Congregational Meeting Postponed

by Posted in Board Minutes, Congregational Meeting Documents

The congregational meeting scheduled for Sunday December 12, 2010 at 1:30 pm has been postponed until Sunday, January 16, 2011 at 1:30 pm in the Sanctuary.

Please mark your calendar for this very important congregational meeting. We will be deciding on the final budget for First UU. Additionally, there will be a discussion of whether or not to move ahead to hire a volunteer coordinator. Much thoughtful discussion and thought has gone into this issue. It is important that every member of the congregation be present for this meeting to make important decisions that will affect your future.

Childcare for the Congregational Meeting may be arranged by sending an email to childcare@austinuu.org.

The following materials are available on the church web site for your information:

A Unitarian Universalist View of Prayer

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Nell Newton, Sermons

Nell Newton

November 28, 2010

Do you pray? Really?

Is there “something” you do – almost automatically – in certain situations?

I mean, outside of the times, when midway through our service we are invited to “join in an attitude of prayer” and someone reads something worthy of pondering. Do you really pray? Or do you just adopt an attitude?

If you do pray, would you admit it to anyone else — to the person sitting next to you in these pews? Would you tell me?

Our practice has no fixed liturgy of prayer. We have no cannon, no formal recitation of holy words to use in times of turmoil to calm our hearts, or focus our thoughts. If you walk into any Unitarian or Universalist church in North America, you will not hear the same words spoken in the same way at the same part of a service. We have no shared doxology for giving thanks or acknowledging blessings. We have freed ourselves from any requirements that would dictate how and when, or even IF we should pray. And, for the most part we seem to be getting along okay.

In fact, some of us are probably pretty glad to be done with certain prayers. (Our father who art in heaven… hmmmm…, lift up his countenance… uh hunh… , and it is in dying that we…. hmmmm….) It well might have been in the middle of a standard prayer that you stumbled, and were caught up short when you realized I Cannot Say That And Mean It.

So what DO we say?

Maybe we don’t. Maybe prayer isn’t a part of your life. Maybe, you are a pragmatic person like my Aunt Ruth. Ruth lives outside a small town in southern Michigan. While her family is not particularly religious, plenty of her neighbors attend the many Christian churches. One day, while fixing supper for her family, Ruth collapsed on the kitchen floor in an epileptic seizure. It was a one-time thing, it never happened again. But it meant countless trips to medical specialists, and the inconvenience of losing her drivers license for a whole year. After the initial scare, she heard from too many members of the community “Oh Ruth, we’re praying for you.” It wore on her patience. She told me “I don’t want their damn prayers – I want someone to help me pick up my kids from school and take me grocery shopping!” Like I said, she is a pragmatic woman.

At its worst, “We’re praying for you” carries a whiff of condescension. As if the speaker can plainly see from your sorry condition, that your own prayers have been insufficient, so they’ll lend you some of theirs.

Perhaps that is why UU’s tend to shy away from that particular exchange.

From the get-go, that type of prayer is beseeching and calling upon a god for intervention or intercession. Could you lend me a hand down here? In its most immature, prayer is wishing – wishing for a puppy, a sparkly pony, a good grade on the test. Up one level comes the bargaining – “I’ll give up cussing and taking your name in vain if only you’ll…” And many of the wordiest of prayers amount to flattery: “Oh all powerful and merciful god…” The speaker is but a humble servant buttering up a vain and capricious deity. I’ve had some bosses like that, and, for me, such a character is not a god worth serving.

So we’ve grown up and we’re past the wheedling and pleading prayers. We’re not waiting for god to bring about changes we’re not ready to make for ourselves. We know better than to bargain with the universe. If we are going to make a personal connection to a greater power, it better be one we respect. And for several of us, god simply does not fit into a deity-box. And that’s where it gets a little complicated… To what address should we send such messages?

And what do we say – almost reflexively, after the first gasp of sadness follows bad news? What do we say when someone has had a loss – a death – and there is nothing one can do. And yet there is the wish to affirm for that person’s well-being and the longing to offer healing. These are the times when prayer would be a traditional response. What do we say when our heart is pained with sympathy? Do you have prayers to offer? Would you consider them of any value to offer?

