Across the Causeway!

My adventures in New Orleans continue!



Today my friend Robert took me across the Causeway, to Abita Springs and to a Fontainebleau State Park. ( http://www.crt.state.la.us/parks/iFontaine.aspx )

This morning I headed over to Robert's house, and we jumped in his truck and went across the Causeway... 24 mi. to Mandeville, LA. We stopped at the visitors center and picked up several fliers, including a wonderful one showing the history of Abita Springs.

So we headed to lunch at the brewpub in Abita Springs, a few miles inland.
( http://www.abitabrewpub.com/AboutUs.html )

I had a muffaletta, and a sampler of the Abita beers... most of them are very good... the amber is so-so, but the wheat was very good. The sandwich was good too, but if I recall correctly, the one I'd had in the French Quarter was better.

Then we went searching for a Venus Flytrap Park listed on the brochure... but couldn't find it... so we settled for going to the State Park on the lake.



The park was one of Mandeville's estates. This is the old sugar mill... or what is left of Mandeville's mill.

The ranger said the mill was in operation until 1860... but there are no known photos of it when it was in operation.

It's a nice park. In the Visitors Center we saw a man making arrowheads from flint. He was delighting a 10 year old boy and his mother, and making a very intricate head-- flaking bits of flint off of it as he talked.

While we were in the Visitors Center, a thunderstorm passed.

After it cleared we headed for the marsh path...






and finally, the beach:



32 oz big-gulps in our hands, we headed for home. The Dr. Pepper ran out before the causeway did.

Arrival in New Orleans.

I arrived in Louisiana yesterday. I drove down from Springville, a town north of Birmingham, Alabama, where I was visiting a friend's farm. And while Sunday night was filled with farm food and a silly comedy video "Role Models," Monday was a day filled with 75 MPH highway.

Interstate 59 comes out of Chattanooga, TN, on the southern end of the Great Smokey Mountains. It runs between the Tennessee River and Lookout Mountain, following the mountain through Georgia and into Alabama, then goes down a valley between long rolling hills down to Birmingham. After Birmingham, it begins to flatten out... and once I entered Mississippi, the high points in the road tended to be bridges over creeks and floodplains.

Mississippi was not entirely routine driving. The skies were no longer clear, though the air wasn't much cooler than the weekend. At one point the sky ahead looked especially opaque... indeed, the road seemed to vanish. It was a Mississippi downpour. The road was completely dry at one place, then three seconds later it was a complete deluge. I hydroplaned briefly and coasted down to 40 MPH, windshield wipers going full blast. And then, after perhaps twenty seconds of travel, the rain had stopped and the road was dry-- not drying-- dry! This pattern repeated a few times over the next hour, once with a flash of lightning. By now my eyes were crossing from staring through a wet windshield, so I pulled over for pie and coffee. While sitting at the truckstop a big storm came through, with heavy rain and plenty of lightning. Twenty minutes later, after checking some e-mail on their WiFi, it was over and I headed south again.

Coming into Louisiana means crossing the Pearl River, a small stream with a large flood plain. For the next half-hour I was still in the country. The only way I knew it was Louisiana was the large Welcome Center, and a new map for my collection. The Welcome Center personnel were watching Fox News, which was loudly discussing how angry America was with Obama for calling those who silenced debate on health care un-American... or something like that. Every phrase seemed to twist and insinuate. I couldn't get out fast enough... but it told me that yes, I am in The South. And yes, many Americans have opinions not heard in Berkeley, CA!

So I was thinking about that, and the large billboard announcing "RUSH LIMBAUGH HAS A NEW HOME IN LOUISIANA- 99 FM!" as I went across the causeway from Slidel to New Orleans. I caught myself driving too fast a couple of times. I will learn serenity.

