Sunday, September 12, at our Special Combined-Service Time of 10:30 a.m.: Homecoming Sunday! The words are sweet on my tongue and dancing through my fingertips. Homecoming is here—this joyful time of renewal, regathering, and recommitment!Like the water we each bring to share in our Water Ceremony, at Homecoming we unite the individual streams of our life into one river which is greater even than the sum of its parts. At Homecoming, we reconnect with who we are: one community of many diverse and beautiful souls, bound together by choice to discover greater depth, joy, service, and meaning, committed to making the transforming power of Love visible in our lives, in our community, in our world.This year we embark with renewed intention on a remarkable journey of faith. We of all ages will find mysteries to explore, questions to be asked, fun to be had, good works to be done, relationships to deepen. We will shape our journey around five “liturgical seasons”—does that phrase echo with any faith traditions you have known? If so, be prepared to delight in the mingling of the familiar and the brand-new, for here are the Unitarian Universalist seasons we claim this year: the seasons of Transformation, Incarnation, Love, Grace, and Freedom. During the Season of Transformation—Homecoming Sunday through the Day of the Dead—we will share our stories of change and new beginnings. We will ponder the ways in which forgiveness, as a spiritual practice, helps to make room for the new; we will practice seeing things with the fresh eyes of compassion. We will deepen our understanding of how, in our lives as in nature all around us, we must sometimes die to the old in order to be reborn to the new.Our board (a body of strong and visionary members) will guide us in naming and claiming our mission and vision. Did you know that in 2015, FUCSJ will be 150 years old? What will we do between now and then to make this birthday a citywide celebration of all that First Unitarian has offered and now offers to our community? With our consultation weekend, October 2-3, and in conversations before and after, we will ask the radical questions: Who are we? What is our purpose? Why do we need to be a multicultural, multiracial, multidimensional congregation, for example? Do we, in fact, “need” to be? And if we are indeed called to create this Beloved Community, this community that models one sacred human family, then how best do we go about making this vision a reality?What transformations will we experience in ourselves, as well as in our community, when we ask these questions and follow them faithfully where they lead us?My own sabbatical time—from December 25 through June 26—will offer both you, beloved FUCSJ, and me rich seasons of renewal. As we prepare for the sabbatical this fall, we are united on this journey of faith, for the streams of all our lives have flowed together to make a river greater than any one of us could have dreamed.Come, join us on this journey! Welcome Home! 

With joy and anticipation for the year ahead,Nancy  

His Holiness the Dalai Lama is coming to the

We diverse faith leaders are taking our cue from the Dalai Lama’s latest book, Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World’s Religions Can Come Together. The book helps us to see where and how the different world’s religions converge, without ever losing their distinctiveness. The choice of the word kinship is perfect, for to be “kin”—to be truly, deeply related, one to another—means that each of us living beings is both our own unique individual self and is fundamentally part of the same family. We share “convergences” (in our genetic material, our longings, our capacities for life, our need for life’s basic elements), but like all families, we also struggle to understand and embrace each other across our differences. The Dalai Lama invites us to move toward an understanding that honors this kinship—an understanding that will transform the way we live.

In late June I offered a worship service suggesting “guides for the summer,” each of which just might transform our understanding of kinship. I invited us to find ways to:

·         quiet ourselves and experience our kinship with creatures and things beyond our usual spheres

·         step outside our comfort zone and learn something new

·         get into our bodies and revel in our senses

·         pay attention to the beauty around us.

So tell me: How is your summer going? Have you followed any of these guides, and if so, where have they led you? It’s not too late to give one or more of them a try! What will you bring “home” with you to First Unitarian from these summer journeys—what will the water you bring to Homecoming on September 12 represent?

Following these guides this summer has brought me to a sense of kinship across border, which keeps surprising me. (Ah! So this is what it means to “practice what we preach”! J) Lately, when I stand under a tree, for instance, I feel it growing and changing ever so slowly beside me; its life is so palpable that it almost seems to be breathing. I marvel at the deep crevices in its bark, at the angles of the branches, at its reach upward to sky and downward to earth; these are so different from my human skin, angles, and reach … yet we are kin, converging in our dependence on this earth, this air, this light and dark. “Thank you, my brother,” I say, hoping that it knows how to translate the language of Human into the idiom of Tree.

