AWAKE Weeks 1 through 6 (JC)

"This is the high point of my week."  "I make it a point to put this on my schedule."  "This is where personal growth meets church."  "The music is fantastic!"

These are just a few of the sentiments expressed about the UUCA's new AWAKE worship services, held on Tuesday evenings from 6:30-8:00pm.

AWAKE is an emotional literacy ministry dedicated to helping people make better life choices.  Some of the topics covered in weeks 1-6 include courage, dealing with fear, conscious listening, and being 100% responsible for your actions.

AWAKE's services include spirited music sung by the AWAKE Singers and Band, healing hands, candle lighting, prayer and an inspiring but brief message on spiritual and personal growth.  The newest addition to the service is the "Soul Spot" featuring the "Wheel of Wisdom".  This is a time when two people sit and discuss secular and religious topics ranging from success to God. 

AWAKE is our congregation's deliberate effort to reach out to underrepresented groups.  The service combines the emotive music from the African American tradition with the thoughtfulness and conscientiousness of traditional Unitarian Universalism.

 So far a spirited group of about 60 have been coming each week since our debut on March 12, 2013.  A significant number of those coming are people of color.

For me, AWAKE is fun!  It is  spiritual, soulful,and real.  I think it provides a model for what the future of Unitarian Universalism can be.  Come see the future of our faith!  Thank you for this opportunity, UUCA!

Love to you all,
Rev. John
www.awakeministries.us
www.facebook.com/awakecommunity
 

Conversations on the Road Home (DG)

People will either be surprised or annoyed to learn that I am a dyed-in-the-wool introvert. I have even taken several tests, (Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, grandmother etc.) that seem to firmly support what I already know to be true of myself. I have profound thoughts and deep emotions just below what is often a very calm and present, somewhat reserved exterior. Now, that is not to say that there isn’t calmness and presence on the inside as well, bouncing up against and flowing around the other thoughts and emotions.

So you might ask, “Why does an introvert choose a vocation (parish ministry) where they are around people, large noisy groups of them, and all the time?” I ask myself the same question, especially after a meeting runs too long on words and too short on content.

But, maybe, just maybe, if we all put the same question out there into the universe, one day I will get an answer.

Ok, so I am being a little cheeky about this blog entry, maybe a bit sarcastic, and here’s why: conversations are hard for introverts. (Or at least a “growing-edge” for introverts to use the most P.C. vernacular) Especially in a world that is filled to bursting with loud extroverts, talking all the time, using up our precious oxygen, deafening us with the sounds coming out of their mouths.

I am learning to do a better job of talking more, expressing all the things that need to be expressed, and most of all learning to share some of my vulnerabilities. It has been a practice. Sometimes I do better than others. Sometimes I am able to connect in ways I never thought possible as an introvert. Other times I miss the mark completely. (If only sticking your foot in your mouth meant you had been prevented from saying a foolish thing?) You see there is a kind protective shielding that happens with silence. You can’t say the wrong thing, if you don’t say nothing at all.

All of this to say (where’s the oxygen): I am learning to be with other people, and to enjoy them as much as I enjoy the book-ensconced solitude of my hermitage (i.e. Fahs House). It’s been tremendous, all of it, the talking, and most of all being in conversation.  

There is a difference (right?) between talking and conversation. The introvert in me still doesn’t want to talk, but I definitely want to be in conversation.  In conversation one expects to hear multiple voices, responses; perhaps, to gain insights, or simply to feel as though you have been heard by another person. In learning to be in conversation with others, I also feel as though I am also learning to be closer to the source of my being, the life that grounds me and contains all the rest. In fact I believe that G-d, among many other things, is what happens between “you and I” when we are in right relationship.

In Jewish and Christian scriptures we hear in one instance the psalmist wanting to turn their dwelling space into a “house of prayer” and in another instance Paul encourages his friends in Thessalonica to “pray without ceasing”. Prayer can be the ongoing, ceaseless conversation we have with each other in our house of prayer, the church. It can also be the conversation we have with life, by how we live in community, how we welcome the stranger—as a prayer. Talking is not prayer, real, meaningful conversation can be. Conversation, like prayer, when it is done right, reminds us of interconnectedness and interdependence of the web of life.

