CampUUsMinister's Blog

December Visuals

January 7, 2011

It’s been over a month since I’ve given myself the opportunity to sit and write here. At 7am I’ve already been up for a few hours and part of me, despite my usual cups of coffee, is beginning to feel it. I was supposed to be on the road and headed to Philadelphia by now to reconnect with two of my besties, Shay and Stephanie. Shay is in from Minnesota for the first time since we graduated from seminary; we were going to spend the day at Stephanie’s who lives outside of Philly. But, it is January and it is snowing, and though Al Roker who is on in the other room says it will probably stop in just a few hours, I am having to find other things to do with my caffeinated time than get on the road to see two of my loves.

So here I am.

A few quick updates:

My experience at the MFC was certainly positive. Though my interview began just over an hour later than scheduled, and despite the unsettling deer and pheasant dance wallpaper on neon color squares and striped carpet aesthetics of the hotel we interviewed in, I received a ‘one’ and upon the completion of my internship here in Annapolis will be in Preliminary Fellowship with the UUA. This was the goal of all goals and I still cannot believe that after five years and one hour’s interview, here I am. The process is certainly never over but I am restfully grateful to tuck this part of the process away. I am pretty sure that my ordination will be scheduled for September at my home church; a thought that gives me butterflies.

On the 24th I did the 5:00 family Christmas Eve service. Friends, Tara, Emily and Emily’s sister and mother were here. It was the first Christmas I was away from my family; the first Christmas Eve I did not sing Polish Christmas carols or hear my father sing Silent Night while playing along on his guitar; the first December I went without pierogies; the first of a lot of new traditions and new understandings of family. So, with that said, it was a gift to have people I love with me, even if it wasn’t the usual suspects.

I bought a fake Christmas tree, Tara helped me decorate it with construction paper and bows. A few days before Christmas I received a carepackaage from my Mom with my old ornaments from my grandparents and my home church as well as my grandmother’s town figurines and little angels that I set up; a Christmas runner and some hay that I put under it to represent Jesus’ bed in the manger, just like we do at home. It made this place my home and in some way connected me to my family in a way that can be missed when I am with them.

The Christmas Eve service went very well and in fact, I had fun doing it. I’m not always confident speaking to the children from the pulpit but perhaps this Christmas Eve awoke something inside of me I want to explore and unfold that I hadn’t expected.

In between returning from the MFC and Christmas, actually the day I returned from Chicago, I was given the opportunity to apply for my first choice job though I wasn’t entirely prepared with everything I’d need to hand in; meaning, I had nothing I needed to apply. Thrown together with what I could get, I was given the opportunity to interview. A week and a ridiculous amount of stress-eating later, I have been given the opportunity to Pre-Candidate the first weekend of February. Maybe because the coffee is wearing off, or maybe because it is working and I’m just so tired despite it, but I can’t explain how excited I am about this possibility, and about the process I’ve already been through leading up to this point.

In the last few weeks I met with, and showed myself to, the Ministerial Fellowship Committee; I’ve applied to my first job that could turn into a career; I spent my first Christmas without my given family and continued traditions that reminded me that I will never be without them. Work continues to be busy but rewarding; I have begun running just over five miles at my fastest pace and have set a goal to run a half marathon in April; Owen continues to make me laugh and smile and remind me that I am not the only thing that exists in my world; my college friends and I brought in the New Year together; I have begun cooking with new confidence and excitement than ever before; I haven’t eaten meat or poultry since the New Year.

These are just a few things that have taken my attention; not nearly all. I guess the only update I can really give is, it’s been a busy month.

The sun is coming up. Even at 5:45 the sun seemed to creep up with more confidence as it reflected off the snow. Its a blue grey outside; still and quiet. Owen is at his usual spot looking out the window. I wonder when the next time will be that Shay and Stephanie and I will be together. Maybe I should have gotten on the road. Maybe I should have just taken it slow; drank some more coffee; taken a nap even when I got there to prepare for having to come back only a few hours later. But here I am at 7:30am; the Catholic Church bells are ringing.