The directions I had included a turn-of onto I-610, but I went on to a surface road paralleling the elevated highway just before the interstate, and drove across the neighborhood called Gentilly. I was surprised to see how little had changed from two years ago. The drive-through Daiquiri place looked like it had been cleaned up, but several shopping centers were just fenced off and boarded up. Churches were abandoned. The surface roads have holes, and the concrete squares on the road are not all level. It makes driving somewhat like a video game, with sudden hazards to avoid. Some houses look wonderful, with landscaping and toys on the driveway, while the house next door still has an X on the siding, and boarded up windows. And maybe next to that is an empty slab. The X indicates that the building was searched... in each corner of the X is: Who searched, When, How many Dead, and something else which I can't remember. The houses I saw all had "0" in the How many dead corner, thank goodness.

I drove over to the big city park, and across it to try to find Community Church, in Lakeview neighborhood. This is where my office will be. It is on Fleur de Lis Street-- a boulevard. In happier times it seems to have been two lanes with a wide park-like divider. Now only one lane was passable each way, and you could not safely go more than about 10 MPH. There were broken concrete slabs and holes... and sometimes entire blocks of missing road. You had to divert to the side street to continue. With hundreds of miles of broken roadways, it's clear that Fleur de Lis is not on the top of the list for repair.

The church, or rather, the vacant lot where the church had been, is on a corner lot. Community Church operates out of a converted house next to the vacant lot. I parked in front of it, went up and rang the bell. Inside I met David W. who is a member of the finance committee. I got the quick tour-- the large assembly hall was formerly the dining room, living room and family room, while the minister's office was a former bedroom and the kitchen was a slightly modified kitchen/social hall area. There is a tiny upstairs, with a bathroom and a library. I think my desk will be up there, or maybe I'm in the walk-in closet (now book supply closet) next to that room. It's nice to have my own space... but it will be "modest." Fortunately, it is air conditioned, and well lit. The "Annex" as they call it is a wonderful small church. I can imagine that it gets pretty crowded on Sunday, and it will be good to have more space for meetings, children's classes, etc.

David showed me one wall hanging called the "Tree of Life", done for the original church building. It has all sorts of threads and beads sewn into the fabric, and must have been marvelous, two stories high in the church. CCUU had retrieved it before the church was torn down, and sent it to an art college in Florida to be restored. It now hangs from ceiling to floor, folded to make it fit in the one-story assembly hall. I imagine that when the new building is dedicated, the moving of the tree of life will be an important part of the ceremony.

David also talked about where he lives, which is across the Mississippi, on the western side in Algiers. He says the rents are cheap, and that the bridge isn't too bad for a commute. If I get a place within bicycle distance of the ferry, I'd have easy access to the French Quarter, too! I'll look at the area, I'm not sure it's for me.

I decided to take a trip over to First Church after that. It's a bit of a drive, including a short stretch of freeway. South Carrolton was in better shape than it was two years ago, but still not perfect. The intersection with Napoleon had two huge front end loaders parked on the wide median-- like lions guarding the entrance to the Boulevard! I drove around First Church, then walked around the building. They are renting out the assembly hall to Gymboree, or some similar organization, and signs for that dominated the outside of the building The "First Church Unitarian Universalist" sign seemed unimportant, and the stonework still has the old Evangelical congregation's name on it (in lovely lettering.) I felt a little bit like First Church was just renting space in the building rather than telling the world that they are alive and open for business.

The doors were all locked, so I headed out to the Frostop for a catfish dinner -- where I had enjoyed eating two years ago. A big TV had MSNBC blaring, making digestion impossible. So I downed the fish and got out of there. This time I drove back to the freeway and off to Gentilly to my Bed and Breakfast home. I'm staying in a very nice rebuilt home on a bayou-- an inlet from Lake Pontchartrain-- and have two rooms, one for a study and one with a double bed. It's very comfortable!

The house I am in isn't actually a B&B, but it takes in guests from other Unitarian Universalist churches during Mardi Gras, as a fund raiser for the congregation. The homeowner had gone to Texas during Katrina, and had to have the entire first floor repaired. We talked for an hour about the recovery, her family and the church. Then I excused myself and went to bed.

