Circles of Trust and UU Small Group Ministry

So I have recently finished reading Parker J. Palmer's book A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life.  A great deal of the book is committed to describing Circles of Trust which Palmer has both led and been a part of for many years.  The Circles of Trust have much in common with the Unitarian Universalist small group ministry and yet I am also struck by some of the differences.  The first thing that struck me is Palmer's assertion that circles of trust can consist of as few as 2 people and as many as 25.  In small group ministry 6-12 is considered optimal and in my congregation's experience you need at least 8 people to really make the group viable.  Another striking difference between the two is that people are allowed to pass in the circle of trust - whereas there is an expectation that everyone will share each time, with 5 minutes (in our situation often timed) to speak without interruption or comment.  The primary commitment in a circle of trust is "to protect and border and salute each other's solitude." If we insist that people share each time are truly making a place that the shy soul can come out of hiding - a key feature of circles of trust?

What I wonder is what can we learn from Palmer's circles of trust that might inform our practice of small group ministry?  While both covenant groups (small group ministry) and circles of trust facilitators are trained that the job of the group is not to "fix" anyone or anyone's problems but rather to give a place to be heard, I wonder if really give our leaders the tools to do this?   What also does it mean that we insist that people share each time since part of the point of the group is to deepen ties within the larger  community? Again do we have something to learn from Palmer here about truly making participation voluntary - voluntary down to not everyone has to speak each time?

Maybe it is just that I have a deep longing for this sort of spiritual community, a place to be heard and to get out of my own head and yet also to listen deeply to my inner self.  Maybe I just long to form a circle of trust that would give me a place outside of my congregation to explore my own self and to become more deeply myself.

Living Gratefully

So yesterday I led worship at the College of William and Mary and I titled the service "Living Gratefully."  I have been thinking about what it might mean to live gratefully, not in a pollyanna, prosperity gospel way, but in a way that takes seriously the deep paradoxes of life.  What does it mean to live in gratitude even in the midst of suffering?  Can we be authentically grateful even in the midst of grief and loss?

One story that always comes to mind when I think about this in The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom.  Corrie and her sister were imprisoned in a Nazi camp for hiding Jews in their home.  One of the stories in the book is that Corrie's sister reads a Scripture passage that says to be thankful for all things and so they give thanks for the fleas in the barracks.  Corrie is a bit skeptical, to say the least, as I think most of us would be.  Yet it was because of the fleas that the guards would not venture into the barracks which allowed them to hide the Bible they possessed, to talk together and share their meager rations.  This seems to me, to be an authentic way of living in gratitude while not downplaying the reality of suffering.  It also strikes me that Living Gratefully is a discipline..that we must practice living in gratitude.  It also may not be as easy a discipline as it might seem at first, for to be authentically gratefully, would mean to be grateful even those when we are angry, sad, frustrated, afraid. It means being grateful for the fleas even when we are skeptical! Gratitude might spill forth when things are going well but I think only a practice of gratitude allows us to be grateful in the midst of suffering.

I was also thinking about how the word grateful is very close to grace-filled.  Unitarian Universalists don't often talk about grace and I think we need to do so.  I just finished reading William Schulz for my theology study group.  Schulz defines grace as:  "grace in fact refers to whatever blessings of Creation come to us unbidden, unheralded, and unearned. In this sense, the gracious—whether manifest in the rising of the sun, the sparkle of a fish, the chuckle of a child, or the deliverance of death—is the gateway to gratitude and the wellspring of faith."(What Moves Us, Workshop 9). Grace cannot earned and it cannot be demanded yet it is freely available to all of us.This is a core message of Unitarian Universalism!

Might it be that in accepting and welcoming grace, those gifts of Creation that come into our lives often unexpectedly and always unearned that we can then Live Gratefully?

Salvation by Org Chart?

So for awhile now I have been concerned about the emphasis on the move to policy based governance in Unitarian Universalist congregations, districts and the UUA itself.  It seemed to be billed as the solution to all that troubled us...if we could just free our boards from the day to day work then all our problems will be solved.  This is an exaggeration of course and that is not to say that the way Board's work in most congregations (and by extension to the rest of our association) couldn't use some creative re-imagining!

Yet policy based goverance fever has taken hold and spread like wildfire around the Unitarian Universalist Association.  Again not all of it is a bad thing..often our boards were weighed down with decisions best left to others and ministers, staff and congregational committees often felt the need to get board approval to do anything rather than just going ahead and doing it.

