A Website Home

I'm taking the plunge. I pulled all my websites down about 6 years ago when I realized I didn't much like having personal information plastered all over the world wide web.

But it is time to put up a professional site. And, gosh it is easy using google sites. [grin]

So... To see some essays and worship services... (and perhaps more in the future) click to http://sites.google.com/site/abeltaine/Home

Please do let me know if you have ideas for improvements, or what you'd like to see.

A Covenant

A possible congregational covenant of membership:

"We, the members of [name of congregation] do covenent together in the spirit of love and in the knowledge that we are all related in the interdependent web of life, to walk together in compassion, holding ourselves and each other accountable to the ever-renewing revelation that leads us to becoming our best selves, nurturing the beloved community, and creating a just world."

The covenants created by our forebears in puritan New England of the 16th century frequently included the phrase "in the spirit of our lord jesus christ." I updated this to "in the spirit of love." Many early covenants also included a reference to a creedal statement about God or the scriptures. I replace this with the phrase about the "Interdependent web of life" and specifically included the word "related" to evoke feminist theology of relationship and the indigenous theologies made famous through the phrase "all my relations."

Most of those early covenants spoke of walking together. That metaphor still expresses a visceral truth for me. We do not need to think alike to love alike and we do not need to agree with one another in order to walk side-by-side. This reminds us that this is a covenant: a promise to behave in a certain way, not to believe a certain thing. This phrase reminds me of the art installation at the civil rights museum in Atlanta, celebrating the walk to Selma: People of all shapes and sizes, on crutches, in wheelchairs, carrying babies, leaning on a neighbor, walking together in a common cause.

Compassion and Accountability are the twin items that come next. Compassion is needed lest we lose our respect for the inherent worth of every being. Accountability is needed to guard against the excesses of compassion that Rabbi Edwin Friedman so eloquently warns against.

Ever-renewing revelation reminds us that we seek insights from the past, but cannot rest from our seeking. There are many truths and we are all able to provide a piece of the truth. The commitment then is to becoming the best selves we can be, to nurture a beloved community, and to create a just world.

What Is Ministry (written 1-21-08)

Ministry is a lot like parenting. When you are a parent your heart is walking around outside your body. For the minister that heart is the movement as a whole, the people you minister to, and the web of existence, with its heart of love, to which you are accountable. When you are a parent you encourage your children to become their best selves, cheer when they do, and ache when they struggle. A parent or a minister must model, teach, nurture, and challenge the individuals in beloved community to reach for a common vision of what is good.

Some may object to the imagery of minister as parent because they have experienced parents who are controlling, non-self-differentiated, or downright dangerous. We have probably all experienced or heard stories about ministers who present similar problems. And that is another way in which ministry is like parenting: It is an awesome responsibility. A struggling minister can make a lasting destructive imprint on the congregation. A successful minister can be a powerful force for good.

The art of ministry is to call people toward their best selves. That takes the form of modeling, where the minister constantly strives to live a life of integrity, harmony, and vision. Being our best selves requires that we heed the call to do the work of nurturing and teaching and challenging others and are faithful to ourselves, to each other, and to the work that must be done. We are constantly transforming ourselves, being reborn into who we will be. This requires that we learn to ride the roller-coaster of change, embrace and celebrate it, and pay careful attention to the process of change.

Harmony, not balance is possible when you know that sometimes the focus must be outward, and sometimes inward. Sometimes self care takes a back seat and sometimes a deeply renewing vacation is the right thing. All things come around again and again in a spiral, but they don’t come neatly in balanced packages.

Ministry takes the form of teaching or fostering an atmosphere where mistakes are a part of the glorious adventure of being human, and at the same time, every individual is held accountable for failures of nerve or heart. A harmony of forgiveness and vision creates a congregation that is safe enough to join, but challenging enough to encourage transformation. The minister must forgive herself, and her congregants, many times over and must learn from those mistakes, and trust that the opportunity will come around again to begin again, in love.

Teaching itself has gone through a transformation in our culture as we move from a modernist sensibility to a post-modern sensibility. The teacher of old was the sage on the stage providing the wisdom from on high to the assembled masses. The teacher now is a guide on the side, facilitating learning and offering a piece of his or her journey and reflection to those who wish to participate in the dance. Teaching and learning is a process of entering into dynamic relationship with others.

Ministry takes the form of articulating a vision where everyone is intrinsically valuable; and at the same time reminding us all that our task in life is to make the world a better place. Each of us is a child of the universe, constantly being reborn into something new. Each individual, where-ever they are in their life process, is precious and deserves to be treated with respect and provided basic human rights. We each bring a gift to the world in the blessing of our existence. This blessing also comes with a responsibility. We are responsible for our selves and for the world around us. This is the task I was taught when I first started camping: Leave the campsite in better shape than you found it. The minister also has the responsibility to leave the congregation and members of the congregation in at least no worse shape, but preferably better shape than they were found in.

