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Mar 26

Mad Men and Covenant

I didn’t have time to watch Mad Men last night (though of course I taped it).  Like millions of people I have avidly watched the show with both fascination and disgust.  It’s a little like watching home movies of your parents doing things you really shouldn’t see.

On the one hand, it gives us evidence of how things have changed, particularly for women.  In an interview with Susan Stamberg on Sunday morning, Eleanor Clift, the prize winning journalist talks about starting her career as a typist at Newsweek.  As she said, “frankly, I was not unhappy with that. I have said many times over the years, I just wanted to be where what I typed was interesting.”  How thankful I am that she is now the one producing what is interesting, not just recording it. Read more

Mar 23

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The Hunger Games and Covenant

Okay, I admit it.  I haven’t read The Hunger Games.  Nor am I racing out to see the movie tonight.  I do plan on reading them just to try to understand the cultural phenomena they have become.

But in listening to the talk about them something has stuck out for me. The star of the movie, Jennifer Lawrence, playing Katniss, says this:  ”The most important message of this story is how powerful one person can be and the power we have as a people.” Obviously people in general, and the millennial generation in particular, are craving an opportunity for one person to make a difference.

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Mar 19

People of the Covenant – Part I

Covenant is a big word these days for Unitarian Universalists. Of course it’s always been a big word for UUs, but particularly so in the last few years when we’ve been struggling for a way to define ourselves theologically. If what binds us together is not a common belief, then it is a relief to find another way to express the depth of what we mean by spiritual community.

I heard a lovely sermon yesterday delivered by my colleague Sarah Lammert, who asked us to think of covenant as being a spiritual obligation to anyone around us, not only “our” people. Indeed, how would that shape our sense of covenant if we understood it not necessarily to be that which is agreed upon by a community or between two people, but a way of being in the world?

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Mar 5

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Instant Community

It had been a while since I was on a two propeller plane.  I was on my way to Binghamton for a regional meeting, and saw the little thing sitting there on the runway.  I travel all the time, and pride myself on being intrepid, but for some reason this one made me a little nervous.

Nevertheless I got on board, and sure enough, the little thing managed to get into the air, if a little wobbly.  I was sitting on the wing, looking out to the right, when I noticed the propellor was slowing…then stopped.

Well surely, I thought, there must be a backup engine that kicks in after take-off.  I looked to my left, and that propellor was still going.  Hmmm.  Hmmm.  The flight attendant was looking more attendant.  Nobody else seemed to notice.  Must be no big deal.  After a long five minutes the pilot came on to explain that the right propeller had failed.  Happens all the time (well, not all the time, but sometimes and its just fine).  We’ll just turn around and go back.  No need to worry.

We’re all so well-trained now to be obedient in air travel, and so we waited obediently. I saw the young mother in front of me pull her two year old son much closer.  The elderly veteran to my left smiled encouragingly at us all.  The young woman to my right suddenly turned to me and started talking about all that she noticed around her.  Instantly we were a community — attuned to one another and engaged in a common enterprise– the task of coming to terms with life, with what was most meaningful and present to us in that moment.

We made it back fine, if a little rockily.   And we sat huddled together in the terminal waiting for our next plane feeling connected and displaced at the same time.

Community can happen in an instant.  I know there is a particular kind of community that happens when people engage with one another over time and through many different kinds of experiences — people who choose to be with one another.  And then there’s another kind of community that can come when we least expect it, and are not trying to construct it.  It happens to us, and we only have two choices at that point: respond with openness or close down into our own fear.  Religious community is like that.  We can work really hard to construct our perfect version of what we want to surround ourselves with.  Or we can be open to something unexpected and unbidden that speaks to us of life’s energy at its core.  The two aren’t mutually exclusive of course, but I wonder how often we give credence to the second kind, or think about how we might respond when community happens.  When spirit is born.

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