As I write, I am poised for takeoff on my next journey to

Together we here at FUCSJ will look at kinship when we take up the topics of identities, immigration, and pride (or rather, “PRIDE!”) on August 8, 15, and 22 in worship. Please join us! To learn more about what our PACT team is discovering on our chosen area of immigration and antiracism, come to our next LOC (local organizing committee) meeting, Thursday, August 12, at 7 p.m. in the Ramsden Fireside Room.

So, my friends: What summer guides have you followed? What new kinship have you discovered? What inner and outer journeys will the water you bring to Homecoming represent? We all are eager to hear! I’ll see you in church!

With joy and anticipation for the year ahead,

From my minister’s perch, I’ve got a rare perspective on the Big Picture of life at FUCSJ. No single person can witness all that’s bubbling and brewing in our spiritual community at any given moment, but I’ve taken some snapshots, and I know you will have more. Please look for your own beloved face in this gallery, and be sure to picture the video versions—some of these images are moving (in every sense of the word)!

·         Here’s a large group folks from the Music Summit and its ongoing Learning Journeys to enhance our Music Ministries—this photo sings and sways!

·         Here’s a circle of teachers and parents, reflecting on this year’s Lifespan Faith Development program and discovering the next steps for serving our youngest members and their families. Oops—there go some of them, dashing off to accompany our fifth graders on visits to Our Neighboring Faiths!

·         Wow—look at how many people are showing up for the PACT Listening Campaign gatherings, discerning the social justice issue where we can make a difference. The next gathering is this Sunday, June 6, at 12:30 p.m. in the Fireside Room—be sure to get in the picture!

·         Warmth emanates from this photo of congregants gathering after our 9:30 worship service, responding to the news that the Spanish-Speaking Ministries Coordinator position will sunset at the end of December, and overflowing with ideas about how to preserve what matters most and how to improve what needs enhancement in our congregational life.

·         This next picture captures our Small Group Ministry groups and their leaders, walking with each other through all that life brings. A companion photo holds the loving arms and hands of our Pastoral Care team, along with all who have been touched by them this year.

·         Whoa—here’s the labyrinth filled to overflowing with children and youth! This single photo sums up the energy of the Youth Con we hosted this May; the hope and courage that Our Amazing Youth continually inspire; and the fun of the stories we have shared in worship this year.

·         Here are the Worship Associates, actually growing taller in stature as their worship leadership blooms—and here is a larger circle surrounding them, expanding way beyond the borders of the picture. This circle represents all of us who come to worship; all the folks who have filled out worship surveys or offered worship themes; all the folks who feel the beating heart of our community in the shared experiences of worship.

·         “

·         And here is one more picture, tinted with the future: It’s all of us, at a party! Oh, yes, we have differences of opinions, we have engaged in passionate debate, yet here we are, staying at the table together. We have built into the coming year new ways to deepen our fellowship; we have established healthier means of communication and opened clear pathways for feedback and the continued growth of ministers, staff, lay leaders, and members; and we have grounded ourselves in a renewed sense of our mission and identity as a spiritual community. At this party, the conversations are flowing, the laughter rising. There are tears, too, for life will continue to break our hearts as well as bring us its gifts. But the beautiful diverse faces in this photo shine with comfort, joy, and transformation. THIS is FUCSJ.

With my love, warmth—and more than a little fun,

[*] Mr. Clean Jeans’ Pony is the anagram for my full name devised for one of the games at our end-of-year party on May 23. When this anagram was announced, I replied, “I want one!” 

At our recent buck-a-book sale, I picked up a wonderful book of essays titled “Hard Blessings: Doing the Work of Love,” by Unitarian Universalist minister Tom Owen-Towle.[1] Owen-Towle tells this story:

            Not too long ago, a Methodist bishop in a Midwestern state received a letter from a rural congregation under his care. These good folks were worried that their church was being taken over by a new group of people—new members of the church whose worship style was very different from that of the long-timers. For instance: the new members had brought in a load of hay, spread it across the sanctuary floor, and then begun to roll in it “in fits of ecstasy.”

“Bishop,” the long-time congregants wrote, “we need you to tell these new people they don’t belong in our church. Please kick them out!”

