Dear Ones - Letters From Margie

• June 8, 2009
  This is my last letter to you in Soundings. Frank’s been writing these faithfully for decades. One day I am sure you will publish the whole collection of his letters, a celebration of his long and successful ministry, a memory-book. I’ve written about seventy newsletter “letters” in my three years with you. Through the first year, each one took about six hours to write, an embarrassingly long time. But everything was harder that first year. The first year of any new job—and in this case a new career—is always difficult and exhausting. It was a daunting task to learn the ropes, work effectively with a team, organize projects in real time, move a philosophy of ministry from theory into motion, connect with people, remember all kinds of stuff and save time for family and self care. And I was sick all year with an autoimmune disease, as it turned out. I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in September of my second year.
• May 26, 2009
  I will lead my final Sunday service on June 14th, the fourth in a series of services that work together to “Uninstall” me as your Associate minister. Since April, we’ve been going back through the Invocation of the Directions I wrote for the Installation in October 2006, this time counterclockwise, or “widdershins,” the direction of ritual undoing. That last service will take us the final step to North and the interdependent web of all being that is our Earth. The circle we made together in our partnership in ministry will then open and we will say goodbye in the context of the celebration and reception that follow the service. “May the circle be open, yet unbroken,” sing those who gather for earth-centered ceremony when the work of the ritual circle is complete. “Merry meet and merry part, and merry meet again.” We will say goodbye and when we meet again at some point in the future we will know one another as kin, people who share a portion of this congregation’s rich and vital history.
• May 12, 2009
  Thirty groggy Camp Jewellers gathered in chairs in a large circle in Alumni Hall on a blustery morning for a different kind of Sunday service. We had a chalice, words to a few songs on newsprint, and a big ball of string. I guided us in our work together from the periphery of the circle, moving from place to place behind the chairs. After opening words and a song, our chalice lighting and affirmation and two poems in recognition of Mother’s Day, I handed a big ball of cotton twine to one person in the circle. “Hold on to the end and toss the ball to someone with whom you made a meaningful connection this weekend. Keep tossing it, person to person, until you run out of string or run out of connecting experiences.” Soon a web of connections began to fill the circle’s interior. At one point our “fix” for a big tangle left a mess of string dangling uselessly in the web. Some caught the ball more than once. Some hadn’t yet received it when we ran out of string.
• April 14, 2009
  I made an appointment for later this month with a person, recommended by one of you, who will give me a Tarot reading and take a fresh look at my astrological birth chart.
• March 31, 2009
  By now most of you will have received the news that I will leave my position as Associate minister at the end of the regular church year (June 21). My resignation letter emphasized my gratitude to my colleagues and the congregation for being such good teachers for a new minister in her first settled ministry. I was looking through my search packet recently—the spiral-bound magazine-format compendium of my education, experience and view of ministry that I had shared with congregations during that 2005-06 search year. I have grown and changed so much that I barely recognize myself. I was guessing back then. At this point I have lived those pages into a whole new edition.  I’ll be writing that new edition this summer.
• March 17, 2009
  Perhaps in your own quiet moments you have been thinking, as you have in the past at critical times in your personal lives, “What really matters in my life?” What do I really need in order to live well?” When everything else is in an uproar, when choices come down to rocks and hard places, when one loss follows another, what indomitable goodness remains to keep you on your feet or to comfort, inspire and strengthen you when your knees hit the ground? When, as singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen says “the blizzard of the world / has crossed the threshold / and… has overturned / the order of the soul,” what rope does your hand find to guide you back from the barn through the blinding snow to the house?
• March 3, 2009
  A labyrinth is different from a maze. In a maze, there are choices about where to go next. It is possible to get lost, not to recognize when you are rounding the same corner again and again. A maze can be a game or a trap, exciting perhaps, but confusing and frightening when suppertime comes and you cannot find your way to the table. Here is a drawing of an Amiens labyrinth.
• February 17, 2009
  The cast and crew of The Vagina Monologues did a marvelous job in two outstanding performances last week. Praise ran deep after each performance, but the ones I savored the most were those that affirmed the role of our congregation in lifting up voices and stories often marginalized or silenced. I could not have been more moved or proud—of director, actors and audience—especially considering the controversy we faced in the early stages of planning. There were some in our congregation who thought the play “inappropriate”—for our Sanctuary, for a weekend, for a public space, for OWL children, for vulnerable adults. Debra and I and members of the staff worked hard to connect in creative dialogue with those who were uncomfortable, to measure the play against UU values and to understand needs we could only discover and meet together. We had the choice to connect or not connect. We chose to connect and I am glad.
• February 3, 2009
  The other day I went to the Al-Anon meeting I have been attending lately, doing my part as my family comes out swinging for another round with alcoholism. Al-Anon is about treating the disease as it manifests in the ones who aren’t doing the drinking. The Spirit of Life works these meetings—inspiring, aspiring, conspiring—as people recognize themselves in the worries and wars they hear there. Every time I sit “in these rooms” (as we say) I am overcome at some point by the heroism of ordinary people telling the truth and asking for help. The grace of being human is so obvious at these meetings. Strangers grab hands to help one another take steps to freedom and peace in sets of twelve. Going to meetings reminds me that I am not alone, and that my situation, no matter what it is, is not unique. The program’s success is based on learning through self-revelation and listening, not through giving or getting advice or instruction from experts. You don’t try to manage anyone else’s life. The only one you can hope to manage is yours.
