Monthly Archives: December 2006

If you live in Massachusetts…

I received the announcement below from the Religious Coalition for the Freedom To Marry. I plan to be present at the Massachusetts State House on January 2, and if you live in Massachusetts maybe you can come, too.

Legislators will meet one more time on January 2nd to consider a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. This will be the final day of the current legislative session — and we’re working to make sure that legislators vote to stop this amendment from moving to the 2008 ballot.

This is our opponents’ last chance to pass the anti-gay amendment, and they are desperately trying to intimidate legislators. They have filed two last-ditch lawsuits against legislators and have vowed to bring in buses of people to the Constitutional Convention on the 2nd. Please help us to make sure the voices of marriage equality are heard at the State House on January 2nd.

Join us at the Constitutional Convention on January 2nd. Supporters will begin to organize on Beacon Street at 8 AM. The Constitutional Convention starts at 2 PM and at that time we will be able to view the proceedings from Gardner Auditorium in the State House. Even if you can only come for an hour or two, your presence is needed.

Constitutional Convention
Gathering begins at 8 AM
State House, Boston

For more information about how you can help in these final days, please contact Amy Mello at (617) 878-2307 or email AmyMello@MassEquality.org.

Urban encounters

This afternoon at about 2:45 p.m., I saw a Lark Sparrow on Pope’s Island. The bird was on the southeast part of the island, hanging out with a bunch of Song Sparrows in some of the bushes along the edge of the water. I “pshhed” and it came out to have a look at me — I got a very nice look from about thirty feet away.

For those of you who are not birders, this is an unusual bird to see in our area. To see it in the middle of an urban setting, about a hundred yards from a busy four-lane highway, was a very nice winter solstice present.

Field notes:

The bird was about thirty feet away, down inside a bush covered with bittersweet. Temp. about 50 F., mostly sunny (low slanting light).

General impression: distinctive head pattern; overall color significantly paler than nearby Song Sparrows; overall somewhat slimmer than Song Sparrows.

Head: bright reddish brown (chestnut) crown (black right above eyes) with white central stripe; white malar; throat white or pale gray outlined with black; auriculars white and chestnut pattern; gray bill; broad white supercilium; black eye line; lores black.

Breast: pale grayish-white, central spot of medium gray.

Back and wings: patterned, but not boldly. overall color medium to light grayish-brown, with a faint rufous tinge.

Tail, legs, feet: Hidden by bushes.

Winter Is Icumen In

You may be familiar with Ezra Pound’s 1915 poem that begins “Winter is icumen in/ Lhude sing goddamm….” The poem has an extra line or two, so it doesn’t quite fit the familiar tune to “Sumer Is Icumen In.” But if you take those extra lines of poetry and stuff them into the two ground melodies, you can actually sing the song. It makes a nice antidote to the sappy Christmas carols that we hear playing over and over and over everywhere we go in this week leading up to Christmas. You’ll find the sheet music to “Winter Is Icumen In” here.

Red Light, Green Light

Since we had a lay-led service today, I got to teach Sunday school with Serena, our regular paid child care provider. There were three children present: S—-, age 7; E—-, age 7; and A—-, age 10. K—-, age 12, who was visiting with A—-, was also present.

Rather than plan out a complete lesson, I decided to go with the spontaneous programming approach to planning, where the program arises out of the interests of the children, and their interactions with their surrounding environment. I brought along a Christmas story (which I never used), some drawing paper and crayons, and a game.

The game was “Red Light, Green Light (with cheating),” which the children have been playing off and on all fall. In order to understand the session, I have to explain the rules of “Red Light, Green Light (with cheating)”:

One person is “It.” She stands some distance away from the starting line, where the rest of the players stand (thirty to a hundred feet is a good distance; use a greater distance with more players). She stands in front of the goal, which is some solid object — a chair, a tree, a couch.

To begin the game, “It” stands in front of the goal, says “Green light!” in a loud voice, and turns her entire body away from the rest of the players. As soon as “It” turns away from the rest of the players, they all advance as quickly as possible towards the goal. After a moment or two, “It” says “Red light!” in a loud voice while simultaneously turning around to face the players. If she catches any player still moving, she calls out that player’s name, says what body part she saw moving, and sends him back to the starting line.