            The bishop wrote back: “All I want to know is this: When they get up from rolling around on the floor, are they better partners? Are they better parents? Are they better citizens? If they are, let me know, and I’ll send a bale of hay to every Methodist congregation in the county!”

            Now, I confess: the mere thought of hay spread over (and then ground into) the beautiful labyrinth-inscribed carpet at the center of our sanctuary is almost enough to make me break out in hives. And I can hear our Building Committee hollering already!

            But … I also believe that Methodist bishop has got it right. We need to ask ourselves: What are the effects of all that we experience together at the First Unitarian Church of San José? When we get up from our worship services and committee meetings, our Small-Group Ministry sessions and Social Hour, our Lifespan Faith Development classes and our social-justice actions, are we better partners, better parents, better citizens?

I hope so. I believe so. But the question always bears asking. And it leads to these questions, too: Could other styles of worship, other classes, other actions and activities help us to live our faith and our love more fully? Or maybe, do we need fewer choices but more openness to the power of the experiences we already share?

In our worship services on Sunday mornings in May, we will deepen our experience of the interdependent web of all existence, and we’ll ponder our human place in it. We will experience a more embodied style of worship through our singing and movement; we will take up the strands of earth-centered traditions and paganism that are woven into our faith; we will celebrate the more-than-human parts of this great web. Will we come away better partners, better parents, better citizens—better lovers and friends? We hope so. We believe so. With your open hearts, minds, and spirits, we will travel together into the center of our web. May there be plenty of hay, metaphorically at least! May there be both ecstasy and grounded truth, and the transforming power of love!

Yours in the spirit,                 

[1] Adapted from Tom Owen-Towle, Hard Blessings: Doing the Work of Love (Carmel, Calif.: SunInk Publications, 1999).

Don’t worry about saving these songs!

And if one of our instruments breaks,

it doesn’t matter.

We have fallen into the place

where everything is music….

So the candle flickers and goes out.

We have a piece of flint, and a spark….

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge

of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive

from a slow and powerful root

that we can’t see.

“We have a piece of flint, and a spark!” the Sufi poet Rumi cries.[1] We can touch a deep source—in ourselves, in this world, in Life—from which the creative spirit in each and every one of us is longing to spring forth. We are all artists, even if we never dreamed to call ourselves that, for we are all taking part in a great creation, and we have everything we need to help make this world more beautiful. Don’t worry about the details and the logistics, the poet says; once we release into this place “where everything is music,” then “even if the whole world’s harp should burn up, there will still be hidden instruments playing.”

            How do we live so that we hear this “music” and help to make it more often? What spiritual practices will put us in touch with this deep source of joy and creativity? I talk a lot about how we can make “life-giving choices,” rather than life-suppressing ones, in our daily lives. Life-giving words and deeds, thoughts and actions, bring us closer to the fullness of life—“the terrifying greatness of life,” as A. Powell Davies put it—rather than separating us from our best selves, from each other, from the earth itself. Some of us may produce poetry or music or paintings with these life-giving choices, but we don’t have to produce actual “art” in order to add to the fullness of life. We just need to be in touch with that creative source that resides in each of us, and let it flow.

            In order to touch that source, we need air and breath, relaxation and laughter, the wisdom and guidance of the life-giving artists who have gone before us, and hearty companions who will find the humor and the beauty in all of life’s raw material. All that is exactly what we will be discovering in our Sunday worship services in April!

“Stop the words now” is how Rumi ends his poem. “Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out.” So come, “open the window in the center of your chest” with us this April, and sense our spirits fly!

With love,          

[1] Jelaluddin Rumi, “Where Everything Is Music,” in The Essential Rumi, trans. by Coleman Barks, with John Moyne, A. J. Arberry, and Reynold Nicholson (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995).

