• Tag Archives Leslie

  • A Long Time Ago

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                              Full Last Frost Moon

    Down to United Seminary for Leslie’s last leadership and development class.  The time with Leslie there was good; we developed a good rapport, even a friendship over the 9 months of conversations and I’ve come to care about what happens with her ministerial development.

    The Seminary itself has all kinds of odd resonances.  Here are three.  uts-library

    I parked in a parking spot near a side entrance, a parking spot I had used many times in the years in which I was a student at UTS.  When I got out of the car, I looked up at the library, my favorite part of the Seminary.  I could see the corner where my desk had been.  It was my desk because whenever I needed to study and remain at the Sem, I went to the same corner desk on the third floor, as far back in the stacks as the shelving went.  From my desk I could see New Brighton and Highway 694 to the north, as well as the student housing where I’d lived my junior year (first year) in 1971.

    When I went into the room where the many interns and their mentors gathered, a lot of memories flooded back.  This was the old chapel, a lot of sermons, worship services, morning prayer services happened there.  In my junior year I organized an arts festival, a week long celebration of various mediums focused most on film.  This was 1971, long before even vcrs, and I discovered a foundation in Wisconsin, founded by, of all people, Albert Camus’s widow, that had both the films and film rights to many early Ingemar Bergman movies.  I arranged for four of them to be shown at UTS, including one I had not seen before, the Ritual*.

    Attending the night I showed the Ritual was Dean Louis Gunneman and his wife.  At the time the Dean was 70 and his wife a distinguished lady of similar age.  The Dean had been instrumental in the creation of both the United Church of Christ denomination and United Theological Seminary.

    During the scene of simulated cunnilingus the Dean rose in his elegant way and with his wife on his arm, left the chapel.

    S’ing Long Lin, a Taiwanese native of Mandarin descent, was a tall lean Chinese man of perhaps 30.  I vividly recall the look on his face when I translated 20 degrees below zero–which it was that morning–into centigrade.  Quite a moment.

    Rotten Tomatoes

    *The Ritual is an alternate English-language title for Ingmar Bergman’s The Rite (Riten). Made for Swedish television in 1969, this short film was Bergman’s revenge against those who opposed his management of the Royal Dramatic Theatre. The storyline involves three actors whose recent production has been judged obscene by the powers-that-be. Bergman deliberately obscures the “controversial” quality of the production itself, forcing the viewers to assess their own opinions over what is obscene and what isn’t. Intending to shock and provoke his audience, Bergman was appalled that many viewers laughed at The Rite, misinterpreting it as a satirical comedy.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Art and Culture Asia Commentary on Religion Memories 📎and tagged

  • Real Religion

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                     Waxing Last Frost Moon

    “The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men – from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

    Especially true if you insert mother earth for mothers and nature for women, viz.  The real religion of the world comes from nature much more than from men-from mother earth most of all, who carries the key to our souls in her bosom.

    I am just back from seeing Leslie give her final presentation at Groveland.  Ran into Bill Mate.  He’s been doing work for the Methodist Church in New Orleans.  Sounded fun.

    Wow.  No nap yesterday plus 5 hours driving, then up early for going into St. Paul to see Leslie.  Got hit by a sudden need to lie down and sleep.  Did so.  Better now, less foggy.

    When I got back, Kate was in the front, raking and planting, earth mother to mother earth.  I made pizza, then crashed.  Still waking up.

    Light rain, warm.  80’s in the forecast.  Spring, it seems, may have finally arrived, well after it has come and gone as a Celtic season.


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality Family Great Wheel Great Work 📎and tagged

  • Sickle Moon

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                     Waxing Last Frost Moon

    That last frost sickle moon hung in the western sky as I drove home from sheepshead last night.  The sickle’s always seem to have somebody sitting on them when I look up.  An old woman with a conical hat and a skirt filled with stars.  A boy dangling his legs.  Or, as in one meditative state long ago, Moses on one side and Jesus on the other.  These moons are pregnant with possibility, with the dreams and the hopes littering our lives, just waiting for fullness.  It will swell, grow fat.  May your dreams.

