Miso and Memory

A few years ago one of my tentative food adventures was miso soup. Not from scratch. Not in a restaurant. Annie Chun's in an eco-bowl in the makeshift kitchen at work.

I'm not sure what I expected from that cautious venture, but it certainly wasn't a trip down memory lane.

There was a hint when boiling water hit seasoning paste, smeared over noodles. And when I removed the lid three minutes later.

But when the first mouthful hit my taste buds and my olfactory nerve, I was suddenly in a very different place. Fermented rice and soy became fresh-baked white bread and sweet Manischewitz communion wine, in the upper room that was church for me when I was twelve years old.

With taste and smell came feelings, deep and overwhelming, seductive and terrifying.

I made miso soup from scratch tonight for the first time. The fermented broth still tastes sacred to me, to this non-theistic, religious, humanistic naturalist. And it is. It all is. Then, and now, and for as many tomorrows as come my way.

Tend Yourself

Tend yourself
as you would
a garden.

Till the soil.
Pull out the rocks
and save them for later.
Rocks make nice
edges.

Buy good seeds.
Plant them
at the right depth,
with the proper amount
of space between them.

Hope for rain or
fill your watering can.

Trust our sustaining
sun.

Wait for green life, and later
harvest.

Lessons in Generosity

I am so glad, at this point in my life, to have a kindergarten teacher as one of my closest friends. We have been friends for several years, but only recently have I realized that the lessons she teaches the little ones in her classroom are lessons that she also passes on to me.

I've never read Robert Fulghum's All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. I suspect that I have turned up my over-educated nose at its mass appeal. I, certainly, had left kindergarten in the dust long ago.

But as I've listened to my friend talk about the skills she teaches her students, I've come to understand that somehow I missed some of those kindergarten skills.

So I've begun remedial kindergarten lessons. So far, I've been learning about sharing. My friend showed up at my house, time and again, with gifts in hand. A book. Dinner, ready to be reheated and enjoyed. On my birthday, arms full of flowers.

At first I didn't know how to react. But as the barrage of generosity kept coming, I began to learn the rhythms of friendship, of free gifts and heart-felt thank-you's. I started to keep a corner of my mind open to possible gifts I could give, not only to this friend, but to others as well. She has started a domino cascade of gift-sharing among our circle of friends, and it feels great.

I can't wait to see what other lessons this friendship has in store.

It Was Evening

It was evening
when I walked through the door
marked "2."

Shutting behind me, the door whispered,
"You shall have no other..."

I shrugged off my coat,
dropped my bags,
collapsed onto the bed,
into the darkness.

When I awakened all around me was
green and light
and being--
apple trees and
bicycles and
music.

I walked further in and
the cyclist fell and the
bees collapsed
but the bright ooze
of blood and the absence
of polination were discordant pieces of
greater harmony.

And the open spaces
whispered, "There is nothing
but what is."

And it was enough.

Merry-Go-Round, One Year Later

Another year has come full circle, and I am farther along on the path toward UU ministry. I read the above post, and think about it differently now, more gently.

Yes, the path is not a straight shot, but every wandering loop is a chance to scoop up great armfuls of experience. Those who march in lock-step miss out when they wear blinders to every interesting option to the left or right.

I've learned a lot in the last year, followed passions I might not otherwise have had time for. Did some grass-roots organizing about legislation permitting the sale of raw milk here in Alaska. Read and read and read about food and farm issues. Got swept up in the incredible political drama of this year's presidential election. Volunteered. Gave money. Went to rallies. Brought salad to campaign workers who were eating nothing but pizza.

I found myself gradually becoming more involved in the Anchorage fellowship. I took more leadership in our small group, becoming the person who reminded folks when we were meeting and what we were talking about. I preached several times at the fellowship. I was asked to be on the Committee on Ministry...and now find myself chairing the committee.

I invited three other UU friends to join me in supporting a local CSA. And every Tuesday throughout this past summer the four of us met on my front deck to divide up two shares worth of local vegetables. Built some good community.

I learned how to use Facebook, and re-connected with family members, and friends from high school, college and seminary.

Do I wish I were further along? Yes. Do I wish I was being paid to do what I love? Yes, absolutely yes. Have I learned a lot? Yes.

It's all true. Every last messy, curvy bit of it.

Vocational Merry-Go-Round

Vocation is simple, if you just stay on track.

Graduate from high school and go immediately to college. When college graduation looms, apply for jobs or to graduate schools, while you are surrounded by peers and mentors who can help you figure out what's next.

Stay in the chute, and your forward motion will propel you into a job, maybe even a career. Most importantly, you will have health insurance.

