• Tag Archives preaching

  • I Wonder

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa Full Harvest Moon

    “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” – Greek Proverb

    I’m nervous. Not sweat on the palms, head for the door or the tunnel kind of nervous, but nervous anyhow. It has two sources I can identify. One, will I dress well enough to preach in Wayzata? After a life time of playing down the importance of dressing up, I still know when it can hurt. I know this seems hopeless given that I’m 62, not 16, but there it is. These folks (folks I imagine attending a Unitarian-Universalist church in a wealthy burb like Wayzata.) dress better than I do. I imagine. And, they probably do. I only want to come up to minimum standards and I’ll probably make it. What if I don’t?

    I’ve shaved and cut my hair, trimmed my nails. I’m not about to buy new clothes because I believe Thoreau was right, “Beware of ventures that require new clothes.” but here’s the problem. I don’t wear sport coats or suits at all any more. This is so true that when I went in the closet to fetch a jacket I might wear I found most of the shoulders covered in dust. I’m not kidding. It’s been that long. Also, I’m no longer the svelte guy I was when I bought all the dress pants I own. Fortunately, I can still fit into a few pair.

    The second source of anxiety is also about vanity. I’ve preached around the state in several congregations, but I only get asked back in a couple of places. There’s no need for me to preach at all, financially, but I do have an intellectual stake in being heard and appreciated for the work and original thought. That intellectual stake comes freighted with an emotional stake, too. It’s not like I’ll roll over and quit writing if I don’t get good feed back. I generally do good feedback.

    Part of me says it’s the changeable nature of program committees and the changing tastes of even those who remain constant from year to year and I’m sure that explains some of it. Part of it, too, I’m sure, is the non-pastoral nature of my preaching. That is, I don’t write to inspire or to give practical advice; I write to make people think, to get them to act, to consider new ways of seeing old problems or to see possibilities and problems where they never saw them before. I can make people nervous. On purpose. Because I’ve understood that to be my particular calling from day 1 in seminary.

    In spite of all those it might just be that people don’t like what I say, the way I say it, or me in particular. Oh, well, if it is this, then what can I do? I’m gonna be who I am anyhow. Still, I’d like to know. I think.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Writing 📎and tagged

  • 62 And Still Worried About High School

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    Imbolc                Waning Wild Moon

    Leaving for St. Paul in a few minutes.  Managed to work myself into an anxious state.  Wonderful.

    The day itself has glorious possibilities, bright and warming.

    What I’m experiencing falls under the category of pre-tramautic stress syndrome; that is, stress caused by anticipation of an unlikely, but possible phenomenon.  Last night I wrote that I gave up wanting more speaking opportunities and that the work is its own reward.  True enough as far it goes, but I also want to be liked and know that my prickly, combative personality does not lend itself to the warm fuzzies of human interaction.  God, here I am, 62 and still worried about high school.

    At my best I know and accept the path and the person I have become, but just before a public event, sometimes, like right now, I’m not at my best.  Anyhow, it helps to write it down, say it out loud.  Thanks for listening.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality 📎and tagged

  • Deeply Skeptical of Industrializaton and Technology

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    42  bar falls 30.10 3mph WNW dewpoint 22 Spring

                 Last quarter Moon of Growing

    Into St. Paul today.  Preached (sort 0f) at Groveland.  I say sort of because the presentation consisted of me telling jokes about Unitarian-Universalists and the group discussing their meaning as it relates to UU identity.  This comes from a technique dredged up from those long ago years in anthropology.  Joking behavior, according to anthropologists, helps determine group boundaries.  And so it did.

    The discussion that ensued was better than I could have hoped.  It was heartfelt, honest, sometimes bordering on painful.  The latter emerged during a discussion of UU discomfort with faith, with the act of vulnerability.  This leaves UU’s, as the discussion went, with a blank spot when confronted with grief, crisis. 

    On the way home I stopped at Cheapo on Snelling and loaded up on mindless action films, the kind I prefer to watch when I’m working out. 

    During lunch I finished Princess Mononoke again.  It is a wonderful, complex and beautiful work that gives pause.  It would be perfect to show at the same as Lord of the Rings because both Tolkein and Mizasashi are deeply skeptical of industrialization and technology, yet also unflinching in representing the contradictions and trade-offs as not black or white.  Tolkein seems more either/or than Mizasashi, so I prefer Mizasashi’s take on thing.


    📂This entry was posted in Cinema and Television Faith and Spirituality Friends 📎and tagged

  • I’m Not Sure I’m a Unitarian-Universalist. I Suppose That Removes All Doubt.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    43 bar steady 30.01 0mph NE dewpoint 36  Spring

                 Waxing Gibbous Moon of Growing

    At last.  A night where I was not the biggest loser at sheepshead.  Bill Schmidt and I tied for high for the evening.  I had great cards and some good luck, plus I’ve had a long lesson in sheepshead from masters.  It was fun to do well at last.  We’ll see if I’ve actually learned something as the games continue.

    Kate and I watched Mission to Mars, most of it.  A surprising, hopeful Mars film.  Many films about Mars end with everybody dying, but this one offered an improbable, but not impossible conceit about how life came to earth.  What?  You’ll have to catch it to find out.

    Tomorrow I have two tours, a Weber and a Concerning the Spiritual in Art, focused on non-Western religions.

    The presentation for Groveland took an odd, but interesting turn today as I got ready to get started.  I had decided to face head on the question of UU identity by talking about identity development from a psycho-religious perspective.  The idea was to offer resources Groveland could use to develop a UU identity.   When I began to write, I started with a couple of U-U jokes.  Then I remembered an old anthroplogy lesson about joking behavior.  Our jokes define the boundaries of our group; they are an important device through which we can know who is in our group and who is not.  I’ll explain this a bit more later, but the presentation should be a lot of fun.

    Due to various things I didn’t exercise from Saturday through Tuesday.  My back began to spasm and remind me one of the good reasons for all this time I spend with weights and flexibility work.  So, I got back to it yesterday.  Yesterday and today I did a particular series of movement exercises which go a long way toward a more limber me.  They worked.  All better now.


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