Skip to main content

This Intentional Village

There was a time, not so long ago, when joining a church was the expected thing. That’s what happened with my parents. It was the 50s, and my older sister came home from her New Orleans public elementary school and wanted to know when was she going to start confirmation class? My dad had heard this Unitarian preacher on the radio – A. Powell Davies – offering to debate fundamentalists. So Dad called up the local Unitarian church and they started going there. Going to church. It was what you did.

It is a completely different world now. Especially if you’re under the age of 50, the expectation is that you don’t go to church. Why would you? You can get any information you want from the internet, your social needs can be met through your co-workers or friends.

And yet …

Every week, I see a village at work. No, not every week. Every day, because life doesn’t just happen on Sunday and the relationships aren’t limited to once a week. People come in, and realize they’ve found their tribe. They make friends with smaller circles within the church, friends who meet during the week to play games, do the work involved in keeping this little village running, talk and go deeper with their own growth. I see them taking care of each other. Loving each other through casseroles, babysitting, help with moving.

It’s not a perfect village. I’m not sure those exist, and if they did, I’m quite sure I wouldn’t qualify for membership. There’s never quite enough money, or workers, or time. We don’t get along harmoniously. We chafe at change. We disappoint each other.

And maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be, in this great, old-fashioned, social experiment. We have rough edges, but somehow in our clumsy bumping around, we smooth some of them down. We learn how to say what we need. We learn how to apologize. We learn how to be who we are, and at the same time, allow others to be who they are.

I swear, you could make a Capra movie about this place.  With a little Richard Linklater thrown in.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Me and My Collar

You may run into me on a Friday, in my neighborhood, so it's time I let you know what you might see. When I was doing my required unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), my supervisor suggested that any of us who came from traditions where a clerical collar was an option, take one "collar week," to see how we were treated, as opposed to wearing regular professional clothes. After a couple of days, I joked to the Catholic priest, "How do you manage the power?" In regular clothes, I would walk into a patient's room, and it would take about 5 or so minutes of introductions and pleasantries before we could really get down to talking about their feelings, their fears, the deep stuff. With most people, as soon as that clerical collar walked in the room, with me attached, they began pouring out all the heavy stuff they were carrying. I was riding the bus back and forth every day, and though not quite so dramatic, the collar effect was alive there, to...
10 comments
Read more

Using Your Universal Theological Translator

For years, many UUs have talked about something found on Star Trek, that is a useful metaphor for us. See, in the Star Trek universe, there is a device available called a "Universal Translator." With it, you can land on any planet and because of the device you can understand the natives, and the natives of the planet can understand you. Handy! Not everyone has that device. But you, as a UU,  do. By virtue of being a Unitarian Universalist, you have the universal theological translator. You are equipped with the openness to ask questions, and the commitment to religious pluralism to swap some of their language for words that make more sense to you. When they say, Allah , or God , your brain subs in “Spirit of Life.” And each one of us has our own translator. Maybe yours subs in Goddess , or Universe ; when they talk about Jesus saving them, you can hear the underlying message of someone feeling adrift and alone, but finding a bigger message to believe in. It is a g...
Post a Comment
Read more

Beloved Community: The Now and Not Yet

Rev. Christine Robinson has a great little post up about the phrase "beloved community" and why it's problematic to use that to describe a church. Like her mom, I can get cranky about the whole thing, but my crankiness lies in the misuse of what is, to me, such a breathtaking and profound concept. Martin Luther King, Jr., someone whose words I study in great detail, is the one we often think of as originating the term, but he learned about it through the writings of Josiah Royce. Josiah Royce (right) with close friend William James.  Royce was a philosopher, studying Kant, Hegel. I imagine he would have enjoyed Koestler's theory of the holon , because he saw humanity as being both individuals and part of a greater "organism" that was community. As King's belief about Beloved Community would be rooted in agape , Royce's philosophy stemmed from what he called loyalty, and by that he meant, "the practically devoted love of an individual f...
6 comments
Read more