Spring watch

Back in early March, I mentioned the Great Horned Owl I had been hearing all winter. I had only ever heard a male, and wondered what his breeding status was. At coffee hour after the Saturday evening service, someone mentioned seeing the owlets. Owlets? Yes, the male owl I had been hearing did find a mate (apparently I just never heard her calling), they nested in a tamarisk at the northeast corner of the old court house, and the owlets had recently fledged. It seems likely that the adults are the same pair that used to nest in the tree in front of the church, until that tree came down late last spring.

I went over last night and found the tree. It’s easy to find because of the droppings, feathers, and bones under the tree. There was even a fairly complete skin of a small rabbit (gone as of this morning). I heard the male calling, but it was too dark to see anything else.

This morning I got over there early. It’s pretty foggy right now, but I did see the two owlets huddled together on a branch on the north side of the tamarisk, about a third of the way up, sound asleep. One of the adults was perched far up in the tree, but I did not see the other. If you’re over by the church in the next couple of days, it’s worth taking a look.

It may feel cold, and there isn’t much green yet, but fledged owlets means spring is definitely here.

Later note:

Craig and I went over between the two worship services. The sun was out by then, and we could see them quite clearly. The owlets don’t yet have their ear tufts, but their primary flight feathers appear to be grown in. We talked with an experienced birder who estimated the owlets have another week or two before they fly off. (He also let us look through his scope, so we got a real close-up of them.) Perhaps fifteen or twenty people from church made it over to see the owlets after the second worship service today. Don’t miss them if you’re in the area!

Good Friday for kids

Sometimes adults are curious to know what happens in church school. Here’s a summary of a recent church school session I led.

Lindsay Bates, the parish minister here in the Geneva church, does a Tenebrae service every year. I did a concurrent program for kids on Good Friday. The theology I used is pretty similar to that expressed by Carole Fontaine in a lecture on human rights at General Assembly in 2002: “I like Jesus. He’s my guy. The fact that he’s executed on trumped-up political charges — I mean, he’s the Stephen Biko of the first century. We can work with this!”

We had five children, ages 5 through 11, show up — a good turnout considering that the Tenebrae service was from 8:00 p.m. to just after nine, past many kids’ bedtimes.

The kids and I went off to Pioneer House, along with Yuri, one of the regular child care providers. We built very tall block towers for a while, and then it was time for the story of Good Friday.

My main learning objective was that these UU kids would know what “Good Friday” means. They had all heard Craig’s story of Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem in last Sunday’s worship service, so we went from there. I used excerpts from Sophia Fahs’s Jesus, the Carpenter’s Son, pp. 127-131. I gave them the story of Jesus challenging the commercialization of the Temple, framing this as a tale of a religious challenge to the politicized Temple hierarchy. We looked at pictures of the Temple at Jerusalem from UCLA’s Urban Simulation Team, to get a sense of the scale of action Jesus was involved in. Then I briefly told how Jesus was betrayed to the Roman military police by one of his followers, and then executed on what we now call “Good Friday.” I did not go into details of the means of execution — not with a five year old and a six year old present.

One girl made the obvious comment: “‘Good Friday’! — but it wasn’t good at all, they should’ve called it “Bad Friday.'” Needless to say, we also discussed (at an age-appropriate level) the inherent ambiguity of the story and the attendant difficulties of understanding it fully. The kids were also fascinated by the idea that live animals were sacrificed in the Temple at Jerusalem in Jesus’s day, and we spent a little time discussing this alien notion.

We ended by sharing a snack of cinnamon grahams and apple juice, and then everyone helped clean up.

This just in from the Youth Office…

The following letter was posted publicly on the UUA Youth Advisor email list. I’m posting it here for the benefit of many in the Geneva congregation who don’t subscribe to any UUA email lists.

March 18, 2005

Dear Friends,

The UUA Board directed that a consultation on our ministry to and with youth be convened. We (Bill Sinkford, UUA President and Megan Dowdell,youth trustee at large) were asked to serve as co-conveners. The first step of that process occurred February 25th and 26th in Essex, Massachusetts. We gathered thirty youth and adults from across the Association to outline a process that would help Unitarian Universalism redefine and recommit to youth ministry. Participants included youth members of the YRUU leadership, youth who do not take part in YRUU activities, parents, youth advisors, ministers, religious educators, and UUA Administration, Staff and Board Members. A complete list of the participant and their roles are attached to this letter.

Working intensively over two days with an outside facilitator, the group identified five priorities to be addressed. These are:

* Youth Ministry needs to be served at a more robust, flexible, diverse level than YRUU currently offers.
* Denominational youth work needs to serve local congregations and their youth ministry.
* YRUU and UUA administration need to define an authority structure that respects the rightful role of institutional youth and adult leadership at the same time that it supports the growth and empowerment of all UU youth.
* Anti-racism and anti-oppression work is an important part of youth ministry, although there is not only one way of doing it, and the “right” way depends on individual identities. We need to move this work ahead.
* There needs to be more and better communication among continental, district, and local levels, and within congregations.