I’ll stop asking you questions and quickly tell you straight up. I do pray. And it is a physical and quiet practice with almost no words – only names. Each day I pray specifically for a family I know. Earlier this year Jim died from a brain tumor. He left behind his wife and teenage sons who now must reconstruct their lives without him. Each day I still my body, clear my head, and think of each one of them completely, and open my heart to hold them all. Do they know about this? No. Should they? No. Do my prayers have any effect upon them? Honestly, that’s not the point. But this action keeps them present in my life, and makes it easier for me to pick up the phone, invite them over to dinner, offer to pick the kids up from music lessons, and be of some real use.

Frankly, the efficacy of prayer has yet to be proven definitively. There have been assorted studies that mostly show the placebo effect is alive and well. Many have tried to measure change in patient outcome following intercessionary prayer, and when the double-blind data is reviewed, prayer does not seem to improve the sick people who are prayed for.

But like so many studies, I wonder if the researchers were measuring the right part of the process. Perhaps, rather than measure the outcome of the people prayed for, perhaps we should measure the outcome of the people who are praying for someone else. Or we might examine the outcome of the family members who know their loved one received prayers.

Reverend Ed Brock told me how upon the death of his wife’s mother their family received many kindnesses from friends. The most unusual was a special gift made by two nuns they know professionally. They sent a card that said, in effect, we have made a gift to a convent in upstate New York and for a year the sisters in this convent will give payers for your family.

There was nothing in the note suggesting a wish for conversion, or that the prayers would produce any specific outcome. But to Ed and Alphise it seemed like and felt like an act of love. The idea that out there, amid the crazy frenzy of society, a group of people somewhere were simply mentioning her name daily — that idea was powerful. It wasn’t the potential supernatural dimension, but the caring dimension that touched them.

There is the other type of common prayer – the act of giving thanks. As Meister Eckhart explained “If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is “thank you,” that would suffice.”

My favorite instruction came from my Korean martial arts master who was raised in a Buddhist temple. In his broken English, he scolded us: “Before you eat the pig, thank the pig! Because, if they could, the pig’s family would sue you!!”

As UU’s we’re a bit more comfortable here. Giving thanks doesn’t presume that we’re flawed, or helpless, just appreciative and observant. And we can be munificent in our thanks to the animal, the farmer, the cook!

In stopping to give thanks, we allow ourselves a moment to experience beauty and bounty more fully. Who wouldn’t want to spend time in this type of prayer? But do we – other than for formal occasions? Do you offer thanks over the morning’s oatmeal or the leftovers eaten at your desk? Have your kids ever seen you pause at breakfast on Tuesday and say “thank you” before the fork touches the food? What would that be like? Are you really up for three-squares of thankfulness every day?

Years ago, I worked as the Kitchen Manager and cook at a Quaker residential house on Beacon Hill in Boston. It was the Quaker custom of that community to have a good solid minute of silence before we ate our evening meal. There was nothing structured and no one led us with instructions or guidance through that silence. As the cook, it was generally the first time I had sat down in 6 hours and the first few times, if god spoke to me it was through bone-deep fatigue and if I gave thanks it was for the chair under my butt. But in time, I found myself placing a final blessing upon the food. It had passed through my hands, and was about to be received by people (who were grateful that they had not had to cook), and who would use the energy it gave them to study medicine, choreograph new dances, arrange flowers, build houses, and change their world. Eventually I found whole afternoons of chopping onions, crimping pie crusts, washing pots became an extended action of prayer. Living in an intentional community can do that sort of thing to an impressionable young person.

However, these days, I’m like most folks, hurrying to fix dinner, with NPR telling me about the horrible state of the world. I snap off the radio and fling the food at my tired and surly family who generally do not bother to thank me, the pig, the farmer, or anyone else. It is not ideal, but at least we have a place to work up from…

Just as many UUs have started to reclaim the language of god-talk, some of us are starting to reclaim prayer on our own terms. Perhaps there was a baby in that bathwater. But to rescue it we’ll have to do more than simply deconstruct or demythologize the practice. In short, to understand it, we’ll have to do it.