“Easter, Passover, Spring equinox—festivals of liberation, new life, and new hope,” the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry reminds us (you can read more at http://www.uulmca.org/main.html#40days). To honor this season of liberation and hope, the UULM invites us to make “40 calls in 40 days” to our government representatives, urging them to pass health care reform. Opponents to health care reform are surely keeping up the pressure to defeat even the most modest of bills; the UULM asks that we be equally persistent in our commitment to creating a more just and accessible system of care. “Forty calls in forty days”—even if we start late in the Lenten season, this is a beautiful and potentially effective spiritual practice. You will find the phone numbers for our

But this spiritual practice is larger and more far-reaching even than health care reform. Here is the line from the UULM that caught my mind and heart: “Some folks give up chocolate for Lent. We recommend that we give up despair.” The spiritual practice of giving up despair … How can we make such a practice our way of life? Let’s puzzle this out together:

Just what is despair? In French and Spanish—désespoir; desesperación—the roots of the word are crystal clear: it means literally the loss of hope. Many of us have experienced moments, or more, of despair in our lives. When I think about my own moments of despair, I can see how fear—fear about the future—almost always plays a major role in that “loss of hope.” Sadness spirals into despair when we fear that the current bleak situation, whatever it may be, will never ever change.

And yet … the one thing we are guaranteed in life is that everything does change. Despair is a kind of misconception, then—a projection that the future will feel as difficult as the present does. And of course, the very best way to ensure that this projection does not come to pass is to get engaged in creating that future. As the UULM’s “40 calls in 40 days” illustrates, we can take action to help move the change—which will come, with or without us—in the direction that we desire! “Action is the antidote to fear” is one of my favorite aphorisms, because I have experienced its truth in my bones.

So when despair shrouds our hearts—whether such despair is prompted by discouragement with the workings of

Our Sunday worship services in March, with the theme “Aspects of the Holy—the Depth and Breadth of Life,” will dance with the questions I’ve explored here. Please join us as we try out many languages for naming our surest sources of hope.

My friends, let’s never “give up”; let’s give up despair instead!

With warmth and hope,

Nancy

Every month our PACT (People Acting in Community Together) organizer Karen Belote and I set aside an hour to check in: What is most alive for us at that moment about our twin passions for justice and for this congregation? At our most recent one-to-one, Karen said, “You know, we’ve been working together for a few years now, yet I’ve never asked you about your passion for antiracism. I know it is really important to you, but … why? What’s the story behind this part of your call to ministry?”

            My answer to this question usually begins with stories from my growing up in Texas. Some of you have heard about how I didn’t get to go roller skating with my friend Everett –because he is African American and I am white—when we were only eight. That moment of loss pierced my heart; it made racism something personal and direct. There were other losses, too: broken bridges between Latina and European-American girls in junior high school; walls built up between family members and beloved employees. But it wasn’t just the ever-present racial prejudice and ethnocentrism that hurt, piercing peoples of color around me with a “thousand tiny [and not-so-tiny] cuts” and costing everyone our wholeness. It was also the systemic racism that was soul-killing, keeping the divisions and injustices intact from generation to generation, denying access and opportunity to some and giving unearned advantages to others, like me.

            Yet my passion for the work of understanding and undoing racism in myself and in the world—and my call to the ministry of helping to build multiracial, multicultural, antioppressive communities—are not rooted solely in the wounds of my past, nor are they driven by guilt or shame, although I have had to wrestle with these emotions too. My passion and my call now spring from fresh and ever-renewing sources. They rise up out of life-giving and joyful relationships that bridge those old forbidden boundaries and that have bloomed ever since I began to engage in the work of antiracism. These relationships make multiracial, multicultural community something personal and direct. My passion and my call are fed by ever-increasing experiences of communities that are learning how to celebrate and enhance our diversities, even while dealing with the challenges, confusions, and conflicts that arise when we invite differences to speak out loud. Communities like ours here at FUCSJ. Communities I’m honored to be part of throughout our Unitarian Universalist movement. Communities I’m coming to know here in San José. Communities available to all of us—and that we can help create.

            In short, I am committed to the work of antiracism, multiculturalism, and antioppression because it makes me more alive and more whole. It lifts me up, it turns me on, it gives me hope, it grows my soul. It’s personal and direct.

            Through worship this February, we’ll be experiencing ways to grow our souls, ways to discover more life and more hope, as we look at how we can dismantle divisions and celebrate diversities—both inside our own being and out in the wider world. How are we becoming a “People So Bold”?[1] I can’t wait to dive deeper into our learning and growing together!

