Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast

I met a hero Last year at UU minister’s conference, now retired in Ashville, NC. 

Rev. Clark Olsen was one of three UU minister’s in Selma, March 11, 1965, who had responded to a call by Martin Luther King, Jr. for ministers to come support the struggle for black voting rights.  It was one of the others, Rev. James Reeb who was clubbed in the back of the head and died days later.  All three had dared to stand as allies with African Americans in their struggle for a voice. 

The Unitarian Universalist movement is grounded in the value of justice for all, and respect for every person’s right of conscience.  UU leaders could decide for themselves what the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations will do.  But they are elected from among us and respect us enough to ask us what we want to do.  In 1996, the UUA Board charged a committee to survey the members of our congregations.  See http://archive.uua.org/re/promise/results.html, and it was Clark Olsen who presented Fulfilling the Promise Final Report at the 2001 General Assembly.    

Over lunch I told Clark that I sometimes quote his words introducing that report:   

“The 21st century story of Unitarian Universalism may be, that in fulfilling our promise (of covenant relations) we provided a light for many of the world’s peoples, now conflicted by faith and ethnic differences, to move toward a new understanding of how peoples can be truly together in a democracy.  And what a legacy that shall be!” 

In the congregation he served last, Rev. Olsen took this respect for every person’s voice and “right of conscience” to new heights.  Although “worship” is said to be “the work of the people,” the medieval model of priests and clergy preaching “truth” to illiterate masses remains the cultural expectation of most religions with few exceptions.  Rev. Olsen stopped writing and preaching sermons.  Three months ahead he announced sermon topics and invited members to meet with him to share their reflections on the topic and subsequently research and design and deliver the Sunday service. All manner of arts were brought into worship:  music, poetry, visual arts.  Diverse experiences and insights shaped the messages.   Worship services honored the experience and wisdom of all the people, inviting them to share spiritual leadership.   

Here at the fellowship, some of our most delightful services have been collaborative:  New Years’ and  Interfaith Panels, Mother’s Day, Flower Communion, Memorial Day, Poetry Sunday, Independence Day, GA Retrospective, United Nations Sunday, and Blessing the Beasts.  You might say that the UU “liturgical calendar” has infinite possibilities.  I’m not the hero Clark Olsen is, but I am willing to collaborate with you in any way we can imagine that many voices may be heard, “enriching and ennobling our faith.”  

One Sunday during Second Hour, we were asked at Porch Swing to name just one thing that would bring life closer to earthly paradise.  One member said:  If we listened to one another.  May we create venues to listen deeper than words, to the depths of one another’s life experiences.    

Blessings in this new year! 

At our best, the Winter Holidays are a season of generosity and joy.  I feel gratitude for so many kind acquaintances, friends and family.  I feel gratitude even toward strangers who offer their services and even nurture.  There is much to be said for a modest strategy for saying “I love you”—giving your presence and a few presents to loved ones.  Hanging lights, decorating halls, cooking and feasting and making music! 

Mixed in among the bills and holiday cards, mail boxes are filled with charity appeals on behalf of noble causes and marginalized people. However, our empathy flows deeper than our resources.  I feel sad that I can’t give to groups I know are doing life-changing work for people who have no bootstraps to pull.  The more I know about injustice and suffering among the 99%, the more I feel empathy fatigue!   

It’s not “compassion fatigue,” I think.  Forrest Church’s modest advice is, “Do what you can.”  When I do what I can, when I act with compassion, I don’t feel fatigue of heart!  I feel energized and joyful!  It is the concerns that I do not act upon that build up to “empathy fatigue.”  In moments of empathic sadness, I am advised to breathe and reflect whether there is anything I could meaningfully contribute to redress the wrong.  Breathe.  “Do what you can.”  Enjoy doing what you can do!   I have the greatest gratitude for work others are able to do, well beyond my individual capacity.  Thank you for all the good you bring to the lives around you!  Thank you for your support of Sharing and Caring, Shelter House, Opportunity Place and our Niceville-Valparaiso Cold Night Shelter.  Thank you for your compassion for children, for your kindness to strangers, for your care of the earth.  Thank you for your kindness toward those who seem to least deserve it, for your loyal love toward family.  Thank you for embracing yourself with compassion.  On his Bountiful CD, Peter Mayer sings: 

Could you be a window 
In a darkened hall  
To give a passing soul 
A way of seeing through the wall  
And people stop in front of you  
And into you they peer  
Uncertain what they see because  
You’re not exactly clear?  

