Moderator Gone Missing

The news: on Saturday (two days ago) the congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association elected our eighth President, the Reverend Peter Morales. Peter is energetic and visionary and courageous; we had a great relationship when we were both UUA Trustees about a decade ago. I am excited to be working with Peter for the next four years. We had a great post-GA board meeting earlier today. Peter's driving home this afternoon, and we're already collecting topics for a conference call next week.

The back story: The election results were announced at a worship service on Saturday evening prior to the Ware Lecture. During the service we acknowledged and thanked both candidates for President -- Rev. Morales and the Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman. I was in the hall for worship.

I skip the Ware Lecture at most GAs. I spend Saturday night preparing my Moderator's Report (delivered on Sunday) and try to get a good night's sleep before what is often the most grueling plenary session at GA. The Ware Lecture is streamed, so I can watch it online while I work or see it later. This GA Saturday, I had more writing to do than usual, as I had volunteered to deliver the charge to the congregation during Sunday's closing worship. My GA schedule showed the Ware Lecture as my last GA event of the day. As Bill Sinkford rose to introduce the Ware Lecturer, I grabbed my backpack from the tech deck and returned to my hotel, slipped into blue jeans and went to work.

A few hours later I went down to the lobby of my hotel, and was greeted with "Where have you been?" and "We missed you!" by the first two UUs I saw. "Where did you expect me to be?" The post-election reception didn't get put on my schedule of the 50+ events I need to attend to. By Saturday, I'm lucky to make it to the items that are on the schedule. Note to self: next GA, triple check the Moderator's schedule.

I imagine it was awkward for Planning Committee chair Beth McGregor when she called my name and I didn't come forward ("The von Trapp Family Singers…….the family von Trapp…….") When I realized I'd missed the reception, my first call was to apologize to Beth, who texted back "no sweat"

I didn't think Peter would be concerned about my absence, and I was right. Peter assumed that I had been delayed by something or someone else that required my attention. When we spoke on Sunday morning at the rehearsal for the Closing Worship, we talked about how tired we both were. I admitted my gratitude for anyone who'd point me in the right direction and shove. We had a good laugh together.

I was worried about people I know less well. I endorsed Laurel Hallman; it would be tempting for people to project their assumptions on my absence. In my Moderator's Report at Sunday's plenary I told the delegates what had happened, and apologized for missing the reception. But not everyone goes to plenary. During today's board meeting, someone texted their trustee to ask if it was true that I had stormed out of the celebration because we'd elected Peter. Somehow, I don't think "Nope – she wasn't even there" is the most helpful answer.

Here is the last stanza of my charge to the congregation (at 1:06) during the Closing Worship when we installed Peter as UUA President:
…Help us invite our leaders to make us uncomfortable and discontented,
To challenge our privilege, our cynicism, our arrogance, our complacency,
To trouble our hearts so we will see the gap between the world that is and the paradise that should be
Help us expect much of our leaders, but even more of ourselves.

Moderator's Musings - Governance, Part 1

On my To Do list is the task “post a blog” and the task is five weeks overdue. Ouch. I’ve had a lot to say, but haven’t made time to say it. Thanks for waiting. (The three of you know who you are…)

In my spare time, I've been reflecting about Unitarian Universalist governance. Maybe it's just the election, but there seems to be a great deal of confusion about Association governance. Maybe it's just the stresses caused by economic downturn, but there seems to be even more confusion about governance in some of our congregations. I'm beginning to form some opinions about the relationship between the two confusions, but it's the second confused realm that's weighing most heavily. This week, I've spoken with leaders of three congregations who are working mightily -- and under great pressure -- to define roles and responsibilities of boards, committees, staff, and ministers. If your congregation has governance firing on all cylinders, please spare a moment to send compassionate and loving thoughts in the direction of those who are struggling.

This week’s blog continues with a PowerPoint presentation posted on slideshare. Here’s the URL: http://www.slideshare.net/gcourter/uu-governance-part-1

I look forward to hearing your thoughts. More next week. Really.

Why It Matters

Some folks have requested my closing statement from tonight’s candidate forum at ICUUW. Here it is:

Why It Matters
Somewhere earlier today a woman lost her partner of fifty years.
Somewhere today a man retired – it was not his choice – and has decided to dedicate his life to a noble purpose.
Somewhere today a teenager was beaten for daring to love a person of another race.
Somewhere today a family is grieving the loss of a child.
Somewhere today another family lost their home.
Somewhere today a child decided to reach out to girls in Kenya.
Somewhere today a young man was hazed for defending a queer team mate.
Somewhere tonight a woman falls asleep crying, realizing her spiritual life is vacant, her soul is empty.

This Sunday, each of these beloveds will walk into a Unitarian Universalist Church.
Some are long-term members.
Some are newer; some will visit for the first time
But all will find a Unitarian Universalist congregation somewhere.