One splendid Unitarian Universalist woman I know set out to develop her own ritual of prayer and tied it to her every day. She turned some of her daily actions into sacred rituals. Each morning, first thing, she scoops up a handful of birdseed and steps out onto her patio. She scatters the seed in a small mandala marking the four directions and recites a scrap of a Navajo prayer “There is beauty before me, there is beauty behind me.” She fills in her circle with peanuts for the blue jays, and pauses just long enough to feel connected with nature. Then, every evening, after the dishes are done, and the dog is walked, she stops and simply gives thanks for her guardians who have helped her that day. She calls for blessings on her children and grandchildren. She calls for blessings upon her animal companions and asks that the presence of love be with people she knows who are having troubles in their lives. This is simply what she does.

I came to prayer sideways – through meditation. They aren’t the same thing, but they improve one another. In meditation, a person looks inward to consider their actions and find where they might be wanting. Once the internal landscape has been surveyed, then the individual is ready to connect to the outer in prayer. Many time I found that I might dive down into meditation only to rise up in prayer — prayers of resolve and prayers of remembrance — prayers of thanks and prayers of acceptance. Sometimes a deity is referenced, and sometimes not. And that last detail, so far, has not proven injurious to my health, or limited the usefulness of the practice.

When I pray, I am not asking for anything, I am not expecting any change in the world, only a change in myself. If I surrender anything, I offer up my ego and selfishness, and invite Grace to enter and fill that space. And afterwards, I take my changed self forward, with that small spark of the divine inside me, burning just a bit brighter.

So, how do you pray? How might you take old words and blow new breath into them? Have you created a ritual and observed any changes within you? When faced with a crisis, would you have the humility and trust to open up and allow a caring person to pray with you, to help fan your divine spark so that it might burn a little brighter as you go forward to face what you must?

Now, I have an assignment for us here. You see, this topic is too big for one sermon and I need your help.

Honestly, I suspect that many of you do pray, in your own fashion, and for your own purposes. Being the humble and private people you are, I’ll predict yours are humble, private, prayers. But, if you could, please tell me about them. Tell me how you might have retained or reclaimed prayer. Where it fits in your day, and what you say when life rises up and threatens to overwhelm you. Tell me about it. And in another couple of months, I’d like to be back up here, and I’d like to share some of your stories about prayer.

Until then, if prayer isn’t in your life, be a diligent UU and at least question why. And then question “why” again. For those who would consider “why not?” may I invite you to bring along your god, your breath, and your willingness to be changed.

Blessed Be

© Nell Newton 11/28/2010

Unmasking Courage

by Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Chris Jimmerson

October 31, 2010

Happy Halloween! One of Halloween’s main themes is fear. On this Halloween, what do Unitarian Universalists fear as a religious community and where do we find courage, one of our churches values, in the face of those fears?

I’ve been studying our earliest Unitarian predecessors and have found in their stories remarkable examples of courage – courage in a religious context, what we might call “spiritual courage”. So, I’ll ask you to indulge me for a bit, as we travel back to the 16th century, Reader’s Digest version.

Very frightening things are happening. The Gutenberg press has allowed for the wide scale printing of the bible, so people outside the Catholic Church hierarchy can actually read it! The protestant reformation has begun. The Renaissance in literature, arts and sciences has begun. Those scary Humanists have started studying things. Now, all of this is a great threat to the Catholic Church, so the Inquisition is in full force also.

It is a time when the power and wealth of governments and that of the Church are tightly intertwined, and biblical interpretation, doctrine, has been a major role of the Church in this power structure.

So, to protect their own influence (not to mention to avoid becoming victims of the inquisition themselves), the leaders of the larger reformation movements have expressed their differences with the church as points of practice, not essential doctrine.

Into this volatile situation, a book appears, On the Errors of the Trinity, by a Spanish Scholar in his early twenties named Michael Servetus, questioning one of the sacred creeds of the Church – God in Trinity; the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

The year was 1531, and young Servetus had published his book hoping to convert the Reformers to his position that there was but one eternal God. His hopes were dashed. The Reformers quickly reaffirmed the Trinity. After trying and failing again with a second book, Servetus realized his books had put him in danger, changed his name and went into hiding in Lyons, France. He eventually become a medical doctor and is even mentioned in medical history texts for having elucidated the pulmonary circulatory system – like a good proto-Unitarian, he couldn’t be satisfied with only one field of excellence.

