Author: VUU Administrator

I think it was Emerson who observed that because eternity was too much for mortal minds to comprehend, God mercifully divided it into days and years.  It is before dawn on December 21, 2020 as I write these few thoughts and social media is filled with comments about the annus horribilis about to end and hope that 2021 will be better. 

Human years, the ones we denominate with numbers, are like backyard fences.  They are purely human divisions.  The land they divide does not know or care such fences exist.  On my daily walks I see birds of all kinds who have no idea what day it is or that the pond they surround is part of a golf course.  2020 is meaningless to the crows and the yucca, our plagues invisible to them.  

This I find comforting.  Much as I feel a profound peace in nature because it reminds me of how small I am, the same applies to this thing we call civilization.  As mighty as we are on the globe, we humans are not in charge. Ozymandias speaks not only to individual pretenders to power, it speaks to human hubris overall.  

What then does New Year mean?  Not much in the really big picture, but it does matter in how we treat one another.  We look back and assess.  New years mean forgiveness, as it were.  January 1, 2021 is not encumbered by December 31, 2020, as it were.  The 2021 calendar is full of blank days to be filled.  How shall we fill them?  

Years are moral measures, then, not milestones through life.  As my rabbi often says when observing those having anniversaries and birthdays, quoting Adlai Stevenson, “it is not the years in your life, but the life in your years that count.”  Each day affords a fresh moment to choose life, and each year a time to reflect on how often we made good on that challenge. I hope to add a few more days I chose life.  You?  – FW –

So, we went out and looked at the convergence.  It was fun.  But honestly, it was not a big deal.  Sure, it was 800 years since they last lined up like that, but that’s only from an earth perspective. And to be totally blunt, even then only humans noticed.  What is notable is not the convergence but that humans noticed.

I have just finished a 30 year old book, “The Good Society” which nailed many of the issues we are dealing with today.  Anytime an old book is pertinent I notice.  Coincidentally, the authors think ‘noticing’ is something we need to do more of.  The authors attribute the decline of democracy and civility to distraction – entertainment, career, even politics – at the cost of family and friends and community.  They also say that it is ‘intermediate institutions, those between family and state, that are best situated to help people notice what most matters.  Yes, that means us.

The Christmas story is a great illustration. The world’s largest religion dates itself from any event no one noticed. As the poet U. A. Fanthorpe observed,

“This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.”

While the world was changing, the people in charge did not notice, the story is saying.  What we notice is what we do, but what matters may not be what we notice. When we notice what doesn’t matter, what we do doesn’t matter.  That’s distraction.  Bringing what we notice into alignment with what matters is the very definition of spirituality, morality, religion. Communities like ours exist to help us do that. They help us notice what matters and live lives that matter.  Now there’s a great gift! 

Fred Wooden,

Interim Minister

Here it is barely a week before Christmas Eve and what I am doing? Listening to lots of Beethoven.  It is 250th birthday, and this year
was supposed to be full of Ludwig performances.  But Covid….  Long ago, when I was in high school, I got bitten by the classical music
bug and asked my folks if I could subscribe to the Deutsche Grammophon 200th Anniversary collection, ten volumes of slip cased LPs, five per
volume, plus a big biographical book.  What a delight they were, and still are.  While I have given away some of my vinyl I kept these. Some have never been played, like the many folk song settings.

While my life has been ministry, my love has been music.  And Beethoven was my first true musical love.  Though I shall never be a great performer, there have been days at the piano when I managed some passable stretches of the Waldstein or the Aflat sonatas and more. The joy they gave me, to feel them under my fingers as well as hear them in my ears.  For a moment it was as though Beethoven were alive in me. Is it any wonder that back in 2000, when I made my first visit to Vienna, visiting the Beethovenhaus, I was barely able to restrain my tears listening to his music in the room where he created it.

What has this to do with Christmas?  Not much, except that the gift my parents gave me so many years ago continues to give.  The underlying message of the Nativity story is one of a gift.  Not that of the magi, but of the child.  And not just his theological meaning, but simply his being a child. My children are a gift that has never stopped giving.  The great Sophia Lyon Fahs transformed UU religious education just as I was growing up in it.  One of the readings in the gray hymnbook is hers, saying, “Each night a child is born is a holy night.”  If as Carl Sandburg wrote, “A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on,” then every child is a savior.