Yet I think we need to step back a minute and ask questions about a system developed not for congregations but comes out of a corporate model that was then translated into the non-profit world. It was developed by John and Miriam Carver, it is also known as the Carver model.  It is a management theory. It comes out of a corporate model that is focused on increasing profit and then translated some of the practices for non-profits.  Yet congregations are not just another kind of non-profit; and our primary mission is not profit.  Our mission is to transform individual lives and the world.  We are places that foster spiritual growth, justice and to be a home for the liberally religious.  How does this mission fit with a corporate model of management?

I was prompted by another blog post  on appreciative inquiry to finally write down my own thoughts, encouraged that others are also thinking critically about what it means for a faith community to turn to management theories for a solution to their problems. 

The title of the blog was inspired by a story about James Luther Adams, in arguments with Unitarian humanist, Edwin Wilson who said that "James Luther Adams believes in salvation by bibliography" to which Adams retorted "There is no such thing as the immaculate conception of an idea." (source of this JLA story)  So taking my cue from Adams and Wilson, are we as Unitarian Universalists believing in Salvation by Org. Chart?

Maybe we should heed the challenge of JLA and consider the sources!

When Sabbath is Hard

Well it looks like I managed to miss the entire month of October blogging.  It has been a crazy fall with too little time for rest and re-creation.  Hopefully I can now begin again.

I am having a bit of a rough Sabbath day today.  Not because I follow this strict set of rules and find myself rebelling against them.  Rather sometimes when I stop and have some time to think and to feel, it isn't all sweetness and light.  In fact today it has just felt rather.....yucky. 

I think much of my own, and by extension our culture's, avoidance of Sabbath, comes because I and we know we might have to face ourselves.  I might have to feel what I have been avoiding feeling.  I know, however, that the feelings don't go away just because I refuse to acknowlege them.  In fact in my experience, they just get bigger and more intense.

So what to do with a hard Sabbath?  I am working on feeling what i am feeling, yet not letting spin out of control.  I need to not make decisions out of this place.  I am remembering that this too shall pass.

I am remembering that I am not alone.

Teaching Our Children

So recently a friend of my daughter's from Berkeley asked to "friend" me on Facebook, wouldn't be such a big deal except that the girls are eleven and Facebook policies are clear that you must be thirteen to be on Facebook.  I see that her mom is on Facebook.  I ignored the request. 

It raised for me the question though of what it means when we knowingly allow our children to break the rules, to lie about one's birthday to get on Facebook.  This is not the first time that one of our daughter's friends is on Facebook with the full blessing of the parent.

I don't consider myself a very upright parent but I am already in the dog-house with my daughter because I won't let her lie about her age to get on Facebook. What does it say to our children when we tell them it is ok to lie about their age to get on Facebook?  Maybe not such a big deal but what happens when they start lying about other things..things we would not give our blessing to? What happens when they start lying to us?  How then do we tell them that it is wrong to get a fake id so they can buy alcohol or cigarettes?  After all those age policies are arbitrary as well.

I am not a big fan of the slippery slope theory and I don't want to raise a child with unquestioning obedience to authority. Yet this trend among some of my daughter's peers is deeply troubling to me.  I want some sort of balance between unquestioned respect for rules and authority and blatant disregard for rules and authority.  Also does my respect for Facebook policies around age extend to me turning the children in to Facebook?

As it is much of the time navigating ethical and parenting decisions is not easy or straight-forward, even when you know where you stand.

Becoming Oneself

Here is my Call to Worship and Sermon from Sunday Sept. 5 at Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists.

Call To Worship

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
    (excerpt from “Ask Me!” by William Stafford)

Sometime when the river is ice ask me whether what I have done is my life asks William Stafford in his poem “Ask Me!”  How many of us wrestle with the questions of who am I?  What does it all mean?  Is this all there is? 

These are profound spiritual questions—for no one can tell you the answers. Oh plenty will try—they will promise you riches, happiness, no worries –just read this book, take this seminar.  Many promise to have the secrets of life all figured out and if you just buy their product you can be happy too.  It is not just self-help gurus that promise to give each of us the secret answer to our lives, religions have promised it as well.  Just follow this god, follow these ten simple rules, follow me, or join this community.  Even our family members and friends will tell us who we are.  Yet we know deep down, that no one can give us the answers.

Yet we are not on our own either.  It does help to hear others journey’s, insights that have been gleaned along the way.  It helps to share our own journey with others and know deeply that we are not alone in our questioning and our quest.  How can we learn to truly be a help and not a hurt on the journey?  How can we discern the voices to find the truth?

So we come together this morning to ask the questions, to sing, to pray, to listen. 

Come let us worship together.