• January 19, 2009
  I am listening to reports of the gathering crowd in Washington DC on the morning of the inauguration of Barack Obama as our 44th president. A 105 year-old African American woman, active in her student days at Fisk early in the civil rights movement, is traveling to the Capitol from an assisted living facility in Cleveland. A 13 year-old British boy chatters giddily about the casual way his father suggested they adventure together to America to see the boy’s hero take the oath of office. The grown daughters of UU minister James Reeb tearfully celebrate the long-awaited fruit of their father’s martyrdom after “Bloody Sunday” in Selma in 1965. A reporter dangles her mike over the subway platform and asks “Where is home?” The crowd popcorns their answers: “Wisconsin!” “Nebraska!” “Spokane!” “Miami!” “Juno!” “Honolulu!”
• January 5, 2009
  Sometime in the December of my first grade year, I got my first pair of glasses. With my new facial apparel in place I quickly made a series of startling discoveries. For example, I found out that Christmas tree lights were tiny discrete points of colored light amid the ornaments. What a surprise! Until then, the tree had seemed to me to be blanketed in multicolored starbursts of splintered light. I was not immediately convinced that the world I saw through my new glasses was an improvement over the softer, less organized, more diffusely hued one I had lived in until then. Each time my prescription changed as a teenager, I remember rebelling against the distortions my new lenses introduced. When my mother said “You’ll get used to it,” I’d irately reply “Walls don’t curve! I don’t want to get used to something that isn’t real.”
• December 16, 2008
  Our final share of Stone Gardens Farm vegetables included a bumpy blue Hubbard squash as big as a paper grocery sack. For your holiday tables, I offer this Thai Butternut Squash Bisque, a vegetarian invention from the kitchen of your Associate minister. Enjoy!
• December 2, 2008
  A group of eight or so have been gathering on first and third Wednesdays at noon in the East Wing to eat lunch from brown bags, listen to Speaking of Faith, public radio’s weekly program about “religion, meaning, ethics and ideas,” and then discuss the topic. Other things we do:
• November 17, 2008
  A couple dozen participants in the Interfaith Environmental Coalition event on Sunday and a number of shareholders in our Stone Gardens Farm CSA stood holding hands that evening around the feast-laden table in our Fellowship Hall. The fragrance of the rosemary sweet potato “fries” newcomer Whitney Stewart had just oven-roasted in our kitchen filled the room. Some around the table had just finished watching Renewal, a marvelous film about environmental justice and faith, the sacred relationship of human beings with the land that sustains, inspires and connects us. Others had just arrived from their own kitchens with homemade harvest-fresh dishes in hand. The first growing season of our congregation’s alliance with Shelton farmers Stacia and Fred Monahan is nearly complete. Frances Sink and I read responsively into our circle this “Harvest Grace” she and I had composed collaboratively for the occasion.
• November 4, 2008
  I am writing this on Election Day morning 2008, an historic day, no matter what the outcome of our nation’s decision. I was listening to NPR a few minutes ago as reporters checked in at various polling stations around the country and found each experiencing crowds unprecedented in the memories of the officials there. One of the people they talked to was a woman in charge of a voting site in a neighborhood very familiar to me in my own home town of Roanoke, Virginia. By 7:30AM and they had already helped hundreds of people cast their vote.
• Ocrober 21, 2008
  I have been eating the trees with my eyes and ears and nose and fingertips, nourishing my spirit on their vibrant colors, their movement in the wind, their wooden bones, they way they arch over us like benign ambassadors of reach and depth. I am grateful for their teaching, their willingness to let go of one beauty and welcome another. I creep transfixed through glowing tunnels of red-yellow-green-orange in my stealthy Prius, much to the annoyance of the more harried in my gentle wake. I absorb a life-indulgent moment at my dining table by the door, the cat, the dog and I all paralyzed by the art of the afternoon. I lie under my layers in my windowy bedroom watching the sunlight ascend the branches of the giant maple tree in the yard. I stand over the pile I have raked, breathing in and sighing out that autumn leafy smell Mary Oliver calls “the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment.” I feel full of good fresh spirit food. I’m patting my tummy. I recommend this dish this month. It is a seasonal menu and the season is passing.
• October 7, 2008
  There is so much happening in my neighborhood of our ministry that my letter today consists of a series of invitations to new initiatives I am leading this fall. I hope you’ll be able to make one or more of them. 
• September 22, 2008
  I am not always in my church office. Or, to put it another way, my office is the place where I am doing the work of ministry in any given moment. My ministry often takes me out and about: to your homes, to hospitals, to community events and meetings, to stores and libraries. I hang out in the room with my name on the door when I need something in there or when someone in there needs me, regardless of the time of day or night. I consult with colleagues there and I meet you there when you request it, always as much at your convenience as we can manage. Mondays are for ministering to myself, except the second in the month; that week I take the Wednesday. This year I will be working in my home office on Fridays, but will never be more than a call away: 203-210-5220 (home), 203-228-0911 (cell). I check my office voice mail every day as well.