Could you be a lighthouse  
Standing on a shore  
Meant to send a light out  
To the sailor in a storm  
But even though you show your light  
Not a boat can tell  
You didn’t know you’re not supposed to  
Shine it on yourself?  

Are you a bell that hasn’t tolled?  
  A drum that hasn’t rolled?  
    A word of hope unsaid?  
A declaration never read?  
Could you be?….    

May the blessings of compassion fill you with gratitude and joy this holiday season!  May we each shine our light on someone else.    

Blessings! 

“The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast is a religious community united by UU Principles and committed to service, spiritual growth, and caring  fellowship.”              -UUFEC Mission Statement 

I  was having coffee at the Niceville YMCA after working out on the elliptical trainer, and a guy asked me what I do.  I said I am the minister of the Unitarian Universalist church—a liberal religion.    

Hold on!  That’s not what I say on Sunday mornings from the pulpit!  When I welcome newcomers to the service, I quote our Mission Statement that we are a “religious community” as opposed to a Bible-based, creedal church or one based on “enthusiasm,” an emotional experience like being “born again.”  I say that as a “religious community” we promise to be a safe place for each person’s integrity.  Our Statement of Principles is our covenant (or promise) and ends with these words:  

“Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding and to expand our vision.  As free congregations we enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual trust and support.”                           (UUA Bylaws)  

So which is it?  A covenanting “religious community”?  Or a “liberal religion”? 

In 1568, when the Transylvania Diet and King John Sigismond signed the Edict of Religious Toleration, not only were Unitarian Churches with their anti-Trinitarian theology first legalized, but “liberal” religious toleration for churches that held different theologies was also made into law for the first time in history.  Religious liberalism developed in time to where UU congregations affirm different theological views within the same congregation: “liberal religion.” 

When we say that we feel at home and among “like-minded people” here at UUFEC, I think we are saying we have met people who share the same doubts about traditional theologies.  A few may actually hold the same ethical or theological views as we.  Mostly, we are alike in that we approve of having different religious views!  “Liberal religion”  celebrates religious freedom and the “right of conscience.”  

Some discover us and sign the book as members because they feel “at home” with our liberality toward theology and ethics.  They may even send a check every year.  But they disappear.  Ask their religion, and they will declare themselves Unitarian Universalists, happy that UUFEC is a beacon of liberal religion on the Emerald Coast!   They “believe” the concept of liberal religion but without religious community, and we miss them.  

“Religious community” involves more than beliefs about theology or ethics, whether conservative or liberal.  It is a community of mutual trust and support, a community of compassion and hope.  If our faith were only about liberal beliefs, the library or internet or New York Times Book Review would be a more fertile and expansive source of liberal theology and ethics.  You who join us sporadically—I hope you know that a liberal religious community is here for you.  When you need us, when you want to grow relationships of “mutual trust and support,” UUFEC has lots of small group and leadership opportunities.  Sometimes, even love blossoms! 

 The world needs liberal religious community.  UUFEC needs to become a stronger voice celebrating diversity and compassion in a country that is becoming ever more tribal and divided, each against all.  We need you with us as we learn to “play fair” together, consulting, collaborating, struggling toward mutual trust.  Liberal religious community is a microcosm of the world, exploring how to share power, wealth and knowledge, taking for ourselves no privileged place.   

The world needs liberal religious community.  Will you join us?    Blessings!                             

Minister’s Reflections   October, 2011                                  Rev. Rod Debs, pastor 

Have you ever considered serving on the Board of Trustees of the Fellowship?  Have you considered the precious memories you might create as a Religious Exploration teacher with our children once or twice a month?  If you’d like to help plan Children’s activities, the RE Committee with DREs Deborah and Darrell, and Jennifer Jordan, Chair, need your help with activities.