Sermon - Becoming Oneself

So I have been doing a great deal of thinking and reflecting on who I am, what I am doing, have done, what I hope to do and doing lots and lots of reading.  This question of who am I and what am I called to do is one that I have long wrestled with and while on my silent retreat this spring, I read Parker Palmer’s book Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation.  Parker J. Palmer has been quite present in my life this year – from his book The Active Life to The Courage to Teach to Let Your Life Speak, Palmer writes to the questions I am asking.  I love discovering  a “new” author and delving deeply into his/her work. 

The question of who am I is closely tied to the question what is it I am called to do.  Like Parker Palmer I have had the moments of disquiet, a knowing that there is a life longing to be lived in me. 

We live in a world that does not want us to ask these deep questions or wants to provide easy answers to them.  Some of them take parts of wisdom, strip all the hard parts away and leave us with a feel good notion that we can get through life without pain or without suffering. This world sells that happiness comes from financial security and through being able to buy the objects that will make us happy and whole.  Expectations and obligations abound – from families, television, movies, all around us.  We are given a vision of the good life – one without suffering or pain or hard times.  It is a world of dualisms – dividing life up into good and bad, success and failure – yet life is more complex than that and reality is that life is more paradox than either or.  If you just do these things it promises – then you will be whole.  Yet what happens when one follows all the rules, does what is expected and then things still fall apart as they inevitably do?  What does one do then? 

What happens when we learn that there is not a one-size fits all answer to the question “Who Am I?”  What happens in those moments in the middle of the night or when it is quiet and something deep within calls out and demands more?  What happens when we realize that the expectations that those we love have for us are not our own? 

These questions are not for ourselves alone – for sometimes this disquiet, this piercing comes because we see or hear or learn about others suffering, about injustice and one answer is just to say it has always been that way and it always will be.  Another is to ask, how am I called to respond?  How does this suffering, injustice of another change me?  Do we allow it to change us?  For call is not just about the self, it is about what one is called to be in the world, to serve the world.

For if we can seek the answers to who am I and what am I called to do, then we can better serve the world us, for we will do so grounded, grounded in self-knowledge, grounded in our authentic selves.

What are the barriers to our becoming our authentic selves, to answering the question who am I.  The barriers are mostly our fears – ridicule, failure, loss, getting it wrong.  Yet these fears can also be our guides.  What if we face them?  What if we risk failure, loss, getting it wrong?  What might we learn about ourselves and others? 

The path to becoming one’s authentic self is not an easy one and it may be easier in some way to just forget the whole thing.  Even the poets show us that the path of asking these questions will very well lead us into some dark and lonely places.  Parker Palmer reflecting on Annie Dillard tells us that the path to our authentic selves is down, down deep inside ourselves and on the way we will have to learn to embrace the monsters that we find there.  Parker gives us this example:  “if I allow my life to be deformed by the fallen angel called ‘fear of failure,’ then I will never be fully alive.  I will withhold from myself actions that might fail, or ignore evidence of failure when it happens.  But if I could ride that fear all the way down, I might break out of my self-imposed isolation and become connected with many other lives, because failure and fear of it are universal.    I would learn next that failure is a natural fact, a way of discerning what to try next.  I would be empowered to take more risks, which means to embrace more life, and in the process I would be become more connected with others.  The monster called the fear of failure (or ridicule, or criticism, or foolishness, or any of the other fears that are so easy to regard as mortal enemies) would become a demanding but empowering guide to relatedness.” (Palmer, The Active Life, 31-32)

I know a great deal about this fear of failure, for I know that all too often I have allowed that fear to make the choices for me.  After I graduated from college, I had no idea what to do next. All I had known is school and this whole world of work and living on one’s own felt overwhelming and terrifying.  I moved home and took temp jobs. I was searching for my call and vocation.  I did career assessment, I volunteered, I did informational interviews.  My parents certainly had certain expectations of me as a graduate of Georgetown University.  Through the years following that initial terror of being out of school, I tried on a variety of careers.  Yet there was also this sense of restlessness, boredom would set in and I would look for a new job.  I faltered between risk and fear of failure. 

It has only been in the last five years or so that I can truly say that I have embraced and owned this path.  It is only recently that I know what it is I am called to do, to embrace my call and not run from it. What has made the difference? 

Well for one I have stopped running from the call and embraced it.  I finally stopped running away from what I know to be true. I know deep inside that ministry is the work I am called to do in the world.  Yet I know that the quest does not end here and in fact it is only the beginning.  In what forms and shapes will this ministry take?  And to do ministry well, means that I must embrace my true self, not a facade, not a mask.  Otherwise I risk becoming one of those charlatans who promise easy answers to deep complex realities. 

To embrace this call meant I had to let go of the expectations others, including those of my family.   

