Monthly Archives: October 2009

Sometimes I don’t know Jack

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Really, sometimes I don’t know jack, or just feel like I don’t know Jack. When I feel like this,  I re-read something by Jack – Jack Mendelsohn.  This passage is from Jack Mendelsohn’s book Why I am a Unitarian Universalist.  I underlined it in my copy the first time I read it.  I had it read at my installation. About a month and a half ago, a friend emailed it to me to lift my spirits not knowing, or perhaps indeed knowing it was and is my constant meditation on why I do what I do.  I do know Jack, at least a little bit anyway. He was kind enough to have to me to his house one day while I was an intern minister in Massachusetts.  Still, I don’t know Jack, like I don’t know jack.  That’s the point, I guess.  The ministry isn’t about what you know, it’s about showing up, being present, and giving it your best shot in a world that is full of holiness while many people and things try to convince you otherwise.

Who is a Unitarian Universalist minister?

A person who is never completely satisfied or satisfiable, never completely adjusted or adjustable, who walks in two worlds—one of things as they are, the other of things as they ought to be—and loves them both.

A UU minister is a person with a pincushion soul and an elastic heart, who sits with the happy and the sad in a chaotic pattern of laugh, cry, laugh, cry—and who knows deep down that the first time the laughter is false, or the tears are make-believe, his or her days as a real minister are over.

UU ministers have dreams they can never wholly share, partly because they have some doubts about those dreams themselves and partly because they are unable adequately to explain, describe, or define what it is they think they see and understand.

A UU minister continually runs out of time, out of wisdom, out of ability, out of courage, and out of money.  A UU minister is hurtable, with great responsibility and little power, who must learn to accept people where they are and go on from there.  UU ministers who are worth their salt know all this, and are still thankful every day for the privilege of being what they are.

The future of the liberal church is almost totally dependent on two factors: great congregations (whether large or small) and skilled, effective, dedicated ministers.  The strangest feature of their
relationship is that they create one another.

-Jack Mendelsohn

A Random Act of Kindness

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I stopped by a grocery store yesterday to pick up some oranges and some orange candy for a skit I’m doing this Sunday during our Common Ground worship service (wouldn’t you like to know – you’ll have to come by Pathways or wait for the sermon and video).  Anyway, while I was inside the store a random stranger made my day by leaving this note under my windshield wiper in a random act of kindness:

dearyou2

I drive a Honda Civic hybrid.  Ever since I started driving, I’ve had a love for bumper stickers and my partner Tina does not.  A colleague once referred to my last vehicle, also a Honda Civic, as a “billboard on wheels.”  When we moved to Texas about a year ago, I was hesitant to put stickers on the new car, so a friend suggested magnets instead. I bought magnets at a craft store and stuck the bumper stickers to the magnets and put the magnetized stickers on the car.  I was more than a little nervous last fall driving around with my Obama-Biden magnet (an actual magnet from the campaign) in a very, very red Texas county as well as stickers for the human rights campaign ( the = )and other gay rights or equality magnets or stickers, my church at Pathways, and a UU magnet and lately ones that reads “Pro Faith, Pro Family, Pro Choice” that I picked up at our UUA General Assembly last June in Salt Lake City.  I’ve never had any bad reactions or incidents as a result from wearing my opinions on my bumper in Texas, opinions that run counter to the majority here, but I am quite pleasantly surprised that the first reaction I received from them was a positive one. I’m also happy that I’ve chosen to wear these magnets on my car because one of the reasons for doing so is to let people who think like me know they are not alone and as the note proves, I’ve done that in at least one case.

Thanks for letting me know you’re out there, too, whoever you are.