That’s what I hope for you this Christmas, the ordinary miracle of a child.  All those miracles and fables are just ways to express the inexpressible feeling parents have when a child awaited arrives.  It is a moment when the future is clearly worth living for.  With so many in our nation afraid of the future, this Christmas should remind us every child makes the world worth saving.

A word about Christmas Eve. We still hope – HOPE – to include up to 30 worshipers at our 5 pm Christmas Eve service, which will be held on the portico.  This depends on the advice of the Covid team which is meeting this week, but also on the weather.  If we cancel the ability to be present in person we will do so on December 23rd at the latest. Those coming must be scrupulous about observing recommended guidelines including masks and distancing. We will separate family units by at least 8 feet. There is still room to attend, so email me to secure your place.(minister@vuu.org) And because it will be a virtual service for most, bring your tablet or phone to see the virtual parts.

There will also be a short and intimate virtual service at 8:30pm entirely on Zoom.  Choose one, or do both.  See you then!  

Fred Wooden,

Interim Minister

I sit in a motel in Albuquerque NM as I write this midweek message.  Not the usual place to be working. But these are not usual times.

By now, in any other year, plans would have long been made for Christmas Eve.  Of course there will be a service, but not like last year.  I have been talking about what we should do with our Worship Associates and Tech Team, asking their wisdom and advice.  We have turned lots of ideas over, wondering which ones to choose.  Then I thought, “why not ask the community itself?” 

So here’s my thought.  What if we broadcast our Christmas Eve service from outside the sanctuary and make room for a few folks to be there?  We considered doing ‘drive-in’ church but saw more logistical and electronic challenges each time we considered it.  But we could see using the patio outside the sanctuary, with room for folks in lawn chairs suitably distant.  Of course, this means risking a cold day, and the seating would be very few, no more than about 30.  We would be broadcasting as we do every Sunday, mixing presenters there with presenters on zoom, and using recorded music.  Think TV show with studio audience. 

If you would like to be part of those there in person, let me know. We will be working out the details this weekend and know clearly by Monday the 14th.  Of course, it all depends on rigorous observance of social distance and masking, and the status of the virus in the area could force us to cancel.  Who knows, though, if this works out we could do it again, perhaps once a month.  

Liminal times (as I called them on Sunday) are both times of loss and creativity.  We have found that worship can be virtual and worshipful, something you never would have known without the cost of the pandemic.  I served churches with one building, so I see your whole campus as a place of worship – sanctuary, garden, even parking lot.  Christmas Eve is a great time to try something new.  That was the point of the whole story, want it?  – FW –

It’s just after 9 pm Tuesday December 1st as I write and I just finished a supplemental board meeting.  If you do not know, you have an awesome board, and as I hate using the word ‘awesome’ casually that means I think they are really good.  What makes them awesome is that they care about each other. What makes them awesome is that they are humble about themselves but hold their work as a great honor.  What makes them awesome is that they treat this work as spiritual work.

This is a great segue for my other thought.  Tomorrow I will be at a demonstration here in Grand Rapids on behalf of Black Lives Matters, a monthly presence that has gone one every month since 2015.  Before that, we held monthly demonstrations for marital equality for many years.  Notice a pattern?  

Repetition.  People talk about spiritual practices a lot these days, but honestly the key is not what you do but that you do it over and over again.  Repetition is how pianists learn scales, athletes learn layups, and so on.  Practice means repetition. 

Spirituality takes practice.  That’s why we worship every week, not once a month. That’s why I devote time every day to studying Hebrew.  My daily walks are a spiritual practice, and so are board meetings.  Or they can be.  Repetition is one part of spiritual practice, but making it consciously for your spirit it the other.  

This Sunday I begin a series of sermons about Advent, a Christian spiritual practice.  This may not seem something we UUs should do,  but trust me here.  There is something to learn from other religions about building our spiritual muscles.  Just as I learned that Social Action can be a spiritual practice if you do it regularly, and that even board meetings can be a spiritual practice if you let them.   – FW –