In traditional “Red Light, Green Light,” players are supposed to stand absolutely still after “It” says “Red light!” But this version of the game allows cheating, where players can move at any time — although of course if “It” catches them moving, she can send them back to the starting line. In addition, “It” can cheat by walking away from the goal to get a better look at the players, to see if certain individuals are moving.

The game works best if you play it together over a period of time, so you can figure out the nuances of the rules. Children will find that they can sneak up behind adults. As you play together, you will get increasingly strict about what constitutes movement (at advanced levels of play, even a smile will send you back to the starting line). You will discover the two basic strategies: slow and steady, and mad dashes towards the goal; both strategies can work (and they work well in combination). Those who become “It” discover that it requires coordination to whirl around quickly, and concentration to watch all the players.

The game ends when one player touches the goal without being called out by “It.” That player then becomes the next “It” for the next game.

“Red Light, Green Light (with cheating)” is a great game for small Sunday schools because it works well with mixed age groups (from six to adult). Younger children will need more than one session of the game to feel fully comfortable with it. When you’re first starting out, older children and adults will have to learn to modify their play to accommodate younger children who are learning (younger children who join an established game will find it easier to pick up the nuances of the game). We’ve been playing the game long enough that the younger children are nearly competitive with older children and adults.

The children are always excited when I go over the rules for the game. They find it hard to believe that the rules explicitly allow cheating. They also learn pretty quickly that the cheating is very limited, and actually makes the game harder to play, not easier to win.

A—- became “It” in the third game. She whirled around, saying “Green light!” Then she whirled back and looked at us. “I didn’t say ‘Red light!’ yet, you know,” she said. No one moved. “Red light!” she said. No one moved. She tried this several more times, but as long as she was looking at us, no one moved.

The children began to learn if they hid behind the two adults, Serena and me, “It” would be less likely to see them moving. K—- figured out that if she kept herself very low to the ground, “It” was less likely to call her out; she won the next game using this strategy.

When you are “It” in this version of the game, you have almost absolute power over the other players, within the constraints of the game. When S—- became “It” a second time today, she began abusing her power. She sent several of us back to the start even though we hadn’t moved at all. We complained, but she didn’t listen to us. So we had to resort to other strategies: we conspired to rush her all at once (A—- almost won when we did that); and we complained at her unfairness. After that game was over, K—- said she no longer wanted to play. You could almost see the wheels turning in S—-‘s head, as she realized that she had gone a little too far. At the end of this game, I said, “The next time is the last game, then we’ll do something else.” But S—- said, “No, we have to keep on playing!” — and then she realized that no one else was as eager to play the game as she was any more.

A—- was “It” for the last game. All the players had gotten quite good by this point. We all spread out over the room so that when we got close to her, A—- couldn’t keep an eye on all of us at once. K—- sat at the side of the room, pretending not to watch us. E—- won, sneaking quite close and then making a mad dash to tag the goal right after A—- said “Red light!”

I got out the paper and crayons and said, “Now let’s draw whatever you want most for Christmas.” All the children (and adults) settled down to draw, except S—-, who after five minutes said, “I’m bored with drawing.” S—- is a verbal and kinesthetic learner, so I explained to her that she is the kind of person who likes moving around a lot, but the rest of the children enjoy drawing. S—- looked around and saw that the other children did indeed love to draw, so she settled down — which represents a big step for S—-, who has loved being the center of attention and has always gotten the group to do what she wants. She asked me why I was drawing money, and I told her because that’s what I want for Christmas (Serena was drawing money too!). When I drew Cookie Monster where George Washington usually goes on a dollar bill, S—- said she wanted to know how to draw Cookie. I showed her one way draw Cookie, and she spent the rest of the time drawing.

If S—- had been a couple of years older, perhaps I would have sat down with the children after playing “Red Light, Green Light (with cheating)” and asked them about what had happened during the game, eventually leading up to pen-ended questions like, “How did you feel when someone sent you back even though you hadn’t moved?” and “How did it feel to be able to cheat during the game?” (although plenty of learning happened anyway without the necessity of being so explicit). One of the nice things about teaching Sunday school is that the same children often come back for years, so you can watch them grow up, and get to important discussions when they’re at last old enough for it.

A Thesaurus of Humor

When we went to visit my grandmother, who lived in Staten Island, we would stay in her house. My older sister, Jean, and I would spend hours in the downstairs room where the TV was; the television stations in New York had different programming than we had back home, and we were fascinated to see TV shows that we had never seen before.