With gratitude for your calling me

to be all that I am

and to bring to this work all that I have,

Nancy

[1] This phrase is drawn from a new book, titled A People So Bold: Theology and Ministry for Unitarian Universalists, ed. John Gibb Millspaugh (Boston: Skinner House, 2010).

“Hope is my philosophy, just needs days in which to be. Love of life means hope for me, borne on a new day.” These lyrics, from the song “You Are the New Day” by Airwaves, underscore a common theme that runs through all the spiritual practices that I know. Whether our spiritual practice involves meditation or yoga, running or reading, singing or simply sitting, these daily or weekly practices promise to reconnect us with what we hold of highest worth, with our spiritual center or source. Through that recentering, we tap into a deep well of hope and compassion for ourselves and others. In the Present of such centering, we experience each new day as a gift; we recognize where we have choice about how to spend this new day, as well as where our choices may be limited but are present nonetheless. “Love of life means hope for me, borne on a new day.”

            Ah, I had my hands poised to type my wish that this New Year will bring you just such recentering, with its renewed hope, compassion, and empowered choice. But my fingers paused on the keyboard with this thought: We so often wish for what the New Year may “bring” to us. Yet such passivity doesn’t square with our Unitarian Universalist faith. We believe that it’s up to us to help make ourselves, each other, and this world a better place. So this year, let us focus on what we will bring to the New Year!

            Here at the First Unitarian Church, we have much to offer each other in 2010: Through this winter’s Listening Campaign, we will offer the gift of deep listening; in the process we will build relationships and establish a renewed and strengthened foundation for our social justice work. With a much-anticipated (and still in the planning) Music Summit, we will look at how to enrich our music program for years to come. With each Monthly Worship Theme, we will nurture our spirits and discover new ways to help heal the world. With community events like the Service Auction (on January 9) and the PACT Tea (on January 30), we will enrich our friendships and our coffers so that we may continue to deepen and expand our shared ministries. Throughout it all, we will work and play, laugh and cry together, making meaning of the breadth and depth of our lives.

            I am excited about a new resource for such meaning-making that we will be sharing at the Pacific Central District’s New Century Summit on January 29 and 30. We will take a team of congregational leaders and leaders-in-the-making to this summit, to take place at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley. You can find out more about it at this web address: http://www.pcd-uua.org/currents/summit.htm. Please take a look, and if it calls to you, please contact Program Officer Tamara Payne-Alex, tpaynealex@gmail.com ASAP to join our team. If we take six or more people (and we surely will), the cost is $50 per person—and my experience at the “preview” of the summit promises that it will be worth every penny.

With a love of life that is borne on the new day, and with gratitude for what we will bring to this New Year together, I send you my love and warmest wishes! Welcome to 2010!

Nancy

At some point in a worship service during this month of December, hundreds of Unitarian and Universalist congregations, all around the world and in many languages, will share a common reading as part of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists’ Global Chalice Lighting Project.[1] Just imagine: from Norway to South Africa, from New Zealand to Japan, in India and Indonesia, Pakistan and Poland, the Philippines and Finland, Burundi and Brazil, Canada and the Congo, the United Kingdom and the United States, people who share our multifaceted faith will be pondering the same words at just about the same time.

Here at FUCSJ, we are just now catching the crest of this wave. Looking back, I see that November’s words came from Canada, joyfully welcoming “visitor, friend, or long-time member, believer or doubter, joiner or loner, full of energy or plain tired, seeking a vision or a rest. You are welcome to join us as you are.”[2] The spirit of radical inclusion is universal in our faith, as this shared reading captures. Welcome home, everyone!

This month’s Global Chalice Lighting reading is a bit more somber, perhaps honoring the “dying of the sun” with the solstice or the “dying” of the year. But they are good words for describing why we come together in community at any time of year. Submitted by our own Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, the words are by the Rev. Dr. Forrest Church. Imagine them echoing around the world, from congregation to congregation: “Knowing we must die, we question what life means. Final answers may elude us, but by living the questions, we create and discover meaning where we can.”

