Animals and children

Fourth in a series of posts about the January 2012 UUA Board meeting

My seat mate on the New Orleans to Houston flight was a 30ish man who looked liked the volunteer fireman he once had been in the small town north of New Orleans where he had lived all his life. Engaging, proud of his wife and two kids, self-deprecating about his “hick” rural accent, he said Katrina hadn’t really impacted him much.

Except – he stopped and drew a breath – psychologically.

With Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) skills, he immediately volunteered and was in New Orleans two days after the levees broke. He lasted four days.

“It wasn’t so much the work”, he said. “We were basically pulling bodies. It was the way they were all treated….” His voice trailed off and he continued. “And nobody seemed to know what they were doing.”

The first day he was sent about 35 miles out to “pull bodies”. The second day his crew sat around on a log – no one knew where to send them. The third day they started again, but were quickly pulled in “because the government was doing something we had to wait for – no one knew what.” The fourth day he was back “pulling bodies” – “mostly animals and children”. That was enough.

The conversation shifted. His family had lived in the same area since 1806, when they bought the land as a land grant from Spain. They “raised cattle – and owned slaves”. “My great grandma was a dress-maker, so she said they would let her know when the ship was coming in with the slaves and concubines.”

Concubines? “Yeah. They would take the prettiest, maybe 13 to 17 years old, and they would be sold for concubines. They would rub them with butter, and my great grandma would dress them up so they looked real pretty. The person who bought the concubine would usually take the dress too. She said she could make two bits on each one.” Their family album includes very old photos of pretty dark girls in colorful dresses.

Rubbed them with butter!? Excuse me?

He paused and said softly “they thought of them like cattle”.

Animals. And children. He went on.

"You know, my 8 year old boy didn't know what slavery was. He plays with all kinds of kids, all colors -- we are a pretty integrated place now. So a few days ago he asked me what a slave was. I had to explain it to him, and he just couldn't understand how..." here his voice cracked and dropped lower, "how anyone could treat a human being that way."

Next post: Do you know where your mineral rights are?

Raw emotion in sacred space

Third in a series of posts about the January 2012 UUA board meeting

Eight of us met on Saturday afternoon with North Shore Unitarian Universalists in Lacombe, LA, about 50 miles outside of New Orleans (and over a v-e-r-y long bridge). Currently lay-led, I was struck by our welcome: their board members first met us in their “feng shui garden”, where we assembled and lit the chalice in a beginning ritual, then walked into the sanctuary with lovely music playing softly (which turned out to be a recording of their choir), setting sacred space.

North Shore was the “lucky” church – their beautiful new building was essentially unscathed by Katrina and its aftermath. Yet each person in the room had a story to tell: losing homes, friends, half of their church members, with a mortgage to pay. Piled on top of the trauma of the storm, was also a story of betrayal. In addition to Katrina, the congregation lost a long time minister to charges of misconduct. Those of us who have gone through this gut-wrenching event know how devastating it can be – add to that the personal trauma of the disaster, the high need for pastoral care at such a time – and two subsequent ministers who were unable to fulfill their charge and left in a very short time. This was a hurting congregation – and the raw emotion was still evident in their voices, their eyes, their faces. They feel both grateful and let down by the UUA – for providing funds and support, though not quite enough and not always the right kind.

“You don’t know how important it was” says worship leader (and frequent board president) Terry Van Brunt, “to have human faces on Unitarian Universalism. The people who came down to be with us.” The generosity of the congregation in light of their own struggles is inspiring – they give away the first Sunday plate, have helped and supported other congregations with more recent disasters, and are active in a variety of social justice projects in their community.

Together later that evening, each board group had a similar story to tell. Stories of gratitude to partner churches across the US that sprang up spontaneously to sent people and money to help. Elated that $3 million in relief was raised through the UUA and UUSC – and crushed when most of it went outside the walls of the three UU congregations. Community Church, which sat under 8 feet of water for three weeks, was bull-dozed. If you look up that address on Google maps, you see an empty lot. Three and a half feet of water on First UU’s first floor destroyed everything but the brick walls and a single hard drive computer. As board members – some of us on the board when this happened – we are saddened that we let them down. They were encouraged to combine, but unwilling to do so, believing they could be more effective in three locations. Out of that tension has come a strong partnership between the three, including the Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal.

