Boots and Blessings

You may run into me on a Friday, in my neighborhood, so it's time I let you know what you might see. When I was doing my required unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), my supervisor suggested that any of us who came from traditions where a clerical collar was an option, take one "collar week," to see how we were treated, as opposed to wearing regular professional clothes. After a couple of days, I joked to the Catholic priest, "How do you manage the power?" In regular clothes, I would walk into a patient's room, and it would take about 5 or so minutes of introductions and pleasantries before we could really get down to talking about their feelings, their fears, the deep stuff. With most people, as soon as that clerical collar walked in the room, with me attached, they began pouring out all the heavy stuff they were carrying. I was riding the bus back and forth every day, and though not quite so dramatic, the collar effect was alive there, to

Does your church take care of "their" community or "the" community? I drive through a neighborhood that has a little park with a playground. They have a prominent sign warning that the park is for the residents' use only.   It's for their community, not the community. I was having coffee with my Red Pill brother, Tony Lorenzen , and we talked about this in terms of churches. About how "community" can mean such different things. "Our community" has boundaries, it has gated access and the teeth of guard dogs. The community is boundless. Tony pointed out that the history of Unitarian Universalism is one of "The Community," not "Our Community." This isn't just fuzzy theoretical musings. It's why we got the buildings, the membership rolls, and the communion silver. (Even if it took a while to collect the latter.) In 1818, the community of Dedham, Massachusetts called a liberal (what wo

The Poor Lazarus at the Rich Man's Door, James Tissot, Wikimedia Commons The Church With Heart has a heart full of love for not only its members, but for the people outside its doors. Because this is what Unitarian Universalism is all about -- it's about having faith that love is infinite, undying, and there's plenty to go around for all of us, so we need to love one another within the church, and then take that love outside the church because Lazarus is right outside our gate, starving for our crumbs, and even our crumbs are valuable because the Lazaruses outside  our  gate are starving for acceptance, for nourishing food for their minds and souls, for a listening ear, for relationship, for purpose. Yes, purpose. Another word for that is mission.  And here's the thing - a church doesn't have a mission. Do you hear me? A church does not have a mission, a mission has a church . The Church With Heart is willing to go out and track that mission down so that th

Please forgive me. I'm just not feeling in the mood to be polite or compromising or parsing my words. Blame the heat. It is insanely hot in Houston, Tx. It's the kind of heat that makes things like going and buying a kiddie pool, just to fill it up with 17 bags of ice from Buc-ee's and lay down in it, seem perfectly reasonable. Our Southern politeness just tends to melt, y'all. There's all these articles that have been coming out. "Millenials are leaving your church!" "What people want in a church!" Oh, the list goes on and on. And ultimately, what it comes down to is MISSION. I'm going to take it one step further ... you know all those studies showing that evangelical churches are growing, and liberal ones aren't? I don't think it's because of conservative vs. liberal. It's like that recent study that showed that the problems crack babies experienced weren't because they were crack babies, it's because they

Along with discussing racism and common sense gun regulation, perhaps we should consider Cain Killing Abel, Daniele Crespi, Wikimedia something more basic - why, in the United States, do we have so many legal reasons to kill another person? My dad and I were talking about this whole Zimmerman thing, and some other cases that have come up. He recalled a conversation with a colleague from Germany. His colleague was an engineering contractor, here in Houston for a few weeks. They were at Guido's, enjoying seafood and beer, and his colleague was astounded at the long list of killings in the newspaper. He said that Houston alone had more killings than all of Germany. Yes, they have regulations about weapons in his country, he said, but more than that, "we do not have all those legal reasons for a person to kill another." Around the U.S., it's hard to make the case that we value human life, we have so many reasons to kill. If you feel threatened , if you're p

Rev. Christine Robinson has a great little post up about the phrase "beloved community" and why it's problematic to use that to describe a church. Like her mom, I can get cranky about the whole thing, but my crankiness lies in the misuse of what is, to me, such a breathtaking and profound concept. Martin Luther King, Jr., someone whose words I study in great detail, is the one we often think of as originating the term, but he learned about it through the writings of Josiah Royce. Josiah Royce (right) with close friend William James.  Royce was a philosopher, studying Kant, Hegel. I imagine he would have enjoyed Koestler's theory of the holon , because he saw humanity as being both individuals and part of a greater "organism" that was community. As King's belief about Beloved Community would be rooted in agape , Royce's philosophy stemmed from what he called loyalty, and by that he meant, "the practically devoted love of an individual f