However, also like a good proto-Unitarian, Servetus had a little trouble letting go of things, and so, 15 years later, in 1546, he began another book AND, using his assumed name, struck up a correspondence debating theology with none other than John Calvin, the influential Protestant reformer who had established a powerbase in Geneva.

Calvin was courteous at first but quickly grew exasperated and sent Servetus his own views, as set out in Calvin’s, “Institutes of the Christian Religion”.

Upon receiving Calvin’s seminal book, Servetus responded with one of the first recorded instances of a long and beloved religious tradition still practiced in Unitarian Universalist churches across North America even today. He scribbled disparaging notes in the margins on where he thought Calvin was wrong and sent it back to him.

This may not have been wise.

An incensed Calvin, realizing he had actually been corresponding with Servetus, wrote to a friend that if Servetus should ever come to Geneva “I will not suffer him to get out alive”.

In 1553, Servetus published his new book, “The Restoration of Christianity”. By April 4 of 1553, the French Inquisition had arrested and jailed Michael Servetus for heresy, with evidence for the charge supplied by Calvin.

By April 7, 1553, Servetus had escaped from jail. After convincing the jailer to let him out so he could relieve himself in the jails walled garden, our proto-Unitarian ripped off his nightgown, and fully dressed underneath, scaled the wall and ran away. Inexplicably, he headed to Geneva. This most definitely was not wise.

In Geneva, he was recognized, arrested and convicted of spreading heresy, in a process largely manipulated by Calvin.

On October 27, 1553, Michael Servetus was burned at the stake. They used moist, green wood so that it would burn more slowly and prolong the suffering. They placed a crown sprinkled with gunpowder on his head.

And as the flames grew and the terror consumed him, as flesh was slowly turned to ash, Michael Servetus cried out in agony, but he never renounced his beliefs.

I wonder if today our religious beliefs could cost us our lives, could we summon that kind of courage? If facing that kind of terror, could I? Of course, I’m just speculating, because in modern America, such a situation seems to be a long ago and far away threat.

On September 21, 2005, the DuPage Unitarian Universalist Church received a bomb threat because of their support for marriage equality for gays and lesbians. It would be only one of many such threats against supporters of marriage equality.

On July 27, 2008, Jim David Adkisson walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and opened fire with a shotgun, murdering two people and injuring several others because “he wanted to kill some liberals”. Not so long ago. Not so far away.

Perhaps the crazed acts of disturbed individuals. Perhaps the consequences of a growing rhetoric of violence over disagreement in “modern” America.

Michael Servetus left two legacies; 1. His execution led to a slow growth in religious tolerance and 2. His writings influenced many to reconsider some of Christianity’s most central doctrines, including the Unitarians in Poland and those in Transylvania.

The histories of both are fascinating and contain lessons in spiritual courage.

The Socinians, as the early Polish Unitarians came to be known, thrived for a while in the 16th century protected by the Polish minor nobility, even establishing their own township. However, it was not to last. The Catholic Counter Reformation, a series of invasions by surrounding peoples and shifts in economic and social influences led to growing persecution, until by 1660, the Socinians faced a choice – recant their beliefs, leave Poland or be but to death.

Many did recant. A few gave up all they owned and left, seeking the freedom to practice their beliefs elsewhere, some eventually joining the Unitarians in Transylvania. After only a little over a century, the Unitarian religious movement in Poland had all but perished.

Again, having to make such a choice – to have to summon the courage to migrate, destitute to a foreign land in order to remain true to our religious convictions – may seem like a distant and remote possibility to us now.

Any yet, thousands of people from throughout the world come to the U.S. every year seeking asylum, having fled religious persecution in their home countries, having made exactly that choice. We imprison most of them as soon as they arrive here and, since 9-11, fewer and fewer are seeing their asylum requests granted, especially those we consider to have the “wrong” religion.

Even closer to home, a group calling themselves “Repent Amarillo” has been attacking our Amarillo UU Fellowship, using techniques learned from the “New Apostolic Reformation”, an international organization that provides training on, quote, “taking communities though militant spiritual warfare techniques” — mapping whole geographic areas to identify where the sinners are located (such as in UU churches apparently) and either convert them or “drive the demons out”. Now in case you’re picturing me wearing a rather large tinfoil hat at this point, consider that, before his disgrace, the Rev. Ted Haggard in Colorado Springs adopted these same techniques to harass people he had decided were witches. Ten of his 15 targets sold their homes and moved away because of the harassment.