A Must Read

December 2, 2010

By Jenn Lindsay, classmate at Union and UU friend. Do take the time to read this one!

http://www.stateofformation.org/2010/12/the-apple-of-the-eye-of-the-storm/

An excerpt:

For me, God is not a given, but rather a giving of myself to what is being asked of me by a friend, a family member, a sweetie or a stranger. For me, it is important that my faith is not about belief or cognitive acquiescence or suspension of disbelief. I like theologian Paul Tillich’s notion that faith is the act of being grasped by ultimate concern. For Tillich, being right about what God is might be comfortable, but it is not faithful, because faith requires humility and a sense of the enduring mystery. For Tillich, engaging with questions about the ultimate is an act of faith. Your questioning, your rejection of this and that, your seeking: it is all a very fine prayer.

Giving Thanks

November 28, 2010

It’s Sunday morning. Folks in Annapolis are scurrying in the office prepping for the 9am service. Or, they are sharing stories from Thanksgiving. Or, they are taking a few moments to themselves before the morning begins.

I am home on Long Island at my parents’ house. On Tuesday night Owen the dog, and I stayed at my brother and sister-in-law’s in Delaware; on Wednesday morning I picked up my friend Stephanie from Union in Philly; by Thursday I had laughed and shared meals with college friends, seminary friends, church friends, and family.

Thinking to these last few days, my chest truly aches with gratitude. This was going to be a different Thanksgiving – One that distracted me from my upcoming MFC appointment (in 6 days); one that distracted me from the absence of our usual Thanksgiving guests. And at points this happened. But, and for me this is how Grace works, where I had only been expecting distractions or my anxiety veiled or pushed down … I was given love and laughter and tears of gratitude and also of remembrance. I was given family, my given and chosen, together.

I have been on two different emotional paths lately. Ministry is isolating and lonely – they prep us for this throughout seminary but nothing can truly explain it. No one can relay how important it is to reach out to friends and colleagues. No one can truly explain what an individual path this can be sometimes. So I have been in that camp half the time lately – the feeling isolated and lonely camp.

And then there is past week that I’ve already mentioned; but in particular last night. I had dinner with Austin’s family and some of his friends. How do I explain that I want to so say, I feel lucky? I feel blessed, unnecessarily chosen, and simply lucky — to be a part of his family in the ways that I am right now. I never knew what a personality his younger brothers has; I never knew how similar it is to Austin’s. I am meeting his close friends from work and camp. For as different as each seems at first meeting, they each illustrate Austin’s life; they are each strong good people with wonderful senses of humor, who care deeply about their friends and this life – just as he was. I feel lucky that I am a part of this circle, this litany of his life, that in many ways, I am getting a second chance at reconnecting with him beyond our few minutes at coffee hour during the holidays. I feel lucky to not only get to further discover his given and chosen family, but to be a part of it.

I guess that’s the other camp — the dumfounded overwhelmed feeling of being so blessed my chest aches with gratitude camp.

And that’s a pretty good camp to find respite in from the isolated and lonely one.

So in the next week, as I prepare for my Ministerial Fellowship Committee interview, I do not want to be distracted or have my emotions veiled for any reason. I want to be grateful. I want to take each person’s spirit, who I have been blessed to be loved by, with me into that room and speak with gratitude for my life and this process.

If you are one of them, thank you.

yes

November 23, 2010

“This is about a culture of don’t ask don’t tell”

awake and opened

November 17, 2010

-i thank You God-

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginably You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

- e.e. cummings

The Other Side of the Window

November 16, 2010

Owen, the dog, has been propped up on the couch for about twenty minutes now, still looking out the window at the falling leaves and squirrels. It is his, or perhaps our, morning ritual. As I run around, drinking cups of coffee, throwing different outfits back into the closet, or talk back to the morning news, Owen watches the day begin at a different pace from the window.

I think he is amazed when I am can simply walk by such things. How do I not stop and stare at the big tails of the scurrying and tree-climbing creatures; how do I not chase after the grasshoppers who jump from the grass?