I am angry about the lack of progress of recovery. Back in June I went to Iowa City to see where the Mississippi River flood had been, and it all looked repaired. It was only a memory. But four years later New Orleans still has decades of road repair to do... the scale of the work is astounding. There are tens of thousands of homes yet to be rebuilt. Even in the classy neighborhood of my B&B, one house is just steps to a slab. My host told me of one church member stuck on an overpass for three days, waiting for food or water. Now whole neighborhoods are waiting... waiting for road repair, or schools or community. I'll have to listen for what all that waiting has done to people's self worth, and to their souls.

I am also angry at how the healthcare debate is being avoided by Fox and MSNBC... hour after hour not talking facts, instead talking about opinions about opinions. I also have started to hate the word "THEY", as in "they think this is...." painting groups, including the Democrats with a very broad brush-- "othering" them. Recently I began listening for the word "should" and now I am going to add the word "they" to my list.

I am happy to be here. My spring term was spent waiting for this adventure. My summer so far has been a vacation from the process (or driving around the USA to get here.) Everything has been some form of "not doing," but now it's time to "do." I still have a few weeks before work starts, and I need to concentrate on getting a place to live. It is like the dress rehearsals... not quite showtime, but clearly this internship exists, and I am making decisions which have an effect on what it will be like.

So off I go... time to learn the city enough to figure out where to live!

Charlie as Intern in New Orleans

I'm going to start using this Blog again...

I've moved out of Berkeley, and am now in New Orleans, working as an intern for GNOUU, Greater New Orleans Unitarian Universalists. Come follow along with my adventures!

Third Person Singular Unspecified

Consider this sentence:
"Because everyone in the room spoke Spanish, I addressed him in that language" (I believe this is from Elements of Style: Strunk and White)
The grammar is correct, because "everyone" is singular, To match the pronoun to it's noun, "I" must address a singular object, "him." The default gender for singular pronouns is masculine. If the entire audience were women, "her" would also be correct. "They" is not correct, though it is a popular way of speaking these days.
Then there are situations like:
"Everyone in the room for my talk on penguins spoke Spanish, so I addressed them in that language."
Who did you address? "Everyone" (singular) or "the penguins" (plural)?

