ministrare

This weekend is the culmination of something I’ve been thinking about and planning since I arrived at my congregation six years ago. Starting tomorrow, we spend the weekend celebrating South Valley’s 25th Anniversary.

On Friday night, we begin with a concert by singer/songwriter Judy Fjell, who used to be a member of the congregation and is still a good friend. She’ll perform and lead us in a singalong, and there will be desserts! It starts at 7 pm and we’re requesting a $5 donation at the door.

On Saturday night, we’ll have good wine, good hors d’oeuvres, good art and music and great conversation. We’ll begin at 6pm with the wine and edibles, along with background music provided by congregants. (And the sanctuary adorned in artwork by congregants too!) There will be pictures, scrapbooks, and mementos from the church’s history and at 7 pm we’ll have a short program honoring all the dreamers that brought South Valley into being. Former ministers, former congregants, friends, and new folks who hope to get to know us will all be there!

On Sunday morning we will have a worshipful celebration of our anniversary, featuring Rev. William Sinkford, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations preaching a sermon called “Memory and Hope.” All the former ministers, as well as Judy Fjell, our children’s choir, adult choir, and other special musicians will all take part in the service. Afterwords, we’ll have birthday cake and more fun.

Everyone is invited, whether you’ve known the church since it’s birth or never even heard of us. All events will be at the church itself, 6786 S. Highland Drive in Salt Lake City. Come enjoy the fun and learn about this amazing gathering of amazing people who are committed to being a liberal religious presence in the South Valley.

Hope to see you there!!!

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I don’t usually quote things in their entirety, but I want Martin Marty’s essay to be read far and wide. It was originally published by The Christian Century. Thank you! Thank you!

Pewless

by Martin E. Marty

This spring a certain Christian layperson has been criticized for not exiting his local church when he disagreed with something his pastor preached. The experts on the subject have been, as far as I can tell, media personnel who never go to church, do not know what sermons are for, and have not experienced lively congregational participation; people who value fidelity very little and church hopping and sermon shopping very highly; those who have political stakes in their judgment; and people who pay no attention to the contexts of messages. Less vocal are church members who are unsure when to advance toward the pulpit in appreciation, when to back away, or when to finally head for the door, slam it and shake the aisle-dust off their feet. To help them, we offer this little gamelike guide, suggesting where they should sit in church to indicate affirmation or negation. Arrange your pieces on a hypothetical board and play along. Begin in your regular pew. 1. If the preacher offers the prosperity gospel, announces that you can serve both God and mammon, and uses as sermon text the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal: Move ten pews forward and up your pledge. 2. If the preacher is not wearing a United States flag over her robe: Back up 15 pews. 3. If the preacher avoids all controversial topics and lulls everyone to sleep: No response—remember, you are asleep. 4. If the preacher uses scripture to affirm that all acts by the United States military in all wars have been and are just: Move forward ten pews and smile. This is getting good. 5. If the proclaimer of the gospel announces good news to the poor, healing and hope: Move up two pews, but tentatively. As a Christian, you should welcome that kind of message, as long as it is sufficiently vague. 6. If the preacher blasts secular humanists, Islamofascists, rappers and anyone other than standard-brand heterosexuals: Move up three pews and volunteer for the committee to extend your preacher’s call. 7. If the preacher finds that liberals and conservatives, blacks and whites and others, including himself, fall short of gospel-rooted living: Stay where you are; ambiguity is confusing. 8. If the preacher includes a few seconds of strident and edgy language that will make a controversial sound bite at the next congregational assembly: Be sure you’ve recorded it; it will be good ammunition when you are drawing the conclusion that you’ve had it and don’t really belong in this congregation. But stay where you are so you don’t look suspicious. 9. If the preacher asks those who are without guilt to pick up a stone to throw: Head toward the back pew in a hurry. 10. If a few angry words from the preacher can make you forget how she visited your dying mother, greeted your children as friends and urged you to work for justice with mercy: By all means, leave. But admit it—you miss the community, the challenge and the gospel. It’s lonely out here, and all you will hear of your former pastor from now on are sound bites.