To embrace my fear of failure right now means risking going deeper, to sharing more of myself and asking for help.  I learned this lesson recently as I traveled to Charlotte for my career and psychological assessment. I had already put this appointment off for a year because I could not figure out the logistics of getting to Charlotte.  Finally I broke down and wrote to colleagues in Charlotte asking for help with a place to stay and transportation.  It was hard to ask for help.  It was hard to admit that I just could not afford to rent a car and stay in the hotel near the center.  A religious educator colleague put my request out to her congregation and within a couple of days I had a place to stay and transportation each day.  In addition, I had the gift of people reflecting back to me that this call to ministry is not just something in me—others see it too and want to help accompany me on my journey. If I had continued to allow fear to keep me from asking for help—I would probably have not been able to keep the appointment and complete this important step in the ministerial formation process.  I would have also missed this mirroring back to me about my call to ministry and I would have denied this colleague and the members of her congregation of the opportunity to assist me.  How much would have been lost!

What must one do to become oneself?  One must embrace oneself fully—including all the parts that we would rather deny or reject.    Palmer quotes Florida Scott Maxwell who puts it this way “When you truly possess all you have been and done..you are fierce with reality.” (Palmer, Let Your Life Speak, 70)  Of course this much easier said than done; to fully own all the events of your life means owning the moments you would rather forget, owning the mistakes and the failures.  And in order to own them, one must remember them, admit to them and then learn to own them as a part of the journey.

The journey to becoming oneself is a long one—there are no short-cuts.  While it is journey we must take on our own, none of us does it alone.   That is part of the paradox we must embrace.  We will need companions on the way.  The journey is our own individual path and yet none of us does it alone. 

Do we have a choice about taking the journey?  I think we reject the journey at our own and the world’s peril.  For failure to take the journey means that we deny our true selves.  I think all around us we can see the failure to embrace the inner journey, the journey to our true selves.  Everyday people chose to anesthetize themselves with all sorts of distractions that keeps the inner life at bay – and with often tragic consequences.  These efforts also fail – for the inner life will keep beckoning, keep calling.  Our calling comes from within, who we are, what we are called to do, comes from deep within.  To deny the call is to deny the world the gifts that we are meant to bring, the gifts only we can bring – what a loss.  When we live other lives, put on other people’s faces, then what is lost is ourselves. 

I close with these words from Parker Palmer:  “As May Sarton reminds us, the pilgrimage toward true self will take ‘time, many years and places.’ The world needs people with the patience and the passion to make that pilgrimage not only for their own sake but also as a social and political act.  The world still waits for the truth that will set us free—my truth, your truth, our truth—the truth that was seeded in the earth when each of us arrived here formed in the image of God.  Cultiviating that truth, I believe, is the authentic vocation of every human being.” (Palmer, Let Your Life Speak, 36)

A Prayer for School Children

I just had to share this amzing prayer from Rev. Meg Riley, minister Church of the Larger Fellowship.  Too often our schools seek to make children "normal" rather than letting them be themselves.  We are homeschooling our daughter this year in part because we do not want her to experience bullying because her family is different.  We are excited about the journey and yet very sad that we don't believe our child would be safe at middle school.  My prayer is that one day all our children, in fact all people, will be valued for their uniqueness.


A prayer for school children who are different

For those who are different, or who feel different—
Who learn differently, think differently, feel differently,
Who look different, whose faith is different, whose family is different,
Whose way to connect is different, whose way to dress is different,
Whose faith is different, whose place to live is different,
Whose sexuality is different, whose gender is different,
Whose culture is different, whose language is different,
Whose favorite foods are different, who loves different smells,
Whose body looks different, or works differently
Whose values and beliefs are different--

Do you see that different is just a word?
May you be freed from its poison.

Different: Just an idea laced with fear,
Don’t let it scare you.
A word expressing lack of imagination by those who use it to judge,
Don’t let it limit your own.
They can’t see that difference is the very essence of life,
The opposite of different isn’t normal; it is death.
Don’t let their sharp thorns kill your true self.

As the school doors open again,
May you walk in safety,
With all of your unique loveliness intact,
Knowing you are loved by people who haven’t even met you yet.
People you see and don’t see,
Your closest friends and family, and people who will never meet you,
All hold you in our hearts.
We need every bit of you as we walk our own different paths.

As the summer days end,
May you find the long days’ bright light
Shining in your mind as you learn.
As you go out on this crazy river, this life
Where you will navigate choppy waters, take new turns,
May you know in your bones you are never alone.
As you search for a place of ease and comfort,
May you know in your cells that it lives within you.

And that people who love you are everywhere smiling.

(http://clf.uua.org/school-children-prayer.html)