Do not, under any circumstances, question any choice you have already made. Do not stop to reconsider your vocation. And by all means, do not acknowledge any personal qualities that may disqualify you from being what you have chosen to become.

Because if you do, the straightforward trajectory that has given your life structure will become a spiral, and its centrifugal force will spew you out, and you will find yourself sitting on your ass watching the merry-go-round, well, go round.

It will take a while to recouperate, to find the strength to drag yourself to your feet. You'll spend a lot of time watching the horses dance on past, searching for the courage to leap forward onto the moving carousel. Enthusiasm and courage will ebb and flow within you, almost never at the same time. Just when you are ready to leap--when you really, really want to---your courage will fail you.

That's when it helps to stop imagining your leap as graceful and triumphant. You have to be willing to scrape your shins on the edge of the carousel, to land face-down under the galloping hooves. It's the only way to get back on the ride.

Bathing in Sin

Yesterday while waiting for Costco to open I was half-listening to NPR's Morning Edition. The personal finances "expert" was talking about saving money and conserving energy in the winter. The host asked which used less hot water, a bath or shower (a shower), then followed up with a suggestion that perhaps baths could be shared. The finances guru giggled, admitted that she had done so, then said, "But I'm married!"

There you have it--just one more way "civil unions" are separate and unequal. "But I'm civil-unioned!" lacks the linguistic authority to absolve those who cannot marry from the grievous sin of bath-sharing.

Lapsed Unitarian

I had to laugh at Philocrites word choice about the status of this blog--lapsed. Ah, even among Unitarians there's enough residual guilt that one can be a "lapsed Unitarian."

Actually, I've been pleasantly surprised that, no matter how much guilt I heap upon myself, the UUs here in Anchorage have been very gracious about my comings and goings. As Fran, the minister, says, "You get out of it what you put into it."

I'm hoping to get back to blogging, but will try to emulate my fellow AK UUs and not guilt myself if (when) I once again lapse.

Question for UU Xns

From what I've heard/read, a lot of UU bloggers are UU Christians. A question for those of you who are: why do you affiliate with the UUA rather than the UCC?

I'm asking because I'm curious about your decision-making processes, and don't mean to imply any judgement.

UU Adult Spiritual Formation?

Question for the more veteran UUs out there. Is there any common ground of spiritual practice among UUs?

Here's why I'm asking.

Reason 1: One of my Christian colleagues (whose parents are UU, I believe), talks about UUs as dabblers who don't exhibit a whole lot of spiritual maturity (same could be said of many, many Xns, I know). And his comments are not unusual--isn't there a joke that a UU evangelist knocks on your door & doesn't know why?

Reason 2: The real reason. I'm fascinated by human development and transformation. I do more than my fair share of navel-gazing, I admit, but my interest is a sincere concern for becoming an ever more interesting, compassionate, intelligent, life-loving person (and helping others engage in their own process of becoming).

So, do UUs share common practices for "becoming"? Or is everyone eclectic, creating a complex Venn diagram of occasionally overlapping circles? Is this question what pushes people into UU special interest groups (the Xns, the Pagans, the Buddhists, etc.)?

Sorry for the run-ons--in my quest to conquer insomnia I've discovered melatonin!

Better Old than Orange

In honor of my upcoming 35th birthday, I decided to color my hair (to cover the sprinkling of gray). Faced with two color choices, I asked the stylist, "Which one would be more fun?" Bad move. The "touch" of copper she suggested left my hair the color of a copper kettle (a new one, not one turned green with age, thankfully). It's a shock every time I catch a glimpse of myself in the apartment's omnipresent mirrors. Feels like I'm wearing someone else's hair--hair that doesn't match my skin tone. Now that I think of it, maybe that's where the aged-copper green went--to my face!

Winter is Worse in MI

We just returned to sunny Los Anchorage from an extended holiday trip to Michigan, where we were asked many, many times, "How dark is it in Alaska? Don't you get depressed?"

The answer is, no contest, that Michigan winters are far more depressing than Alaska ones. We were in Michigan for 17 days--and saw the sun exactly twice (and those times were brief). Other than those short burst of blue sky and sunlight, the skies were oppressively overcast, as a heavy gray-white blanket of clouds hung constantly over our heads. It was very, very depressing.

There was more light (longer days, sun more directly overhead) but the longer days made us exhausted. Go figure.

I think I'm concluding that most of what I imagined about living in Alaska was backwards. I do love a place that surprises me!

Lessons Learned

When I was a first-year college student, I enrolled in "Intro to Biblical Hebrew" at Drew's seminary. It was a last-minute thing, a choice made because the class I really wanted (now long-forgotten) was full. I was the lone undergraduate, and very intimidated. I almost dropped the class.

