Rev. Bob Klein UUCLR November 7, 2010 GETTING PAST THE 7 YEAR ITCH/BREAKING OLD PATTERNS: What I Appreciate about UUCLR and Why I am Still Excited to be your Minister! Some of you will remember a movie made in 1955 titled, The Seven Year Itch. Those who prefer to fantasize about women, especially blonds, may remember it better than others. Do you remember who starred as the girl who prompted the itch? (Marilyn Monroe) The movie was actually made a year before I was born, and I haven t seen it for years, but I remember it and I remember I enjoyed seeing it many times over the years! In any case, the Seven Year Itch is about reaching a time in a relationship when the honeymoon is definitely over, things are pretty humdrum, the grass may be looking greener on the other side of the fence, and people may start to think about making a change. You may have noticed from looking at the rogue s gallery of minister s pictures, that the typical tenure of a minister at UUCLR is about 8 years, or a year of reflecting and perhaps searching for a new settlement after that seven year itch hits. Now it works both ways, for the church may be ready to try a new minister after about seven years, or the minister may be ready to move on, feeling she has done all that she can. Some of you may have attended a meeting with the Rev. Susan Smith, our District Executive, a year or two ago when we talked about that cycle of honeymoons and establishing a norm, then getting tired of the status quo, and starting to itch for something different. Ok, those weren t necessarily the words she used, and she talked in somewhat greater length about choosing ministers whose strengths were somewhat opposite the previous minister, but I think you get the idea. One of her points was that the absence of a long tenure for a minister may be indicative of why UUCLR has never achieved all it has said it wants to achieve. It takes time to build a healthy working relationship, so each time there is a change of ministers, it is like starting over except that a lot of patterns are carried over into the new relationship. 1
I like the image of a dance to describe the way that congregations, lay leaders, and clergy relate to each other and create or re-create the religious community. We each have our favorite ways of dancing, we each have our musical preferences, and sometimes our dance is perfect and sometimes we just end up bumping into each other and stepping on each other s toes. It takes practice to create a beautiful dance together, so each time the minister or the lay leaders change, we all have to learn how to dance together once again. Perhaps with each change we will learn new dances or new steps to old dances or we will choose different music to accompany the dance. Change is good, and learning new steps and patterns is good, but too much change can lead to chaos. There are so many things I like about being the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Little Rock, that I am sure I will forget to mention several as I talk about them. I like dancing with you all. Your ideas about life and religion and spirituality mesh well with my ideas about those things most of the time. You challenge me frequently to learn new steps and at least once a year to learn new dances when a new cadre of leaders is elected. You also hold onto some of the old dances, literally in the Sufi Spiral Dance that we dance at the Buffalo and after IllUUmination, but also figuratively in the ways we do things around here. Like with most congregations, the wheels of progress move slowly--which sometimes helps to prevent disaster but also frequently can be exasperating. This dance requires patience and commitment from all of us. Often we lose newer people because so many people and groups have to approve anything. One residual factor that I blame on the start of UUCLR as part of the Fellowship movement, is that at times some people feel like they ought to have veto power over anything they don t like, even and sometimes especially if they weren t there for the vote! I like some of the wild west rugged individualism that keeps things going and sometimes brings in wonderful new ideas, but it also makes me crazy at other times! I wish that we could get to the point of being a permission giving church, which means that over a certain range of things we would be able to say to people with new ideas, yes, go for it! 2
Too often we stop new ideas as soon as we hear that they might cost something because we live with a sense of scarcity, that there is never enough, that we always need to cut back. I would really love to see UUCLR experience the bountiful abundance of this marvelous universe, a few years of plenty in which new programs can be funded, new staff can be hired and continuing staff be given at least a cost of living increase. The last couple of years have been difficult financially, but that has been true at the majority of churches and non-profits, as well as with most businesses and families. I really like it that so many of you are interested in the environment, that you are committed to eating lower on the food chain; conserving, recycling and re-purposing; driving economical fuel-efficient cars and hybrids; and doing things to keep the planet healthy. Such Earth-centered, Gaia-centered practices, whether they originate in Paganism or Science or UUism generally, warm my heart and stimulate my mind! I would love to see us revive the Earth Ministry group and the Green Sanctuary program, to look at what we can do as a congregation to have a smaller carbon footprint, to explore and share things we can do in every part of our lives to walk lightly on the earth. It is time for us to watch Brian Swimme s tapes and invite John Seed back to remind us of our responsibility to the earth. This is a dance we have not practiced enough lately, even though we know it is important! I have heard that there is a group interested in reviving the eco-film series! I love that you are Standing on the Side of Love! You completed the Welcoming Congregation Program and you are a welcoming home to Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning persons. I really liked how you walked through the Coming Out Door as Allies even if you weren t LGBT or Q yourself! Interweave Dances and gatherings are often well attended. I really appreciate the support I have found for reviving and hosting a PFLAG group (PFLAG is for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, but it is much more inclusive today with GLBTQ persons as well as family members and allies). Even though it had been decades since you declared yourself a Nuclear Free Zone, you are interested in issues far beyond the use, threats, and stockpiling of Nuclear Weapons. Just a few years ago, you voted to voice opposition to 3