Vision is many things, including teaching, speaking truth, and nurturing. Vision is not a one way experience. It needs to be articulated and held up, but it also needs to be received. Vision must be embraced as learning, accepting challenge, and relying on those who sustain you.

Finally, ministry nurtures the community in which this work is done. We need each other and we need to do the good work of loving well with and for one another. Nurturing one another, the community as a whole, and the Unitarian Universalist movement cares for individuals and the world. This may take the form of calling others to be accountable for right relationships with one another. It may take the form of being open to learning what I have done that has hurt another, or broken our covenant. This beloved community is the congregation, where we learn from one another, are sustained by one another, and are called to be our best selves.

Caring for people and the entire web of life, loving deeply and well, is sustaining and inspiring. Regardless of whether you spell God as “good” or “love” or something else, we each bring a piece to the table about what God is and our many gifts can be honored and celebrated without diminishing our companions’ gifts. Commitment to this work is renewing when it is done in joy and love. Our deep selves recognize when this work is being done in a loving way. We recognize people who are committed without guilt and passionate without hate and are attracted to them because we instinctively know that this work can and should be done this way.

"It is a blessing each of us was born. It matters what each of us does with our lives. What each of us knows about god is a piece of the truth. We don’t have to do it alone.” These words from our youth sustain and inform my vision of Unitarian Universalism, of being human religiously, and of being a minister.

I will say "Yes"

Call. The traditional understanding of a call to ministry is that the call comes from God. That’s an odd word for someone like me, who spent many years reciting reasons to reject all organized religion, and Christianity in particular. It is a particularly odd word for someone who let go of the old guy in the sky early in life and isn’t expecting to see a burning bush or to hear a personal message from a supernatural being.

Call. Yes. I've been called. And yes, I'd have to say the call came from god. I first heard the call to ministry from my mother. As we wrapped gifts for children in town, whose parents couldn’t get them holiday presents, she was showing us that all people had inherent worth and dignity. I also was led to a call by my father, our walks in the Oregon wilderness allowed the trees and sagebrush to call to me, letting me know that we are all a part of an interdependent web.

As I grew, the call grew clearer and sharper. Participation in Camp Fire Girls continued the conversation with the ocean and mountains, but also singing together at a campfire, worshipping together at Grand Council Fire, and working together to mentor younger girls added a call to creating community, and an understanding of the spiritual work needed in building a world of inner growth and outer justice. 

When I came out as a lesbian the call gained words and a specific voice in women's music and folk music. Ferron’s sang: “You know love has finally called for me, I will not wilt upon its stage” and Sweet Honey in the Rock sang: “We who believe in freedom cannot rest” and Holly Near sang “We are a Gentle Angry People.” These songs spoke of the gift of companions in the struggle of life and our responsibility to serve life and love in the face of fear.

First you have to hear the call, then you have to say yes to it. When I attended my first General Assembly (the annual gathering of representatives and enthusiasts of Unitarian Universalist congregations from across the United States.) I heard a gifted minister use the phrase: "Many are called but most are frozen." 

For me, the call was drowned out by the easy path, the struggle to find a spiritual home, and explorations in loving well and accepting love. Twelve years ago I found that spiritual home in Unitarian Universalism. During that time I fell in love and created a loving family. With new-found spiritual resources I no longer felt the restricting dependence on material resources. 

After five years in seminary, preparing to make the transition, I am now called to devote all that I am to ministry. The voices of god are clearly before my eyes, close enough to touch, and in my ear, when I hear the news about neighbors who won’t be able to afford health insurance, church members turning to one-another for a community of spiritual depth as they face loss, and the beauty of the willow, transforming itself in spring.

Yes. I heard a call, I saw a call, and it is time to live that call.

Innocent hands?

I was raised among a reverence for innocence. Later, in women's studies courses I discovered the damage done to women by this reverence for innocence. I encountered lives destroyed by the assumption that losing one's innocence automatically made one a whore. When there are only Madonnas and Whores, there is no room for the sexual woman who can be proud of all she is.

The theology I learned in my religious studies courses taught that sin equalled a loss of innocence. Carnal knowledge, gambling, drinking, lying, cheating, stealing... All these classic sins are also classic antonyms of innocence. If it is stifling to put woman in a cage of innocence or fallen sinfulness, it is equally soul killing to do so with any human being.

There is a middle path. A path that acknowledges that no one among us is without sin. The truth that theologian Reinhold Neibuhr and former UUA President Bill Schulz both warn of: that there is an intrinsic cruelty, intrinsic sinfulness, within each and every one of us suggests that we need to stop seeking to restore an innocence that never existed, and certainly stop seeking to preserve the innocence that does not now exist. If we 'get over ourselves', and stop fruitless striving, then we can start from a realistic place of exploring what we CAN do. No-one is exempt from trying because they have "soiled hands." That stops us from throwing stones and stops us from paralyzing ourselves, hating ourselves, or giving up.

I'm thinking of sin lately in a non-traditional sense, the idea that sinning is anything that works against the good of the whole, the life-force, the impulse to greater complexity and uniqueness and connectedness. Sin as Racism. Sin as oppression. Sin as internalized homophobia. Sin as systemic processes that harm.