• September 9, 2008
  Welcome home to the nest and nurture of this faith community. The wheel of the year has turned us back around to fall, the familiar patterns of light and color, sound and smell that decorate our world into the days of quiet, numb and white. The trees are mixing their paints for their vast green canvas. Traffic once again piles up behind the fuming school buses. Chrysanthe“mums,” those hardy closers of summer’s flower festival, crowd the stores and garden paths. The wheel has turned us back into the seats and sights and songs of our glass house, our souls’ home and heritage. Welcome home to this company and covenant.
• August 25, 2008
  For five days in August I went to Knoxville as part of the UU Trauma Response Ministry Team after the Sunday shooting at our Tennessee Valley congregation. This is the prayer I offered at the vigil we held in our sanctuary on Tuesday, August 29, 2008—a prayer for each of us as we meet, sooner or later, our own most dreaded terrors.
• July 15, 2008
  Whew. If any of you are or will be managing a move this year, you will find this minister perfectly attuned to your experience. One more brief visit to 66 Beacon Court in Black Rock and I will complete my transition to the little apartment in the back of the farmhouse at 15 Olmstead Hill Road in Wilton. Getting me here has been a community effort. I am so grateful to Linda Hudson, Stacy Prince and Lynn Whitton for their help with the last bit of my (seemingly endless) packing and ferrying process, to Kristen Leddy for the timely heads-up on this one-bedroom gem in the country, to Cheryl Paul for helping me choose paint colors, and to David Vita for coordinating and supervising the application of those colors to the walls.
• June 16, 2008
  Our community has been rocked by the death of a teenager. Every heart that has received the news has lived the imagined story in those Wilton woods, if once, then a hundred times, and felt the shock of loss, the confusion and refusal, outrage and sorrow, the seeming emptiness of the path that lies before all who knew excellent Nick. Young friends, perhaps with siblings of their own, parents, teachers, ministers, neighbors, relatives and strangers all reverberate today with an empathy uniquely informed by their own histories of sudden loss. I know Frank writes to you of this as well overleaf. We are awash in this our own flood, seeking our footing as best we can in the rushing waters, dreading the damage, the counting of treasures washed away, the long mud-days.
• June 3, 2008
  This is a picture I drew when I was a hospital chaplain and was in intimate contact with the suffering of others every day.
• May 20, 2008
  Our Small Group Ministry (SGM) program consists of 15 groups of folks who spend two hours monthly connecting with one another, using a shared topic to generate personal stories and focus discussion. Each small group of 6 to 10 members has a session facilitator, uses a common session format; abides by personal and group covenants; meets at least monthly; and remains open to new members. The Small Group Ministry Program Handbook that the SGM Steering Committee (Randy Burnham, Chuck Harrington, Sara Leydon and I) created this year describes the program and directs its future maintenance, management and development. Small group ministry is one of the key strategies for maintaining a sense of intimate community as church size transitions from “family” (<50) and “pastoral”(50-150) size into the “program” (150-350+) and “campus” sizes with membership totaling over 500 pledging units or so and Sunday attendance of more than 300 adults and children at one or more services.
• May 5, 2008
  Over the years I have been puzzled and frustrated by the inability of our Association to provide UUs with transformational education about racism in America and to promote effective strategies for “undoing” the beliefs, attitudes and structures that perpetuate racism’s destructive influence in our own congregations as at every level of society. Both our religious traditions enjoy a proud history of enlightened advocacy of racial equality from the foundational years of our country through the Civil Rights struggle of the early 60’s. Yet it sometimes seems that we were permanently disabled by the failure of interracial negotiations at several pivotal General Assemblies in the late 60’s. Black members of our Association were disappointed when the white majority reacted with reflexive angst during the first real tests of financial and positional power-sharing. White denominational activists, for their part, felt dismayed and threatened when black UUs seemed to be rejecting the warm partnership with white allies that had helped them win their fundamental civil rights. Since that time, we have had a terrible time freeing ourselves from the mutual mistrust, resistance and disappointment of those trying years.
• April 22, 2008
  “I have idea!” That’s what my little niece used to say frequently when she was a thought-factory of a toddler. Whenever she said it, all the fawning adults would stop what they were doing immediately and respond to her with exaggerated excitement, “What’s your idea, Ellie?” Her face, surrounded by tight golden curls, would tip back and beam up at us, her eyes nearly squinted shut by the cheeky bigness of her smile. But then she would shrug her shoulders merrily and keep her idea to herself. Maybe the “idea” was just to get a little attention, but I don’t think so. I think she’s been storing them up all along, sorting them into the folds of her cerebrum like a squirrel packing its cheeks with nuts (or, as in the case of the one I was watching through the sanctuary glass on Sunday morning, with pieces of broken Seder matsot). This little blondie niece of mine is a teenager now in the process of choosing a college. The ideas she’s packed away over the years are on their way to becoming theories and experiments and adventures. Out of them she’ll weave an identity, an expertise, a purpose, a dream, a legacy. What a miracle!
