Happy to be back!

It has been wonderful to see everyone again, as I've come back from sabbatical and we've all come together again into our autumn church life! I have been a little overwhelmed by emails, so if you have emailed me and not heard back yet, please try again. I want to connect! I have appreciated your welcome back messages, and feel happy to be with you all again.

I am so terribly excited about our funding campaign, “Walking With Care on This Earth.” After our long process of sorting through ideas and principles and options for our building and land; after our permaculture design process in which those ideas were brought together in a plan; after hours of research by many church members about sustainability and costs and feasibility—now we are actually raising the money to do it! Our consultants say we can do this. There are great leaders involved in the work. Now they just need all of us to participate in whatever we are able, and we will be able to begin work next spring.

Thanks to Connie and Dave for co-chairing this effort. Thanks to all the members of the group working on it. If you weren't in church when they made an announcement, I will mention that they are organizing one-on-one visits for all church members, in two waves. Margy and I were visited recently by a member of the team, and he answered any questions we had about the project, we had a chance to chat, and then Margy and I made a confidential pledge for our contribution to the projects. It was really fun to connect, and I was blown away by the brochure that they created for the campaign.

The first wave of visits will conclude by mid-October, and then the second wave of visits will happen between mid-October and mid-November. So if you are a member you'll be getting more information soon. And if you don't get information, but would like to participate, contact the church to make sure your contact information is all up to date, or to pass a message along to Connie and Dave. Non-members are welcome to be involved too. This is one more way we can bring our mission alive.

I also wanted to mention that this year I will be serving as a teaching pastor for a first-year student at Meadville-Lombard Theological School. His name is Israel Buffardi, he is a member of First Parish, and is beginning to follow a call to UU ministry. This year he and I will meet once a month, for mentoring and reflection on ministry. Then, if all goes well, he may serve as a half-time intern for A2U2 during our next church year starting in Sept 2016. The Board and I were happy for our church to continue on a path of helping to teach our next generation of UU ministers.

All the best, Rev. Myke

Liminal Time

As I return to church from my four-month sabbatical, I am feeling grateful and deeply appreciative of this time. Thank you to all of you who helped to make it possible! It has been a wonderful opportunity for refreshment and renewal. But I am noticing that I haven’t actually finished the two big goals I set for myself at its beginning.

One goal was to complete and publish my book, Finding Our Way Home: A Spiritual Journey into Earth Community. I am happy to say that I was able to finish another full revision, and I sent out several queries/proposals to publishers. In a positive development, one publisher, after seeing three chapters asked to see the full manuscript. Now I am in another period of waiting to hear back. I am learning just how long the publishing process can be. I also submitted one of the chapters to the UU Church of the Larger Fellowship's publication Quest for Meaning, and am happy to announce that an edited version of it was just published in their September edition. You can find it at http://www.questformeaning.org/quest-article/forgiving-the-broken/

Another goal was for Margy and I to align our living situation with our ecological values. We have started a process to find greener housing. We are hoping to downsize, move closer into the Portland area, and find a house we can convert to solar energy. We had a chance to outline what we want in a new home; we engaged an environmentally knowledgable realtor; we have looked at many houses that didn’t fit, and we have sorted out financing options. We’ve also begun the process of simplifying and letting go of things we no longer need. Now we are waiting for a house that will match our hopes and needs. I also began blogging about our #searchforgreenerhousing at my blog at http://findingourwayhomeblog.wordpress.com (If you are interested, you can sign up on the blog page to receive posts by email—they also appear on my Facebook page.) Blogging has been a way to share the journey with the congregation, and it also helps me to stay present to the process, rather than to get anxious about completing it.

In the midst of all of this, a new goal emerged. In July, I was able to attend an 11-day Intensive workshop with eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, on the Work that Reconnects. I found myself more passionate about helping people to make the changes that can move human beings into a more beneficial relationship with all life on earth. That in itself is not a new goal, but rediscovering the tools that Joanna Macy has created for this work has been a true blessing. I am already planning ways to bring those practices into my ministry with the congregation, and beyond, starting with the worship service on September 20^th.

I feel like I have been planting seeds and tending the soil, but the harvest time is still up ahead somewhere, as yet unknown. And for now, it is important to let it be unknown. I love that there is a word for the sacredness of being in between one time and another. It is called liminal time. It is the moment when magic can happen, when anything can happen. I am in a liminal time with each of these goals. If I want to experience the sacredness of this time, I must open to its mystery and uncertainty, I must celebrate its possibility, I must wait for its unfolding. The Holy is right here.

I look forward to seeing all of you on our re-gathering Sunday, September 13^th! I hope these months have brought each of you some form of learning or beauty or kindness.

Rev. Myke

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