    Those card gods that have been so good to me over the last few months abandoned me last night.  In the first four hands I didn’t have enough total trump to pick up the blind and play.  A night of 7’s, 8’s, 9’s and the occasional 10.  Two decent hands the whole the night.  As Ovid points out over and over, the gods are fickle.

    Today Latin.  I’m down to line 228 on the Diana and Actaeon story.  I still need to watch those words separated from each other but with the same endings.  I also need to watch the situation which Greg, my tutor, analogized to fixing a car and having a part or two left out.  I translate sentences and from time to time I have a word or two left over.  Hmmm.

    We’re just getting to the good part where Actaeon’s own dogs tear him to pieces.  That’ll teach him to to see naked goddesses.

    Leslie and I had our next to last meeting and she encourage me to attend an event at UTS for those of us who have been mentors.  A tough sell, but I decided, for Leslie, that I would go.

    Afterward had to drive back into Minneapolis because I forgot to pick up fliers for the mining conference I’m attending in Duluth tomorrow.


    📂This entry was posted in Humanities 📎and tagged

  • On the Road

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                   Waxing Bloodroot Moon

    58 in the weather forecast for Thursday, for my brother and sister in Southeast Asia this would be a definite cold snap, while here it means a huge warmup.

    I’m traveling into St. Paul today to observe Leslie Mills present at Groveland.  Leslie is the student intern minister there.  I have had responsibility this year for helping her reflect on her experience at Groveland UU.  She’s made a lot of progress.

    Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike Daylight Savings Time?  It created constant confusion for me as a child growing up in a state where it created constant confusion.  Now, as an adult, and one too much experienced with this crime against chronicity, I wish we’d leave the clock alone.  I know it doesn’t really affect the day, but it affects all kinds of human stuff, like today when I had to get up an hour early just to be on time.  I know, I know, poor me.  All I’m really saying is give standard time a chance.


    📂This entry was posted in General 📎and tagged

  • The Beloved Community

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                   Waning Harvest Moon

    Spent lunch with Leslie.  She’s progressing in her work at Groveland.  We had a very interesting conversation about a UU ecclesiology, not an easy topic since the notion loses something in importing it from Christianity.  UU’s insist on calling their congregations churches, but that is accurate only historically for almost all Midwest UU’s who are overwhelmingly humanist.  No one cares outside the UU community of course, and even most of those inside it don’t care either, except the clergy, for whom the nature of the communities they serve is all important.

    Leslie began feeling her way toward an ecclesiology based on love.  It got me going, too.  There may be a way to define a humanist ecclesiology focused on something like the beloved community.  In this case congregants might gather to participate in a community where intimacy might happen, happen outside the familial or marital or partner bond.  No one has too much love in their lives and a community committed to vulnerability, safety, depth and confidentiality might increase the possibilities.  There is no need here to posit a ground for love transcendent to the community, that is, a God.  We seek and find love here in this immanent plane, mundane and profane creatures we might be, so seeking it in community is in our capacity.

    I think this has real promise, might be groundbreaking.  I hope she follows through with it.

    Going into the Black Forest to dine with my Woolly brothers.  Listening to a new book.

    Here’s a thought about the beloved community:

    “The Beloved Community has three dimensions: self-love, neighbor-love, and universal love, according to Rev. Owen-Towle. “You can’t send forth what you haven’t claimed,” he said of the importance of self-love. “What you don’t own in your own heart you can’t give away.”

    Rev. Owen-Towle pointed out, however, that self-love is not sufficient. “Unitarian Universalism at its most authentic is never only about self-fulfillment – either everybody is saved or nobody is,” he said. “As UU’s we know that there lies an indisputable oneness at bottom.” We must demonstrate an alternative way of being religious, he added, in order to furnish a large, spacious household rather than a snug, comfortable collective.

    Rev. Owen-Towle urged his audience to seek the challenge of the Beloved Community. “Beloved Community transcends our own convictions, ever widening its embrace to include outsiders,” he said. “It’s always bigger than the imaginable.””


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality Humanities Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged