More Late Night Coffee-Inspired Musings

Made the mistake the other night of enjoying a cup of coffee with my dessert, not thinking that no self-respecting Seattleite would serve anything but high-test at their table...which meant that I was up until about 3 am yesterday morning with Randy Pausch, author of the New York Times bestseller The Last Lecture. I'd already seen the actual lecture itself on You-Tube, so the book didn't really have that many surprises...still I often found myself nodding in agreement where my insights into life, cancer, and childhood dreams coincided, and it certainly came as no surprise at all to discover that Randy (who passed away on July 25th from complications of his pancreatic cancer) was/is in fact a Unitarian Universalist: a member of the First Unitarian Church in Pittsburgh, where he apparently actually even regularly attends!

In his book Randy writes: "I was raised by parents who believed that faith was something very personal. I didn't discuss my specific religion in my lecture because I wanted to talk about universal principles that apply to all faiths -- to share things I had learned thorough my relationship with people."

I totally agree.

Don't get me wrong. I don't really have any problem with things like "the elevator speech," and I'm delighted by the renewed emphasis on hospitality, generosity, humility, service and gratitude I perceive throughout our liberal faith. What bothers me, I guess, is the "branding." I just don't care that much anymore about "Unitarian Universalism TM." I'm much more interested in what we do together every Sunday morning: not just in my church, but in healthy, dynamic, progressive faith communities of every stripe and flavor all over the world.

I don't really care whether Unitarian Universalists are best thought of as Liberal Christians, or Post-Christian Protestant heretics open to the wisdom, insights and inspiration of all the world's great religions, or an eclectic amalgam of "mystics, skeptics, and dyspeptics" bound together by a common covenant to seek and speak the truth in love, or even our own new religion. I no longer own or wear any flaming chalice jewelry either (although, God knows, maybe I should). We are what we are, we were what we were, we will be what we will be. The "correct" answer is always "All of the Above." And then some. But even that doesn't really tell us much. Which may explain the traditional Unitarian (and Universalist) preference for hagiography rather than dogma in the first place.

Here's another thought Randy's book and lecture raised in my mind. How "scaleable" is the Unitarian-Universalist experience in the first place? Randy talks a lot in his book about "enabling the dreams of others" -- and specifically about how the experience of mentoring and "paying it forward" can be even more rewarding than achieving one's own dreams. This has certainly been my experience as well. Institutions like the church (or a University like Carnegie Mellon) can allow us to leverage our efforts by serving more than one individual at a time, but there are also limits to how much hot air one can blow into a balloon without distorting its true shape, or even bursting it apart.

So what are those limits in our religious practice? In the aftermath of the Tennessee Valley shootings I've heard a lot in the media about how we are a "small" denomination. One thousand congregations and a quarter of a million people doesn't really seem that small to me, but I suppose that "small" is a relative measure. How would our denomination look (and feel!) different with two thousand congregations and a million members? Or two million? Or ten? How does the UU experience change when the "norm" becomes a "Program" church of 350 "contributing units," rather than a "Pastoral" sized congregation of 100 households? Will there still be a place for the "Family" sized Fellowship of fewer than 100 members? These are the most common sized congregations we have; it seems foolish to neglect or ignore them (and how would you get rid of them even if you wanted to)? And what the hell would a "Corporate" sized UU megachurch look like? Almost by definition, Megachurches are driven by the compelling vision of an individual, dynamic pastor; are UUs willing to accept that much authority so tightly held in the hands of a single person?

I certainly don't have the answers to all of these questions, and (as I suggested earlier) I'm not even really that certain I care about them. What I DO care about -- desperately -- is how to be the best pastor I can to the one hundred and eighty-some souls who have already decided to honor me by entrusting me with the privilege of serving as their minister, together with all the others who may just happen to step through those big red doors on a Sunday morning, like what hear, and decide to stick around.

And naturally I want to make that process as easy and "user-friendly" as possible. I want to create a sacred space where people feel safe no matter who they are or where they've come from, where people feel comfortable inviting their friends, where the values we profess in public are privately practiced by every person there...not always perfectly, but with sincerity, devotion, and commitment. And out of this "promiscuous assembly of believers and seekers," I hope to mobilize an authentic "community of memory and hope" dedicated to the challenge of changing the world for the better -- perhaps not immediately and all at once, but a little at a time, one piece at a time. And this, for me, is what it means to be a "Church."

There's nothing uniquely Unitarian or Universalist about my aspiration. And yet, that's who I am and that's where I find myself, and I'm certainly not ashamed to let people know it. Whenever it comes up, that is. Which is actually a lot less often than you might think....