I live in East Oakland in California. Near my neighborhood there are huge dumps. Lots of trucks come every day and bring more trash to those dumps so it can be burned up. It is very bad trash. It comes from ships and airplanes and hospitals. When it gets burned, it makes poisons that get into our air and the ground and the water. It isn’t fair for us to have to breathe bad air and drink bad water. None of us here know how to get people to stop the poison, not even the grown-ups. Not even my daddy knows. We need help.
Luis: I live in a part of Mexico called Chiapas, where my ancestors have lived for thousands of years. I am eight years old. I live in a little house that has no bathroom, no water and no electricity. It is just one room. My two little sisters live there with my mother and me. Sometimes my father and my three big brothers are here too, but sometimes they have to go up in the mountains to hide from the soldiers. My mother and my sisters and I work all day in our garden to grow food. Sometimes we have enough to eat, but lots of times we don’t. Sometimes the soldiers come and take our food, and even burn our house. Once my mother tried to stop them and they hit her. They always have guns and we are afraid of them. If we tried to make them stop, they would take our land away, and then we would have no food or they might even shoot us.
We need help.
Min Kwa: I live in Mandalay, a city in Burma. I am 13 and in the eighth grade. I want to go to high school and then to the university, but I’m afraid I won’t be allowed to. I fear that instead I will have to quit school and get a job. In my country, mostly only people who are rich or belong to a family of a person in the army can go to school. The army controls all the schools and all the teachers. The army leaders decide who can go to school and what can be taught. They make the teachers and the students take political training and they punish anyone who dares say they disagree with them. I do disagree with them. They do many bad things, but I am afraid to say anything against them. If I did, I would surely have to leave school and maybe be beaten. Maybe even my parents would be hurt. We need help.
The UUSC works all over the world with people like Mary, Luis and Min Kwa, supporting organizations that the people design and lead. When we invite these folks into our thoughts and our hearts, when we support their efforts for a better life, we build a better world for everyone.
We join together to give thanks and break bread together. We share bread made from the rich grains of earth, each different from the other, no two exactly the same. Like the people of the earth, these grains grow in many soils. Together today, in the gladness of thanksgiving, we break the bread of the world community; we share the bread of life.
Only bread is for breaking. The dignity and worth of each human life is not for breaking
Bread of life we share, be food for our wholeness and strength.
Only bread is for breaking. The bonds of love and community are not for breaking.
Bread of the world we share, be the food of love that we may all live together in peace.
Only bread is for breaking. Commitment to justice, compassion and mercy is not for breaking.
Bread of life we break, be the food that impels us to act for justice and mercy.
Only bread is for breaking. The earth that is our home is not for breaking.
Bread of the world we break, be the food of healing and goodness.
Only bread is for breaking. Our right of conscience and freedom to seek meanings in our own ways are not for breaking.
Bread that sustains our world, be the source of wisdom and truth that guides us.
Only bread is for breaking. Our spirits are not for breaking.
Bread that sustains our spirits, be the source of our peace.
by Mark Belletini, senior minister, First UU Church of Columbus, Ohio (The Quest editorial team's apologies to Mark for publishing this piece as "Source Unknown" in the November 2004 Quest.)
...that the CLF sells Classic Chalice Jewelry? Go to www.clfuu.org and click on the Gift Shop or call Lorraine at 617-948-6166.
Last updated June 12, 2005
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