Ministry to the World

As most of you know, I will be going on sabbatical from April 15 to August 15. One of the goals for my sabbatical is to finish the book I have been working on: Finding Our Way Home: A Spiritual Journey Into Earth Community. I feel the call of this book very strongly, and have been working on it for three years, during summers or other time off from my work at the church. But the essence of the book work is not separate from my work at the church.

Part of the ministry of our church is our ministry to the wider world. Just as I have preached to you, I have long felt a call to preach to the wider world about the spiritual journey of our times, the spiritual journey into full community with the earth. Every day in the news, we hear about horrific environmental destruction. We hear about wars and violence against people and animals. How would any of that be possible, if we really understood our connection to all beings?

For many centuries, spirituality has been considered as separate from the earth. As a child I learned that this earth didn't really count—heaven was what counted. It took many years to break through that delusion. And I am sure it will take many more for us to realize what connection to the earth might fully entail. The deeper I go into this question, the more I understand how broken we have become, and the more I am called to find healing and wholeness. I feel such hope and possibility in this.

I want to say how much gratitude I have to all of you in this community for valuing both our “internal ministry” and our “ministry to the world.” I thank you for granting this sabbatical time for me to be able to do this work, and I also thank you for pursuing an environmental journey as a congregation. I will think of you every day while I am away, and feel our bonds as a strength for the challenge I have taken on. I look forward to sharing the completed project with you when I return, may it be so!

I know that while I am away you will care for each other with love and kindness, and continue to live our mission with enthusiasm. I have witnessed your goodness first hand. We have always fostered a ministry shared by all, and that shared ministry will be the foundation for these months. There are also many resources in place for the church to be strong and healthy while I am away.

We have our very first Intern Minister, Lyn Marshall, who has grown connected to our congregation, and has shown herself trustworthy and talented. She will be coordinating worship and pastoral ministry through the end of the church year in June. We have a compassionate and gifted Pastoral Care Team. Do you remember that it was originally created during my first sabbatical six years ago in 2009?  Please call on them when you have a need to talk. You can email or call the church and choose ext. 13. We have a marvelous Worship Committee who will continue to offer lay led worship per usual and through the summer.

The Committee on Ministry will be a resource for the unexpected, in any areas of church life that might need support. Rick Grover is chair of that committee this year. And I want to honor and thank Clay Atkinson, our congregation President, who is a true leader, forward-thinking and hard-working. Help him out while I am away! I look forward to hearing the latest on our Church and Grounds Renewal Project when I return.

May you find much joy and many blessings during these next months. Please keep me in your hearts as I keep you in mine.

                                                   Gratefully, Rev. Myke

Commit2Respond

Commit2Respond is a coalition of Unitarian Universalists and other people of faith and conscience working for climate justice. Launched at the People's Climate March in New York City on September 21, 2014, (where A2U2 was represented by 8 of our members) Commit2Respond seeks to unite our many diverse efforts for climate justice so that we can expand our partnerships and deepen our impact.

Climate justice means we recognize the central role inequality plays in the current crisis. Marginalized communities—low-income, people of color, Native, and/or non-industrialized—are often the first to experience the effects of climate change and environmental degradation. Commit2Respond envisions a future where the most vulnerable are protected from these dire consequences.

From World Water Day on March 22 through Earth Day on April 22, Commit2Respond is sponsoring a Climate Justice Month. Individuals, families, households, groups, congregations, and organizations are invited to participate in a monthlong period of reflection, education, and commitment. You can sign up online as an individual or family to get mailings and information.  I hope we can feel connected to these larger efforts that resonate with the important work happening in our own church, and continue with our efforts.

Climate justice in our state makes me think about the lawsuit currently pending between the Penobscot Nation and the State of Maine concerning whether or not the Penobscot Nation has jurisdiction over their part of the Penobscot River. The state is trying to say that their reservation of many islands on the Penobscot River only includes the land, not the river in that area. This despite the fact that the Land Claims Settlement of 1980 specifically includes their right to fish. As one Penobscot remarked, you can't get many fish on dry land. They are a river people, and along with fish find many herbs and medicinal plants in the river.

It is heartbreaking to me that white society continues to steal from Indigenous peoples day after day, year after year. Towns and corporations upriver from Indian Island have joined the state in the legal action, for fear that they might have to stop discharging pollutants into the river. As we seek to foster a beneficial relationship with the earth, one of the best ways to go forward is to partner with Indigenous peoples and be allies to them in their efforts to protect their land and water.