• April 7, 2008
  Months of hard work came to fruition last week as the Membership Committee completed a very successful pilot of our revised Newcomer Orientation series. Seven new members “signed the book” at the close of Session III-Belonging. In this last of the three sessions we focus on the core human need to belong and the balance we seek here between the autonomy of each individual and our responsibility to the common good, both within our congregation and beyond its walls. After we read through the new document, Rights and Responsibilities of Membership, one of the eventual "signers" waved her copy excitedly in the air and said "I've belonged to a number of churches in the past and have never received such a clear articulation of what I can expect and what is expected of me!"
• March 24, 2008
  A couple of weeks ago I flew to Louisville, Kentucky with John Mason and Kristen Leddy, members of our Board of Trustees, to the 7th National Conference for Large Congregations. Neither Kristen nor John had experienced UUism much beyond the walls of our congregation, so it was a delight to be with them as they took in the spectacle of 350 lay leaders, ministry teams and denominational leaders reminding one another what it means to be a “flagship” in the fleet of our movement. The theme program speaker was Susan Beaumont, a Senior Consultant from the Alban Institute. She spoke helpfully and compellingly about how leaders in congregations can use their power and authority effectively and with ethical and spiritual integrity. On Saturday the three of us chose different topics of interest for each of four separate workshop sessions.
• March 11, 2008
  People sometimes go through really hard times. Most of us know quite a bit about what it’s like for others because the same kinds of awful things happen to us. Disease strikes. An accident happens. A child is born that has special needs. The job search stretches into another month or a second year. A teenager struggles to confront and overcome addiction. The soldier returns, alive, but traumatized in body and mind. A parent, life partner, best friend, beloved aunt dies. A marriage devolves toward divorce…. When it happens to us, we cope as best we can, and if we are lucky, people who care about us gather ‘round to see us through. When bad things happen to other people—friends, neighbors, colleagues, relatives—it is sometimes hard to know how best to be helpful. People respond differently to crisis and loss. Some need space, some meals and rides. Some need to come to acceptance quickly, some need solidarity as they ease through their denial. Some long for ears that can hear their hard truths and feelings. Some draw from strong faiths. Some are angry with God or whoever and find Hallmark clichés utterly nauseating. 
• February 25, 2008
  The last weeks of winter aren’t as bleak for gardeners as they are for, say, commuters and the depressed (endless) or skiers (sodden) or arthritics (achy). Martha Stewart is talking about dibbles and soil this month. It’s seed catalog season. In Virginia, where I was last a full-blown organic gardener, St. Patrick’s Day signals the beginning of the planting season. So right now I’d be waiting for my seed potatoes and pea seeds to arrive. They’re the first to go in—as soon as the soil dries out enough to turn. I’d have one eye on the asparagus patch and the other on the rhubarb, both harbingers of spring and worth the trot down to the garden to scan for the first bit of green this time of year. It’s all about hope. And patience. And memories.
• February 11, 2008
  One of the benefits of being a member of a church, especially a UU church, is the opportunity to practice being a leader. Whether you are laying the foundation for Radical Hospitality, helping people make connections in Small Group Ministry, practicing Compassionate Communication in a listening circle, managing a Board of Trustees facing big decisions, organizing the Annual Giving Campaign, keeping activists abreast of legislative issues or learning opportunities, supporting a work crew on task in New Orleans, teaching a group of teenagers about their sexuality, developing a new adult spirituality program, or directing the company follies of Adam, Eve & Progeny, the leadership skills you master and teach nourish your own spirit as much as they enrich life for the rest of us.
• January 28, 2008
  Here’s the sermon title and description for my February 17th Sunday service. It comes a bit early this month. You can help me out a bit with it, if you’d like to…
• January 14, 2008
  In my last letter I shared a product of the work of the 2006-07 Membership Task Force entitled “Needs of the Congregation.” This week I am following up with its companion list: “Needs of the Individual.” Both lists support our intention as a congregation to pay attention to who is among us, to be conscious of our needs and gifts, to celebrate our contributions as we choose again and again to come through these doors into a chosen community. An entirely voluntary pathway to membership is taking shape this year, one that will help newcomers and others actively explore their sense of “belonging” here. The act of joining is a pretty big deal. The clearer we all are, the more helpful we can be, as individuals and as a powerful collective, to one another and to those in need beyond our walls. No one will be asked to do, give, or be anything s/he does not want to do, give or be. Each of us will always choose a relationship with the church that feels right to us. Yours may remain the same or change. It is up to you.