But then I learned a very valuable lesson. Once I stopped trying to make Hebrew "just like English," things got easier. And once I started laughing at (or with?) this quirky language where everything was "backwards," it all started to make a perverse kind of sense.

When I arrived at Princeton five years later, once again I had to take Biblical Hebrew. "It's not like English," I told my classmates. "Remember to laugh!"

It helped that the prof was the very funny Choon-Leong Seow, who told us that his students are recognized everywhere they go, because they speak Biblical Hebrew with a Chinese accent.

I've decided that Alaska in the winter is a lot like Biblical Hebrew. Once you accept that it's not like the lower 48, you're much better off. And if you can laugh at the fact that it's still dark out way past mid-morning, and dusk by about 3 p.m., you're on your way to being a bona-fide Sourdough. (I've been told, however, that there are residency requirements for that moniker, much like the ones for the Permanant Fund Dividend).

The Rewards of Lonely Exile

Most of the time when I attend the AUUF I am moved to tears at least once during the service. Today it was three or four times.

When I served as a minister in the PC(USA) there was distance between the congregation and its ministers. The most powerful symbol of this distance was the fact that ministers are members, not of the congregation, but of the presbytery (like a UU district).

Even so, I was part of a community. There were Wednesday night dinners, conversations over cookies after Sunday services, Monday night Bible studies, Saturday night volleyball at the Y (we always lost).

But then came exile. Partly self-imposed. Mostly because I could no longer be my true self within the Presbyterian system.

Exile, in my case, has been very productive. For a while now I've known that the desert hast taught me not so much what I believe, as what I do not believe. But today I came to understand a second lesson of exile. It has taught me to value community.

Every time I cry during the AUUF service, it is connected to a deep longing for home.

I hope that this is a lesson that I never forget--particularly if I become a minister within the UUA. I want to remember what it feels like to treasure every face in the gathered congregation, every warm body in my family of choice.

Backwards Progress

It has been strange, coming into this wonderfully progressive group of people (the UUA), only to find them talking about things like "contemporary worship" and "small group ministry" as if they were groundbreaking new concepts. Where I come from, people have been talking about contemporary worship & small groups for a long, long time. Since I'm not real fond anymore of the places I've been, it's kind of uncomfortable finding my new home borrowing from my former places of residence.

Evening All Day

Six months ago in Michigan I thought living through the darkness of an Alaskan winter would be an interesting experiment. In all of the places where I have lived (NJ, OH, MI), I have always loved the Winter Solstice, the turning point of the year, when we celebrate having survived the longest night. I assumed, from the comfort of a light-filled Michigan summer, that winter in Alaska would be the same, but more.

There is a big difference between imagining something and living it.

Most of us are so clock and schedule driven that we forget the little time-cues that bombard us throughout the day. Living here in Alaska has been a sharp reminder of biological rhythms.

The sun rose at 9:58 this morning and set at 3:43 this afternoon. And even when the sky is clear, the angle of the sun is odd, never rising above what would make most people think that it was mid-morning, or late afternoon.

Every day feels like a Saturday when you sleep late, stumble out of bed in whatever clothes you slept in, drink a cup of coffee while you read the paper, slouch around all day, and go to bed at night feeling like you never really got up.

Which explains why it's 12:57 a.m. and I'm blogging.

Good thing we're heading south to sunny MI for a few weeks at the "holidays."

Choosing "We"

The Winter 2005 UUWorld talks about "Our Shared Faith," an excerpt from the COA report, "Engaging Our Theological Diversity." Once again, I find myself saying, "Now this I can live with." (Click the post title for a link to the full article)

Three years of study and conversation have not brought us to a complete consensus about a common core to our faith. Yet we have found much common ground along the way. . . . Respecting the integrity of individual perspective, we offer the following statements as descriptive of who Unitarian Universalists are theologically:

We are a grounded faith.

We are an ecological faith.

We are a profoundly human faith.

We are a responsible faith.

We are an experiential faith.

We are a free faith.

We are an imaginative faith.

We are a relational faith.

We are a covenantal faith.

We are a curious faith.

We are a reasonable faith.

We are a hopeful faith.

We would do well to become a more embodied faith...
a more mindful faith...
more prophetic faith,
a more risk-taking faith.

The Moments of My High Resolve

Keep fresh before me the moments of my High Resolve,

that in good times or in tempests,

I may not forget that to which my life is committed.

--Howard Thurman, UUA Hymnal, Reading #498

This morning I did not want to go to the UU service.

I wanted to stay in bed. Because of the increasingly shorter days, my circadian rhythms have yet to find the beat. I'm tired all day, but when I turn the light out at night, I cannot sleep.