I’ve learned that to experience the benefits of conversation takes practice, lots of practice, not just for introverts, (like, a certain Intern Minister) but for all of us.

So here is a special invitation to enter a meaningful new conversation on our shared faithful journey. On Monday May 27, at 7:00 PM - Memorial Day - I am leading an interfaith worship service called the New Road Home right here at the church. It will be a unique gathering of veterans, civilians, active service members and their families. The aim of this service is for us to be in conversation in a way many don’t experience, but all of us desperately need. We will honor our connectedness, our commonalities and also our unique stories. We will reconnect with home, and our conversations across differences and generations will help to open the door.

I want to hear from you. I want to be in conversation. I want to pray with you. See you in church. Daniel.

A Silly Religion?

I was out of town when metro area Unitarian Universalist ministers began their online reaction to Lisa Miller’s March 22 “On Faith”column in The Washington Post.  The headline assigned to her piece would have stopped just about anyone turning the pages on that Saturday morning: “Many Unitarians Would Prefer That Their Polyamory Activists Keep Quiet.”  Whether you read her opinion or not - and especially if you were unfamiliar with Unitarian Universalism - your understanding of us might have been shaped in just the few seconds it took to absorb the announcement made by that ten word headline.  One of my colleagues and two UU members from area congregations had their letters to the editor published the following week (WaPo, 3/30), but common wisdom is that letters of this sort never leave much of an impression on readers.

      Besides being poorly written and researched and - in several places - simply wrong, I’ve been wondering what the point of the column was.  What was her goal?  Was there purpose to her shoddy journalism?  What was she trying to accomplish?  This was the kind of opinion writing I expect from a Rupert Murdoch publication, not The Washington Post with whom I don’t always agree but generally maintains a reputation for good journalism.  Yes, it was disappointing especially when there was so much more that could have been said about Unitarian Universalism that would have been accurate, provocative and stimulating!  As I said, I was out of town when the column appeared and when the call went out for a response.  But also, other things needed my attention.  If I had not been consumed in my ministry with you, I might have written about one sentence in particular with which I took exception:
      “The debate [over polyamory] makes the whole denomination look silly.”  Silly as in “foolish, stupid, unintelligent, idiotic, brainless, mindless, witless, imbecilic, doltish, irresponsible, mad,  erratic, unstable, childish, empty-headed, weak-minded, crazy, loopy, screwy ...” (Oxford Dictionary). You get the point.  Our faith is silly?  Here’s just one of the objections to her declaration: There is no debate, at least not one that I or any of my colleagues know about.  I know of no UU congregation that is debating the issues of which she speaks.  One of her sources is a six year old sermon given at the UU Fellowship in Chesterton, MD by someone I’ve never heard of.  That, and her other sources, fall far short of any reasonable measure of “the whole denomination” (besides, we’re not a denomination nor are we “Unitarian,” but Unitarian Universalist).  But as I’ve said, I had other things on my mind.

While The WaPo journalist was writing her misguided column about our alleged silly congregational life, many at UUCA were in shock over and mourning the tragic death of Marine Lance Corporal Taylor Wild whose memorial service saw 500+ standing shoulder to shoulder in our sanctuary.  That same week saw your ministers praying with  and sharing healing words of affirmation and courage with 25 people who came forward during the Tuesday AWAKE service.  On Thursday night, twenty UUCA members and friends concluded a four week conversation on “Life and Death,” in which the personal authenticity and vulnerability was moving beyond words.  On Saturday evening, UUCA opened its doors for our annual Passover Seder, the traditional meal shared while remembering the liberation and exodus of Jews from political and spiritual oppression.  This Saturday, we will host another memorial service for former church members whose fifty year old daughter succumbed to cancer after fighting it for several years.  So you see, it was hard for me - and others of the Ministry Team - to get too worked up about Lisa Miller’s column suggesting we were “silly.”  UUCA was deep into the ministry and meaning that shapes and sustains life.