• January 1, 2008
  In the first two Soundings issues of the New Year, I’d like to share with you a pair of documents that emerged from the inquiry by the Membership Task Force into the meaning of membership and the dynamic of “belonging” here in this congregation. Towards the end of our yearlong process, we realized that we were learning about two sets of needs: the needs of each individual who participates in the life of the congregation and the needs of the congregation as a whole. An individual develops a sense of belonging and personal fulfillment only when a significant proportion of the needs he or she brings to the search for a spiritual home are met.  Similarly, the congregation as a whole can hope to manifest its vision and fulfill its mission only when its own needs are addressed as well. Most of us had not thought about the congregation in this way before, as an entity with its own distinct history, challenges, purpose and future. The moment we did however, our tasks and priorities in the area of membership suddenly became much clearer. Here are the needs of the congregation we identified:     
• December 17, 2007
  Some of you may have heard about the Firewalk twelve of our youth and one young guest experienced on December 8th. As our Director of Youth Outreach, Jamie now plans activities with the youth that help them shape their sense of who they are, their gifts and challenges, their purpose here on earth. Those forays will always be into somewhat unfamiliar territory, across boundaries of human difference, outside comfort zones and beyond the fallacies of long-held assumptions and limits. Sometimes it is only by leaving the safety of familiar choices, roles and places that any of us, young or old, have hope of moving through our fears to a new awareness of our true nature.
• December 3, 2007
  The Membership Committee (Stapely Emberling and Steve Gormley, co-chairs) with Lorraine Reilly from last year’s Membership Task Force, are putting in place the components of a new welcoming process for visitors and newcomers. By improving the quality of our efforts to attract, welcome, connect, inform, engage and track those who come to our doors every Sunday for the first time, we hope to encourage visitors to come back again and again, learn more about us and eventually become members.
• November 5, 2007
  What an amazing fall we have had, a seemingly endless string of brilliant sunny, temperate days! It’s hard to remember in the midst of such an exuberant summer-redo that this weather comes to us out of a planet’s dire distress. Though it feels more like a blessing than a disaster, I know global warming has other, less gracious gifts to give as well. Nevertheless, as I cleared out the exhausted summer plantings in the front garden yesterday, and noticed the cherry tomatoes still covered with ripening clusters of fruit and hopeful yellow blossoms, I was filled with gratitude for an abundant and still giving autumn, beautiful beyond reckoning.
• October 22, 2007
  In June last year, just before the church year ended, my right index finger swelled into a little sausage and became very tender around the joints. The swelling and pain came and went. And then it was my left index finger and my little fingers, same ones right and left. And then it was some of my toes, also symmetrically. I convinced myself that my problem had to do with bad computer ergonomics, a bad sleeping position or heat intolerance. Funny how denial works, isn’t it? Unfortunately, I was away much of the summer and when I was in town, my doctor wasn’t. So I resigned myself to temporary digital impairment and got other people to carry and pull and open things.
• October 8, 2007
  Elsewhere in this issue of Soundings you will find a save-the-date notice from your “Committee on Ministry” (COM) inviting you to participate in a Sharing Circle after the second service on October 28th. The COM wants to provide members and friends of the congregation, in a circle devoted to honest sharing and compassionate listening, an opportunity to share thoughts and feelings around the topic What is Happening to My Church? Recent changes and events, including our intention to purchase contiguous properties and our new office structure and staff, have been unsettling for some folks, invigorating for others. Some of you are experiencing a mix of feelings and struggling with trust and uncertainty right along with the excitement. How are you doing? I hope you will consider attending and sharing the answer to that question among friends.
• September 24, 2007
  Like to know a little bit about why you might want to come see your Associate Minister and how to arrange the visit? Here’s your fridge guide! My hours in the office are irregular, but I am often in the building for at least a few hours between 10:00AM and 4:00PM during the week. If I am working in the evening (which I will be—two or three times a week), I may take equivalent time off in the morning or afternoon for R&R (= “rest and reading”) or to run errands. My weekly personal day is Monday except the second in the month; that week I take the Wednesday. I may also be away from church one Sat-Sun a month. The Friday before I preach (which will usually be the last Sunday of the month) I’ll be working on my sermon at home. To let me know you’d like an office appointment or a home visit, just call 203-227-7205 (extension #19) or send me an email at margie@uuwestport.org. I check my office messages frequently and email even more often. As for the “why,” I encourage you to think about contacting me whenever:
• September 10, 2007
  Ever wonder how a new minister fledges? Right now I am awaiting word that I have passed my annual Renewal of Preliminary Fellowship review by our Association’s Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC). For several weeks in July I slaved over the form required for this first of three annual probationary evaluations, and then I composed the professional development plan that is also required each year. These tasks were pretty much the last thing in the world I wanted to face at the end of a challenging first year. But with my remaining “oomph” I did what I had to do. And I must say it was both satisfying to look at all we accomplished together and helpful to begin to shape a plan for the second year with the details of the first freshly parsed on the pages.
• August 24, 2007
  I returned home last Sunday morning from three wonderful weeks in Brewster on Cape Cod Bay. One thing I cherish about our wonderful summer home is that it has remained as close to unchanged as a place can possibly be on the Cape. Though since 1932 when my family acquired the property the dune it sits on grew a grassy bluff and woods, and a garage appeared and then morphed into a second small cottage, and three maple saplings grew up to shade half the yard, our half-acre is still wiregrass lawn and sandy loam gardens, split rail and rambling roses surrounding typical gray-shingled Capes. Inside the houses, my property-managing sister has preserved our childhood environment. Yes, there are a few more outlets, a washer and dryer, wireless internet, some new furnishings and appointments. But change has been deliberate and subtle. Most of the kitchen utensils, pots and pans, decorations on mantel and walls, the games and books, towels and rags, even the red mop-bucket in the kitchen closet date back at least to the early sixties!
