This morning I spent a few minutes outside planting a hill of seed potatoes. The spring air is about as good as it gets, don’t you think? Sweetened with a trace of wisteria blossoms.

It seems such a gift that for a small effort, covering pieces of potato under a mound of soil, I will be able to unearth whole potatoes in a few months. Collard greens keep on giving. I tear off the big, lower leaves, and collards just keep growing taller with new sprouts at the tip. I call them my “palm collards” — tall stems with a clump of leaves on top!

Eight little baby bunnies grace my rabbitry, jumping in and out of their nest boxes. Katrina used to put one in each of her shirt pockets. Rabbit kits are a joyous gift I had very little part in creating!

Clean tap water and clear air are blessings many nations can’t enjoy. They are gifts of the earth, vulnerable to those who would despoil them in competition for lower costs of doing business.

Market value is no measure of life’s gifts. In Wyoming I remember scouring my imagination for how that expanse of land might be developed— too little water for crops or cattle, too distant for housing or businesses. Then I woke up: How often I confuse price with value.

The smile freely given by a stranger. People who look and listen and ask questions and celebrate insights different from their own. Gifts of community, fellow-travelers. Gifts of nature. Gifts of inner feelings and passions, experiences and insights, evolving, persisting. Gifts of personality, endlessly diverse among us and around the world. So much value, transcending the accident of price.

Religious community is where human beings seek to be awake to the priceless gifts of life. Gifts that transcend the changing market, whether balloon or devaluation. Here we gather in awe and wonder, gratitude and humility, the posture of religion (and of secular wisdom) around the globe.

At UUFEC, April is when we make our individual pledges of financial support for Unitarian Universalist religious community. Stewardship volunteers have drawn my attention to Malvina Reynolds’ song, The Magic Penny (1949): “Love is something if you give it away, you end up having more.”

When we participate in religious community, we celebrate awareness and exploration of life’s gifts. We invest in one another, collaborating in shared leadership. We invest in Unitarian Universalist values by our living witness in the community. We invest with our time, our talents and our treasures.

Beyond my commitment to UnitarianUniversalist ministry, Jeannette and I will give real dollars in our pledge to UUFEC, guided by the suggested giving chart. We think it is worth investing in Unitarian Universalist values- exploring and awakening to the gifts all around us.

“It’s just like a magic penny, hold it tight and you won’t have any. Lend it, spend it, and you’ll have so many, they’ll roll all over the floor….”

Blessings!

“The great gift we receive on the inner journey is the certain knowledge that ours is not the only act in town.”
–Parker J. Palmer

Children display real delight in exploration, discovering something new: Aha! We Unitarian Universalists long for the spirit of the child, open to new insights and wondrous discoveries. We love that feeling! In fact, we call our religious education classes “Religious Exploration” and “Lifespan Religious Education and Faith Development.” In the early 1800’s, William Ellery Channing described this radical Unitarian notion of “religious instruction”:

“The great end in religious instruction is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; Not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own;

Not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire a fervent love of truth; Not to form an outward regularity, but to touch inward springs;

Not to bind them by ineradicable prejudices to our particular sect or peculiar notions, but to prepare them for impartial, conscientious judging of whatever subjects may be offered to their decision;

Not to burden the memory, but to quicken and strengthen the power of thought; Not to impose religion upon them in the form of arbitrary rules, but to awaken the conscience, the moral discernment.

In a word, the great end is to awaken the soul, to excite and cherish spiritual life.”

Sometimes I think the Western world is trapped in our moot religious and philosophical debates, as if there is nothing new under the sun. Then, aha! Halfway around the globe people explode in celebration of exotic religious traditions!

On March 8 and 9, huge numbers gather to celebrate ancient religious festivals, rich in spiritual insights exotic to the Western world: Magha

Puja, Holi, and Hola Mohalla! Enough talk about how religions are all alike! New insights, new discoveries await our openness. See you Sunday?!

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

When I first wandered into the Unitarian Universalist Church of Binghamton, NY, I thought “church” involved Sunday services with music and preaching, children’s classes with stories, crafts and songs, and adult classes on hot ethical issues.  I had not the faintest idea of what a passionately diverse covenant community might entail.    

With all our different personal perspectives and passionate debates, we rarely come to agree on beliefs.  In fact, we are pretty proud that UUs with an exotic array of human wisdom and experience hold our heads high in full participation, welcome, and embraced with kindness.  I’m not suggesting we don’t sometimes break our covenant and act with disrespect toward one another now and again.  We’re a learning community.  But we have our covenant, bylaws and policies, and we try to call ourselves back to our better behavior.  At best, we celebrate our beautiful diversity of perspectives, especially when we differ, with grace and mutual respect.   

Which brings me to this question:  What is your ministry here?  What unique gifts and energies do you bring to this diverse fellowship?   Is there something not being done?  Perhaps others share your recognition of this emptiness that should be filled.  With others’ support, could this be your ministry? 

Is there something that could be done better?  Please be gentle with us.  We are not trying to be perfect nor impressive in our ministries with one another.  We are trying to be faithful, doing what we can to serve our various callings.  What calls to you?  What little ideas are nibbling at your soul? 

Let me give an example.  We support food pantries that provide largely processed foods to the hungry.  But in the Debs household, we try to eat unprocessed grains, fruits and vegetables.  I wish I could give the hungry better, healthier food to eat.  Then our daughter Katrina mentioned that potatoes are one of the more perfect foods.  Been thinking about that.  What if….  What if someone bought a bunch of seed potatoes and made them available to kids and teens and families at UUFEC to grow a hill or two, maybe a tub of potato plants in the yard.  Perhaps I’m not the only one who thinks our kids would do well to learn how to grow food.  Maybe we could harvest potatoes for the food pantry. 

I’m coming to think that Unitarian Universalist faith is not just about attending church and classes.  It’s about encouraging and accepting one another.  It’s also about finding our ministries and supporting one another in that journey.  What is your ministry here and in this community? 

“I don’t know what your destiny will be,  
but one thing I know:  
the only ones among you who will be really happy  
are those who will have sought and found  
how to serve.”   
-Albert Schweitzer 

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.