Membership folks are working out how best to welcome and engage participation of those who long for our religious community but don’t know such a place as ours exists.  If you would like to create exciting new Sunday programs, Religious Services folks and the Minister want to see your ideas blossom into reality.

In Iowa, years ago, a UU congregation needed a committee chairperson for Religious Services.  A guy who came from the school of self-reliance— Emersonian or military or academic, said:  “I’ll be the Chair only if we do it my way.”  Sounded to me like someone who had broken free after much struggle and suffering from the authoritarian grip of parents or religion or restrictive educators!  He had succeeded in becoming a professor by breaking loose and doing it his own way.

We are not asking you to carry the burden of doing anything your way, alone.  At the same time, by trusting committees and electing Trustees, we are empowering small groups to represent the will of the congregation and to deliberate on actions without everyone being involved in every decision in every area of committee work.  Committee boundaries empower you to collaborate and act on our behalf.  They also constrain us all to consult with stakeholders before going our own way.

I’m not going to say that breaking boundaries is never OK.  There are revolutionary times when the only way seems to be to act first and ask forgiveness when you could never get permission.  But that is not in a community that covenants with one another “our mutual trust and support.”  Loose cannons break trust and undermine the community of trust and support. 

The creativity of collaborative sub-groups, empowered and entrusted to consult with stakeholders and to take action, exceeds the creativity of loose cannons or authoritarians acting alone, and is far more efficient than the “committee of the whole.”

We have no kings or priests here.  We “share ministry.”  Learning to restrain and integrate the creativity of “independent operators” is something we are called to do, beginning with ourselves.  The Congregational Ministry folks, chairperson Tiny (543-3290, andersontb@valp.net), Fred (582-4417, boyer@valp.net), Lois (897-2162, lvr1@cox.net), Brenda (865-0363, bancfleming@cox.net) and Rod (225-3826, minister@uufec.com) are individually interested in hearing every concern.  We will research for accurate and complete information, and get back with you.  Though we have “broken our trust a thousand times before,” we don’t pass judgment or decree punishment like kings or priests.  We will find ways to go on from here, honoring one another’s mutual trust and support.

This Fellowship is a fabulous microcosm of the world where we can learn how to live–as real, imperfect people–our great covenant of “mutual trust and support.”  We can do it here, and in our families, our neighborhoods, our communities, our countries and as a global eco-system.  We can learn mutual trust and support!  

Have you thought about your role at the UU Fellowship?  We need you.  The world needs us.

Blessings!                                                         Rev. Rod Debs, pastor

“No one shall be reviled for his religion by anyone,… it is not permitted that anyone should threaten anyone else by imprisonment or by removal from his post for his teaching, for faith is the gift of God….”  “no one shall compel them for their souls would not be satisfied.” (Edict of Religious Toleration, Torda, 1568) 

On Pilgrimage to Transylvania, Juanita, Jeannette and I stood in the Torda church where the Edict of Toleration was issued by the Transylvania Diet.  History’s first declaration of the “right of conscience” in matters of religion was under the reigns of Queen mother Isabella and her son King John Sigismund.  We paid our respect at their tombs.   

The king’s preacher, Francis David, declared, “We need not think alike to love alike,” and many congregations converted to call themselves Unitarian.  We climbed to the Citadel in Deva and entered the dungeon cell where Francis David died for the crime of “religious innovations” under good King Sigismund’s successor to the throne.  It was a long climb up to that cold dungeon.  

Over a year ago, 48 UUFECers jotted down your thoughts in answer to the Sunday morning question, “What are we doing here at UUFEC?”  443 years since the Edict of Religious Toleration, here are some of your answers: 

• Promote religious tolerance and respect for each other. 
• Promote peace, love, understanding, and a quest for knowledge/truth. 
• Create a just and loving world with family, friends, community, nation, planet… 
• Learn how we can work together to bring  peace, respect, community to all. 
• Build bridges of peace to cross gaps of hate. When the rest of the world says “x is evil” we ask “why is x evil?”  “How can x become NOT evil?” 
• Nobody tells anybody else what to believe. We decide for ourselves. 