• July 20, 2007
  I hope this summer note finds you enjoying the sun and summer storms and the thankfully moderate warmth of July. I am enjoying the change of pace summer brings to my ministry, a chance to kick around at home, explore the area, concentrate on a slimmer portfolio of projects. Nancy is in the first few months of her new ministry as chaplain in two state institutions for children and youth. She cannot believe how right the work is for her, a surprise, because she too had been aiming for congregational ministry. She has been taking in a lot of orientation hours, getting to know the staff and children, working out questions around supervision, scheduling and office space. As part of her work she gets to visit local congregations for services with the kids. This Saturday she is taking two boys to a Catholic mass, next week one boy to a Jewish Sabbath service. Last week she and other staff took a group to one of the kids’ favorite destinations, Gateway Christian Fellowship in New Haven, which offers lively contemporary worship accented by a (she reports “wonderful”) rock band! I have been looking through their visitor materials admiringly with an eye to our own welcoming process.
• June 18, 2007
  The Associate minister’s contribution to our congregational annual report opens with these words:
  
  It was a first year for a first-year and it was first rate. Thank you so much for your warm welcome and encouraging presence to me this year. I have never once doubted that this is the place and you the people with whom I am meant to partner in ministry. The first year is a year of settling in. Making a new home with Nancy has been a major component of that process. We are in good shape at this point and will have a better grip in the year to come on how to make healthy choices in order to sustain ourselves in our love and ministries. I am so happy to be back east, near my family, old friends and the summer place my sister and I share in Brewster on Cape Cod!
• June 4, 2007
  The kind of freedom that, for instance, a certain kind of summer offers is a delicious thing. I remember days in which I have been truly free to pursue my own ends. No one telling me what to do, when or how or where. My choices unencumbered. No guilt, no pressure, no goals. A sense of abundance and joy. Most of my memories of that kind of freedom come from my childhood and involve extensive safe territory, faithful comrades and long grass-stained, sun and wave splashed, fiercely-pedaled fantasy-laced days. My world was small. The choices were between Lincoln Logs or trolls, my secret perch in the crabapple or the one in the weeping willow, dill pickle or cheddar cheese, the flooding creek or the budding woods, Burl Ives or Through the Looking Glass. But I was finally evicted from that haven, the campus island of my youth. I remember my first solo visit to a grocery store in the “ville” at Bryn Mawr. I was eighteen and food-rule free. Suddenly able to buy anything I wanted, I bought stew beef and ate it raw. Able to speak any word that came to mind, I reaped the isolation my own frankness sowed. Able to do or not do any assignment, I invented procrastination and something new under my sun: failure. Freedom was sweet but unexpectedly repercussive.
• May 21, 2007
  I spent the whole Mother’s Day weekend at Camp Jewell, way up there in the scenic northwest corner of my new state. Darin Adams, my traveling companion, began on the trip north and ended on the trip south the amazing story of his journey out of the Mormon church and into our congregation. He told his epic in polished “chapter book” form. Every chapter closed with a cliffhanger, so I was always excited to have a moment with Darin during the weekend to find out what happened next! My precious time with Darin was far from unique, though. I had multiple opportunities to meet and talk with all sorts of folks: parents and kids, newcomers and others of you I’ve seen around but never quite attached to names and stories. I spend so much of my time around the church ricocheting from one project or meeting to another—being a pinball (and sometimes a pinhead). It was inordinately pleasurable to dwell in community for a relatively extended period, to relax into a wide-ranging conversation with a bunch of people around a fire, a (really) good cup of coffee in hand. You go places under those conditions you can’t ordinarily get to.
• May 8, 2007
  My aunt Gray Haynes is dying of esophageal cancer. She may have a week of life remaining or a few days or a few hours. She knows it and her kids know it, two sons and three daughters, who lost their Dad suddenly to pancreatic cancer over twenty years ago. Gray’s cancer was just diagnosed last fall. The tumor is inoperable. She underwent palliative chemotherapy to shrink the thing, to buy her another spring on the back porch of the country house she has shared with one of her daughters ever since she had a stroke some years ago.
• April 23, 2007
  I have been gradually finding my place in the well-established pattern of the 75-minute Sunday services and the Fellowship Coffee Hour that follows each. I appreciate your patience, receptivity and feedback as the ministry team, and the staff and volunteers who support our weekly work, find together a new equilibrium. As with any group, the addition of a new member creates an entirely new entity with new needs and challenges. Reintegration of the team is a creative process that involves learning and change and trust on all our parts. Our ultimate goal, of course, is to maintain the high quality Sunday morning experience we have all come to expect.
• April 9, 2007
  In the world of medicine and hospitals this seemingly universal saying describes how physicians and nurses in training learn new procedures. Visual, tactile, verbal. And there is a phase that precedes these in which the learner is first exposed to the theory—the physiology or physics or psychology, for instance—most often in a classroom as opposed to a clinical setting. Hear. See. Touch. Talk. That is the order in which knowledge becomes embodied and, once embodied, teachable.