       If you detect a slight edge to my words, you’re right.  I’ve grown quite tired of outsiders - and insiders, as in our own members and friends - whose misunderstanding of Unitarian Universalism leads them to conclusions and then utterances that are at best wrong and at worst offensive.  My hope and prayer is to see the day when we no longer must endure the silly ignorance of the uninformed.

            Take care and see you soon,

                        Fred

 

Saved by Doubt (CL)

This month we are talking about salvation. How are we saved, and from what?
I was saved, in the middle of college, from certainty. I was saved by my own doubts, and by a community that allowed me to embrace those doubts... and that embraced me with my doubts.

Some of you might already know my story, but here's a re-cap.
I went to church on-and-off as a kid, usually to Baptist churches with friends. I really wanted to believe in Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and savior, and sometimes I did. Sometimes, I didn't. I was told to have faith, to have trust, even through my doubts. And so I tried. I really tried.

My college years, like that time in many people's lives (ages 18-22 or so), were marked by great transition and a lot of uncertainty. A lot of doubts. Doubts about what I wanted to be when I grew up, who I wanted to spend my life with (or not), and what I believed to be true and right. I was changing majors a lot, and leaving behind a career I had planned on my whole childhood and teen years... I was engaged to be married, and then broke that off. I was in a Christian Sorority, and realized, sadly, that I wasn't really a Christian, at least not in the sense that they wanted me to be. I had a lot of doubts.

And then, one afternoon while procrastinating from writing a paper, I checked my email. A "spam" e-mail had gotten through my filters and I decided to open it up. One of the things in the email was a link to a quiz: Belief-O-Matic from Beliefnet.com. The quiz (which I linked here and hope you will take for yourself!) asked all kinds of questions about my beliefs: about God, about salvation, about the afterlife, about morality. I remember being afraid: What if God pulls out my Belief-O-Matic quiz results while I'm standing at the pearly gates, and denies me entrance to heaven because of my answers? But I decided to answer truthfully... The way I felt in my core (my soul, some might say), rather than how I thought I "should" answer. When I was finished, I hit "submit" and it tallied my results.

I was 100% Unitarian Universalist.

I had never heard of that long-named religion. Was it a cult?

So I clicked on the link provided, and it brought me to the UUA webpage, where I read all about this faith that honored doubts as well as answers, and honored people in all stages of their life and faith development. I sat at my computer in my dorm room, and I cried.

I was so grateful to have found a religion where I didn't have to pretend to be certain.
Where my doubts could be honored as a part of me, and where they could fuel my search rather than stunt my faith. I remember the way the minister, Rev. Laurel Hallman, began her prayer that first Sunday morning I attended church, and how she always began her prayers... to the "God of many names, whose mystery is beyond all our understanding." I remember feeling filled with gratitude for that address--one of humility in the face of the great Mystery--God is not God's name... It is the name we give to that which is greater than us all. I am so grateful, still, to be a part of a community that appreciates our questions, our doubts, and our full humanity, and not simply our professions of a particular belief.

I have been saved from certainty. I have been committed to a lifelong search for truth and meaning... Which by no means is an easy path. So, as the reading in our hymnal says (#650), "Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth.... Doubt  is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false... the truth stands boldly and unafraid... Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help."

Let us rejoice. For we have been saved.
Amen...     -Rev. Christina

Saved by a Different Faith (JC)

I chose Unitarian Universalism as my faith not because of our history which is rich, indeed; not because of our pioneering efforts to end slavery, or how we helped in the women's suffrage movement. I did not become a UU because of our important work during the Civil Rights Movement.  I didn't choose this faith because I am antitrinitarian or because I believe in the salvation of all souls. I chose this religion as the one I would die for because, quite simply, it accepted me for who I was and where I was.  This faith said "You are okay as you are, you are an original blessing not an original sin--a work in progress." That is the reason I am a Unitarian Universalist. 