The good news of this week—President Obama vetoed the Keystone XL pipeline bill. More bad local news—the city of South Portland is being sued by Portland Pipeline Corporation because of the Clean Skies ordinance they passed. The issue of climate change and our relationship to the environment is perhaps the most critical issue we face today. It is big, and can seem overwhelming. So we need to stay connected to others who care and who act, to keep our spirits energized.

Climate change issues are also one of the three focus areas of the Maine UU State Advocacy Network, which will be our share the plate recipient starting March 8 for four weeks. Another way to stay connected and act on our values.

January & February Happenings

I will be away on study leave for a couple weeks at the beginning of February. As part of this time, I am attending the UU Ministers' Association “Institute for Excellence in Ministry” from February 2-6 in Pacific Grove, California. Almost 500 colleagues will gather from all across the U.S. for worship, inspiration, conversations, and several workshop tracks being offered. I am attending “Just Transition in a Time of Unraveling” featuring the eco-philosopher Joanna Macy. It fits exactly with the environmental focus of A2U2. Just listen to this description:

In a time when a radical confluence of crises sweeping the globe challenges human and planetary existence and eco-system integrity as never before in history: What knowledge must we possess? What path can we follow? What practices will sustain us as a people, and as those called to minister? Together we will explore experiential and learning practices that will stretch and deepen our relationship to time, stir our call into healing engagement, and deepen our analysis of the crises as well as the potential forward in our perilous times.

I am looking forward to this opportunity to fill the water in the well in my being, so that I have more good things to share with you all. After the trip to California, I will have a week at home for more reading and writing time. I will be back on Sunday February 15^th. While I am away, Intern Minister Lyn Marshall will check in on phone messages, but you can also contact me via cell in any emergency.

On another note, you may have noticed a new object in the sanctuary, or you will soon—we now have a large television screen on the sanctuary wall. Remember all the shenanigans that it took to share photos or videos during worship? I had to use a long pole to pull down the hanging cord of the projection screen, then pull down the screen, and run extension cords into a space in the center of the chairs where the projector sat on a little table... well, it was rather disruptive of a smooth flow of worship. In conversation with the IT committee, we strategized together about possibilities, and they made it happen. Thanks to Terri, Don, and Jerry, as well as Steve, Dan, Keith & Jay who played a role in this project. Now, we should be able to share photos and videos just by using a laptop from the pulpit. I am looking forward to how this might enhance the worship experience in ways we haven't even imagined yet.

The search has been on for a new Church Administrator. From more than 50 applications received, several promising applicants were interviewed by phone, and a few then were interviewed by the committee. Thanks to the hiring committee of Barbara, Marge, Terri, Dave, Lynne, as well as adjunct helpers Sonia and Vicky for all their work in finding just the right person. Hopefully we will be able to announce a new person soon, but it may take a few weeks before someone can start.

In the meantime, thanks again to our dedicated office volunteers who have done a marvelous job. Ann & Margaret have been answering office phone calls and emails. Diane has been doing the Order of Worship each Friday, and the announcement bulletin. Terri has been managing churchdb calendar requests. Thanks to Vicky and the members of the Finance Committee for handling all financial matters—that includes Jared, Sue, Jon, & Lynne. I am sure I am forgetting someone—everyone has pulled together to help during this transition—thanks to you all.

And, I am looking forward to our 50^th anniversary celebration, on February 28^th. Please put it on your calendar. 

Black Lives Matter

I am thinking this week of the words of the civil rights activist Ella Baker. Fifty years ago, three Civil Rights workers were killed during the summer Mississippi campaign. A search was mounted after their disappearance that involved dragging the rivers of Mississippi. As they searched the muddy waters, they turned up bodies of black men who had never been looked for because they were Black.  Of this painful reality, Ella Baker said “Until the killing of black men, black mother’s sons, is as important as the killing of white men, white mothers’ sons, we who believe in freedom cannot rest…until this happens.”

I first heard those words when they were put to music by Bernice Johnson Reagon. Sadly, they are still all too appropriate today, fifty years later. In Ferguson, Missouri, when a grand jury failed to indict the white police officer who shot black teenager Michael Brown, mothers of black sons all over America shuddered in fear for their children. Because it was never just about this one situation. Professor of Political Science Melissa Harris-Perry has pointed out, "From 2006 to 2012 a white police officer killed a black person at least twice a week in this country."

Black men especially have been demonized by our society. They have been stereotyped as criminals, as thugs, as drug dealers, as dangerous, and then that demonization becomes its own justification for the fear that is used as a reason to kill. I think about the fact that some white men have taken to carrying guns in the city streets claiming their second amendment rights, and I haven't heard about any of them being shot or even detained by police. But a black twelve year old, Tamir Rice, was playing with a toy gun in an Ohio park, and was shot and killed by police this week.