I am reminded of the Buddhist monks who refuse to drive over 10 miles per hour. They do not refuse, like the Jains, to drive at all, just not to go so fast that the number of bug lives ended on their watch goes over some threshold they can bear. They have found the middle path. They have not abdicated their responsibility to avoid sin. But they also are not trying to live entirely sin-free.

There is something wonderful about accepting each person's frailty, complicity, and humanness, without rejecting our responsibility. How many voices will be in our choir, how many bodies will be on the front lines working against injustice, how many arms will be open to love if we can accept that none of us is innocent, but all of us matter.

This same note sounds in the Alcoholics Anonymous process, where people admit that they are helpless, and therefore are able to do something about their disease. I am not perfect, but I am able to do something, one day at a time.

And again, we come round to the idea that there are no clean hands. There are idle hands or there are hands that are soiled but willing to do the work. (I think I heard that in the context of Desmond Tutu talking about the truth and reconciliation process.)

Perhaps if we could stop wringing our hands, and stop throwing them up in the air in despair, we'd be able to get to work building what needs to be built, undoing what needs to be undone, and repairing what can be repaired.

Our hurting world needs a theology without innocence, a new theology that loves us as we are while demanding that we heal ourselves and our world.

Though you have broken your vows a thousand times... Come, yet again, come.

Gay Marriage or Opposite Marriage

As a colleague recently said: "I'm not for gay marriage. I'm for equal marriage." When we are done laughing at Ms. Almost America for displaying her bigotry, and lack of facility with words, on national TV, we might begin celebrating the wonderful progress we've seen lately. More and more people, and more and more states, are realizing that denying some families the legal protections that come with marriage is unfair, undemocratic, and wrong.

I am filled with joy from the recent decisions in Iowa and Vermont and any step toward equal rights for all people. At the same time, I am surprised to find myself feeling uncomfortable with the way in which church and state are entangled around this issue. Oddly, I find myself agreeing with the spirit of the protest from conservative Christians who do not want the state telling them what sacred rites they can perform (which, of course, legalizing same-sex marriage would NOT do.) Bottom line, I don't want religious representatives to be able to administer functions of the state, nor do I want the state showing up in the form of rules or paperwork, in the midst of sacred rites. 

Our country needs a distinction between sacred marriage and civil protections for families. A wedding is a ritual that has historic, social, and for many, religious meaning. This is completely separate, for me, from a visit to the courthouse or a lawyer to fill out some paperwork and establish certain legal obligations to one another, and to register for legal benefits from the state.  (The many rights and benefits of legal marriage)

When my wife and I got married. We had a ceremony in a church, surrounded by a hundred family and friends. My 88 year-old grandmother walked me down the aisle and a minister solemnized our union. I have felt married, and acted married, since that day. It wasn't a "gay marriage." It was a marriage in every sacred sense of the word.

We tried stopping by the courthouse to get the legal paperwork taken care of but were refused: two women were unable to get a legal marriage in NY in 1998. (This is the case to this day.) We saw a lawyer, spent some money, and were able to establish some of the protections for our family that are automatically accorded any heterosexual couple who marries. When I have the right to visit my wife in the hospital if she is sick, when she has the right to parent the child I'm a parent of, when someone like Karen Ann Quinlan can go home to her wife, without the interference of her parents, we will have equal legal rights. 

When my cousin wanted me, as a student minister, to solemnize her marriage I agreed, but after talking, we agreed that they would separate the ceremony from the legal process. Each time I talk with a couple about their upcoming wedding, this same conversation comes up. Why break the two processes up into separate actions in separate locations? Is it solidarity with same-sex couples who must travel to another state or country to establish legal marriage? Is it commitment to the separation of church and state? Both are true. 

I'm grateful that I've been unable to sign that state paperwork for the several years I've been officiating at weddings. It has forced me to consider if I even want to do that when I can. Meanwhile I will speak up for equal rights and for separation of sacred marriage from civil contracts and rights. I will open the conversation with any couple who is considering marriage. I will keep an open mind, but for now, I don't wish to demean the sacred ceremony with legal documents. 

Bloom you fools, Bloom!

The primroses by the front walk think it is spring. Tiny yellow flowers and tiny purple flowers nestled in wrinkly new-green leaves surprised me yesterday as I arrived home. I guess they don't care that it is getting down to a shivery 24 degrees at night.

I could learn a lesson from them. Perhaps something about the courage to be yourself, even when it doesn't seem like a safe thing to do. The knowledge that you must be yourself, standing on a sidewalk holding a rainbow flag, across from the anti-gay protestors. The brave and foolish urge to push through the dirt, toward the sun, and to bloom, singing from the heart in front of hundreds of people, in thanks for being alive.

I learned a chant from Starhawk back in 1983, at a huge open ritual, in Portland, OR.

"Like the grasses

Though the dirt and the soil to the sunlight

We shall rise again.

We are thirsty

For the waters of life we are reaching

We shall live again."