What about you? Is UUism a gift to you? A gift is "a thing given willingly to someone without payment; a present" (thanks Wiki). This movement came to us free of charge it was a present--presenting to us new opportunities for affirmation and association. It was freely given without any thought of repayment.  I don't know?  Somehow I feel compelled to do something with this gift. I want to pay it forward by sharing our message with others. An old hymn of the church comes to mind... "What shall I render for all the blessings? What shall I render, what shall I give?” The hymn goes on to say, “All I can render is my body and my soul, that’s all that I can render that is all that I can give.” I have to be present and share this UU gift because I am held captive by the message.

If you are not a UU you might ask "Is that all the UU message says--that 'you are okay and a work in progress'?   Yes.  Pretty much, but it does say more...  Our message says to you that we support inclusivity   We believe all humans are the "Imago Dei"-- made in the image of God, made in the image of Greatness!  We believe all humans beings have worth and are worthy of love.  We believe that all religions point us right back to ourselves and the "god(s) of our understanding."  We believe in the democratic process, that each person is free to responsibly search for her/his own truths in life.

Perhaps you are a Unitarian Universalist and don't even know it?  If you want to talk about it, give me a shout out.  The ways to reach  me and to check out some of my work are below.  

Peace and blessings,

Rev. John T., (MOLE)
Minister of Outreach, Leadership and Evangelism
UU Church of Annapolis, Lead Minister AWAKE
AWAKE website
AWAKE on Facebook
UUCA website
UUCA youtube page
UUCA Ministers blog
My Facebook page
sermon archive
AWAKE Drive-Time Msg
AWAKE Blog talk radio
GA Worship Service
AWAKE Amazon Store

Office 410-266-8044 x107
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When God is One

I am still reeling from Partner Church Sunday, and I believe that I am not alone. We all felt a sense of blessing and perhaps even pride in being the heirs to this special religious legacy. There was something about the service and Rev. Fred’s message that excited the imagination in a profound way. We got to consider our sense of connectedness across continents and across the stretches of time. We got to see, hear and in some cases taste and touch our relationship to all those who have undertook, and are undertaking now, this faithful journey we call Unitarian Universalism.

I found myself fixed in place like a deer in the headlights by the very simple refrain “God is One” that we heard over and over again. (And, I am willing to accept the possibility that maybe I’m the only one who heard it that way, as it bounced back and forth in my head). It had such a pure and resonant quality, both elegant and buoyant.  The phrase said so little but meant so much to me.

Egy Az Isten  “God is One.”

Maybe I was awestruck because it reminded me of my days in seminary when studying Hebrew Bible and I stumbled on the passage in the book Deuteronomy:

 שְׁמַע, יִשְׂרָאֵל:  יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ, יְהוָה אֶחָ.
 Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one.

The message occurs other time in the Christian New Testament (believe it or not Jesus says it in Mark’s Gospel, the oldest text in the Christian canon!) and we see it in the Koran as the essential article of faith:

لَا إِلَّهَ إِلَّا الله مُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ الله
There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God.

In Hinduism we hear intimations of it in the Upanishads in reference of Brahman as the substrate of existence. For me there is a universal quality to the refrain that says more about our yearning to apprehend the true nature of reality, than it does about any particular deity or cultural context.

But, even before I had the chance to study all of these ancient books with their similar messages, I had the innate capacity to hear and perceive what would become my deepest truth that indeed “God is one”.
So hearing the message “God is One” felt familiar to me on multiple levels.

You see growing up I was almost certainly a Christian Universalist like our partners in the Philippines, and most likely a Christian Unitarian, like our friends in Romania. Long before I knew what it took to be either one, I had an intuition that because God was one, no one could be separated from that “oneness”, it was inescapable and irresistible. As a kid I believed (and still do) that God could be encountered in holy scripture and in trees, grasses and bright sunny days. All people had access to the holy in their own way, even if I could not explain the precise mechanics of that access.