Grammarians like E. B. White made a strong case for the standard English usage of his day, and it was a noble fight. But it is lost. Everyone says what they want, and we all understand it... usually.
I believe it's time to either standardize the new grammar or introduce new words into the language. English is an evolutionary language. It has changed, even in my lifetime. The most major introduction I can remember is "Ms"... a title for women that does not have information about marital status. This word allowed our thought processes to shift out of the "Miss or Mrs." era in into an age where women had the same right to privacy as men. Our culture shifted, and our language shifted with it. Instead of letting English blur singular and plural, I propose that we add more words to the language.
The words I want to introduce are general replacements for the hard-to-say pronoun combinations "his or her", "s/he", "her- (or him-)self" and the like. The proposed words are actually even more general than these limited combinations. Instead of being "masculine or feminine" they have unspecified gender. This allows us, for example, to look at a baby in a crib and say something other than "Isn't he cute-- it is a boy isn't it?" Indeed, even if the child has a sexual identity that is neither male nor female -- intersex, hermaphroditic, or other description -- the child (it would be grammatically correct, but absurd to say "he" here) would be included in the new pronoun.
Some people have proposed new words like "ghe", "zhe" and "per", "hir" or "gher" as ways of referring to new genders, those associated with transgender, intersex, and gender-queer persons. I have no argument with this, but these new pronouns only complicate the combinations: "Let every voter go to his/her/per/gher/hir voting place!" When the list is used, it is clear that the speaker is being inclusive in his/her/per/gher/hir language, though the order of pronouns may be criticized. But sometimes a speaker will simply forget, leaving transgender and intersex individuals off his list. Is this a passive-aggressive act, or accidental?
The solution is to make a set of pronouns that are explicitly non-explicit. They are third person singular unspecified pronouns. And rather than find a new set of sounds, I propose that the new pronouns sound fairly much like the most common substitutes, that is, the third person plural words. The proposed words are:
THAY (nominative pronoun) "Thay is in the way!"
THAM (objective pronoun) "I see tham!"
THAIR (possessive pronoun attributive) "That is thair height!"
THAIRS (possessive pronoun predicate and absolute) "It is thairs!", "Thairs is a hard life!" and,
THAMSELF (reflexive) This is equivalent of himself, herself, itself, etc. It is a new construction, not the direct modification of "themselves," which would be "thamselves." "During deliberations, a judge should eat by thamself."
The word "thay" is actually much more general than the traditional "he or she." It can also mean "it" in situations like: "If there is any source of noise, make sure thay is silenced!" -- the source of noise could be a person or a mechanical device.
The words should be easy to say using standard English pronunciation rules for the community, so the words will sound similar to the third-person plural words, with broader vowel. Exact pronunciation will vary depending on location. (For example, a Bostonian may make "thair" two syllables, as thay sometimes does with "their.") Differentiation between the singular "thay" and plural "they" may not be possible without listening for context. This is similar to the situation in German, where "she"="sie" and "you (formal)"="Sie."
The grammar will sound a bit lower class to some ears, especially when using the singluar subject "thay" with singular verbs. This can't be helped. A similar criticism was heard against "Ms." People commented that it sounded like a slurred version of "Missus." But grammar is already broken, and this provides a way for everyone to say what thay means in a grammatically correct and inclusive way.
Simply because a new, unspecified gender pronoun exists, it does not mean that it should be used when a specific one is known. As a rule, when a specific pronoun can be used without loss of ambiguity or inclusiveness, use the specific pronoun.
For example:
"If the captain says that the compass is stuck, strike tham on the side!"
This would mean striking the captain, since it matches the captain's lack of specific gender. It might also match the gender of the compass, but the compass is known to be neuter, so "it" is the simplest and therefore correct pronoun for that meaning. The problem is more complex in the following examples:
"If a guard says that someone is moving in the corridor, thay is to be believed."
"If a guard says that someone is moving in the corridor, thay is to be shot."
English is still a confusing language. These additional words don't fix everything.
These new pronouns are introduced for the purpose of providing simple, easy to pronounce substitutes for alternative words or phrases that are either grammatically incorrect or that contain too much specificity for the situation. As a side effect, the new pronouns eliminate the need for hyphenated, slashed or parenthesis-ed pronominal phrases and provide natural ways to make speech gender inclusive.

Charlie

Hard times?

A friend sends this around (amounts deleted):

"Got an email today from the CEO with exciting news: We've just received a $xxx million donation! That brings us up to $x00 million in donations! We continue to serve a record number of patients! Staff reductions to begin in April!"

To what extent have modern economic theories invaded the non-profit sector? How does your thinking about religious community support depend on modern business models?

Dorothy Day used a different economic model... she did as much as she could with all her resources, and more resources appeared.

This might be the abundance model... contrasted with the scarcity model of modern capitalist enterprises... or it might be something else.

A set of questions I'll be thinking about!

Neighbor Water

So I didn't go to church today... but I am reading Rebecca Parker's book Blessing The World... and for no real reason, as I read her proposal that we should tithe, we should enforce a day of rest into our lives and we should go on a shamanistic journey, at least those of us who can afford it... I got a crazy idea...

In many Unitarian Universalist congregations it is traditional to begin the church year with a 'gathering of water' from the families in the congregation. Folks bring water from their travels... sometimes from exotic places like Russia or France... or from a summer camp or a canoe trip.

But I'd rather propose a different tradition. Instead of having the water in a water communion come from YOUR summer, what if it instead came from a NEIGHBOR'S house? Each member of the congregation is asked to knock on the door of a neighbor, introduce themselves and ask for a cup of water. The water communion would then be a celebration of the community, and the collected "neighbor water" would be diverse, rather than based on one's ability to pay for a vacation.

I am a big fan of blessing hands with this collected water... teachers, musicians, etc.

Wake Now Compassion...

