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.