This of course was an impossible position to have growing up as a Pentecostal Christian, where we lived in a world delimited by a rigid brand of fundamentalism, and under constant threat of God’s imminent, final judgment of humanity. It was a world of winners (the saved) and losers (the eternally damned); and there was only one way to be a winner, as it were, and that was through accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Our focus as Pentecostals was the life hereafter, and actively rejecting life on Earth. I lived as someone who was constantly prepared to leave a place that was never his home in the first place.
But, one day, in the middle of a Sunday service, actually, I realized something that changed things for me--forever.

I realized that I couldn’t believe in a God who would damn anyone ever again. I couldn’t believe in a God who could exclude anyone. There had to be a way that everyone could be included in the divine plan, if were truly divine in the first place. Otherwise it was just scare tactics and politics masquerading as religion.
I couldn’t believe in a God, who wasn’t immanent in creation; who couldn’t be encountered everywhere and in various scriptures and religious traditions and even the sciences.

In essence I came to believe that when God is One, everything is one, linked in that network of mutuality that Martin Luther King spoke about that bejeweled garment that Indra once wore.

An entirely new world came into being from that moment on. And, it was a world I wanted to live on and make my home.

I hope we can all have moments of realization just like this. I hope that those moments find you here in our special community or somewhere in the world, encountering the holy wherever and whenever you can. I want all of us to have big, slippery thoughts that excite our holy imaginations and stop us in our tracks and invite us to reconnect with our deepest truths!


Be Blessed and see you in church. Daniel.

Beyond Pews

The Roman Catholic Church is experiencing a tough time.  The Church is journeying through a very rough period, similar to but unlike anything in its history.  The Vatican will soon have a newly elected Pope and a Pope Emeritus; Catholicism is immersed in several scandals that remind all of its fallibility; the faith is hemorrhaging members and advertises for priests; it refuses to hear anything that suggests of breaking the male oligarchy of apostolic succession.  So it was with great interest that I read a recent New York Times op-ed piece.  The title caught my eye immediately: “Give Up Your Pew for Lent.”  The author, Paul Elie - a Roman Catholic and a professor at Georgetown - suggests that with all the confusion-creating events and misconduct in the Catholic Church, it’s time that the faithful take a break and collect their thoughts; he’s urging the faithful to take a “time out” and vacate their pews for a weekend.  And do what with their time?  He’s very clear how the break should be spent:

We should seize this opportunity to ask what is true in our faith, what it costs us in obfuscation and moral compromise, and what its telos, or end purpose, really is.  And we should explore other religious traditions, which we understand poorly. (3/01/2013

I don’t think the writer really believes that anyone who reads his column will follow his advice by spending the weekend church-free.  I’m not really sure that this was his hope or point, but, as I said, the headline sure caught my attention!  And so does the idea.

No, I’m not urging you to take a Sunday off from UUCA.  But consider this: If Elie’s use of “pew” is simply metaphoric - “pew” meaning stability, stasis, or what's expected from the church and yourself - then yes, give up your pew for Lent and maybe more: Give up your pew, forever.  When shouldn’t we be asking what is true in our faith?  It’s always appropriate to wonder what the opaque places are in your belief.  What purpose does your faith serve?  How are we as a faithful community serving each other and those in our region?  How much do you know - first hand - about other religious traditions?

     There are religious traditions where a believer or member can fall into a rut, a routine, the predictable.  I’ve never thought about Unitarian Universalism in this way.  If anything we are just the opposite, often taking great pride in living our faith outside the expected, and contrary to perceived norms.  Yet even the unpredictable can become predictable. Have you ever heard someone at UUCA tell a newcomer after a service, “It’s not this way every Sunday.”  Put enough of those experiences together and it becomes that way every Sunday!  Even in our theology, spirituality and social justice outreach, you’ve got to wonder if there is a particular way to be a Unitarian Universalist.  In other words, taking the time to review and reflect on your faith - to give up your pew - is always a good idea.

          Take care and see you soon,

                   Fred