My Sermon "Wake Now Compassion..."
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Marin, California

The reading was from "Here if You Need Me-- a True Story" by Unitarian Universalist Minister Kate Braestrup. Kate is the chaplain for the State of Maine's Game Wardens. Her work includes praying over the bodies of hunters, snowmobilers, and hikers, and counseling the wardens themselves.
In this excerpt, Kate is preparing to say Grace at the annual Game Warden's Dinner, a dinner cooked by a group of wardens including Fritz Trisdale. (The reading followed here)

Sermon:
Although it's not traditional here, I'm going to start my sermon with a Gospel reading. I found this tiny bit in the Gospel of Thomas, the most recently discovered of the major gospels... and I'm only going to give you a fragment of saying number 6, though there is a similar sentiment in Luke chapter 11:
"His disciples asked him and said to him... How should we pray?" (Five Gospels, Hoover, Funk)
That's all... just that simple question. In the two different gospels where the question is asked, Jesus gives very different answers. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus replies that God knows everything anyway, and in Luke Jesus responds with a version of "Our Father"-- the prayer commonly called "The Lord's Prayer."
But... I am savoring the answer to "How shall We Pray" we find in Kate Braestrup's book when she writes: “Heigh Oh Silver!”
As a Unitarian Universalist, I’m much more comfortable with a prayer that begins “Heigh Oh Silver” than one that begins “Hail Mary” or "Our Father". But over the last two months I’ve actually said more Hail Marys than Heigh-o-Silvers.
I want to thank Sally Schroeder for asking me to be with you today. Sally and I go back a few years, when we both lived near Princeton New Jersey.
I lived in a community called Kingston, and like most of the men in town, and a few of the women, I served as a Volunteer Firefighter.
Kate Braestrup's memoir of the Maine Game Wardens touched my heart in that it resonated with my firefighting past.
Kingston had lots of open space, and when someone gets lost—a suicidal teenager, an Alzheimer sufferer—the fire companies are the quickest way to get lots of people searching the forests and swamps.
Elsewhere in "Here If You Need Me" Kate Braestrup tells about another lost-person search, on an icy, rainy November night.
Chaplain Braestrup is asked by one of the wardens: "Listen, Reverend Mother, as long as you're here, could you pray for it to stop raining?" Kate replies: "I'm a Unitarian Universalist. We don't DO weather." (109)
So, from Braestrup’s point of view, UU prayers should not ask a supernatural power to change atmospheric patterns. And, believe me, I’ve been out on lost-person calls on snowy nights, and if I thought they’d do anything, I might have acted differently.
Two summers ago I saddled up my minivan left New Jersey, an engineering career, and volunteer firefighting and drove across America, to come out to Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley. My goodbyes didn't include a prayer, but "Heigh o Silver" would have been a perfect.
At School when I inquired how to pray, the students who were further along would say: “Charlie, wait until you are a Hospital Chaplain Intern — then you will learn how to pray!” So I waited.
As with many denominations, the training of Unitarian Universalist ministers includes a critical step, called C P E. That stands for “CLINICAL PASTORAL EDUCATION”, and it’s a process in which we learn how to be a pastor in a clinical setting.
Each ministerial candidate is required to do CPE. We can choose to be a chaplain in a Hospital, a Prison, a Hospice organization, or a Mental Health facility.
My choice was a VA Hospital.
I wanted to work with Military Veterans, and specifically to work at the Palo Alto VA because that hospital has a wide variety of units.
It has almost 1000 beds, and everything from Hospice and Nursing Home units to addictions, blindness and spinal cord injuries, as well as the usual heart bypass and hip replacements.
So two months ago I appeared at the Palo Alto VA Hospital… ready to learn how to pray, to pray and also to be present to patients.
There is a saying. A chaplain must meet patients where they are.
If a patient is Jewish, I am a Jewish chaplain.
If they are atheists, I am atheist.
If they are Catholic, I am Catholic.
But I’m not a Rabbi, or a Priest or even a Minister. If a patient is Catholic and wants communion, I arrange to have a Eucharistic minister to come to him—or her, though most patients are male.
If a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints wants to talk, I will provide a compassionate listening ear. If they need a ritual, I will contact the Mormon minister on call.
I spent some time wondering... is working for the VA really working for the military-industrial complex? Another of our chaplain interns was actually challenged on this point... challenged so strongly that his ability to be ordained came into question. But he and I see it this way:
A recent study shows that one-in-five returning OEF/OIF (Those are the official names: Operation Enduring Freedom, in Afghanistan, and Operation Iraqi Freedom) …one in five… has symptoms of what is called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and is at a higher risk of suicide. Last year a national suicide hotline got 22 thousand calls from veterans.
In my opinion, it does not matter that our incursion into Iraq was based on deception and out-and-out lies... the soldiers who fought and are fighting there are human beings.
AND If a Gulf War veteran is suffering Gulf War Syndrome, he or she deserves to be cared for spiritually as well as physically.
And those my age, who were drafted into Vietnam-- only to have their sense of safety permanently destroyed-- they also demand our attention. They were IN THE WAR, but they were NOT THE WAR. They deserve dignity, just as all human beings deserve to know that they have worth and dignity. So I chose the VA.
One thing I should tell you... because of privacy concerns in healthcare, in this sermon I will be fictionializing patient names and information.
For our internship each chaplain selects several units to cover, one or two days per week. The rest of the time is spent doing classwork.
Of the twenty possible assignments, I selected THREE to work with all summer.
One is a ward full of Vietnam-era vets suffering from alcohol and drug addictions. And when the alcohol is withdrawn, the nightmare of Post Traumatic Stress reappears... sometimes with hallucinations.
It is a locked ward where patients have no belts or shoelaces -- a precaution to prevent suicides.
Another of my wards holds paraplegics and quadriplegics, some on ventilators.
And my third ward is a relatively normal hospital ward, full of old farmers, car salesmen and teachers spending a few days or weeks in surgical recovery for cancer, diabetes related conditions, back problems, and things like that.
How would you pray for these precious people?
Maybe you have had a friend waiting for a cancer biopsy result. What would you say to your friend other than "It is God's Will"?
Maybe you have a friend who suffers from the disease of alcoholism, drug addiction or depression, whose life spirals into chaos. What do you say to your friend that doesn't drive you two apart?
Maybe you have a friend who has lost physical abilities, through accident, through disease, or simply because of how they were born. What do you say to your friend when "Don't Worry" just sounds hollow?
And what do you say to yourself? How do you comfort YOURSELF when you are in relationship with struggle?
I must confess, I have had friends in all these situations, and I've never known what to say.
At the start of my internship I also had to be explicit about my personal goals. The other five interns also wrote out their own goals, and then we shared the documents, so each of us could help the other.
One of my goals was to "Experiment with Prayer"... and for how little I knew of prayer, I might have just as reasonably said, "Experiment with Heart Surgery". But once stated, you know, a true desire cannot be withdrawn. And so I have been mindful of this goal in my work.
For example, as part of the addictions unit I learned the "Serenity Prayer"-- a standard part of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, though it dates back at least to the time of theologian Reinholt Niebuhr...
God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change.
The courage to change the things we can.
And the wisdom to know the difference.
AA leaves the understanding of "God" to the particular group and individual. The one AA meeting I attended was in a church, and the serenity prayer had a Protestant Christian preamble, but this need not be so.
The patients in the addictions unit are mostly desperate, and in dire straits.
They have burned bridges with family and friends, lost house, car, savings, job, and sometimes health. To accept that the ex-wife, the condo or their drivers license-- accept that all these things are gone... that is a step toward recovery. And while I don't participate in their AA meeting, my job is to support the words of that prayer.
And one step at a time, the VA will help them build a new life... if they can learn serenity, and work to change.
The spinal injuries unit has not involved saying any prayers. For these men and women, the "things I cannot change" are as obvious as morning bowel care. They will never be what they once were.
For them, prayer takes the form of presence.
To listen to their lives and hopes, to be with them as they suffer setbacks when bedsores reappear and progress when they are healed again, to embody a sense of their worth, that is my prayer for them. It is a prayer of joy.
The surgical ward has had the most prayer in it.
One day I was asked to pray the Hail Mary and the Our Father in Spanish… I took German in High School.
