Parson to Person Blog

In an ancient Chinese teaching story, a king of Wei wants to attack the smaller and weaker kingdom of Zhao. Ji Liang, an advisor, comes to the king and says:

"On my way here today, I met someone on the road. He was going north and told me, 'I want to go to the kingdom of Chu.'   said to him, 'The kingdom of Chu is to the
south of Wei. How can you get there by going north? '

"He replied, 'My horses are good.'

"I was confused. I said, 'Even if your horses are good, this is not the road to Chu,'

"He replied, 'I have a lot of money to pay for my trip,'

 "I said to him, 'Though you may have more than enough money, this is not the road to Chu!'

 "He told me, 'Yes, but my driver is very skilled.'

"And with all his advantages, he kept going north, farther and farther from Chu.

"Now," said Ji Liang to the king, "Your majesty wants to control the whole world and to gain the world's trust by your every action. Your majesty has vast lands and a very good army. Attacking Zhao, a poor and small country, however, is similar to the man  who wants to go south by driving north. The more wrong action you take, the farther away you will be from your purpose."

We enter now into the season of celebrations: Thanksgiving, Solstice, Christmas, New Year (western) – and we do so fully. This story, though, helps me peer to our celebrations' far side – to the New Year time celebrated in the eastern world (January 23 in 2012). That week, January 16, I will begin a period of sabbatical study leave from our usual ministry, extending through May 31, 2012.

Ji Liang helps me introduce how I'll spend that time in two ways.

1. His story dates from the Warring States Period of Chinese history, which begins in 475BCE, just four years following the death of Master Kung (Confucius). Part of my study time will be devoted to plumbing the humanist tradition in Chinese spiritual life. Master Kung is the wellspring of that tradition. I will be following its growth through reading at Harvard University's Yenching Library and traveling in China's Shandong
province, Master Kung's home. I expect this study to cast some helpful light on the challenges I see facing our western religious humanism today.

Also
2. His story teaches us that the most important resource required for success in any long-term project is a clear image and understanding of our goal - where we want to arrive. Last June we voted to pursue a Strategic Plan of "ambitious growth." In the Unitarian Universalist Association, there are "Breakthrough Congregations" who have achieved such growth in recent years from starting points very similar to our own. Des Moines IA & Bloomington IN are two. Part of my study time will be devoted to deepening my acquaintance with their path, through in-depth interviews and on-site visits. And how will you be growing as I spend this time in these ways? I'll peek at those possibilities in our January newsletter. But first, let's enjoy our celebrations!

See you in Church.

On an October morning, as a 1968 college sophomore, I awoke to learn that our campus administration building was being "occupied." 30+ students -some my friends - had entered the building overnight, barred the doors from within, and were preventing "business as usual." They presented demands that the college provide better support to its black students and better programs to improve inter-racial relations. Their cry was of pain. We, outside the occupation, took in their pain. As our understanding of it grew, we amplified its cry. And slowly, stumblingly – imperfectly, but still helpfully - the institution changed.

Now this October, I'm awaking to a new "occupation": Occupy Wall Street
•initiated in New York's Zuccotti Park five weeks ago,
•in place on our own Capitol Mall (as in hundreds of sites worldwide) these two weeks past.
I'm not in the tents, or on the streets, yet. I'm outside, again. But, again, I'm taking things in.

I'm taking in that this occupation decries the growing wealth gap in our country:
•that 1% of our citizens have come to own 40% of our assets (the greatest percent since the gilded age)
•that the top 1%, in the past 25 years, has seen real income rise 280%, while real income for almost all the rest has risen 5% or less.

I'm taking in that U.S. based corporations, chiefly banks, are the occupation's named targets: The September 29 "Declaration of the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly" cries,
"They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process."
"They have taken bailouts from taxpayers and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses."
"They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right." . . .
and then continues with 20 more "They haves . . ."

I'm taking in that UU clergy colleagues have raised their voices in support, harking to historical UU calls for "economic justice." I'm listening, as our National UU Service Committee President, Rev. Bill Schulz, writes "What OWS and its potential allies need is a demand – 'Tax the 1%' perhaps" . . . Vague stirrings of discontent, even rage, can be
dismissed. Demands can be rejected but they cannot be ignored." (Huffington Post, 10/15/2011)

But I'm also taking in that OccupyWallStreet.org has responded to such calls: "We are our demands. This OWS movement is about empowering communities to form their own general assemblies, to fight back against the tyranny of the 1%. Our collective struggles cannot be co-opted."

Most affectingly, I'm taking in the pictures - faces with short statements - posted on the website wearethe99percent.tumblr.com. They're people I don't know, but feel I could – like the short-haired young man, in white shirt and tie, with his statement: "I got 2 college degrees. I am now over $60 thousand dollars in debt and can barely afford
to eat each week, let alone pay off these college loans. I get more calls from creditors than friends. I am the 99%."

I'm warming up my amplifier. I'm stumbling, again in faith, toward some change. Where are you?

- We got "Ready", last year, articulating our mission, adopting our strategic plan. 

- We're eager to "Go", next year, to execute our long-sought facility renovation, to fund it, build it.