The Membership Committee has asked how we show UUFEC welcome to U.S. military families, retirees and contractors. Would flying the U.S. and Earth flags communicate our welcome?  At the Opinion Table in the sanctuary please write your feelings on flying the flags and what it would mean to the community.   

One member’s opinion is that the quotes we post on The Wayside Pulpit outside are our UU flags, as many as we have opinions.   

When we consider one another’s views, we honor the “right of conscience” first declared 443 years ago by Unitarians in Transylvania.  May we more than tolerate different views.  May we celebrate the integrity of others who do not “think alike.”  May we show the world what it means “to love alike.” 

It’s good to be back home.  Blessings!

The familiar rhyme, “April Showers Bring May Flowers,” reminds us of patience, optimism, and a full range of attitudes and behaviors associated with the virtue Hope. Spring evidences the rewards of perpetual Hope, particularly in the month of May. One can sense the fruits of Hope in the fullness of Spring’s emergence from Winter’s dearth into Nature’s lush, vibrant, diverse display of flora and fauna.

In May we bear witness to Hope’s promises fulfilled through rituals honoring the growth and achievement of our children through their exams, sports, recitals, graduation ceremonies, and even through our own Religious Exploration Bridging Ceremony. May is both a demonstration and a celebration of Life’s robust plentitude.

Absurd as the recent “end of the world” false prophesy may seem, it is not the prediction of the Rapture itself I find curious—nothing new in that scheme—rather, it is the date—May 21st. In May we take delight in the rapturous climax of Spring. We are amazed…again…at the season of fecundity and new birth. We acknowledge the fruits of our labor in both field and family. We celebrate good work and good fortune through rituals honoring the human spirit in personal, controlled, and partial tones even while being confronted with impersonal, uncontrol- lable, and impartial forces of Life that evoke awe, terror, humility, but also gratitude, and hope.

The “insane” proclamation of God coming to destroy all but the faithful few is rooted in apocalyptic literature that was originally intended as messages of justice and hope to oppressed and persecuted Jewish and Christian communities. Ironically, despite its absurdity and exclusivity, even in “the end of the world” message a faint echo of “Hope springs eternal!” can be discerned, particularly in May, because Hope springs from a fundamental human impulse toward Life.

Minister’s Reflections: Rev. Rod Debs,  May, 2011    “What Do I Owe”

“A penniless man

Who will readily give whatever he has

Is said by the wise

To be the noblest and richest on earth.”

(Kindness: A Treasury of Buddhist Wisdom for Children and Parents – Sarah Conover, 2005)

One of the OWL workshop questions is, “What do you most want in an intimate relationship?” (Our Whole Lives – UUA-UCC comprehensive sexuality education curriculum)

I can imagine answers such as:  mutual attraction, honesty, trust, compatibility, humor, good sex, good communication, love, faithfulness, shared power/decision-making, common values, …  The list of relational desires and expectations could go on and on. OWL follow-up questions ask for the most important quality, the least important, and what qualities we want in our friends as well.  Great questions!  I wish I had considered them in a class years ago!

Similar questions are asked by businesses across the country and by church leaders as well:  What do our customers or clients or church members want from our organizations?  These are basic questions for any consumer society.  Am I getting what I want?  Am I getting my money’s worth?  Is this worth my time and energy?  Consumer questions.

At UUFEC I am always asking myself, are we serving the spiritual needs of all the constituents in all our diverse conditions of life?  Members ask themselves,  is this religious community worth my time? How much of my money is it worth?  Am I getting my money’s worth?  Consumer questions.

Do you remember the movie “Pay It Forward?” Perhaps we are asking questions that nurture greater and greater neediness. Greater and greater expectations. Nurturing judgmentalism rather than “service, spiritual growth and caring fellowship” as articulated by our UUFEC Mission Statement..

Consider a wholly different mind-set.  A different question.  What do I owe an intimate companion? Honesty?  Trustworthiness?  Shared decision-making? Listening?  Faithfulness?  Kindness?  The benefit of the doubt?  Gentleness?  Strokes?  Simple recognition? What do I owe my friends?

