Meeting Places

UU minister Richard Gilbert’s words, “whoever you are, wherever you are, I bid you welcome,” come to mind as I kick off this blog. More than anything, I am aware of the uncontained and unpredicatable audience factor involved in writing something like a blog. Though I can imagine most who read a “kick-off” post will be somehow personally connected with me – hi friends and family! – the hope of course is that these conversations will reach beyond my community and make ripples into worlds I might never find if not for the internet.

However, if we believe in the theological concept of utter interconnectedness, all the “world wide web” allows is to make explicit what is already at play spiritually. So, these words, these hands, they are reaching out across time and space, even if I do not yet imagine it to be so, even if I am afraid, even if I do not understand, even if the web address has not yet reached beyond three or four of you. The impact may not be in the ways I intend or envision, but the world is changed nonetheless by my presence, by my choices, by showing up in the ways and in the places I do, by meeting the world in the ways that I do.

Which brings me to my project. It starts with a promise. That church is something that matters, and matters more than other things, or in ways more profound, more Ultimate than other places. Or, to use a less power-laden image, that life in church encompasses, addresses, enlivens, illuminates, heals, transforms, incites all other parts of life. The promise that if you show up here, in this meeting place, you and the world will be offered life, abundantly. "...That they may have life, and have it abundantly." (Jn 10:10)

And it starts with the ways we break this promise, the ways this promise has been broken. Sometimes actively, sometimes less obviously, though just as incessantly. The ways we come together and only repeat the superficial ways of relating with each other and with ourselves we attempt to escape and overcome by forming religious community. The ways we find not God but greed, not Ultimacy but injury, not intimacy but alienation. The ways we think of church as something for Sunday mornings, and this is when we do not have something better to do, something more relevant, meaningful, life-giving.

And before we get too far along, I better just confess. Although this is one of the things I've preached on - that church matters - my preaching is further along than my practice. I am speaking from faith. Because I wonder too. How can real communities ever form (religious or otherwise), except by magic, and time, and love? How does something come to be meaningful to us, to the world, to offer us solace and fuel, and hope and healing?

This is a project that comes out of my experience in Unitarian Universalist congregational and seminary life, which is to say, being a UU at a progressive Methodist seminary, being a 33 year old ("Young Adult") in a church community significantly lacking in young adults, a queer woman in a mostly straight church (tho a gay-if-perhaps not-queer welcoming one)....a queer woman in a church at all...a baptized and confirmed Catholic, with strong Catholic cultural ties, who does not find in the Catholic church something to reject, but rather to be in relationship with, which means, not exactly Christian, but a part of Christian community...this is a project that seeks to understand the UU congregational context especially, but not exclusively.

Over the course of about 10 weeks this summer, I will be traveling from Chicago to Rochester, Salt Lake to Atlanta, and up and down the front range, listening and watching, forming relationships and weaving together stories in my mind, in my body - stories of communities forming, of worlds being made. Though I am focusing in on Micah's Porch in Chicago (micahsporch.org), and First Unitarian in Rochester, NY, I hope to in relationship and conversation with churches from Albuquerque to Seattle, San Jose to Louisville - not to mention the churches here in the Denver area.

I hope you feel comfortable posting your comments, questions, and other responses to my notes. I hope we can find here our own meeting place of sorts. I invite you to show up here with me - from whatever context you are in, whatever struggles you may have, whatever hopes you keep always in the back of your mind, driving you to a site such as this, or to a church / meetingplace of your choosing. I look forward to the journey ahead.