Every Unitarian Universalist congregation is somewhere.
Every day is this day.
Every Sunday is this Sunday.
I pray you, beloveds,
Do not ever forget
even for a moment
how much this faith, our faith, matters.

A funny thing happened on my way to the forum....

I'm sitting on the floor in the back of the hall at the International Convocation of Unitarian Universalist Women. Between my "day job" (the stuff I do to pay my bills) and "making a living" (serving as Moderator of the UUA, which is how I make life meaningful), I haven't been able to participate in this Convo as much as I'd like. For example: Rebecca Adamson was apparently as amazing yesterday as I'd imagined. I think I'll have an opportunity to talk with her later today.



The Candidates Forum this evening will include three candidates: Presidential hopefuls Laurel Hallman and Peter Morales, and Moderator likely Gini Courter. I'm running unopposed for a second term. Margot Adler wants to know how to introduce each of us, so I just finished the 100-word introduction of Gini. I try to avoid introducing myself; I usually say "surprise me", but Margot doesn't know me at all, and I'm not sure I want to be that surprised.



Last evening we convened a quick meeting with Margot, Laura Nagel from ICUUW, the candidates, and members of Peter and Laurel's campaign teams. (I'm currently an army of one.) Laurel and Peter have done these forums so many times that they each are confident they could speak for the other -- tell the other's stories, present their platforms and vision for Unitarian Universalism. They're fast learners, but it's not just speed that accounts for their knowledge of each other. They've learned primarily by numbing repetition - far more forums than Bill Sinkford, Diane Miller, Patsy Madden and Diane Olson were required to participate in 8 years ago, and every candidate in 2001 said: this should never happen again -- it's too grueling and wasteful. I've asked both Peter and Laurel how they're doing, how their feet and hearts and souls are faring, what they think of the process? gaunlet? triathalon? that we force -- not by intention but by an inept lack of coordination -- on the wonderful folks who feel a call to Association leadership. More from me on this in the near future.

Final Reflections (Annette Marquis)

Reflections at the end of our pilgrimage

The 2009 Living Legacy Pilgrimage is over now and all of us have returned to our communities, our families, and our congregations. But the impact of this experience is embedded deep in our souls in a way that no photographs or notes or memories could ever summon. To say that we were changed by the experience seems trite considering what people risked, what those who lived the Civil Rights Movement sacrificed to secure their freedom, a freedom that had ostensibly been granted to them 100 years earlier.

In the course of our journey, we visited two Unitarian Universalist congregations, the Unitarian Universalist Church in Birmingham and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Montgomery (UUFM). Both congregations greeted us as family who had come home for a visit after too long an absence. They showered us with true Southern hospitality, fed us home-cooked meals, and did everything they could do to make us comfortable. But most importantly, they shared the richness of their histories, their involvement in the Movement, and their courageous people. In both cases, I was struck with how vibrant the congregations are today and how poised they still are to represent UU values in the world.

In fact, in Montgomery, we actually saw the congregation in action as we attended a rally on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol to support the inclusion of sexual orientation in the state’s hate crime statute. The Reverend Paul Britner, minister of UUFM, helped organize and MC the event and the UUFM choir led the protestors in singing, “Love Will Guide Us.” It is clear that the fight for civil rights is not over and that wherever we are, UUs are called to lead in these efforts. I was proud to be a UU that day. I was proud to be standing on the same steps where George Wallace refused to allow Martin Luther King to stand at the conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery march because he didn’t want King speaking from the spot where Jefferson Davis took the oath of office as president of the Confederate States. I was proud to sharing the day with Montgomery UUs who were proving that our civil rights legacy is still living and breathing in the hearts and minds of today’s UUs.

Of all the questions that this pilgrimage generated in me, I continue to be most challenged by what it meant to organize an entire social change movement based on non-violence resistance that I began to wonder if I could have done what the people in the civil rights movement did.

Imagine that you are in a training session designed to prepare you to participate in a protest march. You spend an entire weekend learning about non-violence and non-violent resistance techniques. But this training is not all talk. Throughout much of the weekend you are being badgered, yelled at, called names, pushed, and even hit, and your job is to not react -- to let yourself be verbally and even physically abused and just take it, to not defend yourself, to not run away, to just take it. By the end of the training, it’s decided whether you have what it takes to be in the march. For you see, being a marcher in the Movement is a high honor. If it becomes clear that you can’t respond non-violently, you are placed in a support role and are not given the honor of marching.

As I heard these stories, I again asked myself, could I do it? Could I place myself in that level of danger? Could I risk my life for something, even if it was something I believed in as strongly as I believe in civil rights?