My pro-nun-cia-tion was horrible, but the patient was,...... thankfully patient, as I read the words off a tiny card.
Another prayer was with a young veteran's family, where we all held hands.
I asked him to start... His start included an invocation of "Our Lord Jesus Christ" and statements of humility and unworthiness... and he continued for several minutes asking for blessings on the hospital, his nurses, and even me. When he had mentioned everyone and everything I could imagine to lift up in prayer, he turned it over to me. All I had to do was say "Amen!"
I had given my first fundamentalist prayer.
And consider George... "George" is an old veteran recovering from a painful procedure. I sat at his bedside as he talked of his life, losses and what he held dear. When it came time to go, George started the prayer in his traditional way, but he didn't do the whole thing. He let me take over:
Let us be mindful of our friend George as he does the hard work of recovery,
Let us be mindful of the love he felt for his mother and his father, and the love he feels for his children. (And, after a few more like that I said:)
May he find peace amidst the work of healing. May he get enough sleep, (and so on)
Amen.
I was nervous. My mind raced... It was awful... but it was perfect.
Back in our reading, Kate Braestrup gives a prayer: "Oh God, whose name is love and whose work is justice, I offer thanks to you for this day and for this fine and funny company" (104)
And now I understand.
Prayer is like my goals for the summer. It is the way to make explicit, to expose, develop and place in public view that which is within the heart.
For Kate, it was the love she felt for the Game Wardens of Maine.
For the recovering alcoholic, prayer can be a reminder of need for inner peace and an affirmation that there is a way to change.
Prayer can also expose sadness, loneliness, fear, and anger. Prayer speaks personal truth into the world beyond the self.
I can see how directing your prayer to "Abba"-- the Aramaic word meaning "DADDY" could be comforting-- Abba, translated "Our Father" is the word used in Luke at the start of the Lord's Prayer.
And I can understand how using a female name for "the divine" provides more comfort to others.
For Reverend Braestrup, "God whose name is love" is beautiful, biblical, non-AN-THRO-PO-MOR-PHIC and not gendered.
But others do not need God as a witness. Declaration to the community, declaration to the trees or the sea or a picture on the wall, all these are prayer if they come from the emotional center we call the heart.
Where one person might say, perhaps: "Oh Lord may this snowstorm stop and my daughter arrive home safely." It's not about the weather. Another person might say: "I love my daughter, and am afraid for her as she drives through the snow."
Both statements name the emotions of the heart. Each could be a prayer.
And so, last Sunday, after I heard of the murders at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, I thought for the first time that prayer might be worthwhile in my life.
I have no illusion about being able to change weather patterns, to change the past or change what occurred that day. I cannot undo the damage of the shotgun blasts. I cannot give them life again. But I can speak my emotions to the world.
So with this definition, do you think we can pray together, TODAY?
I want to add a COMMUNITY PRAYER here in our order of service.
Let's change roles... a moment ago you were audience, now you are a participant.
I want to give some time for those of use whose hearts were touched by the attack in Tennessee, and who want to try verbalizing it in prayer.
For some of us, the children on the stage, witnessing the events at the door is a vision of profound sadness. For some it is the bravery of Greg McKendry, the usher... and the bravery of the parishioners who tackled the gunman.
Perhaps it is the loss of innocence in liberal religion -- an awareness that violence can touch us even during our worship service.
Or is it the sad story of Linda Kraeger, a visitor to church that Sunday, who was also shot dead.
Let's take a moment, let's give ourselves space to speak the prayers of our hearts to our assembled community. May we take a few minutes?
Here's how it will work. We are creating a shared prayer... each of us contributes a sentence. If you wish to help create our shared prayer, stand or raise your hand, we'll point at you... and shout it out your statement or whisper your words.
It is the saying, not our hearing, that is important.
And I will start, using Kate Braestrup's formulation:
"God whose name is love and whose work is justice," we turn our attention to the murderous attack at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. May we share this morning with this our community the emotions and meditations of our hearts.
May we remember the loving action of the usher, Greg McKendry.
(a community sharing of prayers followed)