There have been different theories as to why the tragedy in West, TX, has not engendered the same attention as did the tragedy in Boston, MA this week. Some say it's because one was an attack, the other an industrial accident. Others say it's because one was in a large city, the other in a small rural town. I think it was something far more basic: we are visual people, and we viscerally connect with pictures of other people. Quick, think of a picture of the Boston marathon bombing. The man with half a leg missing, being pushed in a wheelchair? The 78 year old runner knocked to the ground? The police, running toward the explosion? Now, think of a picture of the West, TX explosion. The fireball? The cloud? The stripped-out apartments? The lack of faces defining the explosion are, actually, perhaps the saddest part. Because when the fertilizer plant exploded, homes nearby were leveled. We simply don't know how many people died. We can count the bodies that are found.

It was the nails that broke me. I had already cried. Cried when I watched the reports of the bombings at the Boston Marathon. Then dried the tears, and began working fast, earnestly, with Meg , Lynn , Lara , and Tim to put together a prayer service so that Monday night, we would all have an online place to gather, to be in religious community. Bless you, musicians, for your songs. Bless you, the community that showed up, to bare our pain together. Bare. Not bear, as Ric Masten corrected . Tuesday came, and more details. Pressure cookers, filled with shards of metal, ball bearings, nails. Those nails pierced my grief, taking me to that place of just total incomprehension. What did it feel like, holding those nails in your hand? Did you touch them, or just open the cardboard box and drop them in? Perhaps you thought if you didn't touch them, they would leave no blood on your hands? But you chose them. You chose them, because you didn't just want attention, you wan

I have concerns about community, about shibboleths, about only wanting to be around "people like us." But there is also something visceral, something that looks at a picture, reads a blog post, hears a conversation during coffee hour, and breathes in, "This is my tribe." It was a picture of a friend's mom that reminded me of this. Joy on her face, love on her shirt, a friend at her side, clutching a banner of her belief ... deeply and reverentially, I inhaled, held the breath, and thought, "I have never met her, but I know her. For we are related. She is my tribe." If she and I were to speak, we would already be speaking the same language. We might argue about the accent, but we could understand each other, even if we did not agree. How important is that! In this world, where we not only don't agree, but often times, we can't even understand each other. We speak the same language, we think, yet my words go whizzing past his right  ear,

Take a moment with me, would you? Imagine your church. No, not the place you go to on Sunday. It's not a place, it's people. But I'm not talking about your formal congregation. Think about your life, your day to day going and doing. Work. Home. Grocery Store. Gym. School. Soccer Practice. Imagine all the people whose paths you'll cross. Some you know, some you don't. Now imagine that they are your church, and you are their minister. We all do ministry, whether we call it that or not. Yesterday, I was in the subway system of another city, and I got off at the wrong stop. I stepped off at the next one, to head back. A young man was there on the platform. He had a welcoming face, and so I explained where I was trying to go and asked his advice. He gave it, along with some reassurance, and kind chitchat. I had stepped into his church, and he ministered to me. Where is your church?

"I remember that day." God looks at me, unsmiling yet neutral, waiting to hear. "You called me. You called me out of my happy life that I was leading." God nods slightly. Yes. "It seemed impossible, then. Impossible, but inevitable. Almost like I didn't have a choice." I did have a choice... A call is not a demand. Never a demand. You have to want it as much as it wants you. I know that now. "But I could never have imagined how hard it would be." My eyes blur. I can't help it. Life intervened, for me. And yet, in a million different ways, life intervenes for everyone. No way is easy. The burden is light but the way is narrow. God has dropped down, next to me, so close no one can tell where I end, where God begins. Which is fine. The boundary is only an illusion, after all. I look up, unseeing, into Its Eyes. (As if sight, fleeting, were so important.) "It took a million years. 8, at least. A million years in t

A bird calls from outside. No, no, I bury myself deeper Wanting the comfort of warmth from the cold The comfort of barely moving In my comfortable, familiar bed "It is warm outside," she sings. The seasons change, with you or not. Grudging, I get up. Clothes, shoes, Take a walk. My path curves around fenced backyards. I smell it ... White honeysuckle. The unmistakeable olfactory harbinger of spring. The trees are leafless, the grass dead, but From behind one of those gray wooden fences It wafts out. I peek through, seeing nothing. But it's there. I'm not ready, I explain. I walk on. I need more winter. We need more winter, I try to persuade. Who? At the cross, of this street to that, I see the back of a bird. It's black, but I suspect ... The bird doesn't move, so I walk on. I turn my head and look back. Yes, a red breast. I consider running at it, Shooing it away. As if it knows, It looks me in the eye. "Really?&