The room was full of books, too. I think it had been my grandfather’s study, or office. He had died two weeks after I was born, so I never met him. Jean and I found the books fascinating. We leafed through them, and as we got older, we read a good many of them.

I still have a tattered copy of the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, dated 1894, which Grandma gave me when I was eleven of twelve. But I no longer have A Thesaurus of Humor, which I discovered when I was eight, and which Grandma also gave to me. I took it home and read it cover to cover, and I would read the jokes out loud to my parents, and memorize them. I must have been insufferable.

Dad told me that my grandfather, his father, had been the managing editor of the Staten Island Advance and a member of one or two fraternal organizations and had taken jokes from the book to put into speeches that he had had to give. I only vaguely understood what Dad meant, just as I only vaguely understood some of the jokes.

Today, as I was walking through Porter Square in Cambridge, one of those old jokes suddenly came up out of memory. I have a touch of a cold, walking briskly loosened up some congestion, so I hawked and spat, making sure to spit on the road, not on the sidewalk. That’s when the joke re-emerged from memory.

MAN: Your honor, I feel I should be fined.
JUDGE: Why is that?
MAN: I expectorated on the sidewalk.
JUDGE: Well, if it makes you feel better — the Court fines you two dollars. Next!

I distinctly remember reading that joke in Grandma’s house, and not understanding it. I asked my father what “expectorate” meant. “Why, it means ‘spit’,” said Dad. Then my eight-year-old self thought I got the joke: how silly of the man to ask to be fined just because he spat on the sidewalk! I hadn’t thought of that joke in thirty-five years, but remembering it today I finally realized that the joke was funny in large part because the man was obviously educated and overconscientious.

A Thesaurus of Humor disappeared some years ago. I can still see it in my mind’s eye: a thick book bound in medium blue. I can remember how the jokes were laid out on the page, grouped together by category. I wish I still had it. It’s a good thing I don’t still have it, because I would probably succumb to the temptation of reading it again cover to cover, and memorizing the jokes, and reading them out loud to people who would only listen out of politeness.

Defining youth ministry

A post on the youth advisor list serve alerted me to the fact that the Youth Office at the denominational headquarters is surveying youth advisors.

These denominational surveys are usually pretty boring. I was plodding along, not paying much attention as I clicked on questions like my age, gender (six choices on that one), whether I’m a member of my congregation, and so on. But then I got to a section and a question that required some thought:

12. Definition of Youth Ministry

As part of the Consultation on Ministry to and with Youth, we are trying to define what Youth Ministry means in a Unitarian Universalist context. Below is our first draft of a definition.

YOUTH MINISTRY WORKING DEFINITION
Unitarian Universalist youth ministry is a collaboration between youth and adults to create authentic, anti-racist, anti-oppressive,* multicultural, and intergenerational communities which empower and support:

  • The spiritual and religious development of youth
  • Mutual love, respect, and trust between and among youth and adults
  • Relationship-based ministry and support among youth
  • A youth-driven ministry of justice that calls all of us to live out our values in the world.

Like all ministry, ministry with youth is the responsibility of the whole congregation and the whole community.

“The great end in religious instruction…is not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own.” – William Ellery Channing

* Anti-racist and anti-oppressive communities are ones in which individuals actively work against individual and institutional racism and oppression while striving for safe, welcoming, and radically inclusive communities. The language of “anti-“ is used to emphasize the prevalence of oppression in the world. It is our calling as people of faith to actively dismantle oppression in Unitarian Universalist communities and the world at-large.

29. Looking at the definition above, what do you think Youth Ministry is?

I guess I was feeling crankier than usual. Here’s what I wrote in reply:

Well, your definition is very politically correct but it leaves me utterly cold. “Collaboration” — how cold. “Authentic communities” — any time you have to call them authentic, communities aren’t. “Religious development” — as if youth are like third world countries waiting to be developed. “Relationship-based” — I don’t even know what that means. Your definition simply doesn’t get at the emotional and spiritual depths of what religion and ministry have been in my experience.

First of all, ministry is all about love. You have to start there. And it doesn’t have to be “mutual love.” As a Universalist, I believe that love is the most powerful force in the universe, and that all human relationship tend towards love. Ministry is one process by which we can get to love.

Secondly, ministry always has a horizontal dimension (human community) and a vertical dimension (God, the divine, that which is larger than ourselves, the best that is in human nature). Ministry is a relationship that takes place, not just between you and me, but between you, me, and something larger than us.