I think these words offer a good introduction to this month’s worship theme at FUCSJ: “What Can Jesus Teach Us UUs?” “Final answers may elude us” as we ask the question in this theme, but this month we will “live the questions” and discover meaning in new places. What will we discover from wrestling with and relishing Jesus’ central teachings? When we strip away centuries of interpretation of these teachings, when we quiet the external voices that claim to tell us about Jesus and listen instead to our own internal wisdom, what surprises might we find? What can Jesus teach us about love? About radical inclusion? About the problems and the possibilities of being “in a body”? About the relationship between power and wholeness, between healing and community? About ways of relating to others that can create “heaven on earth”? How will this holiday season grow richer when we live these questions?

Join us for this month’s explorations and meditations, for its stories, songs, simple pleasures, and sudden intuitions. “Visitor, friend, or long-time member, believer or doubter, joiner or loner, full of energy or plain tired, seeking a vision or a rest”—you are welcome here, just as you are. Welcome home!

With warmth and hope for a holiday season rich in meaning making,

Nancy 

[1]You can read more about the ICUU and see a map of all the member groups, emerging groups, and associates at www.icuu.net. To find the Global Chalice Lighting readings, just click on “Resources.”

[2] Phrases extracted from the full welcome by Rev. Ray Drennan, Canadian Unitarian Council, available at http://www.icuu.net/resources/chalice_archives/GCL%2011-09.pdf.

In the last edition of the newsletter, I began to ponder this month’s theme of “Simplicity.” My blog, http://www.sanjoseuu.org/revnpjblog/, holds both the poem and the essay that I offered then; look for “Simplicity: The Complex Task of Living a Balanced Life.” Will you walk with me now as we continue this journey?

Here is what we have been exploring: What happens when we develop the spiritual practice of sitting still—sitting still long enough and often enough to begin to notice how we are spending our resources? Not just our money resources but also the resources of our thoughts, emotions, time, and physicality—our energy. How are we spending each of these resources each day? Each week? How we are replenishing them each day? Each week?

Are we living within our means? Are we living a sustainably? Are we replenishing our resources at a “richer” rate than we are spending them? Do our thoughts, for example, bring us more energy, more insight, more joy or depth—or do they deplete us? We have a choice about how we “spend” our thoughts. And what resources have we discovered for replenishing our thoughts? A well-written book; a piece of art; a loving conversation; active engagement for the good of others; the practice of centering meditation when we take a break from “thinking”? Our thoughts are a resource that can be spent wisely or poorly, and that need replenishing. Isn’t this a mind-boggling idea?

The same is true of our feelings: On which feelings do we dwell; which ones do we encourage? How do we “replenish” our feelings?

So, too, with our time: Which uses of our time bring us closer to our authentic self? Which ways do we spend our time that distance us from what we value most? How do we replenish a sense of spaciousness in the time we are given each day?

And which uses of our body, of our physical energies, actually give us more energy? Which uses deplete us? How are we restoring these energies?

Earlier this month, I chose to spend part of my time cleaning out my e-mail in-box. My in-box was like a room in the house where we toss all our clutter until finally we dread opening the door. There are valuable treasures in that room—we know there are—so we can’t just haul everything away. Just so, my e-mail in-box was stacked high with messages that were no longer “new” but that I couldn’t simply delete. Most of them had been skimmed and responded to, but some of them had arrived on days when I couldn’t even get into that room; they were still bright bold, “unread.” Some of those e-mails were being temporarily stored, waiting to be filed—except that “temporarily” had now stretched into months. Many messages needed to be deleted, but I had never formed the habit of getting rid of them right away. My in-box once again held thousands of e-mails.

So, for several hours a day over the course of several days, I entered into a Zen-like mode of selecting, deleting, responding, and filing. My energy rose as the numbers fell. The old messages reminded me of some beautiful ways I had spent my resources in the past year—events and experiences shared with you or with our wider movement that were treasures, but that I had almost forgotten because I had allowed less important preoccupations to pile on top. I discovered a few messages from old friends who were still waiting for a response, and I reached out to restore those lifelines. I saw how busy we are here at FUCSJ—too busy and sometimes swamped by petty concerns—but I also saw the power for good that we have when we let our mission guide us. I wondered in which ways we most want to spend our resources so that our deepest values and highest purpose can be sustained. And I began to free up my own resources so that I could be responsive to what matters most.

This spiritual practice was time well spent. Already I have new and tender habits for how I manage this aspect of my life.

How about you? What steps have you taken on this journey toward a balanced and sustainable life?

With love and encouragement,