I joked the other day that Owen always helps me to stop and smell the flowers – he usually pees on them, but I get the point.

It’s been good for me to have this new life threaded into mine. Caring for something other than myself, I am being cared for. It might sound odd or backwards even, but he helps me remember that there is life outside the window, often moving at a different pace than my own.

I have spoken of vulnerabilities before — in fact, I often refer to vulnerability as one of the blessed emotions of our lives. It allows for, or perhaps, forces growth. It reminds us that even in our most naked, revealed state, we will survive – and in fact, often times, be taken care of or walked with. — As an aside, one of my favorite passages in the New Testament speaks of the Spirit as an advocate. I love this. Who walks with me? Sometimes it is someone I can name and touch; other times I must be content with the language of sacred texts, an Advocate.

Walking into a state of vulnerability takes courage and trust. Finding ourselves entangled in this “blessing” takes courage and trust to move through to the other side where stability and certainty once again steady our breath.

For the last few weeks I have only been living in my own world, on one side of the window, at the pace squirrels would find dangerously fast and curiously skittish. The vulnerabilities that have enveloped my emotions, my state of mind, and my physical movement have bordered on debilitating.

And what’s … sad? funny? ironic? frustrating? about this is, every day I have had an advocate offering to lift me from these vulnerabilities. Sometimes it is the dog who needs an extra half hour at the park in the sun or who stops mid-trot to discover a frog. Most days it is an email or a conversation with someone who has dropped a line just to say hello or that they believe in me. Some days it is my own body that says I can run an extra mile, and so I do.

When I was a chaplain at St. Luke’s in NYC I ran a Spiritual Formation & The 12 Steps program on the Detox unit. Some days I would ask the patients to shake my hand. When they would reach out and clasp my hand I would keep mine stiff and refuse to hold theirs. We would then talk about how reaching out, putting our hands out is only one step of the process. We have to take hold, embrace, and reciprocate if we actually want to receive of the other, of the Advocate.

I have been keeping my hand stiff. I have been stuck at step one. And step one is a big deal! But now it’s time to take hold of what is reaching out.

Owen and I are going to go for a walk. Maybe this morning I’ll pause a bit longer when he wants to watch the squirrels scurry.

A Message from the Youth & Young Ministries at the UUA

November 16, 2010

Living the Welcome

November 8, 2010

For folks who are interested in hearing / reading my latest sermon, it is on the UUCA’s podcast here: http://uucamd.libsyn.com/ Just click on the “Living the Welcome” link. Also, since you won’t see it — as I read names, people throughout the congregation stand.

From both services the response was overwhelming and one that I can hardly put into words. I thank everyone for their tears, their participation, their words of thanksgiving and pain. The next few months will truly be a difficult but worthwhile gift as we rededicate this community as a Welcoming Congregation and move into the larger community with faithfully guided intention.

I want to share one story that will forever be with me. After the second service a same-gender couple brought their 6-year-old daughter to me . She is already dealing with bullying in Kindergarten because of her parents. When I told her she could come visit me any time throughout the year in my office she smiled so big and started to jump haha When I told her that she could hang out with me and watch what it was that a minister does, she gasped, looked at her moms with this huge open mouth and big eyes and then gave me a high five. It was perfect.

Below is the manuscript.

Living the Welcome

Last evening, and the weekend before, I had the opportunity and privilege of officiating two weddings. It is always moving to me to be a part of these unions. I actually catch myself having butterflies in my stomach each time I offer a blessing for the couple or when I think of how I have been let into the lives of two people beginning their futures together…

But this morning, and for the last few months, I am also deeply saddened, and to be honest, conflicted about my role in these partnerships.

For every marriage license I have signed, for every rehearsal I have helped direct, I have wondered ten fold, I have been kept up at night wondering, if I will ever see the same legal blessing returned to me. I have wondered if people will smile as I dance at my wedding. I have wondered if the kiss that marks my union will be celebrated … or if it will make others uncomfortable.