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Okay, some of you know me well enough to know that when people (usually colleagues) inquire about my spiritual practice, I often respond (and only partly in jest) “Video games.” Well, I’ve been partially vindicated!!!

In the May 5 edition of Newsweek, an article called “This is Your Brain on a Videogame” says, in part:

[T]he players felt less fatigued than before the games, less “mentally confused,” more vigorous, less angry, less depressed and less mentally tense.

and:

The different games affected each of these to varying degrees— Bejeweled increased vigor the most, for instance, while Peggle reduced mental tension the most. EEGs hint at what caused these feelings: Peggle upped brain waves linked to a desire to engage with life, while Bejeweled reduced brain waves associated with avoiding and withdrawing, and Bookworm got brain waves in sync, a state associated with relaxation.

So, it’s possible that video games actually do some of the same things that meditation, prayer, and other spiritual practices accomplish. Of course, one has to be careful–not just any game will do. Violent, startling, and timed games can actually increase anger, reactivity, and stress.

But for those of you, who like me, use games to “zone out” and relax–the data are in. Maybe if we are intentional, careful, and mindful, playing video games actually can be a spiritual practice.

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I want to thank you for all the words of support and all the prayers. So far, they seem to be working. My son seems to have settled something in himself, at least for now, and is really committed to changing his goals and his life. He’s had a few frustrations with getting to his outpatient sessions–such as a breakdown in public transportation that meant he had to walk a long, long way to his session only to find out that his therapist had left because he wasn’t there on time. Right now he seems absolutely committed to proving he can stay sober by willpower alone. But he’s not fighting going to the outpatient meetings. He just comes home and talks about how stupid they are. But, it’s been over a month since he used and he seems to be happy with his life back on track. I can hear him out front shooting baskets like he used to.

Last week I was gone for six days. It felt like a big risk in the middle of all this, but it was an event that had been in the planning stages for over four years. We held the first retreat of the steering committee for a new organization in the UUA: TRUUsT. That’s the Transgender Religious professional UUs Together. We’ll be publishing a press release and starting our own website very soon, but you get the scoop. There are enough Transgender ministers and religious professionals to make it important for us to organize ourselves. And after so many years of wishing and planning, it’s done! We met on retreat for three days in Massachusetts and began the first steps of our process. We concentrated on telling our stories and building relationships among the members of the steering committee. It went really well.

After that, I spent a couple of days with my best friend, just relaxing and taking some time to absorb, reflect, ignore, and process the family crisis. I got to sleep in one day, play a little, tour a famous UU congregation, eat good food, and otherwise just take some time for myself. I feel better, though of course, I have about a gazillion things to catch up on now that I’m back.

All in all, I feel like I’ve regained my balance, at least for now. I’ll probably still be stepping through life a bit gingerly for a time, but at least the feeling of being in the midst of a maelstrom has passed. I know enough to know that it could return any moment, so I’ll try to make the best of every moment of calm. Thanks again for your support, love, prayers, and well wishes. Every single one mattered.

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Dear Readers,

Yes, it’s been a long time. As I’ve mentioned before, silence on the blog is usually a sign that I am overwhelmed. This silence is no exception. About six weeks ago, our family was plunged into crisis. Our son, who is seventeen, went from “normal teenage attitude and rebellion” to “signs of serious problems.” He began to get verbally abusive, destructive of our property, and began stealing regularly from the family and everyone else. (Three shoplifting charges in eight days!) As things spiraled out of control, I was thrust into full crisis management mode. Nothing extraneous got done and that means I didn’t read blogs or write them. It was all I could do to keep my son safe (enough) and meet the most basic requirements of my ministry.

Just when we were all at the breaking point, he admitted that he had a substance abuse problem. Not a small one, but a serious problem with a very addictive illegal drug. He recognized the problem and asked for treatment. (Of course, that was in part because it was becoming very clear he was going to end up in the juvenile criminal system. Rehab is better than detention.)