Community’s new, beautiful church stands at the corner of Fleur de Lis and 38^th. The stained glass window from pre-Katrina days that had been in storage is installed in First UU, and their kitchen finally restored. A labyrinth, laid by members and volunteers, gleams in the floor of the sanctuary. I walked it each night I stayed at the Center, the path flowing softly in the light of the newly installed exit signs.

And there is so much more to be done, both in the buildings and the souls of those who survived. You can help by sending contributions (of any amount) per the instructions found here. A small amount from a lot of us could make a huge difference to these congregations.

Next post: Children and animals

If you have come to help, you are wasting your time

Second in a series of posts about the January 2012 UUA Board meeting

The Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal, a program of the three Greater New Orleans congregations, is located on the second floor of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans. It is a big building for a small congregation, yet the dreams it houses are proof that Margaret Mead was right. It started its work a few days after Katrina.

Ten women trustees from the UUA Board shared the "girls dorm" for three nights, 3' by 6' bunk beds packed in a small room, our gentle snoring making me glad I brought ear plugs. (I understand the "boys dorm room", with seven of the board's men, was substantially louder.) Each group shared one indoor shower (the women also shared with a group of volunteers from Wellesley), and three outside. We were more than aware that such accommodations would be a privilege in many parts of the world.

From this base we split up and worked with a partner organization, sometimes two, in some part of the city each day: pulling weeds in the garden of the African American museum or North Shore Unitarian, chopping switch grass in a nature preserve, serving meals in homeless shelters, cleaning out food pantry (walk in) refrigerators, packing oranges, painting, and "power washing" the exterior of houses. We quickly discovered the "power" for the latter was supplied by our hands firmly grasping scrub brushes.

What struck me was that the organizations we came to spent so much time showing us the history, the operations, and their vision. For most of the groups I joined, there was as much education as work.

Education. For us. So that we are changed and understand our own role in creating a better future. The last line of the quotation in the title (sometimes attributed to Lilla Watson , sometimes to a "tribal elder") is on the wall of the center:

If you have come to help, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

Next post: Raw emotion in sacred space

New Orleans Bound

First in a series of posts about the January UUA Board meeting

I have never been to New Orleans -- my stereotype of jazz, booze, and lots of food in the French Quarter has not been a strong pull. In the past few years -- ever since Katrina -- it has represented something else for me. Shame. My own.

There appeared to be a negative undercurrent to all those laughing faces in the tourism ads. Poverty. And the crime associated with desperation. In 2005 families in my Berkeley church opened their homes to those who had lost them -- and co-minister Barbara Hamilton-Holway asked us "why am I willing to open my home to Katrina survivors, but not to those from our own neighborhoods?" There is an undercurrent everywhere -- and many of us choose not to see it.

The Board meeting starts Wednesday, so many of us are going a few days early to work with the Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal. I expect to spend several days weeding, serving, and cleaning, or whatever needs to be done. I am a late-comer to this particular service project -- many UUs across the country have already walked this path.

The Board packet can be downloaded here. Agenda items include selecting the candidate(s) for moderator, finalizing the agenda for General Assembly, reviewing progress towards our Ends (including the perceptions of a sample of nearly 1300 UUs of how well we are doing this). linkage activities, meeting with the Commission on Social Witness, the Doctrine of Discovery, work on a long term vision, and a request from the District Presidents Association. I will be covering these -- and more -- when I return on the 23rd.

Current and future generations

Seventh in a series of posts about the October UUA board meeting

The Steering Committe of the organization-formerly-known-as-Continental-Unitarian-Universalist-Young-Adult-Network met in Boston at the same time as the board. Several of us joined them at lunch to talk about the future of their organization and the UUA. The timing was interesting -- the board had just had its conversation about the scope of the organization.