the Iraq war, and the banner was out front until the fighting units were deployed home or elsewhere. You have been interested in matters of war and peace, supporting the troops but calling for an end to unjust wars. These matters are close to my heart. Some of you have been more interested in some kinds of spirituality than I have often been since leaving United Methodism. You have challenged me to renew my spiritual journey, to explore more intentional spiritual practices, and to make our worship experiences more spiritual. At the same time, others of you have reminded me that Jesus was a humanist, that he was focused on the well-being of human beings in calling for justice, equality, and compassion. When I came here, I told you that I was a Web-Force-Religious- Humanist, today I would probably add Spiritual and Pagan or Earth-centered to the mix. I believe in people, and in the great mysteries of the universe, and in the importance of the earth for life. Most of you don t like going to meetings. I think only Sarah Prickett and I really like going to meetings, and we both get tired of some of them! You have been open to considering new ways of doing church, new ways of organizing, new paths for decision-making. The new system isn t perfect and we are still learning how to dance with it, but it is opening some news ways of communicating and some new ways of doing things. I am certainly not a great evangelist, even of Unitarian Universalism, but I think you, as a congregation, are more ambivalent about growth than I am! I don t want a mega-church, I am not even sure I want to minister to a much larger church, but I know that the Little Rock area can support more than one UU congregation of 220 members. I believe that there ought to be at least one other UU congregation in the metro area and another in Conway. A few years back you voted to grow to 500 members, but just voting won t make it happen. It will take stronger financial support, more volunteer time and effort, and a willingness, even a desire, to invite friends, family members, colleagues and co-workers. On the matter of growth I am frustrated with myself but also with you we could and should do better. We get plenty of visitors, we just need to hold onto more of them and not have other people leaving by the back door! 4
Overall, it s kind of a mixed bag. You aren t the perfect church and I m not the perfect minister! You could be so much more as a congregation, and I still have quite a few things to learn in this life. I could say, somewhat cynically, that we deserve each other! What I would rather say, is that we still have opportunities to learn from each other. You certainly challenge me, some days more than others, and I hope that I challenge you, at least some of the time. Jane and I stayed in Rancho Palos Verdes for eight years in a congregation with an even stranger cycle than UUCLR s. We still hold the second longest tenure as ministers there by a couple of years. Why am I excited to stay here, perhaps even to retire from UUCLR after several more years as your minister? That s a really good question! I have been thinking about it ever since Dave Rickard chose this topic for my Service Auction sermon! Actually I have been thinking about it for a while with the conflicts that we struggled through a couple of years ago. With my mother gone and with Jane and me divorcing, I don t have family here beyond the church family. My kids are both in Phoenix, along with my only grandson, but Phoenix is always too hot! On the other hand, Little Rock has a nice climate, most of most years a little too hot and dry this summer. I like our woodlands and the readily accessible parks, rivers, and lakes, hills and what I still have some trouble calling mountains. This is a nice city in a beautiful state along with a lot of very nice, though outside the church too conservative, people. After the fifth year in Rancho Palos Verdes, I was ready to move on. Jane wanted to stay, but I was ready to move. I don t feel like it is time to move yet, I don t think my work with you or your work with me are done yet. I can t guarantee that I will retire from UUCLR, nor may you want me to stay that long, but it just doesn t feel like we are finished yet. We have so much more to do, you and me. We have danced part of the dance, but the dance isn t over. I am not even sure where in the dance we are, but we are not to the end of the dance. I am excited to see where the dance will lead us. I have ideas we haven t tried yet, and I know you have things you want to accomplish. I think this dance is a spiral, like one of those ramps that takes you between multiple levels. 5
From different parts of the ramp, one can see a much different view of the same things as well as seeing other things you can t see from the bottom. How will we see things differently next year? What kind of perspective can we get to help us see further? All questions for another day. For today I leave you with an invitation to continue the dance. Come, dance with me, and we ll follow our journeys together. I cannot tell you where your journey will lead, but I can tell you from my journey so far, that it will lead to interesting places, interesting people, and new realities and wisdom, even if we never even leave home! So May it Be! Amen! 6