- Our eyes are hemmed in by dark staying longer and coming sooner, yet they're captured at midday by brilliant wings on butterflies. 

- Our ears strain for bird songs at daybreak, from out the growing insect din and (if a school's nearby) those drums and horns set marching. 

- Our nose catches the fading pungency of herbs gone to seed – cilantro, dill – even as it gives enticing notice of what . . .

- Our tongue ecstatically confirms: the rich, succulent favor of Colorado peaches and cantaloupe in full orange glory.

- And our skin is never satisfied – this day sweating, the next day chilling. The air's unsettled. 

Summer vacation, in my childhood, always included random moments lying in our yard - staring at the sky, watching the clouds take, lose and retake wondrous shapes.  I was reviving that time for a moment last week when a stark reality bit through my reverie.  Somewhere up there, just beyond those cloud shapes, the Space Shuttle Atlantis was making its way back home – ending for now our nation's "manned" space adventure.

 

Which is the cause for greater marvel at this "end of an era?"

- Is it that we're set now to rely on our erstwhile enemies – Russia and China – to provide the ferries that will keep humanity's orbiting space laboratory in service.  I know – we're relying on "private enterprise" as well; and our star wars missile shield largely obviates space as a national security threat.  Still I do dare sense the threads of world community shown stronger by this step.

- Or is it even more marvelous that we're facing now more earnestly the truth that our salvation is an earthbound project?  Manned space exploration, as a national undertaking, may well be revived on some longer term arc – to Mars or beyond, as our President says, however indistinctly.  But I sense that our 1960's man-to-the-moon faith – in outward leaps as a Great Escape from this veil of tears – that hollow faith is finally fully deflated by this step.  May it distract us not another day.

 

Clouds are not my only study in my time apart this summer, however.

- China, where I'll spend some of next spring's sabbatical leave, has grabbed part of my attention.  I'm attracted to Confucian insistence on the unity and mutuality of humanity and Heaven – that transcendence is an "anthropocosmic" reality. And

- Ambition, as a communal undertaking, is occupying my even nearer-term thoughts.  Is Atlantis' homeward glide path a metaphor for our now-voted "ambitious" plan as a congregation – seeking inspiration now, not in greater heights, but in greater breadth and greater depth?

 

As summer slides away, I look forward to our own renewed explorations on such paths.  But, first, I do have just a few more clouds to study.

 

See you in Church

 

- A Jewish rabbi, a Muslim bio-chemist, a secular humanist, a zen Buddhist met in a bookstore – with me.  Sounds like the beginning of a joke.  It wasn't. Good humored, though, it definitely was – and enlightening. And stimulating.  Last week Thursday evening, we were all presenters in Indigo Bridge Books' public dialogue on interfaith relations.  It involved perhaps 30 Lincolnites, none of whom are on our church mailing list. I'm looking for more such opportunities.

- An evangelical Presbyterian minister, an independent Christian pastor, a liberal Methodist elder met for lunch – with me.  Last week.  And we'll meet again.  The Clergy Peacemakers group catalyzed into being five years ago is now reaching out to the Lincoln Evangelical Clergy.  We're seeking to bring self-proclaimed "liberals" and "conservatives" into constructive public dialogue on divisive community issues: immigration? abortion?   I learned that evangelicals have coined a special name for making common cause with strange bedfellows.  They call it "practicing co-belligerence."  That's not all I learned.  "God willing" (as some say), we'll feel able to engage wider circles in our learning.

It's good to get out – to try to speak in others' terms, to understand and be understood across divides. It's Unitarian-Universalism in our time – working to bind All (humanity) into One (divinity).

 

P.S.  The Second UU Church of Omaha will install the Reverend Scott McNeill as its minister, Sunday, May 1.   The service will begin at 5:00pm.  To accommodate the expected attendance, it will be held at Second Church's down-the-block neighbor: Prairie Lane Christian Church, 3111 S. 119th Street.  A drumming procession to the service will depart from Second Church (3012 S. 119th St) at 4:30pm.  Would you like to be part of our church's delegation?  Tell me and I'll help arrange car pools.

"Be here now." On the low table amidst my office's chairs, a stone tablet carries these words. It's Ram Dass' meditation mantra, given us in his 1971 book, passed on from his Indian teacher. The tablet was given me by one of you. The mantra is often a helpful focus for the talk and thoughts and feelings that pass between us, over that table, throughout the year.

But at this particular now, being here, and being only here, seems disturbingly easy to me. Here now, the light lengthens, the air warms, the breeze plays, the grass greens. One could quite pleasurably wallow, revel in our lives in this here in this now. But there are other "heres," now, in our presence, and I sense we dare not wall ourselves from them in spirit for more than several moments.

For many years my shirt pocket, left side, was home to my pocket calendar, the pencil-and-paper kind. It was the record and map for my personal, largely separate, path through heres and nows. In more recent years, the calendar in that pocket was supplanted by my cell phone. It added to my heres and nows those of others who knew my name and could call my number, as I did theirs. But the consciousness it circumscribed was still very personal and really quite small.