I have heard both dismissive and earnest comments about Young Adults whose congregations are the conferences they attend -- dismissive by those who think you have to sign a book and show up religiously on Sundays, earnest by those who think we need a much broader definition of what it means to be in covenant. Not surprising, the Young Adults we met with were in the latter camp, talking eloquently of what it meant in their lives to be Unitarian Universalist. Many of them were also active in their home congregations, but not all. Rather than attempt to convince anyone that Young Adult "cons" did not compete with traditional congregations, this group embraced it, renaming themselves "Conference Attending Young Adult Network" (CAYAN, pronounced like the pepper).

A 1960 Harvard Business Review article by Ted Levitt about organizations defining themselves too narrowly (is our business about railroads or about transportation?) comes to mind when we talk about congregations. I personally do not think one can be a Unitarian Universalist in isolation -- for one thing, it is too easy, especially for someone who may define Unitarian Universalism as believing whatever you want. That said, is the only option signing the book in a congregation, whether bricks and mortar or a sanctioned virtual one like the Church of the Larger Fellowship?

Paraphrasing Ted Levitt, is our mission about congregations, or is it about covenant? I welcome our Youth and Young Adults to help the rest of us figure that out.

Our covenant

Sixth in a series of posts about the October UUA Board meeting

My board orientation in 2007 included getting a copy of the Board covenant in our binder. Somewhat put off by what appeared to be a cavalier attitude toward covenants, we six newly elected trustees complained.

In typical fashion, Moderator Gini Courter gave us the opportunity to readdress the covenant in the next board meeting, which we did. This included a survey that showed differences in how we perceived our adherence to the covenant, depending on whether or not you were a Person of Color, young, or new. Not much has been done by the Board with the covenant since, in spite of adding several new trustees.

Until this board meeting. In addition to creating a covenant, from scratch, we agreed to start each board meeting by reading it together. I am copying it below in its exact form, though we did agree we needed to clarify our intent about the bridges:

We promise to:
....listen deeply, speak boldly and keep an open mind, balancing views of self and others authentically
....be humble, prepared and present and focus on governance as the board's essential role, while taking the long view, and maintaining accountability for anti-racism/anti-oppression/multi-culturalism
....have respect and affection for each other, assuming the best of intentions and honest needs and building new bridges and bridges that are broken
....remember our sources and whose we are, giving space for faith
....learn and grow, practice self-care, laugh and sing!

Occupy Boston

Fifth in a series of posts about the October UUA Board meeting

Knowing I spent years as a senior corporate executive, a friend asked me last night how I felt about the Occupy movements.

I support them. I may cringe sometimes at what I perceive as naivete - a lot of good things are enabled by corporations' abilities to raise and invest money, leaving me decidedly NOT anti-corporation. But I am anti-what-many-corporation-have-become, where the profit motive has outstripped psychological, ethical, and moral contracts.

So there I was with the rest of the UUA Board, wandering between tents, stages, and humanity at Dewey Square. Some of us (trustees) washed dishes in the mess tent, some of us held signs, and others talked to the people who had been there for several weeks. This includes Andy Coates, one of the UU "protest chaplains" who can't do a lot of blogging without wi-fi right now. Among the crowd I encountered Katherine Allen, the young woman from Minneapolis I sponsored at General Assembly last summer; Lucas Hergert, who serves our Livermore (CA) congregation; and a long time (non UU) friend from Boston.

The mood was festive, peaceful; a drumming circle at one end; Marshall Ganz and Noam Chomsky at the other. Ganz encouraged the crowd not to give in to the calls for organization, clear goals, and clear leaders. He cited the story of David and Goliath: David tried on the armor of a "traditional" warrior, and it didn't fit; he went on to fight (and win) his own way. Food was free, clothes were free.

Otto Scharmer, on the faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, likens the current corporate system to a cancer -- it has grown out of control, and its primary goal in life is to feed itself, not caring if it is destroying the system around it. His proposals around Capitalism 3.0 are interesting, as is his work with some of the more enlightened corporate CEOs.

Like Scharmer, I am not quite ready to give up on capitalism. So in my next life I may become a corporate healer. In the meantime, Occupy community members are making some very important points about income disparity an a system stacked against the 99%.