• March 26, 2007
  Today I spent some time pruning the roses around this little place we rent in Black Rock. There are half a dozen roses in the yard, little ones and big ones, most of them around the front porch, a few on the side of the house. When Nancy and I moved in last August, every one of them was in furious bloom. The place was decked out in reds and yellows and gorgeous peachy-pink. The crimson roses on either side of the porch stairs were so exuberant and thorny that I had to tie them back with clothesline on that scorching moving day to keep them from grabbing everyone who passed by. They were defending the place.
• March 13, 2007
  Once upon a time, I was a Puny Prophet. I said the right thing at the right time (as did others) and nothing happened. It was March 24th, 2003 and I wrote a pastoral letter, just like this one, to a people much like you, in which I told a true story about the future. Then I got up and went about my ordinary day. And people read that terrible, alterable story and hurried off to brush their teeth, walk the dog, pay the bills. Those were the days of “Shock and Awe.” Remember? I wrote these words, sent them out, and then we all sat by while they came horribly true:
• February 26, 2007
  Many projects that were dreams in the fall are manifesting this winter-spring. I thought you might like to glimpse a few highlights of what you and I are up to together right now!
• February 12, 2007
  A few years ago a group of lay leaders came back from our General Assembly with a gift for the congregation: a cast bronze chalice made by Mordecai Roth, a UU artist from Arizona. Gradually, the symbolic act of lighting the chalice has become established not only as an element of our Sunday morning Order of Service, but as an opening ritual for committee meetings and other assemblies. Every Small Group Ministry gathering and every meeting of the Board of Trustees, for instance, begins with a chalice lighting and opening words, setting our intention, as the flame is kindled yet again, to go about our work in unity of purpose, respecting our differences in the context of the faith we share.
• January 29, 2007
  It was my great honor to participate with colleagues and many of you last Sunday in the Ordination of Leela Sinha. In the Prayer I offered, I asked us all to visualize Leela standing in the borderland to which all ritual, by definition, brings us. “I invite you to see, in your mind’s eye,” I said, “the ritual portal through which Leela is poised to step, / on the boundary between ‘Yes’ and ‘No,’ / between ‘I will’ and ‘I won’t, I can’t,’ / the boundary between deep desire and binding promise.” I asked us to see also the future into which her call will lead her, to see “those whom she will serve, / their love, their doubt, their longing, their gifts.” And I ended the prayer with words that grew out of the closing of my last Soundings
• January 15, 2007
  Nancy and I spent five days at Sivananda Ashram on Paradise Island in the Bahamas after New Year’s. There we participated in a rigorous schedule of daily chant, meditation, yoga practice and spiritual instruction: four hours starting at 6:00AM and another four in the afternoon/evening. After twenty hours of yoga, I was very relaxed: the contorted, released; the painful, relieved; sleeping better, balancing better, dramatically more flexible. I could sleep on my back, lie comfortably on my stomach on a hard surface, rotate my head more easily. My chronically tense shoulders finally came down from my ears. An incredible, undeniable improvement in my physical well-being. What a disappointment when, immediately upon reentry into the stress of my regular life, my body snapped ferociously back into its familiar contracted state. Mental habits work the same way sometimes. As enlightened as we may become—correcting damaging self-talk, opening to risk, achieving clarity, growing compassion for ourselves and others—stress and anxiety can snap us right back into old habits of thinking. The mind begins again to run only those old movies that focus on our chronic imperfections. Regular physical and spiritual fitness practices are key to a healthy body and an open and flexible spirit. I have recovered some of my gains from our week in the ashram and am delighted with my new relationship with the practice of yoga. Getting this right is a lifelong adventure, it seems. Our faith community gives us an opportunity to share the joy and the frustration together, to ready ourselves, body and soul, for the work of creating a better world.
• December 29, 2006
  When I was really little, I wondered why the virgin Mary was described as “round.” Later, when I found out about pregnancy, the carol made more sense. Well, sort of. For many years each Christmas as we sang Silent Night I entertained an uninterrogated image of round young Mary standing alone in the peace of a full moon-lit night.
• December 18, 2006
  Remember the theme of my Installation service: “Let it Be a Dance”? Through this first Halloweeshannahyompurthanksticehannukmasnewyear’s season with you I am aware that YOU are leading. I am swinging in this dance on your strong congregational arms. When I first took up contradancing (what seems like only a few years ago, but certainly isn’t) I learned the steps and figures, sure, but because, from dance to dance, I could choose to dance the “male” or the “female” role, I also learned a lot about the emotional differences between leading a partner and being led. It is, for instance, a very different feeling to swing a person than to be swung. To be swung is to rely on the strength and grace of your partner. It requires a yielding to the care of the other, leaning out against reliable arms and gazing into steady eyes as the world whirls around you. This is my experience of the holidays in this congregation. I am leaning with confidence into the centrifugal force of our motion, knowing that our feet are tracing the same little circle, our arms warm around each other, our eyes locked against the dizzies. You do festive well: youth with your wreaths, bazaar ladies, collectors of food and gifts for needy friends, worship leaders, singers and musicians, microfinance magicians, bakers galore, potluck cooks, decorators and storytellers and many others doing many things to make the season bright and generous. Thank you for teaching me your holiday dance. You lead well in a grace-filled pattern of tried and true with room for the new.