Thirdly, in our tradition ministry implies a covenant, promises that you and I make to one another, and to something larger than ourselves. In our tradition, covenants are typically formed in congregations.

Fourthly, when you minister to me, one of the things you do is to help me find out what my ministry in the world is or will be. You do this through love — through holding me accountable to that which is greater than myself — and through the bonds of covenant.

But it’s all founded on love. For me, it’s the radical love taught by the rabbi known as Jesus — although I’m also deeply influenced by the practice of love taught by Siddhartha Gotama, called the Buddha. Whatever. It’s all about the love.

When you get to the end of this survey, you can see tabulated results [link], and you can even read what everyone else wrote in response to question 29 [link]. One respondent said that he/she wanted young people to grow up to become Unitarian Universalists, which I happen to agree with. One respondent said, “I’m pragmatically oriented, and those statements seems unnecessarily obtuse” (hear, hear). And one respondent quoted Kahlil Gibran: “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that his arrows go swift and far. Let your bending of the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable”; which I felt was a nice addition to any definition of young people’s ministry.

How would you define “youth ministry”?

Church 2.0 wiki

Peter Bowden and I have been talking about ways to nurture an ongoing conversation about what we’ve been calling Church 2.0. Given the philosophy of what we’re doing, it seemed like the best thing to do would be to create a Church 2.0 wiki, a Web site where anyone can contribute ideas or report on real-world projects. Of course I had to use open-source software to create the wiki (PMWiki).

Read or contribute to the Church 2.0 wiki

If you are asked for a username and password, use “edit” for username and “3d1t0rz” for a password (the fifth character in the password is a zero).

If you would like to contribute, click on “Edit” at the top of the screen. You will be asked for a password — just enter “3d1t0rz” (the fifth character in the password is a zero).

Note to a reader

Roger:– I replied to your email message, but your internet service provider bounced it back to me, saying your email address doesn’t work. Can you contact me using another email address? (Or just call….)

The vultures

When I got to work this morning, Linda was telling Claudette about how Route 6 from Fairhaven across the harbor to New Bedford was closed, and she had had to drive up to Interstate 195 and over that way.

“Why, was the bridge closed again?” I asked.

Linda looked at me, and said to Claudette, “He doesn’t watch the news in the morning.”

“There was a terrible shooting at the Foxy Lady,” said Claudette.

“Is that what the helicopters were for,” I said. I had heard helicopters flying over our apartment all night long.

“The whole highway was blocked off as a crime scene,” said Linda. The news had said that there was blood everywhere.

Our letter carrier came in a little later in the morning. He and his wife like to leave the police scanner as they’re falling asleep. “We knew this one was bad,” he said. “You could hear it in the dispatcher’s voice. She was shaken.” He had heard her say that one of the police officers who got shot in the shoot-out with the gunman was hit in the face, and somehow managed to drive himself to the hospital.

This is what the New Bedford Standard-Times Web site had to say:

Gunman opens fire at Foxy Lady; 3 dead

A gunman sprayed the Foxy Lady strip club on Popes Island with bullets from an M-16-style rifle early this morning, killing two club employees.

The gunman, Scott C. Medeiros of Freetown, injured two New Bedford police officers in a chaotic firefight outside the club before eventually going back inside the club and killing himself, police said.

Most days, I take an hour-long walk, to try to keep myself at a minimal level of fitness. I head out across the swing bridge to Pope’s Island and then across into Fairhaven center and back again. Which takes me right past the Foxy Lady.

I decided to walk that same route this afternoon, same as usual. Trucks and vans marked with television station logos were parked all over the dirt parking lot of Captain Leroy’s Marina, which happens to be right across Route 6 from the Foxy Lady. Video cameras on tripods, lights on stands, and other television equipment littered the sidewalks. Thick electrical cables snaked out for the various trucks to the cameras and lights. A few people who looked like technicians wandered back and forth. I saw a man in a suit walking away from a camera, and a woman standing in the bright lights in front of a camera. Their heavy television makeup looked vaguely macabre.

“News vultures,” I thought to myself, “critters who come from far away and gather ’round whenever something dies.” Except that I happen to like real vultures; evolution has shaped them well to fit into a well-defined ecological niche, cleaning up carrion and helping the cycle of life to continue within their ecosystem. The news vultures will be gone in the morning, for they are not a part of the cycle of life here in New Bedford.