Perhaps the biggest question of all that will determine our happiness in life is this: What do I owe strangers I meet on the street? These are not selfish consumer questions.  They are spiritual-relational questions.  Sacred questions.

As we enter a new fiscal year as a religious community, I hope we will go beyond the consumer questions, and ask questions that are more appropriate for spiritual growth—which is what a religious community is all about.  What do I owe friends and strangers, elders and children, in all our diverse imperfections and giftedness?  What do I owe that will enrich others’ lives? And give meaning to my own life.

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

-John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address, Friday, January 20, 1961

Sabbatical Note:  Rev. Debs is on Sabbatical from May 1 through July 31.  For pastoral or emergency concerns, please contact Darrell Bruning (retired USAF Chaplain) at 897-1192 bruningd@hotmail.com or Bill White (Humanist Counselor) at 243-5247 u2rhuman@earthlink.net.  For other UUFEC business, please contact committee chairs, Board members, or Sabbatical Committee members:  Karen Lauer at 582-4676 kdlauer@cox.net, Tiny Anderson 678-5282, Scotty Zilinsky at 244-3296 scottyzpt@aol.com or Darrell Bruning, Chair.

Minister’s Reflections: Rev. Rod Debs,  April, 2011    “Gratitude, Loneliness, Wholeness”

“Life is a gift for which we are grateful.

We gather in community to celebrate the glories

and the mysteries of this great gift.”

–Margorie Montgomery

What if religion is deeper than beliefs? What binds us together? What makes us whole?

In recent months, a couple walked into the fellowship asking to be married. After marriage conversations they took the wedding manual I have compiled and went home to write their own ceremony. I helped them polish it up over the months before their wedding. I printed it and taped it into my red binder. With pencil in hand, I practiced what they had written. I discovered that I did not believe what they wrote about being born alone and living most of our lives solitary until a lucky few of us find someone special who will share our passions, our sorrows and our joys with us. Nope.

I do not believe we are born or live alone. But it was their wedding. Like them, many people experience life with a deep sense of isolation and loneliness. Escape from loneliness is truthfully what marriage meant to the couple. So I celebrated their marriage. I delivered their marriage sentiments.

Many think they are alone. I am in awe of the air and light, the hands and eyes that greeted me at birth. Before birth, I was bathed in warm fluids, massaged by my mother’s movements and voice, and nourished by her body. My world gives me clouds and moon and sunshine, rain and soil and green growing plants, cars and houses and clothes, hands and voices and eyes, ideas and words and feelings, dogs and rabbits and birds, and countless new discoveries minute by minute. I have been unattentive, lonely and anxious many times in my life. I have never been alone.

My Unitarian Universalist religion is neither a matter of believing in a supernatural nor in salvation sacrifice nor in heavenly destination. What grasps me in saving grace, are those moments of awe and humility and gratitude for the gifts of life. Despite the realities of hunger and pain and fear, I receive gifts of nature and community, gifts of surprise and generosity, gifts of breath and awareness. I am not alone, nor am I a believer. I am the awed, humble, grateful recipient of gracious gifts.

We are bound together in our different points of global community, sharing a common life together. Thank you for your commitment to fellowship and to greater interconnected wholeness! From winter to spring, may we awaken to the immediacy of life’s gracious gifts.

Blessings!

Minister’s Reflections: Rev. Rod Debs,  March, 2011    “Pilgrimage to Turda”

For the first time in history, in 1568, these words of toleration became “law of the land”:  “No one shall be reviled for his religion by anyone,… and it is not permitted that anyone should threaten anyone else by imprisonment or by removal from his post for his teaching, for faith is the gift of God….”  “no one shall compel them for their souls would not be satisfied” (Edict of Torda).

For our Minister’s Sabbatical this May, Jeannette, Juanita and I will be joining other Unitarian Universalists on a two-week pilgrimage to Romania, including Turda where the historic Act of Religious Toleration and Freedom of Conscience was issued by Transylvania’s King John Sigismund and the Diet of Torda.

