Author: VUU Administrator

I am on the road this week, heading to Michigan to await an expected grandchild.  But… BUT!.. I will be back in AZ soon.  And no matter where I am physically I will be working for VUU.  

That’s the gift of this awful pandemic, that we can be together even when we are apart.  And that will continue even when we are able to be together in person.  Thus one of the great tasks facing us, and all congregations, is being both virtual and actual from now on.  What religious community means is changing, and it will be hard.  

But it can also be liberating, much as my home state Maryland Blue Crabs shed their old shells to grow.  The old shell that was ‘church’ with its focus on money and members and ‘marble’ is too confining.  There is a new way forming, one based on meaning and mission and ministry instead.  

For now, though, we are between the two – the old one that we know but cannot keep, and the new one that we do not know can cannot yet grasp.  Truly, these are liminal times.  

Are you tired yet? -FW-

Scandalous!  That’s what we say when someone really acts out. Or we used to say it.  But you know what I mean.  What you may not know is where the word comes from.  It’s from the Greek ‘skandalon,’ which means a ‘trap.’  Think of political scandals where the media catches them in their sins – from Wilbur Morse to Mark Sanford to Matt Gaetz.  

I am thinking of this word at Easter because for us the traditional message of Easter – the unjust death and miraculous resurrection – is scandalous.  It asks people to abandon common sense and decency.  And early Jesus followers knew that. But today, the original shock has worn off.  What was scandalous 2000 years ago is now revered.  

And that is a real scandal.  Christians (mostly) have become inured to the horror of the story.  Take the bare facts of Good Friday (which was not good in any sense) and what you have is an arrest, torture, and execution.  That was nothing new in Imperial Rome.  They had treated thousands like that, including lining the Appian Way with 6000 crucified slaves after the revolt of Spartacus.  But today the horror of that story has been diluted by piety and theology such that the scandal of it all is gone.

I mention this because the acceptance of abuse and violence and death is the moral scandal of our times.  This week we have seen yet another trial of a police officer for the unnecessary death of another unarmed black man, George Floyd.  But we know the Appian Way of our history from 1776 to now is well populated with crucifixions. 

That we accept this as the price of doing business is the real scandal. The American romance with violence is a scandal greater than the scandal of violence itself.  The American denial of systemic racism is a scandal greater than the scandal of racism itself. And we can thank organized Christianity for making violence and oppression normal.  Churches lit the fires of anti-semitism, justified the enslavement of Africans, celebrated the conquest of the Americas, and demonized women.  This Easter that is the scandal now.  – FW

“I wonder, wonder, who…. wrote the book of love.”  That was a hit song when I was 5 years old, so I have no claim to remembering it when it was new.  But some songs are timeless, aren’t they?  

Why mention this?  Well, in some ways the question is universal.  For lots of people, there is a book that explains it all.  Not for nothing did Thomas Aquinas say, “beware the man of one book.”  What that means is more complicated than it sounds, but my point is that when we put our faith in one thing – be it a book or a philosophy or a religion or a nation – we cease to wonder.  Having found the fabled ‘pearl of great price,’ we no longer need to look further.

For many, that is a comfort.  I remember the man who grew up in the first church I served and had become an evangelical Christian. “I needed absolutes,” he said, and we UUs don’t do well with absolutes in case you haven’t noticed.  That, too, is a complicated fact which I will address some other time.  For folks like that former UU man, ambiguity and uncertainty are so discomfiting that they cannot stand it. They find comfort, but they lose wonder.  

A book I have shared with the Board and the Transition Team, written by the church consultant Susan Beaumont, talks about the importance of wondering as a form of leadership.  That’s at odds with the usual definition of a leader – someone who is clear, decisive, confident.  Those are great traits, but not for all seasons.  

The times we are in now are actually not suited to that kind of leadership.  So much is in flux, both in VUU as an institution but also in organized religion to say nothing of the nation. What we need is the courage to wonder, to have faith (forgive the expression) that something will emerge from this liminal time, something that is not clear yet and cannot be decided yet. 

Waiting is hard.  Wondering is hard.  They both demand faith, not blinkered faith in a book being right or a church or a nation, but trust that what we value is larger than what we fear.  For us it comes down to two things – truth and love.  The first is the promise of Unitarianism, that ‘whatever is true is God’s word no matter who said it,’ as Ulrich Zwingli wrote.  The second is the promise of Universalism, that love is as universal as gravity and as strong. 

Truly, these times test our faith in these things.  Wondering and waiting are the spiritual practices we need most.  So take the time.  “Don’t just do something, sit there,” as the Quakers wryly say.  And while sitting, “wonder, wonder, who…. wrote the book of love.” 
– FW