Taking Shelter in Holy Houses

I was on my own again today. No worries – I’m getting pretty good at getting around and knowing the neighborhoods I know. I was ready.
After breakfast I headed out to the Midlevels via taxi to visit the oldest synagogue in Hong Kong – Ohel Leah. That’s Hebrew for Leah’s Tent.
The synagogue has very high security, which I thought was sad. I had to show my passport and essentially provide my Jewish creds. The guard was friendly, but he was also very serious. I guess my creds were good enough, because he let me in.
The synagogue is down from the street level, so you actually enter from one building and go down a few levels to go out into the courtyard that surrounds the actual synagogue building. It was constructed at the beginning of the 20th century by Sephardic Jews, but now its membership is mostly Ashkenazi. It is Orthodox. It’s also quite lovely, and as Shabbat hadn’t started yet, I was able to take some photos inside.
As I came out again it began to rain and I was forced to take shelter under the eaves. It gave me time to reflect on the state of things.
It is a very lovely campus in the middle of an urban landscape.
After the synagogue, I took a taxi to the IFC mall, in part, because I know my way to places from there. I stopped in at the tea shop (TWC) and got some smoky Earl Grey, and then had a pot of Alexandria and a couple of cookies. Yum.
Then I decided to brave the MRT(the subway) by myself and head out to the New Territories and the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas (T10KB). It required that I change trains twice.
Oh, and in the New Territories, there are decidedly fewer tourists. Much less English signage. Nearly everyone on the train was Chinese. Still, I found my way.
So, this monastery and temple complex. Wow! I promise pictures will follow when I return to the states. There is a long path going up to the temples that is lined with Buddhas. I think it has 10,000 steps. At least it felt that way. Water is essential. I could hear wild monkeys in the trees , and I knew that someone had just been scratched, but I didn’t end up seeing any.
At the lower top level, there is a small vegetarian restaurant. I had tea and lunch there. Then I walked out to see the temples.
Inside the main hall the walls are lined with small Buddha statues. Is truly awesome. I was moved to tears – I felt the power of God in this place. There are incense pots everywhere.
There is a second level, and for the second time in one day, while I was up top at the second level, I got caught in the rain and was forced to take refuge in a Holy house.
Up top there is a hillside covered in Buddhas riding donkeys. There is a big Buddha by a waterfall, and a spectacular view.
The rain forced me to pause twice today. Interesting that I was at religious house.
There is so much to this temple complex, but I really can’t explain. I made my way back and had a short time to rest before treating my cousins to a fantastic dinner at a Greek restaurant. As I’m now nodding off, it’s time to sign off. That’s my mite.

Connections

The 2014 Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly in Providence, RI has ended. This was, for me, the best GA ever (of the seven I’ve attended). It seems to have been good for a lot of folks.
For me, this GA was all about connections – and reconnections. This was my second year at ministry days. Last year I knew a few people – mostly from my own chapter. This year, I found I was looking forward to reconnecting with ministers I hadn’t seen in the last year.
Most of the GA’s I’ve attended have been as a layperson and therefore have involved using vacation time from my job. For the last several years I’ve been attending nearly every year, and it find that I also look forward to reconnecting with other religious professionals as well as the laity who attend year after year.
Don’t get me wrong – I get plenty out of the workshops (although there have been years when I’ve barely gone to any), but this year especially, it’s been about connections. The theme of GA this year was Love Reaches Out, which, for me, is all about connection. The worship services were about connection, too.
I felt connected to God and to the assembled congregation as I listened to the stories, sang the hymns, and watched all that was going on. As I prepare to return home, these connections linger.
I know I won’t see some of these people again until next year. It’s possible that I won’t see some of these people ever again. We never really know what’s coming next, do we? But I am, for now, sustained by the hugs and smiles, the prayers and good wishes, the awesome power of being in community.
As we return home, I will keep this community in my prayers. I’ve made some new connections, too, and that only makes the whole community stronger. At the opening ceremonies, we sang Leaning On The Everlasting Arms – and I wept. At the closing ceremonies, we sang, in Spanish, Nearer My God To Thee, and I wept again. I am so connected. These are my people, and I love them. And there is still more room in the circle.
That’s all I’ve got. That’s my mite.