Last week, Reverend Brock spoke about America’s rising intolerance toward Muslims. Interesting then, that the Unitarianism that exists in Transylvania today was able to develop in the 16th Century because of the tolerance extended to them by the Sultan of the Islamic Ottoman State and because an intermixing of Islamic and Christian cultures bred an ethos of religious acceptance.

Their history is a long one, and religious tolerance toward the Unitarians in Transylvania has waxed and waned, as governments and societal influences have changed, yet they have persisted, providing us lessons in courage.

One such lesson is that spiritual courage requires standing up for religious tolerance. Our Amarillo Unitarian Universalist Fellowship knows this! You see, on September 11 of this year, the head of Repent Amarillo, part-time Reverend David Grisham, had planned to burn a Koran in a public park. The UU Fellowship organized a counter demonstration.

As the good Reverend doused his copy of the Koran with lighter fluid and held it over a barbeque pit preparing to set it on fire, the counter-protesters held their hands over the pit to stop him. Twenty three year old skateboarder, Jacob Isom, an avowed atheist, came up behind the Reverend, grabbed the book from his hands, said, “Dude, you have no Koran,” and ran away with it.

And so it came to pass that thanks largely to a bunch of Unitarian Universalists and a skateboarding atheist, no holy books were burned in Amarillo Texas that day.

A second lesson is that courage is not always one short act in time – that courage may be required over the long run, in the face of societal challenges and changes. We must practice a vigilant and a persistent courage. Only a few years ago, the Texas State Comptroller at the time, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, some of you may have heard of her, denied non-profit status to the UU church in Denison because they did not have one system of belief.

The Texas State Board of Education has been busily rewriting the rules for our childrens’ textbooks to, among other things, strengthen requirements for teaching the “Christian beliefs of the Founding Fathers” and to deemphasize Thomas Jefferson because he was a deist.

At the national Values Voters summit this year, attended by several of the nation’s most well-known politicians, the following statements were issued: that the U.S. should ban the construction of any new mosques anywhere in America; and that the 1st amendment to the constitution does not justify the separation of church and state.

Of the politicians attending, several of whom stand a chance of becoming our next President, not one of them disavowed these statements.

How are we to have courage in light of such challenges? How we do we avoid becoming discouraged in a culture filled with dogmatism and intolerance?

Well, research has found that practicing small acts of courage in our daily lives, such as reaching out to those with whom we have disagreed, builds confidence and prepares us to act with courage when confronting far greater risks.

Research has also found that discerning our values, and reflecting on them often, provides a higher purpose and the impetus for acting courageously. And this idea of finding courage in our values is why, this Halloween, I have resurrected our Unitarian ancestors; although, saying ancestors is a stretch. For the most part, Unitarianism in the U.S. developed independently of that in Europe. Still, each embraced a set of strikingly kindred core values, a shared religious DNA if you will, which UU historian Earl Wilbur identified as commitment to religious freedom, unrestricted use of reason and tolerance of differing views and practices.

This religious DNA is still a key element in the blueprint for Unitarian Universalism today, when we proclaim, “One religion, many beliefs”, or when we affirm our 4th principle, “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning”. This religious DNA drives our congregation’s support of individual spiritual practice and growth.

You see, this foundational core of our belief system requires that we not only work for religious tolerance in the outside world, but that we practice religious freedom within our very religion itself.

And that is good news. That is a saving message that people, whether secular or spiritual, need in our world today.

It demands that we proactively invite people into a place of spiritual exploration without creedal requirements. It compels us to evangelize. Now, I know this idea of UUs evangelizing is controversial. Nonetheless, I will risk being branded a heretic even among Unitarian Universalists by advocating for evangelizing!

Evangelizing is controversial because we’re afraid of it. We don’t even like the word. For many of us, rightly or wrongly, it carries connotations of an irrational, overly emotional form of religious worship; of fundamentalism and restrictive dogma; of conversion and coercion, promises of heaven and threats of eternal hell.