I have been a part of this community for just about two months now. I have had conversations with some of you about my sexual orientation; I assume others have discovered, or assumed, or been told that I am not straight.

I am not heterosexual. I identify as a word or identity that I know some of you might find hard to hear – and that’s why I want to pause for just a moment and speak to this. I identify as Queer. This word has been reclaimed in the last twenty-five / thirty years or so both within academia, in Queer Theology, but also as a personal identity. To be queer acknowledges that one might not fit into the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender category – it acknowledges that sexual orientation and yes, even gender identity, is fluid, it is elastic and always in flux for many people.

And with that teaching moment aside, though I know this about myself, and though many of you have probably known some aspect of this about me,

I find this to be one of the most difficult things to speak about from the pulpit.

And yet maybe that is reason enough to do so.

As you know I was raised in this faith and I was loved simply for being alive – I had no question of that. But as an adult, discovering the totality of myself, I wondered if that would still be true.

Despite all that had been taught to me, despite all of the lessons I had been given, all of the mentors both allies and lesbian or gay, I wondered if I, as a queer woman, still had worth.

I wondered if my family would still celebrate me – and my relationships. I wondered if my friends would still touch me - if they would hug me or be affectionate towards me.

When I first came out to my parents, my mother’s first response was, “Thank God I am a Unitarian Universalist.” I, too, thanked God in that moment.

But it was only hours later when she had gotten so ill, that I had to call an ambulance for her. Her body said what she wouldn’t – That this can be hard. That there will be challenges seen and unseen. That she was scared.

And I’m sure that, hearing this sermon on a podcast in the coming days, she will cringe with this intimate story being shared –

but I have to believe that silences our challenges, our shame, and our fears have never lifted someone out of assumed isolation.

I was not alone that night in fear. My mother wasn’t either.

And so, with this, I speak to you intimately today, from the pulpit.

Now, I know some of you might be wondering, why are you sharing these things on our Sunday morning worship service?!

In the last two months, in the time that I have come to know this community and become your intern minister, we, as a country, have lost more than fifteen young lives to suicide.

And not to suicide – I have such a hard time suggesting that these young men took their own lives. They were killed by shame, and guilt, fear and those same questions – will I be loved? Will I be celebrated? Will I ever be held again? Will I lose what I have?

They were boys … and girls. They were 13 and 15, 18 and 19.

In two months this is who we lost:

This is Tyler Clementi. He is 18-years-old.

This is Seth Walsh. He is 13-years-old.

This is Billy Lucas. He is 15-years-old.

This is Asher Brown. He is 13-years-old.

This is Zach Harrington. He is 19-years-old.

This is Raymond Chase. He is 19-years-old.

This is Justin Aaberg. He is 15-years-old.

This is Chloe Lacey. She is 18-years-old.

This is Victoria Carme. She is 28-years-old.

This is Joseph Jefferson. He is 26-years-old.

This is Cody J Barker. He is 17-years-old.

This is Harrison Chase Brown. He is 15-years-old.

This is Raymond Chase. He is 19-years-old.

This is Felix Sacco. He is 17-years-old.

This is Caleb Nolt. He is 14-years-old.

This is Ayeisha Hassan. She is 19-years-old.

These are the 7 youth in Minnesota who, in one county last year, took their lives but went unnoted and unnamed by our national news.

These are the 9 transgender men and women who were murdered in 2010 in the United States who went unnoted and unnamed in our national news.

Our faith communities are among the first to have openly and proudly welcomed into its communities out lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender peoples. I do not have to choose between having a partner to share my life with, and my call to ministry. I do not have to reconcile my faith life or my understanding of the divine with my gender identity or sexual orientation.

And yet, our being the first – Unitarian Universalists being revolutionary in our acceptance – is quieted when we are burying our children some thirty years after the Welcoming Congregation program was created.

It is quieted when we are burying our children some thirty years after we have publicly said that homophobia and transphobia – from others or our own – is no longer acceptable.

It is quieted when we , as a Movement, are not louder than a school board president in Arkansas who celebrates the LGBT suicides and calls for more.