We who believe in freedom like to tell the story that racism is easing, that, yes, we still have work to do, but so much progress has been made in the last fifty years. But each year I learn something new that astounds me concerning the depth and persistence of this plague in the very structures of our society. Schools today in America are more segregated than they were fifty years ago. Voting rights are being diminished each year, with methods that are targeted to people of color. More black men are in prison than ever before--the United States now imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of Apartheid.

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes. We have to be willing to acknowledge the problem, and not persist in a naïve feeling that all is well. The protectors of the status quo are already trying to put all the focus on rioting and looting. But as Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “I think we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard...” He did not condone violence, but he understood it.

I am encouraged by the thousands of people who participated in hundreds of vigils and protests on Tuesday evening, all across America and beyond. Are we waking up? I leave you with another quote from Ella Baker: “The older I get the better I know that the secret of my going on is when the reins are in the hands of the young who dare to run against the storm.” May we find the courage to stay on course.

With hope, Rev. Myke

Fifty Years!

Fifty years ago, in 1964, Universalists from the First Universalist Church in Portland left behind their big beautiful building at Congress Square to form a new UU community with their colleagues from the Messiah/All Souls Universalist Church on Stevens Avenue. It was a difficult decision, eventually made because the huge old building became unsustainable for a shrinking congregation. Most families had moved away from the downtown area. Attendance was down. Money was hard to come by. The consolidation was not without struggle as two church communities tried to form one new identity. They were re-inventing themselves.  As a part of the agreement, they promised to jointly build a new church building in the North Deering area.

Fifty years offers a lot of perspective. They didn't know 50 years ago what would emerge in the unfolding years. They only knew that what they had wasn't working. The consolidated church, then called the Universalist Society of Portland, built our current A2U2 building, with a smaller, multipurpose room for a sanctuary. I think that has had profound symbolic and practical significance for this community. Unknowingly, our predecessors laid a groundwork that positions us to be more flexible and adaptable, more focused on people than on structures, more focused on the future than on the past.

We are now in another time of change for religious institutions. Church attendance in the United States has been going down across most denominations. More people don't identify with any faith tradition at all. Some experts wonder if there will be any such thing as churches or ministers fifty years into the future. And of course, many of us ponder what changes the world will experience because of global warming and other ecological changes that humans are creating. Many churches are stuck in the model of the big old sanctuary, and the Sunday morning service.

But here we are, with a multipurpose building, beautiful land and a thriving community. And we are asking questions about how we can be sustainable for the next 50 years. We are exploring changes to our building and land that might help us in that dream. It is a challenging process because our visions often outpace what is possible with current technology and current economies. But why not dream and let ourselves experiment with a church that can keep on thriving.

On November 9^th, after each service, I encourage you to participate in an all-congregation feedback session with members of our Environmental Steering Committee. They will be presenting some of the ideas that have emerged, and the research they have done about things like energy efficiency, lowering our carbon footprint, and generating our own solar energy, along with possibilities for improving the parking lot, the bathrooms, and the foyer, and creating more beauty and usability of our land. I am so appreciative of all the work they have done to research the options! It is not so easy as we might think, and they have spent many hours on this. But they really need your feedback now, because nothing will happen without the congregation's financial and logistical and enthusiastic support—and there are decisions to make about how to proceed next.

If you can't come to one of the Sunday sessions, you can also participate in a feedback session during the Program Council meeting on Monday the 10^th at 6:30, or in a meeting on Thursday the 13^th at 7 p.m.

I look forward to seeing you there. May we have insight and wisdom to bring our church into the next 50 years!

Rev. Myke

Looking Ahead: Sabbatical

First of all, thank you to all of you who sent good wishes and prayers to my family for my father's recovery from a stroke. He is making progress each day, and can now use a walker to walk. It was good to be with him and my mom for several days.

As part of how UU churches support their ministers, our contracts include a plan for us to take a sabbatical every several years. We “earn” one month of sabbatical time for each year of service to a congregation. The Board of Trustees and I have agreed for me to take a four month sabbatical later this year, from April 15 to August 15, 2015. A sabbatical is an opportunity to be free from the daily and weekly demands of ministry, in order to delve more deeply into activities that can refresh and renew one's ministry, and thus be a benefit to minister and congregation.

My first hope for this sabbatical is to work on the completion my book, Finding Our Way Home: A Spiritual Journey into Earth Community. This book is an expression of the spiritual side of our work on ecological sustainability. My goal is to share the book with A2U2 members and friends, and with the wider world, as part of our witness to the environment. Some of you have seen earlier portions of the book, which I used to create the class Spirituality: For Searchers, Skeptics, Activists, Mystics and All Broken-hearted Lovers of Earth, and which I posted in a blog online called Finding Our Way Home.

My second hope for the sabbatical is for Margy and I to consider greater alignment with our ecological values in our own living situation. This process is not always simple, so by having time to dedicate to the question, we hope to take some steps closer to our ideals. Perhaps we might move to a smaller house, or one located nearer to the church, or find other ways to lower our carbon footprint. This time will give us the space to take stock in our personal lives of the values we have been proclaiming here at our spiritual community, and then to bring back to all of you our experience of that process.

On a personal note, one more hope for the sabbatical is for Margy and I to pursue her long-time dream of travel to Ireland.

The Committee on Ministry will coordinate preparation and support for the sabbatical time. On the practical side, 2 months of the sabbatical will take place during the summer season when I am usually on vacation and study leave. During the other 2 months (April 15-June 21) the Pastoral Care Team, the Worship Committee, and our Intern Minister will lead our continued church life—we are much more prepared for this sabbatical because we have strong lay leadership already in place. On 5 Sundays, a visiting minister will lead worship. Since I won't be taking vacation or study leave during the summer, I will take 2 weeks of vacation in the last half of November and 2 1/2 weeks of study leave during the first half of February this coming year, and something similar the following year.

To give you a simplified picture of the year, here are all the months, divided in half: Yellow= Time I am at church, while Green= Time I am away on vacation, study leave and sabbatical.

Sep

Sep

Oct

Oct

Nov

Nov

Dec

Dec

Jan

Jan

Feb

Feb

Mar

Mar

Apr

Apr

May

May

Jun

Jun

Jul

Jul

Aug

Aug

I am excited to deepen my participation in our environmental focus, through the work we do this year at church, and through the work I can do while on sabbatical. If you have any questions, please contact me, or the chair of the Committee on Ministry, Rick Grover.

The Glass Is Already Broken

This week I am contemplating an old Zen saying, “The glass is already broken.” I believe it reminds us that all things are temporary, so we must not be too attached to things (including ourselves)—breakage is a part of the natural cycle of life. In our house, we are recently experiencing the breakage of our television set (during one of the electrical storms of August) and of our refrigerator, and just for good measure, my luggage was damaged during recent air travel. It has made things a bit chaotic during the past two weeks. I find that when one thing breaks I feel cranky. But when multiple things break, I start to get philosophical, and have to laugh again.

I have to remember that life is always a bit chaotic, and change is the nature of reality. This fall, we will have some change at church too. Happy change, but still a bit chaotic for everyone. We are welcoming a new Director of Religious Education, Taryn Walker. The search committee feels very excited about her experience and her potential, AND, it is all new for her. Taryn has a strong background working with kids, and she already loves our spiritual community, AND she has never been a DRE before. Just to make it a bit more challenging, her prior work commitments included two trips this fall—so, even though she has been hard at work during August, we won't get to welcome her at church until September 21^st. So please, help her to feel welcome in her new role, and offer a lot of patience and support as she learns the ropes. (And volunteer for RE!)

We are also welcoming a full-time Intern Minister for the 14-15 church year. Lyn Betz comes to us via the Concord, NH church, where she was a member for many years, and also did a two-year part-time internship. She recently graduated from Meadville Lombard Theological School, and brings many gifts of ministry to our congregation, plus a wonderful chance to share a perspective from another UU church, as she learns about our A2U2 culture and community. Remember how it felt to be the new kid on the block? I know you all are great at helping people to feel at home. That will be her primary work this first month, and then we'll see how best her ministry can find some good purpose here, and she can learn the aspects of ministry that she still needs to learn.

I am looking forward to seeing everyone again after a fairly restful but full summer. I had a chance to visit my parents, who are both in their eighties now and living in West Virginia, where two of my sisters also reside. Mom and dad are slowing down, and dealing with some health issues so my sisters are helping out in significant ways. On the other side of our family, sadly, my partner Margy's mother died at the end of July, at the age of 96. Even after someone has lived a long and full life, we cannot help but grieve their passing. I always appreciated that Margy's mother purposefully let me know I was welcome in their family, and that she, as well as Margy's sister, came to my ordination ceremony fifteen years ago. Margy and I traveled to Rochester for her memorial service in mid-August, and had a good visit with all of her extended family, including three little ones—ages one and a half, two and a half and three and a half.

So I will see you in church on September 7^th, and look forward to hearing about your summers and the events of your lives since last we met. I also look forward to more work on our church's three year plan, and our environmental focus—this year we get to see more details about possible improvements to our building and land, and make some decisions about what we might like to pursue as a congregation.