Service of the Living Tradition

This evening I was honored, along with, if I’ve counted correctly, 161 of my ministerial colleagues who have received preliminary or final fellowship, or who have retired this year, and 14 credentialed religious educators and musicians who have received their credentials or have completed full-time service.  We also paused to remember the 17 ministers who have died in the last year. It was the Service of the Living Tradition.

This was the 53rd Service of the Living Tradition at the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. This has been going on for my entire life. But in truth, it reaches back for centuries.

If you’re not a Unitarian Universalist (UU), or even if you are, you should know that we have congregational polity. That means that the power is in the people. The people form the congregations. The people call and ordain the ministers. The people, as the congregations, formed the Association, made the by-laws of the Association, and run the business of the Association. The people elect the officers of the Association. So, although my fellowship has come from the Association, and my ordination will come from the congregation, in a sense, fellowship really is from the people, as well, as that is who makes up the Association. It’s from the bottom-up.

When we gather together, as an Association, to do our business, we become like one giant congregation. So it was exciting and wonderful and delightful to have my picture shown up on the big screens (I had Twenty-One-Year-Old take a good picture for just this occasion), to hear my name called, to hear the arena (yes, this all happened in the Dunkin Donuts Arena in Providence, RI) erupt in applause and my own people cheer out loud, and to walk across the stage/chancel and shake hands with the appropriate dignitaries. As it happens, the current President of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, the final dignitary in the line, is a minister who serves my home congregation and one I’ve known for many years. So that wasn’t so much a handshake as a bonus hug.

I was thrilled to be there (did I mention that? I feel like I might have mentioned that, and yet, I keep wanting to say that), so happy to be walking with so many of my friends who had also received preliminary fellowship (and a few who received final fellowship). But amidst the joy, there was weightiness, too.

OK, Hebrew time-out:  This is where I need to tell you that the Hebrew word for “honor” or “glory” is “kavod” which also means “heavy” — honor/glory is weighty. And there was definitely a weightiness to this. I think it’s brilliant that we honor all the significant passages of ministry in this one service. Most ministers will be honored in this service four times in our lives – in preliminary fellowship, final fellowship, when we retire, and when we die. Some of us might never achieve final fellowship. Some of us will die before we have the chance to retire. This was driven home this past year when a colleague died after a freak accident a few months ago. Seeing her picture on the screen reminded us of the fragility and uncertainty of life.

I was also reminded that I stand on many great shoulders. Ministry wasn’t invented with me and it won’t end with me. At the service of ordination, a minister offers the right hand of fellowship to the newly ordained minister. This is meant to symbolize the long line of ministers who stand behind, beside, and before the new minister. We are in this together. And this evening, I was in this together, with so many colleagues.

We worshipped. Oh, and the preacher this evening? Rev. Rebekah Montgomery – a colleague from my own local ministers’ association chapter, and, oh yeah, an Army chaplain who did happen to be, if I’m not mistaken, the chaplain of the year not too long ago. She rocks. We worshipped. She preached.

Once upon a time, all the ministers processed in to the service together – but remember that congregational polity thing I mentioned? A few years ago that changed. I was called up (we all were) from the congregation. I was sitting with my people, and I walked up from the congregation to take my place on the stage/chancel.

Ministry can be lonely, but, as the hymn says, “How can I be lonely? My friends are all around me? Their loving arms surround me. Day is a breaking in my soul.”

We are blessed.

That’s all I’ve got. That’s my mite.

Why I Don’t Particularly Care For Goddess Worship

It’s no secret that I’m strongly theistic. I hope that it’s also no secret that I believe that each person must find his or her own way to the Divine, and that what’s right for me is not necessarily what’s authentic to someone else.

So why don’t I like goddess worship? I have nothing against neo-pagans and those who believe that the goddess connects them more authentically to the earth. It’s not wrong any more than any other religion is wrong. It’s wrong for me, though.

Here’s the thing. Goddess worship presumes a gender. That’s my beef. I’ve heard people give their rationale for goddess worship as giving equal time to the feminine, or recognizing the feminine, or rebelling against  male-dominated Christianity or Judaism. However, the God of the Bible is neither male nor female. I don’t like the idea of tenderizing God one or or another. I don’t want God to be female, nor do I want God to be male.

Throughout Hebrew and Christian scriptures, God is portrayed in both feminine and masculine characteristics. As a father. As a nursing mother. As a king. As knowledge. As creator. Protector. Lamenter. Lover. God is too big to be contained.

In Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, there are ten manifestations of God, and the one that is  immanent, the one that dwells within us and is all around us, the Shekinah is feminine.

So it’s not that I think God is male, it’s that I don’t. I don’t think God is male, and by stating that the Divine is female, it has the same effect. I don’t want a male god and a female goddess. I don’t want a god and a consort. The God I believe in is beyond my complete understanding.  How can I genderize that?

I am apophatic about God. That means that I believe we can’t define what God is. We can only say what God is not. Now, there are those who are very strictly apophatic. They would even say that we can’t say God loves, we can only say God doesn’t hate. I’m not that strict. I think we can know that God loves by God’s actions in the world. I think we can know that God has compassion by God’s acts of compassion. But we can’t know fully God’s compassion or love. We haven’t the capacity. And we don’t know enough to define God.

So all I can say is that God is not female. And God is not male. But if God created humanity in God’s image (and male and female God created them both), then both male and female are needed to complete the picture. There was no man, after all, until there was woman. There was only the earth creature (Adam).  Man, ish, did not exist until there was woman. Then the earth creature became both man and woman.

So worship how you will. Worship what you will. Do it authentically. But please don’t tell me that my God is a man. My God is not a man. And even if you want to say that Jesus is God, that’s Jesus who was fully human and fully divine. Jesus, who was formed in the womb of a woman, therefore that womb must also be divine. And the Holy Spirit is feminine. So we still have God who is male and female and neither male nor female.

Where was I? Yes. Don’t tell me that my God is a man. My God is God. Singular in every sense of the word. May you always go with God. However you understand God to be.

That’s my mite. It’s all I’ve got.

The Twelve Blogs of Christmas: Fifth Day – Gold Things

It’s the Sunday after Christmas Day, so I preached today. This is not unusual for interns. Plenty of my fellow interns were preaching today, and I hope that it went well for everyone.

Since it’s still Christmas, I figured I’d keep with the theme. The lectionary has the slaughter of the innocents on for today. That’s a worthy topic, and I’ve preached on it before. But since we won’t be doing Epiphany next week, I thought I’d talk about the magi and their gifts today.

So this is what I’m not going to do now. I’m not going to just reprint my sermon here. You can hear that online (eventually) if you  like. Still, I want to talk about gifts a bit, and worth.

As it happens, yesterday I got into a FB discussion about the worth of things. That is, the price of things in stores and what they’re really worth. I was weighing in on this because, well, I’ve been talkative my whole life, and it doesn’t seem to matter if it’s coming out of my mouth or my fingers, I have a lot of opinions on things, and I worked in economics for ten years. So I couldn’t resist is really what it was. But it got me thinking.

Worship is about worth, after all. That’s the root of worship – worth. What are we worshipping? Some people really are worshipping gold.

The magi did bring gold to the baby Jesus, but the gold was a symbol of majesty. They also brought him frankincense (anointing, and the sign of Divinity or the adoption by the Divine) and myrrh (a funerary incense that foreshadows the crucifixion and resurrection). So it’s a whole package. Like a gift set. And they’re signs. Not meant to be worshipped in themselves.

Not that gold isn’t nice. It definitely is. But it comes at a price – and I’m not talking about the approximately $1200.00/ounce at which gold is trading. I mean that to get at gold now miners are having to do more and more damage to the environment. Cyanide is used to leach gold from the earth now. Is that worth it to us? Do we need gold that badly that we’re willing to destroy the ground it comes from?

Of course, we do the same for oil, natural gas, coal, and many other things that we take from the earth. We hurt the planet, and we hurt each other, for more stuff, for more money, for more gold.

The magi only appear in Matthew, who is very concerned with royalty. So there’s a lot about royal gifts and royal lineage. There’s nothing about being born in a stable, or about traveling to Bethlehem. In Matthew, the holy family is already there. They live in Bethlehem. It’s in Luke where we see them as poor. Luke shows us a holy baby born among animals and announced to lowly shepherds. No kings. And still, there are angels. The story is worth so much.

So what’s gold to you? What’s a precious gift?

Related articles

• The Twelve Blogs of Christmas: Third Day – French Horns (thewidowsmiteyblog.wordpress.com)
• The Twelve Blogs of Christmas: First Day – The Whole Family Tree (thewidowsmiteyblog.wordpress.com)
• The Twelve Blogs of Christmas: Day Two – Snuggly Doves (thewidowsmiteyblog.wordpress.com)