Together, the group generated preliminary ideas for how these five issues should be addressed and who should be involved in addressing them. A smaller group was charged to synthesize the ideas into one coherent plan. This subcommittee will meet in late April to create a draft plan. Key stakeholder groups will then have the opportunity to respond to the proposal before it is finalized. The goal is to have a viable process finalized by August of 2005. It is expected that implementing the process will take one to two years to complete.

Information about each stage of the process will be shared as the work moves forward.

In Faith,
Rev. William Sinkford and Megan Dowdell

CONSULTATION PARTICIPANT LIST

Youth Participants:
Jova Vargus YRUU Steering Committee
Lehna Huie YRUU Steering Committee
Sean Fletcher YRUU Youth Council Member
Sean Jones YRUU Youth Council Member
Al Jensen YRUU Youth Council Member
Sara Eskrich Non-YRUU Youth
Dana Dwinell Non-YRUU Youth
Jessica Potts-Mee Non-YRUU Youth
Kelsey Pitcairn Non-YRUU Youth
Michael Salandrea Non-YRUU Youth
Julian Sharp Youth Observer to the Board
Brian Kuzma YRUU Program Specialist
Beth Dana Incoming Youth Ministry Associate
Megan Dowdell Youth Trustee to the Board / Co-Convener

Adult Participants:
Paul Richter UUA Board Member
Rev. Makanah Morriss LREDA and UUMA Representative
Mandy Keithan LREDA Representative
Janice Marie Johnson DRUUMM Representative
Emily Mitchell Parent
James Buckner Parent
Phillip Pike Canadian Youth Advisor
Frank Filz Non-YRUU Youth Advisor
Rick Roehlk Adult YRUU Steering Committee Member
Dori Davenport UUA District Staff
Judith Frediani Director of Lifespan Faith Development
Jesse Jaeger Youth Programs Director
William Sinkford UUA President / Co-Convener

Facilitator:
UT Saunders Independent Consultant

Logistics:
Ethan Field Youth Office Assistant

Unitarian Universalist “iPod” strategy

You can check out “Coffee Hour — Where UU Bloggers Mix It Up” for a discussion of how to keep Unitarian Universalism from slipping into decline. They pose the question this way:

“So it’s time to put your imagination caps on. Think big about what “big changes” you’d want to see in UUism. What would your “iPod strategy” for UUism look like? What would it take to get there? And would any of your “iPod buyers” end up “making the switch” (and give up their old PCs for new “UU Macs”). Or would that even matter? Would a bunch of new “UU iPod” owners be enough?”

Feeling crankier than usual (which is pretty cranky!), I couldn’t resist offering my own answer, which I will paste in below…. Those of you here in the Geneva church have already heard versions of this tirade, so feel free to skip reading it once again here.

In some ways, we are like Apple. We already have a great product — an open, liberatory theological message which is not based in creedalism. We know from looking at the demographics that there are millions of people out there who would fit right in. It’s even pretty clear that we are getting more curious visitors than many other religious movements.

I believe our problem is that most of our congregations actively reject newcomers. At one level, it’s a sociological problem. Most of our churches are so-called “pastoral-size” churches which would rather die than give up the sense of false intimacy that arises when you have less than 150 active members (i.e., less than 150 average weekly attendance at worship and church school).

Perfect example — try telling many UU congregations to give up the sharing of joys and concerns, and you’ll cause an enormous uproar. Yet joys and concerns clearly turn off many (even most!) newcomers, because joys and concerns represents the congregation as a small, tight in-group, where if you don’t know everyone’s first name and if you don’t feel comfortable sharing personal problems in front of a group, you just can’t fit in. (Yeah I know you like them, but you’re one of the few that stayed.)

I’m of the opinion that congregations of about 300 active members represents a good, stable size that balances between the ideals of our polity and economic reality. Wouldn’t it be great if we had such congregations scattered throughout the United States, no more than a 30 minute drive apart? Of course, when you suggest to most UU congregations that once they reach their goal for growth they could do new church starts thirty minutes away, again you meet up with enormous resistance, as if such a thing were unthinkable. It’s that false sense of intimacy again — “Why, then I couldn’t see my friends!” — but if they’re really your friends, you’ll figure out a way to stay in touch that needn’t involve meeting at church once a week.

Rather than Apple, we’re more like Wang — remember them? They produced the first commercial word processors. But they got too attached to their mini-computer platform which died when micro-computers came along — they didn’t understand that mini-computers were just a means to an end, not an end in itself. Just so, we Unitarian Universalists have become attached to this false sense of intimacy, mistaking it for the real work of liberal religion.

Our real work needs to take place on the congregational level. We have to start taking a hard look at ourselves, understanding which of our behaviors actively reject newcomers. All the ads in the world won’t work if we reject people once they arrive! Having a great theological “product” is useless if we scare people away before they can hear our theology!

So yeah — it’s up to each one of us — we each have to take full individual and personal responsibility for the fact that Unitarian Universalism is fading out. We have to stop blaming our decline on the UUA, or on the surrounding society — our fate is in *our* hands. So what will you do, personally, to make sure newcomers are actively welcomed and integrated into your congregation? Will you actively support an additional worship service? Will you help with new church starts? Will you rein in joys and concerns? Will you talk with newcomers at coffee hour instead of just your friends? It’s up to you and me, my friends, no one else — and we *do* have the power to turn things around, if we choose to.

Church as place

An interesting discussion developed last night in my monthly discussion forum on interim ministry matters. We have this church building dating back to 1843 — to what extent does it limit us, and to what extent is it a strength for the congregation? We talked briefly about the “big box” churches which you can find interspersed with the strip malls on Randall Road. Should we be out there, in a new, spacious building that could accomodate growth?

That discussion has gotten me thinking about what it means to have a sense of place. The “big box” churches seem to me to have no sense of place. They could be anywhere in North America. I feel there may be a theological message there — no need to worry about a sense of place here on earth, because the ultimate goal is to get to another place.

But do our Unitarian Unviersalist church buildings need a sense of place? Mike Durrall, in the final chapter of his recent book The Almost Church, seems to argue that we should aim for placeless big box churches. I love nearly everything in Mike’s book, but here I have to disagree with him.

I am coming to believe a sense of place can be a real asset to a congregation, with obvious caveats. Here in Geneva, our historic building creates obvious and problematic limitations — it’s so small we have to have three worship services, renovations are limited by the historic character of the building, the much-loved pews are not comfortable for tall people like me, etc. Yet our building also creates a deep sense of place, which has both theological and practical value.

As for the practical value, the historic building has proved attractive to newcomers. One of the “Mystery Visitors” who came and evaluated our church in the fall summed it up, saying: “As an artist and a lover of architecture, I found the building itself to be astonishly beautiful both inside and out. I was truly moved by the loving care the building has obviously received. I was impressed with it as a visual and physical symbol of our Unitarian Universalist heritage.” Our building is the oldest building west of the Alleghenies that has been used continuously as a Unitarian or Universalist church — it is a visible reminder of how liberal religion moved westwards. Dave Karcher calls it “a Unitarian Universalist shrine,” and he’s right.

But I believe there’s theological value in our old building, too. The more I explore ecological theology, the more value I find in having a sense of place. A sense of place means setting down roots, it means awareness of my human interdependence with the surrounding natural world, and awareness of how I fit into the surrounding human culture. A sense of place also means connections with ancestors, and connections with the generations to come. Care for a historic building like ours forces us to think about the hands that laid the stones for the walls seven or so generations ago, and to plan ahead seven generations or more so that this building (and the surrounding ecosystem!) will still be here.

While not every church building will have this deep rootedness in the surrounding place, I’ve come to believe more and more that our congregations should be thinking about the theological role of place.

(Those of you who read this blog from afar can find a picture of the Geneva church at 102 South Second St., on a Web site of pictures of historic Geneva.)

Don’t forget to vote April 5

…in the upcoming elections in Kane and DuPage counties.

For those of you living in Kane County or Du Page County, don’t forget that we have an election coming up on Tuesday, April 5. I don’t care how you vote, but we Unitarian Universalists have long been supporters of democracy and this is one of your ministers telling you — make sure you get out and vote!

You can find information about Kane County elections on the Kane County Web site. Du Page County residents can find election information on the Du Page County Web site.

For Geneva residents, I see the most recent issue of the Geneva Sun has a letter from our own Steve Hanson. Steve supports the referendum for a 20-cent tax rate increase. If you don’t happen to agree with him, you still have a chance to write your own letter to the Sun to express your opinion.

Once again, I don’t care what your political position is, or whom you support, or how you vote — just vote. No excuses, now!!

An international perspective

One of the characteristics of Unitarian Universalists over the years is that we have striven to maintain an international perspective. (I have heard rumors that a bunch of Unitarian Universalists were instrumental in starting the United Nations, but I have not been able to substantiate this.) Taking a broad international perspective, rather than a narrow nationalistic perspective, seems to fit in with our religious sense that the fate of all persons is linked, and with our religious attitude of tolerance and acceptance.

(Don’t think I’m promoting partisan politics! In my experience, both Republican and Democratic Unitarian Universalists tend to take an international perspective — to say nothing of those of us who are to the left of the Democrats.)

As a confirmed internationalist, I find my preferred news source has become the BBC Web site. I still look at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal for U.S. coverage, but find them too narrowly focused on the U.S. (and both too partisan for my tastes).

One especially useful feature of the BBC site is the section on country profiles. BBC offers nice capsule summaries of most countries around the world, with links to recent news stories. I have found this useful recently as I continue to follow the deepening crisis in Nepal. Where the BBC has no recent coverage — for example, for Micronesia, another country my partner and I are interested in — BBC at least provides links to local news sources or government Web sites, and a timeline of recent key events.

BBC does not have the depth of coverage I could hope for. But as a confirmed UU internationalist, I find it does provide a useful corrective to the usual U.S.-based news sources.

Spring equinox blues

Transcendentalist that I am, I suppose I should be writing a paean to the season, on this the first full day of spring. But I’m feeling crankier than usual today. I was reading the most recent issue of Christian Century at lunch today, and found more disturbing facts about child care. What really bugged me was hearing about the study that showed (no surprise) that very young children need good to excellent day care, yet only about 8% of day care centers qualify as good to excellent.

More annoying is the fact that Unitarian Universalist congregations are not setting a good example when it comes to child care. We’re all feminists, right? We all support the “7 Principles,” which grew out of the Women and Religion movement, right? One thing I learned from feminist theology — caring for our children cannot be dismissed as “mere women’s work” and therefore unimportant — instead, caring for and nurturing children must be at the center of what we do as human beings. Yet we are all too willing to pay our child care workers less than high school kids get for babysitting.

So let me throw down the gauntlet here. I believe that if Unitarian Universalist congregations truly valued child care, we would consistently pay our child care workers a starting wage of $20 an hour, going up to $30 an hour for experienced workers. (And spare me your budget woes — since most child care workers in our congregations work only 2 to 4 hours a week, this is really a small amount of money). We would pay them to get infant and child CPR training annually, and we would pay for additional in-service training opportunities at least twice a year.

I’d go further than that — all business meetings should provide child care, especially Board meetings and annual congregational meetings. Not to provide child care at such meetings effectively disenfranchises parents with babies and younger children. Which clearly violates our democratic principles.

Funny thing about providing decent child care. Most studies of church growth say that having excellent child care during worship services is one of the keys to congregational growth. When parents, and parents-to-be, first arrive they check out the nursery and the child care workers, and these parents make up a large percentage of newcomers. Want to keep your congregation small? — simply provide inadequate child care by poorly paid workers in a dingy room — and even people without babies will be turned off by your selfish attitude towards those without power. If you wonder why Unitarian Universalism isn’t growing, I contend part of the reason is the way we treat babies and their parents.

One last small rant-and-rave, and I’ll climb down off my soap box. One way you can find out how a congregation really feels about “the inherent worth and dignity of all persons” is to watch how the congregation treats persons who can’t advocate for themselves, people who don’t have any power or money — people like babies. Watch how your congregation treats babies, and you’ll know if your people walk the walk, or if they just talk the talk.

OK, done now. Spring is here — woo, hoo! Maybe the longer days will make me less cranky.

Nature and a creator

Liu Zongyuan (773-819) is considered one of the great prose writers in Chinese. I was in an odd little bookstore over the weekend and happened to find a paperback titled Poetry and Prose of the Tang and Song (translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, published in 1984 by Panda Books, the English-language publishing arm of the Chinese government). In this book is a wonderful short essay by Liu Zongyuan, in which he describes climbing Stone Town Mount, past a small stream, scrambling up rocks that “look like a city wall,” and arriving at the top to be greeted with a view into the far distance. But more fascinating than the distant view is the summit itself:

“Although there is not soil, the fine trees and slender bamboos which grow there are more curiously shaped and firmly rooted than most. Some are high, some are low; some grow in clumps, and others stand apart as if planted by a skilful hand.

“Indeed, I have long been curious to know whether or not a Creator exists; and this sight made me feel that there must surely be one. It seems strange, though, that such wonders are set not in the heart of the country but in barbarous regions like this, where hundreds of years may pass before anyone comes along to appreciate them. This is labor in vain, which hardly befits a god, so perhaps there is none after all!”

In this short passge, I think Liu Zongyuan raises some good issues for those of us trying to do ecological theology. Liu says we can probably neither prove nor disprove the existence of a creator from Nature. We like to think Nature is set up for our especial benefit, but that is open to question. We like to think whatever a god does is for our especial benefit, but that too is open to question. Liu goes one to finish his essay thus:

“Some say, ‘This [the beauty of the summit] is done to comfort good men [sic] who are sent here in disgrace.’

“Others say, ‘This climate does not produce great men, but only freaks of nature. That is why there are few men south of Chu, but many rocks.’

“I do not hold, however, with either view.”

In other words, Nature does not exist for the pleasure of human beings. Nor can we judge Nature solely by human standards.