Those of you who are Star Trek nerds like me will understand when I say that the evangelism practiced by the small-town Baptist church I grew up in felt more like a “church of the Borg” – “Resistance is futile. Freedom is irrelevant. You will be assimilated.”

We are also afraid of evangelism, because if we bring to the world our good news (what evangelize means by the way), people might just join us, we might just grow, and growth means change and change can be scary. We are afraid of it because we are much better at talking about what we do not believe than what we do believe. But what we do not believe is not a saving message. Taking about what we do believe takes a lot more courage, but we might start practicing it with our UU principles or our churches’ values: “We find meaning in acceptance of one another, justice, equity, the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process.”

“We believe there is eternal beauty in transcendence, community, compassion, courage and transformation.”

“We find there is God in the inherent worth and dignity of every person; in the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.”

Wherever your personal beliefs meet those of our shared religion, that is our faith. Our core values, our religious DNA, will not allow us to keep it to ourselves. As the President of our denomination Rev. Peter Morales so aptly demonstrated in a recent sermon, there is a tremendous need for a safe community within which to explore life’s deeper questions.

After I found this church, I realized that I have been a Unitarian Universalist all of my life and just had never known it. I’ll bet many of you had the same experience or have heard the same thought expressed. Sometimes, we seem almost proud of this, but I think it is heartbreaking. I wonder how many more people have never found community with us because they have never heard of us; never heard from us.

If we were to evangelize, if we were to radiate the light from that chalice out beyond these walls and into our community and our world with our saving message of religious freedom, hope, dignity, peace, love, justice, compassion — the sacred beauty of shared existence, well, we might just transform the world, reclaim this paradise we have been given. Here. And now.

And that is what terrifies us the most.

“How DARE we dream that?” we ask ourselves. We dare it because our most deeply held values compel us to do so. We have the spiritual courage. It is in our religious DNA.

The Joy of Giving

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Nell Newton

October 10, 2010

Click the play button to listen.

Prayer:

After performing the miracle of the loaves and fishes, Jesus and his disciples made a quick get away in a boat to leave the Pharisees to themselves. Once in the boat, the disciples realized that someone had forgotten to grab one of the seven baskets of extra bread, and there was now only one loaf of bread among them. While Jesus warned them against the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod, the disciples got fixated on their one loaf of bread. Jesus was not impressed. “Were you not paying attention? Do not you yet see or understand?”

Now, you and I do not perform miracles. If there is a great crowd who have nothing to eat, we cannot break apart seven loaves and expect more than crumbs to reach every mouth.

So instead, let us gather the flour and water to bake more bread. Let us share our leavening among our neighbors. And let our efforts fill the hungry empty places in our world with love.

Great Spirit, I ask that we might each know the comforting weight of a small smooth stone in our pocket, waiting for its chance to become soup.

I ask this in the name of every thing that is holy, and that is precisely every thing.

Amen

Sermon:

Have I told anyone recently how much I enjoy being the past president of our church? It’s really quite nice. As past president, I attend all of the board meetings, but don’t have a vote. Instead I simply serve as advisor and offer insight when asked. And if anything goes kaboom, I genially defer to our current president Eric Stimmel who will smilingly attend to the clean up. It’s really very relaxing. And it’s allowing me more time to do other things that I enjoy around the church, like washing dishes, greeting guests, and assisting with our worship.

+++++++

From an imaginary posting on a website for Unitarian Universalist ministers:

“Fun-loving, plus-sized church seeks compatible minister for long-term commitment and growth. Turn-ons: stimulating Sunday morning chats and community engagement. Turn-offs: Calvinism and put-downs. Must like self and others. Ability to nurture souls, transform lives, and do justice a plus. Please, only serious inquiries.”

Or, so that is how I imagine how it might read if our search for a settled minister read like a personals ad.

Instead our Settled Minister Search Committee is preparing a detailed congregational report and a fat packet of information that will make the rounds of ministers in search. Many will pore over it and try to imagine what it might be like if they came here. Some will quickly realize they are not up to the challenge, but several will lean forward and re-read some sections excitedly and wonder “What would it be like to be with First Church Austin?”

But, let’s back up a bit…

Susan Smith is our district executive overseeing the Unitarian Universalist churches in the southwest, and in a conversation she explained that in some ways the relationship between a minister and congregation is a bit like a marriage. It is a covenantal relationship, with shared goals and mutual respect. Like actual marriages, the joys are mixed with tough spots – but the agreement to stand in right relationship with one another helps keep both partners on track.

And, like actual marriages, the relationships generally end in either death or divorce. At the end of our last settled ministry, some of us wondered if we would ever feel such a connection again. Others felt we might not even deserve such connection. And still others were ready to find someone new right away.

But, have you ever been on a date with someone who is on the rebound? Over a plate of otherwise good fettucine, you get hear about that person’s last love’s awful habits or endearing charms, and then all of the disappointments, betrayals, and bitterness that accompanied their parting. It’s enough to put you off your pasta.

Congregations can behave much the same way, which is why the advisors from the Unitarian Universalist Association recommended we spend at least two years with interim ministers before calling our next settled minister. We were encouraged to play the field, so to speak, before making a serious commitment. Bring some new voices into the pulpit – they told us. Try out new ways of doing things, take some classes, look hard at some old habits, and dream about your future!” And that is exactly what we’ve been busy doing for the past 18 months.

But all along, we have been looking forward to finding a special someone to share our dreams and journey with.

Unlike in other denominations, our congregations and ministers do not have arranged marriages. Our ministers aren’t sent down from a central authority. There is no bishop to play matchmaker. Instead, like modern marriages, UU congregations and ministers choose one another after careful consideration. So, into the documents the search committee has prepared, they have compiled our most appealing attributes, but have also been frank about our weaknesses. Yes, we’re attractive, but we’re also modest, and good company.

The report and packet are almost ready, and they will be sent out by the end of this month. They tell a rich story, and you are all in there! Your dreams are included in there because you’ve already given so much of yourselves. You participated in groups to build our covenant, name our weaknesses, define our values, and shape our mission. You completed a survey of what is important to you in a minister. Your voices will come through loud and clear to anyone who will read through the pages. Many thanks to our Settled Minister Search Committee for the hours they spent compiling them. I know they will represent us well.

Now, like a small town, in our small denomination news travels fast and most of the ministers know that First Church Austin is entering into search. Some have been waiting to see our documents for a long time. “Would it work out between us?” they wonder.

There are several months of more work ahead for the Search Committee. They will read many packets posted by ministers in search. They will listen to countless sermons. They will eventually travel to see the strongest candidates preach and have many conversations. By next spring it is likely they will recommend a candidate for us to consider.

What do the rest of us do in the meantime? Well, there are a few specific things we can do – keep up with the self improvement – our leadership development classes, our move to policy-based governance. And, while this might not be an arranged marriage, there are a few traditional touches that it is time to attend to. Namely, the trousseau and the dowry.

Like birds and mammals that line their nests by pulling fluff from their own breasts, this fall we will be making a nice soft, warm budget to hold our vision and welcome our new minister.

Now, in traditional communities, there are uncles and aunties who make sure that a good arrangement is made, and they will put up the extra resources to seal the deal. While the bride-to-be weaves and sews the linens she will need as a wife, the extended family sets aside extra resources to give the new couple a good start. One uncle provides a few extra goats, another buys a modern stove for the couple’s home. Aunties sew coins onto the ceremonial garments and set aside extra food for the feast. With all these preparations, family alliances are secured, and everyone deepens their commitment to the community.

We are now in the middle of our stewardship campaign, and each of us has the chance to be the aunties and uncles whose commitment to the community will seal the deal. Several of us have already dug a little deeper than usual to make our congregation’s next budget look healthy and attractive. The search committee’s documents will include a proposed budget based upon the results of the stewardship campaign. You can be sure that interested candidates will look closely at that detail. And who would really want us if our budget were scrawny and underfunded?

Are you in? Will you set aside a few extra goats? Will you help stuff grape leaves for the feast? Will you raise your pledge a bit to secure your family’s alliance, and deepen your commitment to this union?

Ask yourself: What will you bring to the feast and are you ready to be fed?

Benediction:

Ean Huntington Behr

You are in the story of the world.

You are the world coming to know itself.

May you trust that all you will ever say or do

Belongs in the story of the world.