There are some good things in this: he has recognized he has a problem; he is under 18, so we have more options for intervention; the drugs explain some behavior that was truly scary. But mostly, dealing with the fact that a child is addicted to drugs is extremely painful. And on top of the emotional consequences, there are financial, legal and relational ones.

Just to give you a hint of what I mean…he gave his cell phone to a dealer in exchange for drugs. Wherever that phone ended up, it eventually had over $8000 of international calls charged to it. Because he didn’t tell us it was “missing,” we did not know to report it as lost/stolen to the cell phone company, leaving us liable for the charges. To their credit, the cell phone company is forgiving almost $5000. But that still leaves us with a $3000 cell phone bill. And that’s only a small part of the financial impact. There are legal fees, fines, treatment costs…

I’m not writing this so you will feel sorry for us and there is no paypal button for you to make donations. We will manage. We have money in our pensions, if worse comes to worse. What I really want this story to do is help people understand what families like ours are going through. Not just the primary stressors, but the secondary costs of parenting a child who has become an addict. I hope it will help all of us grow in compassion to know and remember this story.

The hardest thing about this whole situation is the deep parental desire to have someone to blame–usually myself. I am having to fight hard to keep the words “if only…” out of my vocabulary. (If only we’d seen the signs earlier. If only we’d made him keep going to that counselor. If only we’d been more strict. If only I hadn’t moved the family to Utah. If only I hadn’t taken that sabbatical. If only I’d invested in ten years worth of duct tape and kept him immobile throughout his teens.)

As they say in Al-anon: “You didn’t cause it. You can’t change it. You can’t cure it.” What we can do is love our son and do whatever we can to be on the side of recovery. That means setting some hard limits, as well as providing support for his treatment. From a recovery website: “You discover that you have no power, whatsoever, even with money, to stop it, contain it, fix it! You cannot love, hate, fight, beat, guilt-trip, cry or scream it away.”

It is very hard to face that I can’t protect or save my son from this. Even though every day of parenting has been another lesson in letting go, this is excruciating. Almost as excruciating as finding another thing that is missing, stabbed, or destroyed because of his addiction and the behaviors it caused. I think, down deep, I have always believed that my love alone could protect and save my child. Even in this moment, I want that to be true. But it’s not. And all those parents who have lost children to this disease loved them just as much as I love him. Welcome, compassion.

All of this has left me pretty drained and eventually, sick. I am recovering from whatever virus took advantage of my stress, but I have fallen behind. And tomorrow I leave town for a very important conference that I’ve been helping plan for over two years. It is not a vacation and I don’t know if I am relieved or afraid to get away for awhile. Both, I guess. If things stay peaceful at home, I will probably be glad to have some time to be away and “catch my breath” emotionally.

A week away means more things won’t get done at church and at home. My own addiction to seeming perfectly competent is being challenged. I know very well that my congregation is willing and able to step in and minister to each other. It’s what I’ve been very intentional about making happen, since I believe a good minister teaches the church everything they know. I don’t believe I should be indispensable in any area of church life. So even as I feel bad for not being able to do my job as well as I’d like, I feel proud that the church is truly living up to our goal of shared ministry. Letting go.

So, all I can say to those of you that still check in here now and then: I’ll do my best to keep this blog up to date. My best will probably be less than I’d like, but that is just where I find myself. Until next time, your prayers and good thoughts are always welcome.

Rev. Sean

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“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”  ~W. E. B. Du Bois, 1903

“In short, we, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation–if we are really, that is, to achieve our identity, our maturity, as men and women.  To create one nation has proved to be a hideously difficult task; there is certainly no need now to create two, one black and one white.  But white men with far more political power than that possessed by the Nation of Islam movement have been advocating exactly this, in effect, for generations.  If this sentiment is honored when it falls from the lips of Senator Byrd, then there is no reason it should not be honored when it falls from the lips of Malcolm X.  And any Congressional committee wishing to investigate the latter must also be willing to investigate the former.  They are expressing exactly the same sentiments and represent exactly the same danger.”  ~James Baldwin, 1962

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.  ~Barack Obama, 2008

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