The Religious Freedom which our nation’s founders built into the U.S. Constitution protecting each individual’s “right of conscience” was born in 17^th century conflict and debate among Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and newborn Unitarian Churches of Transylvania.  You and I today enjoy a great degree of freedom from being “reviled” and from threat of imprisonment and from losing our jobs because of this historic precedent.

Even so, we know friends who have lost their jobs because of faith or absence of faith.  We know what it is to be “reviled” and “compelled” by coercive religious or secular acquaintances, relatives or co-workers.  Ridicule, intimidation, discrimination, and violence are still a part of our society, for all of our Constitutional protections of the “right of conscience.”

It’s easy to be drawn into returning intolerance when that’s what we feel around us.  So to remind ourselves, we celebrate the words of King Sigismund’s minister, Francis David who declared:  “We need not think alike to love alike.” Such Religious Freedom is a delicate flower.  When Transylvania’s monarchy changed from being Unitarian under King Sigismund, Francis David was to die in a dungeon for his religious “innovations.”

Celebration Sunday: We have so much to celebrate at this Fellowship!  In March, every friend and member is invited to commit what you are able, in support of all that we do and all that we stand for in the world.  Jeannette and I will be giving generously because we are excited about what this Fellowship does and the message we embody on the Emerald Coast.

On Sabbatical in May, we will represent this Unitarian Universalist Fellowship to Unitarians in the villages of Romania.  Our Sabbatical pilgrimage to Turda, birthplace of religious toleration, is an occasion to celebrate our Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on the Emerald Coast, rich with diverse religious and secular sentiments.  A time to celebrate our nation’s Constitutional protections of the “right of conscience” and of religious freedom.

453 years since the Edict of Religious Toleration, may we not just “tolerate” diversity.  May we “celebrate” our congregation’s, and our nation’s enriching diversity!   The Unitarian Universalist Principles read: “Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding and expand our vision” (UUA Bylaws).

Today, it is ours to graciously and courageously promote the realities of religious integrity:  “no one shall compel them for their souls would not be satisfied.”

When sex is mentioned in adult company, some people clam up like they are walking on thin ice!  For me it brings up guilt and shame. Others seem to have anger and defensiveness. Wouldn’t it be great to re-file sex under “pleasure” in our mental filing cabinet‽

Check out what has been said about our Unitarian Universalist sexuality curriculum on Oprah.com: “Adventures in Adult Sex Education” by Amanda Robb, http://www.Oprah.com/Relationships/Adult-Sex-Education

Several years ago our trained sexuality educators, Patty and David, facilitated a group of UUFEC adults to explore issues of sexuality and wholeness using the sexuality curriculum OWL, Our Whole Lives.  Sensuality, physical relationships and sexuality are part of being human throughout our whole lives. The discussions and exercises were safe, liberating and just plain fun.

Now for the first time, UUFEC is offering three OWL curricula: K-1st grade, 7-9th grades and high school.  The first sessions are geared for kindergarten to first grade children and involves their parents.

The curriculum for grades 7 through 9 has six young people signed up.  Their parents previewed the entire curriculum prior to their enrollment.  The teen high school OWL curriculum was also previewed by parents before they began the class.

Trained OWL facilitators are Micah Krider, Miriam Lavandier, Gil Brown, and Jane Park. They are leading the initial three OWL classes, with the assistance of Don Harrison and Sandy Urbanczyk. The final curriculum for grades 4 through 6 is expected to be offered later this spring. Perhaps we will be able to offer Adult OWL again soon.

OWL sexuality education for our lives’ wholeness is one of the best things the Unitarian Universalist Association has to offer us as member congregations. OWL was created by a team of sexuality professionals, sexuality educators, psychologists and PhDs, commissioned in 1999 by the UUA and by the United Church of Christ for use in churches and schools.

I could not be more pleased that our children of all ages, and we adults as well, are exploring healthy sexuality, free of shame and fear, at the core of human wholeness.  Thank you to parent volunteer Micah Krider who spent so much time in training, preparation and now teaching! Yours is a special trust and joy, sacred work.

Thank you to parents who are providing for your children’s sexual health and wholeness by previewing the OWL curriculum and making it possible for them to participate!

Blessings!

Rod Debs, pastor