For six months, though, a new lodger has occupied that pocket, a "smart" phone" so-called. It's united my calendar with my cell phone, of course, along with my computer's email and contacts, all to my pleasure and according to my plan. But, being "smart," it's also had its own plans, and brought its own consciousness into mine, as well.

In my shirt pocket now, at the touch of the screen, lives the here of fellow-humans on the northeast seacoast of Japan, where the grass cannot green beneath the flooded rubble, and the breeze may carry radiation's death. (I visited Japan once. I was VERY well treated there, I remember.)

And too, on that screen, lives the here of fellow-humans on the north seacoast of Africa,  here the light may lengthen in a rocket bomb's flash even as the air warms with liberated debate. ( I lived in North Africa once. There too I was OFTEN well-treated, I remember)

I don't know yet how to enter these nows newly here to me- how to BE in those nows with these newly known fellow humans. But I carry them now, in that pocket, over my heart. They're as close to me as that tablet on my table. Be here now, all of us, together.

We said it twice, loud, and clear.
•Our pledgers, in fall 2009, gathered in small groups, were asked "What would advance our church?"
•In fall 2010, with our newly voted Mission posted on the wall before us, we were asked, "In fulfilling our Mission, what must we do better?" Both years, to both questions, the most strongly voiced answer was "Raise Community Visibility." As advised by our Trustees' Community Visibility Task Force, here's our first major response:
Yvette Davis has now become our "Community Visibility Specialist."

Yvette's initial focus will have three dimensions:
1. She'll arrange for Lincoln media to cover events or publish stories which acquaint the community with our church's identity and actions.
2. She'll arrange for church people to speak or perform in public events to exemplify our
approach to religious life.
3. She'll publish profiles and notices of principle practicing LUCers on our Facebook page and website, and foster their dissemination to wider audiences.

Yvette's skills come from 15 years’ work as a technical and social service writer/publicist. With her family (husband Allan, children Crystal, Nicole, AJ, Justin, Jennifer, Bryanna), she has been active in our church for a bit more than one year. Yvette writes: "I'd like to profile church members who are living UU principles outside of church in order to make a positive impact on their communities, Lincoln, Nebraska, and the world in general. If you, or someone you know, fits this description, please write me at communcation@org. I'll contact you for further details and to possibly arrange an interview."

Did you see the GREAT Daily Nebraskan front page coverage of our Marriage Equity
Rally, "Standing on the Side of Love," 2/15/2011?"

We're doing better already!

It's a busy time for my bright yellow T-shirt these days:

• Standing on the Side of Love with immigrant families at the state capital's west entrance January 27;
• Standing on the Side of Love with same-sex marriage aspirants at the Federal Building February 14.

Such energetic public witness springs from our living tradition of "prophetic women & men who confront powers and structures of evil" as we divine it in our day and time. As the Boston Unitarian Theodore Parker preached in his time of slavery "The Christian Church should be the means of reforming the world. ... If there be a public sin in the land, if a lie invade the state, it is for the church to give the alarm; ... Here let no false idea or false action of the public go without exposure or rebuke."

And yet it is crucial that we keep high before (and within) us our  peculiar "weapons" in such noble belligerence. Our prophets confront evil "with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love." As Parker's mentor (and ours) William Ellery Channing taught, "No one should take on the office of a reformer whose zeal in a particular cause is not tempered by extensive sympathies and universal love."

In every campaign of public advocacy, as readily as we contest our adversaries, our faith would call us to listen to and empathize with them. Used well, our bright T-shirts will not only loudly proclaim where we stand. They will also warmly invite those who oppose us to sit – with us, in thoughtful reflection on the separate paths by which we've met and the common road we might yet take.

Holy struggle demands a great deal of us. Yet its standard is clear. 2500 years ago our mantra was voiced in India's epic the Mahabharata: (Bhishma Parva 21.) "They that are desirous of victory do not conquer by might and energy so much as by truth, compassion, righteousness, and spiritual discipline. Fight without arrogance."

See you in the Streets.

They were tempting, almost taunting, when I spied them - the flags flapping from their sticks above the holes, the "greens" (though more "browns") open below. My windows were rolled up driving by, of  course. But the sun - while low, obscured - still hinted at warmth.  Monday was my day off. My clubs, in my mind's eye, were right back in the garage I'd just left. The devil whispered, "Give in; turn around; dig them out. Shoot just one delicious hole or two, right into winter's teeth."

But I held up. Oh, I did stop the car. I did walk to the tee. I did peer out to where the ball might land if I launched it - as I so clearly could, so clearly had, and so clearly would again. But that would be in  summer , early spring, February's thaw, even. Not at solstice's eve. That would not be – I don't know – right, fair, somehow.

Let winter have her day, however weakened this year, however enervated. No need to spite her when she's down. She's up in Europe, this year, I read. Just a twelve-month past, she was surely up in Nebraska, I do remember. No need to change habits, yet.

There is surely something to be said for honoring established rhythms even when the establishment's foundations grow less secure. Isn't  there? Well, then, there. I've said it. But there's probably more to say.

See you in Church.