• December 4, 2006
  For many years as a young adult and in middle age, I hung out on the periphery of my extended family. There were many complicated reasons for that “choice,” if you can call it a choice. It was more of a habit, really, a passive thing, entrenched over the years by geographical distance and by the holiday work my nursing career demanded. When my parents died in the mid-nineties and I moved to Chicago my isolation deepened.
• November 20, 2006
  I love to cook, cook for love. Once I fix on a recipe that interests me, I MUST make it. I searched seven area grocery stores last week for the can of hominy I needed to make a shredded turkey and hominy stew, a kind of posole. Since then, much to my great delight, a new Super Stop and Shop has opened up on the downtown Bridgeport side of our Black Rock neighborhood. There I found two full aisles stocked with an unusual diversity of ethnic foods, including, yup, hominy in cans, but also “large white corn” in dry form, in bulk! I spent a good bit of time one day checking out unfamiliar foods, especially the Brazilian specialties. I came home with some cargamanto beans from Columbia, absolutely lovely cream-speckled bright red dried beans (prettiest beans this vegetable gardener has ever seen!) along with the party-colored delicata squash and chicken I had actually come to buy. Late fall produce is my favorite, I think: the squashes and kale, Brussels sprouts, pumpkins, cauliflower (orange!), garnet yams, tangerines, the nuts and apples. Nothing taps my deep well of gratitude more surely than a well-stocked vegetable market in frosty fall. The colors, shapes and smells, memories of past meals, possibilities for future ones—all are powerful joy-makers in my daily life. Veggie therapy. I recommend it.
• November 6, 2006
  Hey! I am now properly and officially “installed” as your Associate Minister! Thank you all very much—what a fabulous day of celebration it was! As I approach my third month “in-office” my work patterns are just beginning to settle into some semblance of a routine. I thought the time right to offer this list of situations in which you might find a visit with me useful. Though I have found it impossible to post regular office hours, I am often in the building between 10:00AM and 4:00PM weekdays. If I am working in the evening (which it seems I will be—two or three times a week), I am likely to take the morning or afternoon off for R&R or to run errands. My weekly day off is Monday except the second in the month; that week I take the Wednesday off. I’ll be away from church one Sat-Sun a month. The Friday before I preach (which is usually the last Sunday of the month) I’ll be working on my sermon at home. Please call, email or drop by to make an appointment to meet with me: 203-227-7205; email - . I check my office messages at least twice a day. Think about contacting me when:
• October 23, 2006
  ‘Tis the season for thinking about the beginnings that are wrapped up in the endings of things living. The blaze of colored light that is the autumn foliage will soon succumb to wind and water and the tines of rakes. Finally the browning leaves will devolve into humus, and the seed and spore that bed there will become the amazement of far-off spring’s new growth. From life, death and from death, life.
• October 9, 2006
  Many people have been sweetly inquiring of me “Well, are you settling in?” And I reply, “I am in.” That’s what we used to say after check-in, weekend after weekend, during the two years I was doing Priestess Path training. “I am in” meant “I am fully present, engaged and ready to do the work I am here to do.” And I am. I am here, I am working and I am ready for anything. But I am certainly not yet settled, and am thinking it is perhaps the better part of valor to remain unsettled. A few weeks ago I taped this quote from Emerson (quite un-aesthetically) to my office door:
• September 25, 2006
  On October 29th at 4:00 PM the Unitarian Church in Westport (i.e., you) will celebrate the installation of your new Associate Minister (i.e., me). I hope you will join us that afternoon for the Service and the unusual reception/celebration immediately following. Last February, I was ordained into the Unitarian Universalist ministry by the congregation of my internship church, the UU Church of Annapolis, MD. Through this personal rite of passage I claimed and was confirmed in my identity as Minister. Our upcoming Service of Installation celebrates a rite of passage for the Westport church itself, for the whole constellation of ministers, staff, and members of all ages. In this public ritual we recognize that, in calling to the UCW ministry a new professional minister, opening the next chapter in the history of the church.
• September 11, 2006
  Have you ever thought about exactly how you might choose to reconstitute your life, given the golden opportunity? What if you could choose a new state and city and neighborhood and home, a new job, a new car, new friends? What if you could then make a new set of decisions about how you will be in relationship with those you love, how you will spend and invest your money, how you will care for your body (in terms of food choices, exercise, health care, and rest)? What if you had the opportunity to move physical and emotional intimacy, continuing education, pure play, volunteer activities, travel and spiritual renewal way up the priority list for how you use your time?
• August 25 , 2006
  At last I am here! Nancy and I are settling into the house we are renting (many thanks to Renata Libner & daughter Lisanne) in the Black Rock area of Bridgeport. I have been a presence in the office since 8/15, learning the phone and computer systems and the weekly routine and ordering my priorities for the beginning of my ministry here. I have been out and about the area visiting some of you where you live, guided by my new traveling companion: the GPS lady in my new Prius. I am thrilled to be finally among you, to be meeting you again at a deeper place, at the outset of our journey together. Your welcome has been so generous.

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