On March 7, 1965, 600 of these trained marchers left Brown Chapel in Selma, Alabama, walked through town and began to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on their way to the state capital in Montgomery. When they reached the crest of the bridge and could see what was ahead of them on the other side, they report that all they saw was a sea of blue. Police had formed a solid line almost a block away from the end of the bridge. The marchers kept moving forward, down the other side of the bridge, and directly toward the sea of blue. When they got within hearing distance, they were told to turn back. Before the marchers even had a chance to respond, the police, some on horseback, viciously attacked. The marchers were beaten back with billy clubs, tear gas, and bull whips. This event, referred to as Bloody Sunday, horrified the nation as photographs and video were shown on the Sunday evening news.

Two days later, Martin Luther-King led a second march across that same bridge. Again they were told to turn back and Rev. King asked if they could pray first. The marchers then got down on their knees right in the middle of the street and prayed. Then King stood up, turned the march around and went back to Brown Chapel. Think about that for a moment. Only two days before, hundreds of people, neighbors, friends, and family members, were beaten, many seriously injured, at this same spot, doing this same thing, by these same police officers. What kind of courage did it take to get down on their knees and pray?
Could I do that? I ask myself.

I would like to think that I would have gone to Selma when Dr. King called Dana Greeley, the president of the UUA, and asked for our help. I would like to think I would have gone. But how do I put myself out there today? What risks do I take today to further the cause of civil and human rights? The struggle is not over. Do I have what it takes?

We UU’s have an incredibly legacy of courage, strength, fortitude, and commitment in the struggle for human rights. We have every right to be proud of this legacy. But we cannot rest there. We cannot live on our legacy. We have to find ways to keep our legacy alive by living lives today that honor these heroes of our faith. Somewhere we have to find the courage to step out of our comfortable lives, out of our safe congregations, and take the risks we need to take to move us closer to the world we want to create. It will not happen if we sit idly by. These people knew that. They put their lives on the line to make their dreams of a brighter future see the light of day.

I pray today that I will be ready when I am called. And I’m going to need you there with me. Will you be ready?

Shall We Overcome?

The Living Legacy Tour ended ten days ago, and I'm writing my last post (followed by a post from Annette Marquis) to close out the tour. In the past week, I've received emails and questions in person: what was ever decided about singing We Shall Overcome?

We had time on Saturday to discuss concerns of the community. I thought that someone would return to the conversation about who'd "earned" the right or "inherited" the right to sing We Shall Overcome. No one raised the topic. However, Leon Dunkley sang a song he'd composed that somehow miraculously morphed into We Shall Overcome. Another miracle of sorts -- some folks stood up, then more, until all of us were standing and singing together. I don't want to overanalyze but I think that after three days, we knew each other well enough to trust a bit more, to risk a bit more, to want to stand together enough that we got past whatever had separated us, if only for that moment.

There are many more white folks willing to sing "We Shall Overcome" than white folks willing to be part of the "We" that is struggling for justice or working actively to end racism. As long as that is true, there will be people of color and their allies who are angered or saddened by white people singing "We Shall Overcome", even if some of those singing also sang it at Selma or Montgomery with Dr. King. While the folks on our pilgrimage found a way to sing together, this remains an incomplete conversation for me.

Day 6 - Mt. Zion United Methodist - guest post from Jim Key

We have visited gravesites of fallen martyrs, heard emotional first-person accounts of the foot soldiers of Civil Rights era, and witnessed the impact on families of the selfless activists. I have been educated by the museums, inspired by the music, and awed by my fellow pilgrims. Moreover, I have lost sleep for the past six nights on how to process what I have observed on this pilgrimage and integrate it into the work that calls us as Unitarian Universalists to bend the moral universe towards justice.

Today we broke bread with the good folks of Mt. Zion United Methodist Church outside Philadelphia, MS and heard the story of the night the Klan waited for a meeting related to registering Black voters to break up. They attacked some of the congregants as they were leaving the church and then burned the church to the ground.

Three voter registration workers, two white and one black who had made inquiries of the church members after the attacks, were reported missing several days later after they were arrested, jailed, and released late in the evening if June 21, 1964. The bodies of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were discovered in an earthen dam on August 4. While the families wanted them buried together, Mississippi segregation laws would not permit it even though the Klan saw fit to bury them together in their first shallow grave. We prayed and sang over the grave of James Chaney this morning.

With this backdrop we heard Leroy Clemons, the President of the local NAACP chapter. His comments about how Blacks, Whites, and Native Americans came together 40 years after these horrific events to claim their history and learn how to work together to, as a community, to learn from the past as they worked for justice now and in the future. We then heard from Hollis Watkins of Southern Echo who, as an activist from the Freedom Summer days, is applying the lessons of the Civil Rights Movement in building bridges to the future in economic, environmental, political, and social justice issues. His advice? Involve the youth of our communities. Teach them the lessons of the past and harness their energy and creativity in our justice work. And sing.

I think I will sleep better tonight. The lessons of this day are becoming clear. There is work to do in my community, my congregation and my district. Now to spread the word.

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Jim Key is a member of the UU Fellowship of Beaufort, and serves as the President of the Thomas Jefferson District.