It is quieted when we are burying our children.

I do thank God that I am a Unitarian Universalist. I didn’t get picked on in junior high or high school for my gender identity or sexual orientation. I got picked on for not knowing how to put on eyeliner or dress like the other girls. I got picked on for trying to mold myself into what others wanted me to be, often unsuccessfully.

I’m not sure how I would have handled being known in a way that I, myself, had pushed and hid away. I’m not sure how I would have spoken the realities of myself that I know now, to my parents or friends at such a young age.

I am certain I could have gone to my congregation. I would have felt safe there. I would have felt whole, still, there. But I was lucky.

I was born into this tradition; I did not have to find it. No one stopped me on the street and told me how saving this faith could be. I didn’t hear from some tv or internet advertisement about the principles and purposes – the welcome or the intention – of this tradition. I was just lucky to have been dedicated into this home.

I fear our communities, our Unitarian Universalist communities, in fear of evangelizing and proselytizing and missionizing and whatever other scary words you can think of that mean sharing what you know to be life-saving, … are failing the communities of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people everywhere.

And if this doesn’t change – if we don’t get over keeping this faith of ours a secret — we will continue to bury our children.

A few weeks ago I sat in on the Path to Membership class with a number of folks who sit in our pews now as members. After sharing our faith journeys, after sharing laughter and questions, folks had the opportunity to sign the membership book. The last few to do so included a same-gender couple. From the corner of my eye I watched as they supported and held one another up the steps to their commitment. They signed with pride and congratulated the other with a kiss.

They kissed before the membership book, on the steps of our sanctuary stage.

I have never been so proud or so faithful, so moved, so – evangelical – to be a Unitarian Universalist, as I was in this moment.

This UUCA community alone has so much to give. We, as Unitarian Universalists collectively, have so much to offer. If we do not believe in a Heaven or Hell – some after life that we work for in this one, then the only option is to work in this life to call people out of the Hell they experience today. We cannot do that in silence. We cannot do that without response.

The UUA has a program called “Living the Welcoming Congregation.” It is a program for Continuing the Welcoming Congregation Journey, to deepen and expand what it means to be Welcoming, to be in this work and to be effective in change. In the coming months, I ask you to join me in the effort to rededicate this congregation, this community, as a Welcoming Congregation.

This is not just about LGBT kids. This is about what our faith calls us to. This is about the first and seventh principles, the inherent worth and dignity of every person and acknowledging that interdependent web of all existence that we are a part of.

I want to leave you a few paragraphs from an article in The Chronicle, entitled “Queer Youth Not a Tragedy.” The author, Laurie Essig, writes,

The fact that schools and universities are not enforcing anti-bullying laws and that this has fatal consequences is a tragedy. The fact that anti-queer rhetoric is so commonplace that “fag” practically means “Yo what’s up” in some circles is a tragedy. The fact that the same news media that decides queer youth are a tragedy gives plenty of airtime to hate-spewing homophobes in politics and religion is a tragedy.

Essig concludes, saying, But the queer youth of today—out in middle school, showing up at their local queer youth center, making fabulous lives outside of heteronormativity—are not a tragedy. They’re a triumph.

In the coming week or two, I will hopefully be finishing up a video from this congregation called, It Gets Better – UUCA. For those of you haven’t heard of the It Gets Better campaign, I encourage you to go home and google or youtube it. It is a collection of personalized messages from famous people, to – well you and me if you choose to contribute your voice – telling the youth of America, It Gets Better.

If you would like to add your voice, your message, your prayers, or smile, I will be here with my computer or video camera in hand in the coming week.

For the lives of those who still need saving, for the youth and adults who are within our own, and outside this community … for those who were not as lucky as I was to be born into this tradition, may you be evangelists of this faith.

We do not have time to argue over language. Go out and share. Go out and mourn. Go out and be proud of kisses that mark our growing Movement.

May it be so and blessed be.

–

At the end of the service, instead of closing words, I asked the congregation to stand and share in this responsive litany.

To each of you who are bullied, harassed, or fear for your safety -