I was afraid to drive. I've totalled three of the four cars that I've ever owned. "Heavenly-minded" people like me shouldn't drive on roads that caused 66 accidents Friday night.

I wasn't really interested in the sermon topic: "The Social Gospel: Liberal Religion in the Nineteenth Century." Good stuff, but not new to someone who's been to seminary.

So when the alarm clock started playing classic rock, I argued with myself for a while before turning over to go back to sleep. What's left of my Protestant work ethic kept reminding me that if I had decided to be a Unitarian minister, shouldn't I get my ass out of bed and into the pews (with a short stop in the shower)? Resistance was futile.

Once safely there, I settled into the back row, nursing a cup of coffee. I looked around me and saw one more reason why I would have wanted to stay home, had I known. There were lots and lots of kids. Great. It was the Sunday where the kids start out in the service upstairs before going to their classes downstairs.

For the record, I have to say that I don't believe in hiding children. I think intergenerational activities should be the norm, not the exception. I just think that Kid Sunday, at AUUF, is a little hard to take. Having 100 kids enrolled in RE in a building that size is a mixed blessing, to say the least. But then again, mixed blessings are part of what I'm trying to talk about in this post anyway.

But I digress. Back to the point at hand.

I decided to light a candle of joy and concern. I had never done that before, feeling that it was an act of fuller participation than I was ready for. But today, with my newfound clarity, it was time to express myself. It was time to light a candle for the joy of the inner call and the concern of the yet unseen outer confirmation.

My heart skipping more quickly than usually, I made my way up the side aisle, following a few other brave souls. My hands were clumsy as I lit the candle, almost burning myself. Then Fran, the minister, leaned forward and whispered to me, "Shoelace alert." "Thank you, I said," carefully heading back to my seat to re-tie my bootlaces.

A few minutes later Fran introduced a period of silent meditation with the above words from Howard Thurman. And all of this was what the sermon was for me today. Sleepless nights, icy roads, rowdy children, untied shoelaces--and High Resolve. The mixed blessings of our sacred, ordinary lives.

Vocational Clarity--For Now

When we moved here to Anchorage this past August, one of the things we had to get used to was the Weather Channel forcast. We learned that seven days of rain didn't mean that we would never see the sun. Instead, on almost every day there would be, at least for a moment, somewhere, a patch of blue sky.

In terms of vocation, right now I feel like I am standing under one of those patches of blue sky.

I've been dabbling with the idea of applying to UAA's new joint PhD program with UAF in Clinical/Community Psychology. Very cool program. Emphasis on rural and indigenous psychology, especially in Alaska. Fun sounding courses like "Native Ways of Knowing."

But in this recent clarity I am remembering that I am a minister. For better or for worse, I love talking to and with people about faith and meaning and why in the world we should get out of bed in the morning. I love creating spaces where conversations like these can take place. I love the poetry and storytelling of preaching--and the passion. I love rituals new and old, the enacted pictures that point beyond ourselves and into the more we long for.

So this is the practical aspect of this clarity. I will find a job that helps pay the bills, one that doesn't kill my spirit, and that keeps the Anchorage apartment version of cabin fever from doing me in. And I will start the process of transferring my credentials to the UUA.

The ordination process in the PC(USA) was a series of hoops I impatiently jumped through. What do you expect? I was a young thing (and still am I suppose, just slightly older).

This time it feels different. Sure, I'll still get impatient with the process. But I do really want it to be a discernment process. I don't want to commit--and then find out, once again, that this is not the place or vocation for me.

God and Shoes

Can you imagine trying to convince all the world's English-speakers that the word "shoe" does not mean "a durable covering for the human foot, made of leather or similar material with a rigid sole and heel, usually extending no higher than the ankle" (thank you, Dictionary.com).

Sure, there are other definitions for the word, but with most people, if you say the word "shoe," they immediately see a hiking boot, a spiked-heel, a sneaker, etc. Variations within the concept, but pretty much the same thing.

Here's my problem. Say the word "God," and despite all my theological training and my extended time in exile from Christianity, I still see some variation of the Old Man in the Sky. I suspect that this is true for most people, but I'm willing to hear otherwise. I do know that I'm an off-the-charts visual thinker, so the problem may be less severe for people without the mental movie playing constantly.

For me, the word "God" is hopelessly corrupted, as are all words related to it. And replacement language has not yet been invented. This is a very frustrating situation. Try being someone who likes to talk about faith and meaning--without using the word "theological."

From the little I know about the development of language, its pace is more turtle than hare. There are some words that still work for me: faith, belief, sacred, holy, mystery, etc. I piece them together, trying to describe this place I've come to where there is nothing that is not holy. And perhaps in doing so I help the turtle to keep moving forward.